When I was in college, one of my mentors declared he would become the “new, type-B” version of himself. This became a running joke in the lab, because Steve is type-A to his imperfect toes. And - because I am too - I could barely understand what he meant by it.
More than a decade later, I still wonder when I will become the “new, type-B” version of myself. By shedding off the heavy burden of type-A fear, I am working in that direction. I no longer worry so often that I will face a future too uncertain to greet with gratitude.
Perhaps the future has not gotten rosier, but what I mean by “success” has become better. And I worry less about when I will arrive at that particular destination. I have realized it has come to us.
I am a child of the eighties, born after the age of reason and trained as a scientist by an industrial system. But the time for those things has passed. The age of reason was the 1600s. If you need one example to explain why reason fails us, I give you the cubicle.  Anyone, anywhere can take one look at this most reasonable of compromises and know in their deepest soul that the proper, unreasonable response is “run!” The black swans of reason litter our landscape, but we cannot reason them away. Science, invented around the same time, has not progressed much in 400 years. It is true that we know many more facts. But the facts we have learned, many very relevant to the limitations of our own abilities, have not fundamentally changed the way we conduct scientific research. Science, today, lives not in the future but the past. We who have survived the industrial era have carried that same, monotonous, over-simplified industrial mindset into a post-industrial world.
Here are some hallmarks of the past - of the industrial age:
The ascent of monoculture, in agriculture, and in human culture. The rise of clock-time, and the belief that it is possible and virtuous to bend biological creatures of great variety to the same, machine-like schedule. The ridiculous idea that we can (and therefore should) do exactly the same things, in exactly the same way, 365/24/7, regardless of season, weather, or the natural-precedent. The belief that the measure of things can be made with quantity, rather than quality.
In short, our mania for simplification - a very biological, human limitation - has been realized to astounding excess. And we barely seem to realize it.
Some of you may see where I am going with this. And if you do, wish me luck. I’ll be there shortly.