The story void.
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Sometimes you read a novel whose observations are so well made that it makes for slightly uncomfortable reading. Last night, I finished a short book like this called ‘Perfection’ by Vincenzo Latronico.
It is set in Berlin and describes the life of a millennial couple, Anna and Tom who move to Berlin from an unnamed southern European country. They are seeking to escape what they regard as the provincial and bland culture of their hometown and experience something more vibrant. They are web designers and creatives so able to work remotely.
At first, their life in Berlin feels full of difference and creativity, but after a while they sense an uncomfortable repetitiveness - the same cycle of clubbing, drug taking,and gallery openings. The endless obsession with the aesthetics of their apartment, the same shallow conversation with friends who never become close, meaningful friends. And so on.
There is a transience and strange homogeneity to their lives, an emptiness to it all that seems to follow them around. Crucially, they sense they are part of the problem but avoid looking at this too closely.
Berlin begins to change. There is an influx of people from New York, London and other places, which they find refreshing yet are also snobby and resistant to. They keep trying to find the ‘new’ and the ‘edgy’ in their lives, only to keep finding patterns and sameness.
Their lives are heavily mediated and influenced by social media and technology. Everything feels less and less real, a performative loop in which they chase realness but cannot escape a web of culture that seems to have entrapped them.
“The future appeared out of focus. They couldn’t imagine it being substantially different to their current life—so smooth and manicured—which itself made it seem rather abstract and unenticing.”
— ‘Perfection’, Vincenzo Latronico
They eventually travel and live as ‘digital nomads’ in Sicily and Lisbon but only find the same absence of something that is beyond their grasp.
The book touches on so much without naming it too closely: gentrification, globalised culture, wealth inequality, the primacy of technology in modern life.
I felt the queasy recognition of parts of my own life, an emigrant from London, a laptop-in-cafe freelancer, a person who still spends too much time interacting with artificial environments and realities.
What the story evokes is a yawning chasm of meaning and a continuous sense of melancholy that, for me, rang true with where it feels we are right now.
There seems to be no cohesive narrative holding things together any more. Perhaps there never was in reality, but we did have a shared story about where we were heading. Everything now seems fractured and uncertain.
Do you feel it? I do. My life is full of beauty, love and connection but I also feel all around me a sense of existential dread, a doubt about whether anything really means anything.
Optimists might claim this makes anything possible. Pessimists might claim this means the end times. It’s possible they’re both right - an apocalyptic future that leads to renewal and reimagination of who we are.
The emergence of AI, one of the most dominant cultural forces of our time, is itself splintered into different perspectives. Some feel it will only accelerate our demise, others feel it is our salvation.
“The problems back then might have been more urgent, but they also had clearer solutions. Now there were too many choices, with each one leading off on endless branches, preventing any real change. Their idea of a revolutionary future didn’t go beyond gender balance on corporate boards, electric cars, vegetarianism. Not only had Anna and Tom not had the chance to fight for a radically different world, but they couldn’t even imagine it.”
— ‘Perfection’, Vincenzo Latronico
There is little coherence to the conversation, just an infinite variety of perspectives that confuse and terrify, or inspire and motivate, depending on your perspective.
Yesterday, I read that UK graduates are entering the toughest job market for years as AI replaces entry-level roles. The Big 4 consulting firms, for example, have all significantly reduced their graduate schemes (by 29% at one firm).
As a current graduate, the world has moved so fast between you starting and finishing university, that the future story you were following has either changed drastically or no longer exists. What now?
And isn’t this true for all of us? The notion of secure employment and a comfortable retirement at the end of it, a stable financial and political system, affordable food and housing, a sense of community that is easy and natural - all of this has vanished or been eroded in the space of a generation.
We seem to be stuck in a cycle of regurgitated, recycled culture with few new ideas. Lately, I’ve noticed how teenagers are dressing in 90s style clothing, which made me feel nostalgic and weird out at the same time, particularly as I still wear a lot of my clothes from then.
I mentioned this to my wife, and we discussed how fashion has always revived old styles and ideas. But something feels different about this. Some of the teenagers I see don’t just look inspired or influenced by the 90s but are in clothes, haircuts and accessories that are identical to what my friends are I wore in sixth-form. There’s something creepy about it.
I’ve recently listened to a few interviews with Adam Curtis about his new series, ‘Shifty’. He emphasises this sense of ‘stuckness’ in our culture, that we are merely playing out the same ideas as if we’ve run out of new ones. It seems to me that even our wars are like tired sequels in a never-ending movie franchise.
To Curtis’ credit, he rejects any notion that he might be part of the solution, instead pointing out that he is part of the same problem. Which is startling given he is one of the few people whose analysis of the world makes any sense right now.
Right now, there is a sense that we need some narrative and vision to hold us together, or at least some shared recognition of where we are: ‘Hey folks, things are a bit fucked, we’re a bit lost but we’re going to figure it out together’. Wouldn’t that alleviate so much of the alienation, confusion and fear?
What’s our new collective and personal story? How might we alleviate the subtle but growing melancholy that sits just underneath our awareness?
The only place I know to turn is to wisdom traditions, to practices that predate modernity and invite us back to the only things that we might consider irrefutably real: the present moment, the living world, and each other.
A kind of animistic spirit that is unfiltered, unaugmented and directly experienced. A deeper conversation with life, that brings us back to our innate capacity to feel at depths we usually skim over.
Perhaps whatever story we need, however abstract, can emerge from this reconnection with ourselves and with each other?
"We make sense of the world, and ourselves in that world, through the stories we tell. Stories help construct a feeling of order and coherence and make us confident that we can overcome the challenges we face."
- Laurence Barrett
Tipping Point: navigating collapse and crisis.
“Ignorance is what you have before you know, but unknowing is what you have after you've got through knowing.”
Iain McGilchrist in conversation with Martin Shaw.
About me.
I’m a leadership coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin.
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My entry this morning in my notebook was about a certain kind of loneliness I am experiencing. The loneliness that doesn't lack people, friends, love both ways. It is a lack of togetherness in the moment I am suffering from, I have come to see. I can catch up with loved ones but I want to experience their companionship in the present, do things together or alongside one another so that we can share the moment. Talk not of the past or the future or of ourselves but have deep or gripping or spontaneous conversations that take us away from it all, back to now, experiencing who we are, together.
I am still working at articulating the sense of unease, hoping I'll find what it is that is missing, what it is that I'm looking for in all the quirky impulses it is creating.
Just found your post above now, after those reflections, and it feels like an additional clue has been put on my path, one with a sense of reassuring universality.
Thank you for this thoughtful & beautifully written piece, which channels something that I do feel in the air too. Your clients and groups are lucky to have your wisdom. I look forward to everything you write.