What We Could Become

“We are approaching a time where everyone will take his place as an equal, self-reliantly and freely, no longer in the service of a person, but in the service of a common idea, the idea of physical and mental progress.”

– Alfred Adler, Inferiority Feeling and Defiance and Obedience (1910)

Time for another thought experiment.

A world of people happy to be exactly who they are.

What dangers could be lying in wait behind such a world? Would we be risking our greatest source of motivation, with no one to really aspire to? Would we fracture and drift apart without aspirational people keeping us united in our insecurity?

As you can imagine, it’s extremely hard to find any examples of what this future might look like.

But not impossible.

A popular science fiction show from the late 1960s was set a few hundred years in the future, and followed a crew of explorers on their mission to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”.

The show was called Star Trek, and it still has a massive cult following today. With film releases, video games, novels, and comics, it’s created over 10 billion dollars in revenue.

It’s huge, and the best part is, it actually deserves it. Because the Star Trek universe is a rare example of what our future could look like if things go really well for us. And not just because we develop lots of cool new technology. It shows us how much we stand to gain by improving ourselves and the societies we live in.

In this future, the Earth has become a part of an organisation called the United Federation of Planets. Basically, a super advanced and mature version of our own United Nations. The main characters of the story are part of the humanitarian and peacekeeping force of this Federation, exploring new areas of our Milky Way galaxy. The show creates conflict by putting the characters through dangerous situations that test whether they can uphold their dignity and stick to the moral high ground.

One of the core issues the show deals with is violence. Our future society has learned from the mistakes of the past and basically stopped doing it, but the main characters have to face dangerous enemies and try to resolve things in the most peaceful way possible.

This future also deals with what’s known as a post-scarcity economy, where people’s basic needs are easily met, and money is no longer needed. As one of the characters explains, “the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

This sort of optimism is rare in science fiction. Most stories set in the not too distant future are filled with war, inequality, and corruption. But all you have to do is look to the past to see this is not how progress works. We’ve been improving ourselves, slowly but surely, for thousands of years. And I have no doubt we’ll continue to.

A world of confident people could make a future like this a reality. A world full of people who judge themselves on what they’ve given back to everyone else, not on what they’ve taken for themselves. People who’ve earned the right to feel good about who they are and what they’re capable of. That is a species who can end scarcity, defeat insecurity, and literally reach for the stars.

Captain Kirk, the main character in Star Trek says that humans are on “a thousand planets and spreading out”, an achievement that seems so far ahead of where we are now that it feels basically impossible. But a few hundred years is a very large amount of time for progress to do its thing, and a very short amount of time in the grand scheme of our history. We stand a very real chance of being an advanced civilization like this, if we make the right choices today.

Alfred Adler had a strong belief that psychology was not supposed to be like other sciences, where only the elite group of academics understand its inner workings and have access to the newest research and discoveries. He believed that understanding human nature should be the goal of every human being on earth,^{Note 1} and that the more we understood each other, the harder it would be to take advantage of each other and the better off society would be as a whole.^{Note 2}

He also understood that confidence doesn’t have a limit. Because there are no limits on our potential for self improvement. It’s a goal that humanity can pursue for as long as we exist.

If the idea that you can never reach an “end” in your pursuit of confidence worries you, it shouldn’t. What sort of life would it be if there was nothing to strive towards?

As Adler knew, ‘life will continue to offer problems even to the most cooperative individual. No individual will find himself in the position of having reached his final goal of superiority, of being complete master of his environment. Life is too short.’

The more confident you are, the more you will enjoy working towards a better world for everyone. You won’t fear what’s waiting for you in the future, because you’ll understand that what makes life exciting is that it’s uncertain. That it can’t be predicted, no matter how much we try to control it. And if it could be, we’d lose interest in it. “If we were all sure, if we knew everything, there would no longer be discussions or discoveries. Science would have come to an end; the universe around us would be nothing but a twice-told tale. Art and religion, which cheer us with the imagination of our unattained goals, would no longer have any meaning. It is our good fortune that life is not so easily exhausted.”^{Note 3}

It’s our responsibility to become these confident people, ready and willing to contribute to others, and never becoming a burden that holds up the progress of humanity.

In a world where everyone’s goal in life is to contribute as much as possible, human progress will take its biggest leap forward in history. Industries that exploit our insecurity will wither and fail. Quality of life will rise globally. Our definitions of success will be forever changed. And confidence will be our default state.

There will always be people to compare ourselves to, who make us feel like we could be doing better. But instead of it being because that person is wealthier, or more famous than us, it will be because they are making bigger and better contributions to the world. And no matter who you are, there is always a way to start contributing more. Opportunities to be kinder, to be more helpful, to make better choices and become more like those people we wish to become.

Confidence is a goal that every single person on earth can achieve, because everyone has the potential to better themselves and give back. The barriers we’ve put up between the successful and the rest of us would start breaking down. Unlike wealth, you can’t inherit your parents’ contributions, so you’ll have to make your own just like everyone else. The playing field will level out like we haven’t experienced since before the rise of large societies.

And it all starts with a choice. To pursue confidence, like our lives depend on it.

Because they really do.

Reversing Faith

If a world full of confident people is the goal, then many of the old beliefs we’ve relied on in the past are going to have to change in some profound ways.

Standing inside the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, it’s hard not to feel the impact that spirituality has had on our species over the centuries. It’s a beautiful building, and currently an active Mosque, but it was built as a Greek Orthodox church and some of the original mosaics of Christian saints and angels can still be seen. It’s a place where religious worlds collide, as it was the spiritual centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly a thousand years, and it’s now a symbol of Turkey’s Muslim identity.

I love visiting churches when I’m exploring new cities. They have so much history and cultural significance. It’s hard to find a better way to learn about a people’s past than by learning about their spirituality.

Spiritual faith is a beautiful thing. As far as we’re aware, humans have always used the power of faith to improve our lives. It’s why we find spirituality in every culture on earth. Everywhere you look, as far back as history allows, you find people practising faith. Spirituality is arguably the most important trait of our species. But it has one very serious flaw.

It teaches you how to have faith in a higher power, instead of how to have faith in yourself.

Whether it’s a divine being, the universe, or mother nature, all spirituality preaches faith in something greater, something better than us.

Yet the faith we’re all lacking, the faith we actually need, is faith in who we are and what we’re capable of.

Even modern movements that think the universe has an innate intelligence, a cosmic order we can all tap into and empower ourselves with, is still just spiritual faith dressed up in a lab coat. It still takes responsibility out of your hands, and places it onto something else.

What would happen if we took all of this cultivated faith, something we’ve been building since the dawn of humankind, and instead of sending it outwards towards a higher power, we reversed it back on ourselves?

On an individual level, reversing the direction of our faith would mean we’d have to accept much more responsibility over ourselves and our lives. We’d lose the safety net of delegating responsibility to a higher power, and instead we’d be forced to become our own safety net. But this is the motivation we need to improve ourselves, and the more we do it, the more confident we’ll become, and the more faith we’d build in ourselves.

On a societal level, increased faith in ourselves could extend to an increased faith in others. Instead of feeling like we need a higher power to protect us from each other, we could finally develop the respect for each other we need if we ever wish to have a truly global society.

Does this mean we’d have to stop believing in all religions? Absolutely not.

But like a child who’s finally grown up enough to stop relying on their parents for everything and is ready to take responsibility for their own problems, the relationship between them will have to change, but not for the worse.

This change has to happen if they ever want to have a mature relationship with their parents, built on mutual respect, and even friendship. The same thing can and should happen with our relationship to our creator, whether that’s God, the universe, or anything in between.

Reversing faith doesn’t mean the end of our rich history of spiritual faith. It just means we’re finally ready to take control of the wheel and accept responsibility for our own lives.

Any creator, just like any parent, would be proud.

The Mirror of Mankind

There is another powerful player in our modern world that would need to be irreversibly changed in a future full of confident people.

It’s one of the best tools for self growth ever created, and it’s currently being used to sell designer clothes and skin care products.

Some of the smartest technical thinkers on earth engineered this tool to make us never want to stop looking at it. It’s designed to show you exactly what you want to see. The world as you wish it to be. It’s called social media, and even though it’s causing enormous amounts of harm to our collective mental health, it’s possibly the best thing that ever happened to us.

It’s our Mirror of Erised, the magical mirror in Harry Potter that shows us the ‘deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts.’ And the whole world is learning together just how dangerous a mirror like that can be.

The problem isn’t that it will show you all the things you want to see, it’s that it won’t show you all the things you probably should be seeing.

In the previous section of this book, I explained how important it is to explore all the things that interest you most, so you know what parts of yourself to work on, but the only way to find those things is to be open to everything.

We could be using social media to explore every possibility out there, and as inspiration to keep building our own unique lives. But it seems we’d rather just stick to our comfort zones.

It’s like having a ship that can sail around the world but never leaving your favourite harbour. It might be safe and fun there, but you’re literally missing out on the entire world.

And the fact that social media isn’t living up to its true potential isn’t even the dangerous part. No, the real danger is something much more subtle. It sneaks its way into our minds and sets people on a path full of false promises and dead ends.

Social media encourages copying.

Actually, it thrives on it.

The ideal way to look, live, and think is plastered all over it, and people are expected to follow along.

And of course, the bitter, painful irony is that anyone who actually has found success on social media did it by making themselves stand out from the crowd. By being different. And then immediately cashing in by encouraging their millions of followers to copy them.

These people have accidentally discovered the right path, but are so unaware of it that they genuinely try to help others down the wrong one. And they’ll often fall back onto the wrong path themselves, trying to hold onto their success by copying other successful people.

This is why self-awareness and lasting success are so closely related. Anyone can just get lucky and find themselves successfully standing out from the crowd. But if you have no idea how you did it you’ll almost certainly mess it up at some point, falling back into your copying habits and eventually losing all the parts of you that made you unique in the first place.

In a world full of people that are striving to be the best they can be so they can make the best contributions possible, social media could be the most powerful tool we have.

It’s a way to share information, to organise large groups of people, to give advice, and to set a positive example for others. It’s a platform that could give the most confident among us a place to help the largest number of people possible in their own pursuit.

Social media companies make their money by showing us what we want to see so we stay glued to the screen. But if what we want to see changes, if we’d rather be getting help, advice, and inspiration instead of entertainment and validation, then these platforms would change right along with us.

It wouldn’t mean the death of social media, it would mean that we’ve finally learnt how to use it properly.

New Machines of Industry

Free market capitalism has pushed human progress further and faster than we could have ever imagined over the past few centuries. And its biggest incentive is its potential for mass individual wealth creation. Basically, you can get super rich very fast.

But there’s also the potential for mass positive contribution.

In a world where we care more about our impact on others than hoarding money, the only thing that would really change is that ethical companies would finally have the advantage over purely lucrative ones.

And it’s already starting to happen.

The Kao Corporation is a perfect example. Based in Tokyo, Japan, they use an Environmental, Social, and Governance strategy to help guide them towards becoming one of the most ethical corporations in the world.

This strategy is embodied in the Japanese word Kirei, which means something clean, well-ordered, and beautiful all at once. For Kao, this represents their desire to “create beauty for oneself, for other people, and for the natural world around us.”

The company mainly makes personal care and household cleaning products, and they place extreme importance on high-quality manufacturing in a way that’s good for people and the environment.

It’s a company that shows sustainability and social responsibility aren’t the enemy of success. In fact, they can be its biggest contributor.

“The Kao Way” is their corporate philosophy, and centres around contributing to society. Their goal is to become a “100-year company”, and they understand that if you want to be around for the next century you need to make your contribution to society your number one priority.

Kao has already developed a number of eco-friendly products made with sustainable ingredients, and they launched “Wash for Life” alongside UNICEF to help developing countries access clean water and hygiene education. They’re on the right path to make it to their 100 year goal, and they’re an example of things to come, as more and more companies are figuring out just how important a positive contribution to society really is. People are starting to wake up to the damage some companies are causing, and they’re also realising just how much power they have to stop them.

One of the most impactful ways individuals can shape the world is with their wallets. If we have the means to decide what we buy, and from what company, then that’s something we should all be taking seriously. It can literally make or break entire industries, and we should be using it to do exactly that.

These days it’s common to see brands lose business over ethical violations. Do something that the general public thinks is wrong, and you’ll lose customers. A simple but effective incentive for companies to remain ethical. At least as ethical as the majority of their customers anyway.

Which is why the best way to make capitalism ethical and sustainable, is to make the majority of people ethical and sustainable. A world full of confident people, who care about the contributions they make to the world, could change the nature of every organisation on earth simply by holding them to the same standards they hold themselves.

This attack from the outside would be helped along by attacks from within. People build companies, and if people cared more about making large contributions than they did about making large profits, their companies would appeal to the confident majority and they’d end up achieving both of these things anyway.

The big question is, would this make innovation faster or slower?

It comes down to which one is the bigger incentive to innovate, wanting to make a big contribution to the world, or wanting to make as much money as possible.

Making a big contribution isn’t possible without innovation. Creating something new that benefits as many people as possible is the aim of the game. But making money doesn’t have to be innovative. In fact it’s often exploitative instead, taking advantage of others and making them worse off.

Shifting our focus away from money and towards contribution will not slow us down as a species. It will do the exact opposite.

The Rise of the Personal Brand

While new technologies will allow large companies to make a shift towards ethical consumerism, it will also let them do it with less and less staff.

Which means the days of being employed by other people are coming to an end.

Very soon companies will be able to replace their entire workforce with a few subscriptions to Generative AI platforms like Chat GPT and Midjourney. No job is safe, from the most technical engineer to the most creative designer. AI can deliver the same level of work for a fraction of the cost and time.

Understandably, people are starting to panic.

Yet despite all the doomsayers out there, there’s a very good chance we should be doing the exact opposite. The fact that AI is taking our jobs is amazing news, and it’s going to completely redefine how we live and work.

If being hired by someone is no longer an option, the only alternative is to work for ourselves. AI is providing cheap, fast and effective labour for large companies, and it can do the exact same thing for us. This isn’t just wishful thinking. Generative AI platforms are already cheaply available to anyone who wants to use them.

Imagine a world where everyone is building their own business, creating their own content, and developing their own personal brand. And thanks to the power of generative AI, they’re doing it extremely well.

What will happen to all the large companies when this avalanche of alternatives hits the market? The same thing that happened to taxi companies when Uber turned anyone with a car into a potential rideshare. The balance of power will shift towards the individual.

Uber, Airbnb, and others like it were early experiments in what happens when you give people the power to own their own income, and hold them accountable with reviews and rating systems. These companies all have their flaws for sure, but as far as early experiments go they were a raging success.

The Generative AI boom will take this to a whole new level.

People will be able to pursue their passions and ideas on a scale we’ve never witnessed before. Competition will flourish, which means innovation will skyrocket, and humankind will progress at a rate we can’t even imagine.

It won’t be a smooth transition. Big leaps never are. People who fail to recognise the opportunity will fall behind quickly. Unemployment will still be a worrying issue while people adjust to this new way of working.

But in the end, we will look back on our fears and laugh. For how could we have thought this moment was anything other than a giant leap forward.

The biggest one we’ve ever taken.

So, I’ll ask you again. What do you want more than anything in the world?

This isn’t a test, and no one is listening. You can be honest.

I hope it’s clear that the answer has always been confidence. The feeling that everything is going to be okay, that nothing can make you feel bad, or hurt you anymore. Because you’re the master of your own world, and you are confident there.

Money can’t buy it, things won’t give it to you, and selfishness will smother it before it’s even begun.

You can try to hide in your comfort zone, shield yourself with narcissism, or push back with rudeness, cruelty, or hate, but insecurity will always find you.

People will always compare themselves to everyone else, and we will always need stories to help us understand who we are. But it’s up to us to decide what stories are worth living, and what parts of ourselves to compare.

Each and every one of us can wake up in the morning and choose to make ourselves, and the world, a little bit better.

To give instead of take.

Every single person on Earth can be confident if they want to be.

But they can’t do it for themselves alone.