So … what is it?

In the early moments of the 2020 Coronavirus Crisis, I made an assumption that the panic was, for the most part, geopolitical in nature. Like many who study these things, I noted to my friends how reliably something promoting economic and civic anxiety emerges during United States election years. Not a conspiracy, just part of the way I believe politics plays out when so many different actors have an interest in what happens in the minds of Americans, and how relatively inexpensive it is to get our attention.

I may have been flat-out wrong, and I will update this to own that in the future, but at the very least I definitely overlooked the possibility that sentiment would shift so significantly that ideas that were previously political impossibilities have suddenly become reasonable measures to promote public health and safety, our economic policy, our infrastructure and supply chains, our thoughts about labor, about neighborhoods, and virtually every aspect of public life.

As many know, global pandemic is often included in a relatively short list of humanity’s ‘existential threats’. Having spent most of my adult life completely preoccupied with the fragility/resilience of human civilization in both micro and macro cases, I have so many thoughts swimming around in my head about what lies ahead for us and what we’ve built over the course of our species’ tiny moment on this rare and beautiful planet.

For the last two decades, I’ve spread my views on these big challenges through various publishing adventures from photocopying pamphlets at Kinko’s, selling books online, running community newspapers, running blogs and an online magazine, and eventually to the World Trade Center where I helped a large media conglomerate rethink the way that content is distributed online. But for the last year and a half, I have taken a break from all of that. (It’s been wonderful by the way, I highly recommend mid-career pause). But naturally, the current global crisis has changed things for me personally. And now, I’m finding myself wanting to put something of more substance than a tweet out into the world

So … what is it?

Rare Earth is the name of a school of thought that supposes there might be something cosmically unique about the planet we live on. Complex life. The possibility has some pretty unfathomable implications for not only moral philosophy, but the day to day scope and scale of our decision-making and political frameworks. True or false, it’s a thought experiment that I find fascinating. In addition, if – when you do your thinking – you think as if it is true, both the mind and the spirit are a little more compassionate and a little more appreciative of life of all kinds. More importantly, that’s exactly the state of mind one should be in when thinking about or solving any problem big enough to impact the lives of others.

So … what is it?

Rare Earth is a subscription newsletter written by me, Tyler Reinhard (@abolishme). I will update this in the future when it’s clearer what kind of publishing schedule to expect. I will explore these issues — civilization, climate change, technology, and social change — one long form email at a time as ideas come to me, or become relevant.

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