Onwards and upwards! or else...

Rethinking progress in a world that has lost its bearings

The concept of cognitive biases are utterly fascinating to me - mental shortcuts that help us make quick decisions but that may also obscure reality. Discovering a new one is like finding the key to a new level of my brain that I have not yet explored. The world looks different and a whole new set of opportunities and challenges appear - just like the old level based computer games I used to love playing as a teenager.

One set of biases so incredibly pervasive in Western society and yet unquestioned are orientational metaphorical biases. Forward, up, fast and growth are all positive and encouraged but backward, down, slow and shrinking are discouraged or avoided.

This isn't just philosophical musing. These metaphors shape everything: our economy, our politics, our relationships, even how we treat ourselves when we're sick or struggling. We've created a society that only values one direction - forward - but that has led to a society that is sicker, sadder and less connected than ever before.

How "Forward/Up/More" Shows Up Everywhere

Our economic system values progress so dearly that we evaluate the wellbeing of an economy by GDP - a metric so narrow that even its creator, Simon Kuznets, warned of its dangers: "Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between its costs and return, and between short and the long term ... Objectives should be explicit: goals for 'more' growth should specify more growth of what and for what".

In conversations with clients, I often hear stories of people who loved their careers - in science, engineering, health or the creative fields but reached a progression ceiling. The only option was to move into management. That move was encouraged and celebrated by all but for them - it marked the end of their love of their work and often, the beginning of chronic stress leading to physical and mental health issues.

The most recent story I heard was of an incredibly skilled surgeon who became a department manager to progress. Tolerable in the operating theatre, his poor people skills combined with chronic stress and his longing for his old position created a negative culture that seeped into all areas of his department. Even though he knew this was the case - there was no going back - he was such a high achieving individual that he couldn't countenance the perceived failure of going back to his previous position where he was happy.

I find it deeply saddening that we are losing incredibly valuable minds because of our addiction to forward momentum as the marker of value in society. I'm sure you have worked with someone who was ill-suited to their position and created chaos and pain as a result, even if well intentioned.

Other Cultures Show Us Different Ways of Being

What makes these biases particularly striking is realising that they're not universal - they're cultural constructs that we've mistaken for natural law.

I don't think that many of us ever realise that we are ego-centric. We relate to everything that happens from our own personal perspective. If there is a cup beside me, I might refer to it as being on my left but if I spin around 180 degrees, the cup would now be on my right. To contrast this - there are cultures that are geo-centric like Tzeltal people in Mexico - they will use spatial references like north, south, east, west or downhill / uphill. If they describe the cup as being to the east and they then spin around, the cup is still to the east - its position is not relative to the individual's personal orientation.

Ego-centric bias shows up subtly but powerfully in our language - we speak of having the "moral high-ground" or "being on top" - both of which imply others are beneath us. This reinforces a self-as-hero narrative where success is defined as rising above, standing out, or leaving others behind.

This orientation underpins the Western ideal of self-made success - the myth of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps," which places the burden of progress entirely on the individual. Personal development becomes a vertical, solo ascent - a ladder to climb, a summit to reach - with failure seen as falling behind or not trying hard enough.

In contrast, cultures without ego-centric spatial bias often conceive of development as a shared journey. Progress is not directional in the same way — it may be cyclical, communal, or relational. In some Indigenous worldviews, the individual is not a solitary agent but a node in a web of relationships: ancestors, land, kin, and community move together. There is no ladder to climb, no high ground to stand on — only paths to walk with others, or roles to fulfill within a living system. There is no sense of one person being better than another - each node is equal, interconnected and interdependent.

Where ego-centric cultures ask, "What do you do?" to get a sense of your value, relational cultures might ask, "Who have you walked with?".

Another fascinating example of our biases is chrono-centerism where we assume that our own temporal framework or era is the correct, advanced or default one and we center our lives around how we perceive time. Examples of this are "Those people are stuck in the dark ages" and "The future is bright" or "We're on the up" but it would also include "It feels like I'm going backwards" as a negative metaphor.

However, not all cultures see the future as being in front of us - some see it as behind us and the logic actually makes sense: The future is unseen, hidden from view therefore it is behind us. The past is known, seen therefore it is in front of us. Another example is that some cultures, like some Aboriginal tribes use Cardinal time where east is the past and west is the future. I found these concepts easier to understand through example: If I were given a group of photos and asked to arrange them from earliest to latest, I would most likely arrange them from left to right in terms of the date they were taken as a result of my Westernised Irish cultural perspective. If someone were looking at those same photos on the other side of the table, they would percieve them as being ordered from latest to earliest. However, someone from a culture with a cardinal time bias would arrange them from east (earliest) to west (latest). If another member of their culture stood on the other side of the table, they would still perceive the order the same way - from east (earliest) to west (latest). What is fascinating about this is both their connection to nature and their orientation around this communal / shared understanding.

Starting to see things differently in this way reminds me of a line from Alice in Wonderland where the Cheshire Cat says “I am not crazy, my reality is just different from yours.” There is no one reality - we just happen to be living in what we collectively perceive as the largest consensus of reality and any deviation from that is considered “crazy”.

What Our "Forward/Up/More" Obsession Has Created

Our obsession with forward orientational biases is becoming increasingly problematic. More friends on social media has led to an epidemic of loneliness and disconnection. More money has led to record levels of inequality - surpassing even the levels seen during the Industrial Revolution. More knowledge has facilitated a culture of alternative facts, 30 second explainers and context flattening that is making us more polarised. More consumption is pushing our planet beyond its boundaries and threatening to knock us out of the stable climate and conditions that allowed us to thrive in ever greater numbers.

The exponentially increasing intermeshing of time and value via money is exhausting and depleting. We are sold a vision of working hard to release ourselves from the tyranny of exchanging our time for economic value but every year, that exchange affords us less and less of the basics we need for survival. In our obsession with progress, more, forward and success - we have productised the basics of life: water is bottled, housing is rented, food is packaged. What next - bottled air? The 2012 animated movie, The Lorax, is starting to look more like foreshadowing than fiction.

We are all tired, overwhelmed and ashamed of our inability to keep up.

Nowhere is this more stark than in what we do to our children. We marvel in and promote their creativity, ingenuity and curiosity but once they start school, we box them into standardised testing and rigid time-based structures - effectively standardising their beings into compliant value creating assets.

What Could An Alternative Look Like?

What strikes me is that we know our biases are fundamentally flawed but we are so used to the paradigm that we no longer question it.

What if we don't need to constantly strive to "move forward"? Some of the greatest inventions of all time were created by standing still or indeed, even going backwards. Einstein discovered his Theory of Relativity by sitting still and imagining what other people had rushed past in the pursuit of a breakthrough. Thomas Edison was known to go for a nap when he was stuck on a problem - holding ball bearings in his hands so as he relaxed into sleep, his hand would loosen, the balls would drop and he would capture the creative thoughts he had before falling fully asleep.

We are also learning more from indigenous or traditional knowledge like Permaculture, psychedelic medicines, meditation, somatic healing and even urban design where we are returning to concepts like the "15-minute city" which are essentially our traditional village structures.

Here in Ireland, we used to have multi-generational mini-villages called Clachans where families lived and worked together, building dwellings as needed, holding stronger bonds and using fewer resources instead of the one off housing with neatly manicured lawns and concrete walls that are now the standard. In a time of rising prices, loneliness and housing crisis - these traditional settlement patterns make sense. However tighter planning rules have meant that these "Backland developments" are rarely granted by planning authorities. Hopefully this will change and we will see a return to more community assisted affordable housing as the benefits of intergenerational living are well established.

These traditional and indigenous ways are still available to us, a reminder to slow down and see differently - *"súil eile"* in Irish. What could life feel like if instead of orienting around individualised biases - we had a sociocentric orientation? What could be possible if we didn't fear being "left behind"? How different would people's decisions be if we valued stillness or even going backwards? If we didn't risk destitution by stopping the work, behaviours and relationships that are actively harming us - would we value each other, nature, health, community and the arts more?

If we had a more socio-centric orientation, children would learn through their innate curiosity supported by adults who encourage, inspire and guide - instead of control, indoctrinate and standardise. We all know someone who is working in a soul destroying desk job but would make the most exceptionally nurturing teacher and also a teacher who should never be near a child's dreams.

There has to be a way to create this world, so that incredible surgeon could continue to progress in both curiosity and value without moving into a management position that poisoned the entire department.

Opening New Levels of Possibility

I am fascinated by these examples of different ways of being and relating to each other and nature. As someone exhausted by the insatiable demands of the world and my perceived lack of success within it - I find the idea of breaking free from ego or chrono centrism exciting.

The vision of communal living, a community that supports and values individuals as a fundamental part of the system of life is so enticing. I have always been drawn to stories of cultures that have a collective nature - communities that come together to build homes for its members, that raise children collectively and that value the innate and individual gifts of each person. Yet, at the same time, I've always been someone who orbits community - never fully able to fit in or fit out so I might be searching for something that does not yet exist or that I've never personally experienced.

I am not looking for a binary solution - the labels fail every time - Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Anarchism - they all end up as rigid structures that create unintended consequences. There are elements of all that are appealing and that may be within our reach - if only we could stop measuring by crude metrics like GDP and pitting ourselves against each other.

Questioning these orientational metaphors is like discovering that new level in the game - suddenly the world looks different, new opportunities appear, and what seemed like immutable rules reveal themselves to be nothing more than inherited assumptions we can choose to change.

How can we change them? I have no frickin idea but I'm sure going to keep digging to try to find out...