Earlier this month, I posted a blog that began: “By almost any measure, the U.S. and the world economy are booming. We seem to have moved well-beyond the 2008 recession and are moving forward on all cylinders.”
And who is leading the pack? Who is not just in the top 1%, but in the top .1%, or even more decimal places to the right? It’s Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires.
Everyone wants to be them, right. Well, maybe not. That’s why I found Nellie Bowles piece, “Soothing the Sting of Success,” so interesting. Here is how the lead-in to the online version began:
“Where Silicon Valley Is Going to Get in Touch With Its Soul: The Esalen Institute, a storied hippie hotel in Big Sur, Calif., has reopened with a mission to help technologists who discover that “inside they’re hurting.”
Who knew?
The article goes on:
Silicon Valley, facing a crisis of the soul, has found a retreat center.
It has been a hard year for the tech industry. Prominent figures like Sean Parker and Justin Rosenstein, horrified by what technology has become, have begun to publicly denounce companies like Facebook that made them rich.
And so Silicon Valley has come to the Esalen Institute, a storied hippie hotel here on the Pacific coast south of Carmel, Calif. After storm damage in the spring and a skeleton crew in the summer, the institute was fully reopened in October with a new director and a new mission: It will be a home for technologists to reckon with what they have built.
This is a radical change for the rambling old center. Founded in 1962, the nonprofit helped bring yoga, organic food and meditation into the American mainstream.
Want more? You can read the full piece.
