A New Economic Vision That Mixes Together Occupy, Amish Culture, and Startups

t feels we are in a time of increasing cultural polarization, marked by the refugee crisis in Europe, the staunch divide of U.S. domestic politics, and the growing disenchantment of millennials with traditional institutions. Now, as we fall victim to the cultural bubbles we live in—the walled echo chambers of opinion that make up our social networks—we need to be able to bridge divides, to communicate across subcultures. Now, more than ever, we need to navigate the world with a certain “cultural promiscuity” and to think outside the silos of traditional disciplines, belief systems, and sectors.

In the same way we can splice a gene, cultures are also capable of becoming more hybrid. 

As someone engaged in social change interventions around the world, I have been flirting with diverse subcultures for some time. I see reality through multidimensional lenses, from Marxist diagnosis and feminist provocation to self-organizing facilitation tools like the Art of Hosting and Dragon Dreaming. All play a role in the communities I serve and the projects I work on.

But this wasn’t always the case. With a background in anthropology, I was trained to approach communities and cultures not as traditions to be spliced and remixed, but as entities to be observed, respected, and preserved. Only recently, I’ve come to see culture as a dynamic and living organism, capable of being “hacked,” of being “mashed up” and remixed. In the same way we can splice a gene, cultures are also capable of becoming more hybrid; for example, elements of hacker culture can become implanted in local government.