For several weeks, we’ve been living a bizarre dream. I picture the set of the Oprah Winfrey show. Credits roll, but instead of Oprah shouting, “You get a car. And you get a car,” Trump points at world leaders in the audience, and yells, “You get a tariff, and you get a tariff.”
By the next day, many of those tariffs have been canceled or modified, and we’re back where we started. Credits roll again. “Lumber gets a tariff and dairy gets a tariff. Mexico, you get a tariffโฆ”
I’d like to officially welcome The Global Economy to ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ถ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ฎ๐น ๐๐ด๐ฒ.
Businesses, employees, governments, and policy-makers are living in this between state, wrestling with questions like:
โ Should we make a long-term investment?
โ Should we re-work our supply chains?
โ Should we find new trading partners?
โ Can I trust my traditional allies?
โ Should we lower interest rates?
โ Should I change jobs?
They’re all hoping the end of tomorrow’s episode will bring clarity. I wouldn’t recommend any breath-holding.
Liminal isn’t necessarily bad. To grow, we have to pass through liminal states, which suggests, this too shall pass. But when? And how? And what shape will the changed world take?
We started crossing key thresholds on the heels of the Global Financial Crisis (marked by political, economic, technological, and cultural shifts). The pace has only accelerated with AI, geopolitical instability, and a wave of populist movements.
The problem: we’ve exited old phases, but we don’t understand the series of thresholds we now need to cross to enter the new, and with the current pace of change, we risk never exiting the liminal, stuck in this reality-show reality.
That’s what makes this The Liminal Age.
When we’re stuck in the liminal, we feel disoriented. We’re fearful. Opportunists and algorithms feed that fear and feed on that fear. We look to “only-i-can-fix-this” authoritarians to lead us through. Vicious cycles abound. Maybe this too shall pass, but it’s getting worse before it gets better.
I wish I had some pithy, made-for-social-media advice for moving forward. At a minimum, we need to understand what it means to stand on such shaky ground. How it makes us feel as individuals and as a collective. Not fall prey to the outrage machines and the opportunists intent on further dividing us (if that’s even possible).
We’d be well-served to brush up on the Stoics:
โThe chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my ownโฆ”ย – Epictetus
Time to buckle up. Time to practice our breathing. Time to demand more coherence and more stability. Time to engage in the dialogue about the future we want.
How are you navigating this uncertainty? What’s helping you staying grounded?
