What would MacGyver do? An excerpt from the revised edition of Life Changing: A Philosophical Guide (2016)

Angus MacGyver thought when he retired from the secret service, he’d put his days of danger behind him. But MacGyver was forever getting caught in life and death situations. Fortunately, MacGyver had a preternatural knack for improvising his way out of them. Since Richard Dean Anderson played MacGyver in the eponymous TV series (originally screening on ABC television between 1985 and 1992), MacGyver has become synonymous with seat-of-you-pants, DIY innovation. In each episode of the show, MacGyver gets caught in at least one life threatening situation, only to escape it, Houdini-like, by applying his knowledge and cobbling together an improbable solution using whatever happens to be lying around.

MacGyver’s indefatigable knowledge and resourcefulness became a running gag on the show. As the episodes rolled by, MacGyver revealed extraordinary insights into medicine, engineering, chemistry, physics, and a host of other disciplines beyond the ken of your average secret agent. The show’s writers would drop MacGyver into increasingly desperate situations only to have him invent ever more outlandish ways to escape them. MacGyver treated every situation with his trademark cool. While other people panicked and despaired, MacGyver would cobble together a parachute, a rocket launcher, some plastic explosive, or a jerry-rigged jet ski that would enable him to avert the crisis and save the day.

Most of the time, it was ludicrous. Still, audiences loved it. Such was the success of the show that one still hears talk of people ‘MacGyvering’ their way out difficult situations today.

Thirty years on, MacGyver is more a cultural icon than ever before. The recent announcement of a movie reboot of the show is not surprising. MacGyver personifies the agile, entrepreneurial, innovative ideal of contemporary startup culture. He represents the hacker genius we’d all like to be – the nimble, resourceful, visionary individual who is always changing and inventing things, never standing still. MacGyver is a hero for our times.

MacGyver is a hero for readers of this book – or should be, at least. Consider the attitude MacGyver displays towards change. MacGyver is never stumped by a situation. He confronts each new challenge head on and reveals it as an opportunity to apply his knowledge and skills. MacGyver doesn’t worry about what is out of his hands. He is too Stoic for that. He focuses on his resources and what he can do with them. Drawing on his full range of powers, and applying them in creative ways, MacGyver transforms crises into moments of glory. He flourishes in contexts of change. Calamitous situations bring out the best in him. Given the regularity with which MacGyver finds himself in peril, one can only assume he pursues these situations to put himself to the test.

Life Changing is a handbook for philosophical MacGyvers. Obviously, the point of this book is not to teach you how to devise unlikely gadgets to escape life or death situations. The aim is to show you how to cultivate the essential skills needed to transform the experience of change, and turning it around, to make it an adventure. With resilience, agility and vision, it is possible to ‘MacGyver’ change by revealing new opportunities in unexpected situations.

Next time you find yourself in a difficult situation without any idea how to proceed, ask: ‘What would MacGyver do?’ MacGyver would get a grip on himself, tap into his powers, and project a solution that transformed everything. MacGyver would rethink the situation and turn the moment of change into a life-changing moment of vision.

Hooked on a feeling: how a chance encounter can change your life

I met a man named AJ Emmanuel as I was walking down the main street of my town. AJ was enlisting supporters for the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. He spotted me coming from a distance and lured me in with a parody of my loping stride. By the time we met, I was laughing and he was laughing too.

‘You are wasting your time with me!’ I told him. I explained how my partner and I give a set amount of money each month to a rolling roster of aid organizations. The UNHCR was somewhere on the list. ‘A good conversation is never a waste of time’, AJ replied. It was a sunny day and I was out for a walk – why not take the opportunity to chat?

I liked AJ immediately. He was confident and upbeat. There was mischief in his eyes, but seriousness, too – a tone of gravity underlying everything that he said. I sensed that I was in the presence of a kindred spirit – a street philosopher, of sorts – a man who had seen suffering enough to know that life has no guarantees, yet who is wise enough to appreciate that the only appropriate response is to celebrate each moment.

Lines of flight: Deleuze and nomadic creativity

‘I am not a number – I am a free man!’ Patrick McGoohan cries in the 60s cult-TV series, The Prisoner. McGoohan plays a British spy who is held captive in a village on an island controlled by a faceless authority. The prisoner, known only as Number 6, has resigned from the secret service. It seems to be his crime. In the opening sequence, we see him burst into his spy chief’s office and passionately submit his resignation; he is subsequently drugged, kidnapped, and whisked off to the island. We never find out why he quit. 

The authorities on the island are as perplexed we we are. The prisoner is told that he will remain interned on the island until he has explained himself. But the prisoner refuses to do so. Instead, he seeks to escape. Insistently. The prisoner’s whole tenure on the island (the entirety of two seasons of the show) consists of attempts to escape and flee to the mainland.

Captured by the eerie bouncing balls that guard the island, the prisoner is hauled before Number 2 and issued a sardonic dressing down. ‘In a society, one must learn to conform’, Number 2 tells him. 

‘I am not a number – I am a free man!’ the prisoner replies. The moment he is alone, he is preparing to escape again.

We can see The Prisoner as a metaphor for the sixties counterculture. According to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), the counterculture was defined by the many ways that groups and individuals sought to escape the society of normalisation and control that their parents’ generation had helped create. 

The driving impulse behind the counterculture was not just to oppose the status quo, it was to get free of it – to head for the horizon with bloodshot eyes on experimental lines of flight (fuite – this can mean leaking, fleeing, or escaping). 

Lines of flight are bolts of pent-up energy that break through the cracks in a system of control and shoot off on the diagonal. By the light of their passage, they reveal the open spaces beyond the limits of what exists. 

In a series of books written with the militant psychotherapist Felix Guattari (1930-1992), Deleuze linked human creativity to flight. It is our desire to escape the status quo that leads us to innovate. Like the prisoner, we dream of being anywhere but here. We coordinate, form alignments, combine our powers and innovate. We remake the world on creative trajectories.

Deleuze’s idea of lines of flight can help us clear up a common misconception about the sixties counterculture. The counterculture was not fundamentally oriented against mainstream society. It was oriented away from it. 

It is true that the counterculture was defined politically by the rejection of the society that existed at the time. The Free Speech movement and Students for a Democratic Society were opposed to US government policies, especially the war in Vietnam. It is also clear that, in the 1970s, the militant end of the counterculture positioned itself against the state in the hope of creating a popular movement to overthrow it. But the counterculture per se was oriented away from mainstream society. Being against was a means, not an end. 

This is evident in Woodstock generation, which was driven by the desire for another world and way of life, and inspired by the belief that this world and way of life was possible. Having a ‘countercultural’ attitude and outlook does not necessarily imply that one is hostile towards the mainstream. It signals a desire to leave the society that exists, to leave it to its own devices, and to grow creative (with new devices) with other like-minded people.

The Apple I was hacked together on a creative line of flight. So, by and large, was the internet.

One of the best expressions of countercultural line of flight is the the 1960s and ’70s back-to-land movement. Drop City, in Colorado, was the first of many hippie communities that sought to create a new kind of society​. Between 1965 and 1973, thousands of middle class kids, in flight from Mom and Dad, society, the draft, careers, and social conventions of all kinds, came to Drop City and other communes like it in search of freedom and alternative lifestyles. 

The culture got by with a minimum of rules. Everything was set up to enable free-wheeling, nomadic lifestyles, which could be recreated or escaped at a moment’s notice. Nomadism, as Deleuze and Guattari understand it, doesn’t require moving around. You can sit still and be a nomad. Nomadism is a way of being. It involves refusing to be tied down by set categories and definitions. It is driven by a desire to experiment and explore, to learn, grow, and boldly venture forth on creative lines of flight.

The hippie experiment collapsed under the weight of its contradictions. Over subsequent years and decades, the counterculture thrived. Today, the counterculture has been absorbed into the system of society – domesticated, to an extent, yet affirmed and enabled at the same time. The corporate mavericks who shake up markets with disruptive innovations create businesses on lines of flight. Each generation of teenagers is encouraged to define a new line of flight, starting with the rejection of the sounds and styles that have come before. 

Nomadism is a cultural norm. While plenty of people simply want to ‘fit in’, the best and the brightest want to break out and head for the horizon.

When we look into the future, we dream of a world that is radically different from the one we know today. 

We may be stuck in offices, trapped in traffic, tied down by debt or shacked to unhappy relationships. Inside, we are nomads. We are already in flight. The mainland awaits.

‘I want to practice things like patience’: Paul Miller’s year of exile from the internet

Paul Miller is back online. Senior editor for the tech website The Verge, Miller took a year off the internet between 2012 and 2013 to see how it would impact his experience. As we might expect, Miller reports that being offline in 21st century society is rather inconvenient. No email. Miller had to deliver his submissions to The Verge by flashdrive. No social media. Miller was out of the loop on all sorts of things. He couldn’t check Facebook to see what his friends were up to. Neither could he jump on Google to browse the open web. No YouTube. No Netflix. Life offline, Miller discovered, can be extremely boring. He admits: ‘I did have a lot of free time, but a lot of it was loneliness and boredom in ways that I hadn’t really experienced before’.

Being disconnected was also empowering in a way. Miller wasn’t subject to constant interruptions and requests, and so he was at liberty to decide what to do with his day. He could get things done. He started working on the book that he envisaged coming out of the experiment. He was able to engage with lengthy reading projects, and spend quality time with himself and others. Unfortunately, the initial burst of productivity only lasted so long. Miller disconnected from the internet in the hope of re-engaging creative touchstones and overcoming blocks to his productivity. In the end, he discovered that his productively problems ‘didn’t have a lot to do with the Internet’. The same problems ‘manifested differently on and offline’.

Positive insights that Miller gleaned from his experiment include the importance of having good habits and the value of mindfulness and presence in life. ‘I want to practice things like patience’, Miller claims in an interview with CNN. ‘Just being present with people and not having so much noise in my head’. Miller found that without a connection to the internet, it was easier for him to be present in the moment. Yet, presence is something we have to work at. In the context of smartphones, laptops, and wearable computers, it is more important than ever that we practice the virtue of disconnecting our minds from the internet so that we can genuinely connect with a real person before us. Miller pledges: ‘Now that I’m back on the Internet I really want to be the shining example of what it’s like to actually pay attention to somebody and put away your devices’.

There is a lesson here for us all. Sometimes we need to disconnect from our devices in order to discover what real connection is about.

Nietzsche’s demon: the eternal return

Arc De Triomphe @ FineArtAmerica

Alexis was in love with life. Fresh out of art school in Fremantle, Australia, she’d picked up a scholarship to study photography under a famous Parisian photographer. Her mother had urged caution but Alexis persisted – and thank goodness! The course – and Paris itself – was everything that she’d dreamed. Her French sponsor found her an apartment in the Latin Quarter, just a stone’s throw from the Place Saint-Michel. Alexis would stroll along the Seine in the evening, up the Champs Elysées to take pictures of the Arc de Triomphe in the flurry of lights.

After two months documenting daily life on the streets of Paris, she had enough material for an exhibition. Alexis felt like she was at the heart of life. Things could go anywhere from here.

One night Alexis was speaking to a friend in Australia. They were reminiscing about their student days, which her friend dearly missed.

‘Do you remember Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return?’ the friend asked. ‘If I had to choose one time of my life to live out again and again forever, it would be art school’.

Alexis, for her part, was ambivalent about the ‘good old days’. She realized then that if there were a time in her life that she would have again and again, it would be her time in Paris, not Fremantle. The more that she reflected on this, the more her life seemed to come into focus. Looking out the window at the bustling streets, Alexis imagined Nietzsche’s demon coming into her room and making her the offer of Eternal Return. Alexis could hear herself reply, like Nietzsche:

‘Yes. You are a god and I have never heard anything more divine’.

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This post is excerpted from Chapter 3 of Life Changing: A Philosophical Guide

Smart data: towards a social change enlightenment

Three hundred years ago, the spread of science and liberal revolution inspired thinkers to claim that society was on the brink of an enlightened era. Today, as new data-driven technologies exponentially increase our ability to understand social problems, new strategies engaging the heart and the head boost the impact of social change programs, and tested techniques for evaluating impact reduce the cost of programs and ensure that funding flows in the right directions, there is reason to believe that we are nearing a new socio-technical threshold.

As David Bornstein claims, we are riding the verge of a social change enlightenment.

We can see it in the way that we are tackling social problems. For decades, social reformers labored under a vision of human beings as self-maximizing rational agents, a vision developed in the first enlightenment and perpetuated in the field of economics. Today, as Bornstein claims, we’re seeing the death of ‘homo economicus’. New research in neuroscience and behavioral psychology is showing that we’re not as rational as we thought. We certainly don’t respond rationally to social problems. Today’s generation of changemakers are taking this lesson to heart. Successful social change programs are targeting the heart as well as the head, effecting change by appealing to ‘non-rational’ factors such as emotion, group identity, and relationships.

‘We are capable of incredible things’: Tim Rayner interviewed by Frederick Malouf on Bondi FM

I spoke with the indomitable Frederick Malouf on Bondi FM a few weeks back about philosophy, trust, collaboration and the meaning of life. I’ve transcribed some choice snippets below. You can listen to the whole interview here: Interview – Bondi Locals @ Bondi 88FM.

Future-casting: from memory to destiny

Luke Skywalker stood on the dune at the edge of his uncle’s compound and gazed wistfully at the twin moons of Tatooine. If only the future looked as grand as those giant orbs. Luke had been raised by his aunt and uncle, who were moisture farmers on the remote desert planet. When Luke looked into the future, he saw nothing but boredom and toil. Luke’s heart brimmed over with longing for adventure. But life hadn’t given him any resources that might enable him to realize his dreams. Luke’s dreams remained precisely that – dreams. He was destined to work the harvesting systems on his uncle’s farm for the rest of his days. His excitements would be limited to racing his landspeeder through the desert canyons and haggling with the Jawas for droids.

All this changed the day that Luke stumbled upon a hologram of a beautiful princess calling for help. He sought the assistance of a desert hermit, Ben Kenobi, who turned out to be a Jedi Knight, practically living on his back doorstep. Soon Luke was consorting with pirates, hot-dogging through the stars and fighting space battles with Imperial forces. All the while, his knowledge and experience was rapidly increasing.

Luke was too modest to admit it, but his sense of destiny was expanding at an equal rate.

Ready for change? Your time starts now

Life Changing is a hands-on guide to harnessing the power of change. Using philosophical examples, it shows you how to cultivate the resilience, agility and vision to embrace change and make it an adventure.

The book includes practical exercises that enable you to apply the ideas in familiar contexts. By doing the exercises, you learn how to think philosophically about change and unleash its life-changing possibilities.

Be creative with change. Don’t just ride it out — use it.

Life Changing: A Philosophical Guide is available on Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes.

Check out the introduction to Life Changing on the P2P Foundation wiki.

Life Changing marks the end of a personal journey. For the past fifteen years, I have been studying, teaching, and applying transformative philosophy in my own life, first as a doctoral student at the University of Sydney, then as a lecturer at the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales, and recently in my Philosophy for Change course, which I’ve run at the Centre for Continuing Education, University of Sydney. My guiding intuition has been that it is possible to distil from philosophical ideas a kernel of practical wisdom, which can be communicated through simple exercises that students can apply to their lives.

This intuition is core to Life Changing. The book is structured about five practical exercises. Each incorporates a life-changing insight. The exercises show you how to muster the courage to change; how to control yourself like a Stoic philosopher; how to cultivate your Nietzschean will to power; and how to use Spinoza’s philosophy to supercharge your social life. They show you how to take adventure from the heart of crisis and fulfilment from the struggle with adversity.

Socrates as entrepreneur: philosophy as a tool of war

CHAPTER FOUR: PHILOSOPHY AS A TOOL OF WAR

But why are we talking about Socrates? If you are reading this blog, you are probably interested in practical wisdom to help you deal with contemporary crises and challenges. What could possibly be relevant in the story of a philosopher who died 2400 years ago? Isn’t this perpetuating the bad habit of looking to the teachings of long-dead white men for answers in a young, multi-ethnic, post-feminist world? Worse, it seems to be celebrating that hoary old intellectual chestnut, ‘reason’ – and reason has earned itself a bad reputation in recent years, deservedly so. The twentieth century saw reason applied to abominable ends: the rational extermination of millions of people in death camps; the establishment of the technocratic state, which claimed the right to socially engineer its populace in the name of rational gain; the ascendency of neo-liberal economic management, which posits every individual as a rational, value-maximizing agent (and too bad for you if you don’t fit the paradigm); the invention of the atomic bomb, turning war into Mutually Assured Destruction and international relations into game theory.

Why should we think about Socrates in the middle of cleaning up the mess that has been made by his descendants? Sure, Socrates is interesting – as a relic. But here in the second decade of the twenty first century, we have more important things to do than reflect on things that happened in the long-distant past.

I hear these kinds of views from people all the time. I agree with the criticisms to a large extent. Still, I think that, in this particular case, there is good reason for us to delve into the story of a dead white philosopher. The story of Socrates has immense value today, especially for those people concerned to address the challenges of the present and our transition into a sustainable future.