The Identity Supply Chain

The rapid pace of technological change creates a "what's next" culture. As companies and platforms keep pushing boundaries, the rest of us are often left playing catch-up. For many, this feels exciting. But is it healthy?

New things and constant innovation keep us on alert. The learning curve of new technology creates a nimble mind, and there's real satisfaction in mastering it. Yet a new undercurrent has seeped into the psyche of this generation. More than a mindset, it's become a kind of subconscious mantra: today is already old, where is tomorrow?

We're rarely told this directly. It's implied and intuited through mass media, social interactions, and the people we look up to. It's a message repeated constantly: it is not okay to be still. You must keep moving, or you'll be left behind. Innovate. Adapt. Change.

Future Shock

In 1970, the futurist Alvin Toffler wrote a now-famous book called Future Shock, predicting many of the outcomes of a rapidly changing, technology-driven society. He described the immense stress that would fall on ordinary people trying to sustain their social norms, families, and relationships while keeping up with a macro-society's endless yearning for more and better.

Even when we try our best to tune the messaging out, it's no small task to be free of it. In an age of information overload, a term Toffler himself popularized, being satisfied with what you have and who you are can feel like meditating on a beachfront while massive waves keep pounding you, one after another.

The Identity Supply Chain

When we can't keep up with the interest payments on our own desires, and we feel overwhelmed by the almost ceaseless pace of change, believing there's a life beyond gasping for air moment to moment can feel far-fetched. But it isn't. It's a matter of mindset, and even more specifically, a matter of the mind itself.

According to the Gita, the mind plays a central role in what I call the Identity Supply Chain. Our yearnings start out like small seeds, which get cultivated over time. Certain desires are then prioritized, and they grow to produce results we both enjoy and suffer from in turn.

We obviously want to only enjoy. But that's not possible. The desires we choose to prioritize shape our identity. The quality of our desires is directly proportionate to the depth of our identity.

If stability matters deeply to someone, if it's truly part of who they are, then committing to a life of gambling and risky behavior will disturb their sense of identity every time. Problems occur when we cultivate certain desires for misguided reasons, built on misleading assumptions about reality.

Krishna advocates accepting our true self as an eternal, spiritual force, and cultivating desires that lead us back toward that state of being, rather than away from it.

This requires a fair amount of confidence in words from someone most of us have never met. But it need not be blind faith. Arjuna offers a good model here, questioning Krishna intelligently and rationally throughout the text. That questioning helps Arjuna build a robust Identity Supply Chain, one where he's not driven by the winds of change and time, but by his own inner calling. It lets him rise above both the pull of his own desires and the agenda of the world around him.