==
“That proves you are unusual,” returned the Scarecrow; “and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.”
The Land of Oz
“Men have become the tools of their tools.”
John Stuart Mill
==
Let me begin in an odd place. Progress is the inevitable increase in complexity. This means when we speak of a simpler past, in many ways, we are correct. The less things are connected, the more simple it is. And if there is one thing one could say about civilization’s progress, it is that we have been quite good at inventing things that connect us. The consequence of that progress is, well, increased complexity. This complexity has a variety of different consequences, but let’s focus on individuality today.
Which leads me to self-expression as a tool for individuality.
Today’s world demands that we each, individually, cultivate a habit of constant self-expression. More and more we are encouraged to ‘be yourself,’ “bring your whole self everywhere,” and more and more we are encouraged to become more aware of our ’emotional selves.’ This is encouraged whether we want to or not or whether it’s healthy or unhealthy with regard to the health of “me.” This happens because we live in a self-expressive culture and society. In addition, we are constantly encouraged to trust our instincts and our impulses above anything else. In other words, trust the things inside ‘me’ and distrust the forces outside that we perceive discourage our instincts and impulses or even suffocate what is best for me. All of this means self-expression is a weapon against a world attempting to make us less unusual, less distinct, and less of ‘me.’ I would argue this isn’t really a true battle’, but I don’t think it’s too far off to suggest that everyone wants to etch a sense of self in the walls of the world – through behaviors, habits, and attitudes. The trouble arises in that, paradoxically, self-love has a nasty tendency to encourage unhealthy focus on instincts and impulses. Unhealthy self-love isn’t always ego-ism, but it does encourage ignoring wisdom from others and the outside world. Along those lines, true love demands connectivity and through that connectivity it has a nice tendency to counter unhealthy instincts and impulses by balancing them out with what other people value. In fact, true love eliminates the distinction between me and you. I want to be careful with the word eliminating. I do not mean to suggest that ‘me’ is completely erased, but rather me has a reflective mirror with which to objectively and subjectively reflect upon itself. “Me’ becomes a bit of a blend of all the people one has met and all the conversations one has had. Its kind of like Hanzi Freinacht’s transvidualism. Anyway. In other words, your personal and unusual no longer reside solely in the purview of ‘me,’ but also in the context of the collective. I would argue this is where the healthy unusual resides.
Which leads me to ‘me’ and competition.
I don’t think it’s a big stretch to suggest society encourages competition as a means of maximizing one’s “me potential.” Well. That is fraught with peril. For example. In recent research lower social-class university students (and other adults) do worse than their higher-class counterparts on a reasoning task only when they’re led to focus on outperforming others. Competition, in other words, exacerbates social inequality. In other words, competition constrains potential. I would posit this occurs because people with higher status, and wealth, believe life offers them more chances even if they get something wrong, while lower class people feel like there is less margin for error. I would also posit competition encourages ‘less unusual’ among the masses, i.e., conformity enhances probability of survival/some thriving, as well as encourages mediocrity. I would argue that in a competitive world, every ‘me’ must to start with where power lives. This is counter to self-reliance, self-responsibility and ‘power of me’ narratives because all of those things suggest you should think in terms of your influence on the world. Instead, in a competition-based world, you need to first and foremost understand your influence is in the hands of the existing power. This is painful to say, but there are no real independent individuals in this world. I would be remiss if didn’t point out technology has exacerbated this issue. Technology makes us feel more independent and, yet, the reality is it makes us more dependent upon other people’s opinions, attitudes, beliefs and input. We have, in other words, become tools of our tools. Which leads me to communities of unusual. Communities of unusuals may seem weird to suggest. And, to be clear, I am not suggesting a conformity of a certain type of unusual, but rather I am suggesting a coherent community of those who are unusual in some way. I suggest a community because when you are in groups, you can be very powerful. You can change things. You have confidence when things go wrong that you don’t when you’re on your own. It changes the concept of power. In fact, it is Grace Blakeley, at the end of Vulture Capitalism, who reminds everyone that when people work together, they have more power than any system.
Which leads me to eccentricity (the word most associated with unusual).
I, personally, do not believe unusual is equal to eccentric, but let me explore eccentricity a bit. I could find the only person to have looked into eccentricity: David Weeks, an Edinburgh psychiatrist and co-author of the 1995 book Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness. What he discovered during a ten-year study of 1,000 peculiar people < including a Chippewa Indian who walked everywhere backwards and two Californians who hypnotized frogs> might surprise you. I think most people believe that extreme eccentricity is a short step from serious mental disorder. But, in fact, Weeks’s subjects suffered less from mental illnesses such as depression than the majority of the population.
Fewer than 30 had ever been drug or alcohol abusers. He also found that eccentrics visit the doctor 20 times less often than most of us and, on average, live slightly longer.
The study conclusion? People benefited from non-conformity. Simply put, those who don’t repress their inner nature in the struggle to conform suffer less stress. Consequently, they are happier and their immune systems work more efficiently. Overall, Weeks found that eccentrics tend to be optimistic people with a highly developed, mischievous sense of humor, childlike curiosity and a drive to make the world a better place. Well. Kind of maybe makes you start thinking about envying eccentric people rather than laughing about them, huh?
Anyway. I believe eccentrics are the people who tend to see problems <and life> from new and unexpected angles. Their slightly odd, off kilter, perspective allows them to conjure up innovative solutions. They are the visionaries, even within smaller individual life moments, who make giant imaginative leaps. Weeks, in his study write up, suggested maybe that like the occasional mutations that drive evolution, eccentrics may provide the unusual, untried ideas that allow human societies to progress. Not too shabby for folk who are very often dismissed as cranks and crazies and nutjobs.
“No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.”
H.P. Lovecraft
Which leads me to I am worried about the world.
Society, and communities, appear to have abolished any type of eccentricity <or individuality> within meaningful power positions. Society, which tends to dictate behaviors, seem designed to promote the rise of the ‘accepted and acceptable’ behavior. Think about that. One can be fairly sure that you won’t find too many Teslas surfacing in the next few years as they are weeded out early by the application of standardized policies designed to produce standardized human beings. When I was younger it seemed like businesses had their share of quirky, slightly nutjob, people and they added color to the office. They added a dimension to the work, and workplace, which sometimes made a tough day better and a tough assignment less challenging. Not always, but at minimum it made the experience more interesting by far.
Anyway.
Look. I am not suggesting more people be eccentric, but maybe possibly less people should find conforming as important as they do. Maybe embrace being, well, unusual. That’s it. If for no other reason than a research study suggests you may be happier.
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
In the end I imagine the challenge remains that we reside in a world that glorifies individual success, yet, our greatest power lies in our ability to come together. A truly empowered and resilient society can only arise from a sense of unity and collective purpose, not self-interest. How can we reclaim the power of the collective without losing our sense of self? Maybe we should be asking how we can create more communities of unusual. Maybe it will be the communities of unusuals who will be most likely to have the ability to navigate increased complexity and ensure progress for civilization. Ponder.
breath I would be delighted if at some point he stood up and said “I am sorry. I have been a psycho. I don’t really like myself that much and I have been an unapologetic asshole for my entire life.” 
Uhm. “I will give you everything.” If that were not so stupidly arrogant, I would get angry with someone running for president saying something like that. I am completely disgusted. He is a flagrant scam artist playing games with America. It gets a bit crazier because the MAGA people claim they like him because he is no nonsense and unapologetic. Well. I don’t like it because I believe it is cowardly to not face your own lies and poor words and poor choices and you are stubbornly unapologetic when you are 100%, no, 100% to the nth degree, wrong or lying to people.
democracy smashing windows, breaking down doors, ransacking offices, defacing works of art, stealing documents and computers, defecating in the building, and searching for lawmakers to kidnap or kill -including the speaker of the house and the vice president. Emblems of racism and hate were everywhere. One wore a sweatshirt that said ‘Camp Auschwitz.’ Another carried the Confederate battle flag. Americans allies stunned by what they had witnessed, condemned the president’s actions (and inactions) and used words usually reserved for 3rd world tyrants and thugs. Even the Turkey autocrat called the insurrection the disgrace that shocked humankind. This may sound offensive to some people, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest it was the darkest day in American history since 9/11 – although somehow slightly worse. For the attack had been launched not by a distant enemy, but by the occupant of the Oval Office. It was a warning to all of us that democracy can never be taken for granted, and maybe more importantly with regard to Donald Trump that he grants democracy no or little value.
networks are more often not symmetrical.
choice – see what we face or don’t see what we face. And if we refuse to face it we will remain disconnectedly connected in our little asymmetrical networks of friends & acquaintances.
pursuit of self-interest is absolute. Unfortunately, this binary thinking creates some flawed structural thinking impeding how we can actually create the kind of world we hope to create. The flawed “how” creates a flawed foundation from which to build upon. What would help would be to understand people are neither inherently altruistic nor selfish. We are actually what researchers call conditional cooperators and altruistic punishers. I believe this is called ‘social reciprocity’ and is defined as a predisposition to cooperate with others and to punish, even at a personal cost, if necessary, those who violate the norms of that cooperation. Reciprocity behavior is grounded in an inherent understanding that teamwork and cooperation and working with others will always create “more” than what one individual can create alone. I also believe that this binary framing conflicts against a general understanding that the most extreme, or purist, implementation of any ideology, model or belief system is not effective, i.e., effectiveness is not achieved through simplicity. For example. State run systems turn into bureaucratic nightmares and free market constructs lead to dysfunctional societies.
want to create, but actually how to build it. Within this ‘how’ we enter into the next conflict: closed system versus open system. Closed systems always have a predictable end state. Humans like that. To be clear there will always be some unpredictable things occurring in the closed system. Regardless. All closed systems eventually find their future resides in entropy. Open systems are significantly more complicated and complex. They oscillate between stable equilibrium states and complex and unpredictable patterns far from any equilibrium (or anything that would be comfortable to greater society and people). Open systems are uncomfortable to people because if an open system continues to be fed energy and resources, it is impossible to predict its ultimate end state (or whether it will ever even reach an end state). People hate that kind of shit especially if they are thinking about how to create the world we hope to create. Unfortunately, the world, itself, is an open complex adaptive system – a system of interacting parts and pieces that adapt to each other and their environment over time.
If we seek to shape the world we want to create, we need to shape the extraction and distribution. By “shape” I only mean constraints, parameters and nudges; not direct activity. And, yes, shaping often refers to government. And therein lies the next conflict we need to resolve in order to create the world we hope. Does government enhance productivity and add value or does it hold back the economy because it is actually unproductive and can even destroy value? Once again, just as I stated at the beginning of this piece, the truth resides somewhere betwixt. Government, in and of itself, is not bad. Regardless of how you specifically define the role of government, I believe most of us can agree the future will always reside in some combination of reducing activities which inhibit the society and economy and increasing activities which more closely create a truly productive activity and a productive healthy society. Government has a role.
I wrote this back in 2010 and have resurrected it with the news that Dan Hurley, currently the coach of defending NCAA basketball champions University of Connecticut, is talking with the Los Angeles Lakers about their open head coaching job. Regardless of how you slice this, life decision, career decision, ambition decision, or money decision, the money involved is a life changing salary. Coach Hurley, similar to Coach K as discussed in 2010, earns a salary the majority of us will never attain. Its a good salary. But he is now going to be offered money 99% of us cannot even imagine earning. As I tuck in later in the below piece – “you have to listen.”That said. My real point is that we often talk about how life is more than money, a career is more than money, and, well, money isn’t everything. All true; until is not. Sometimes the money is so ‘more’ that it suffocates all the other possible ‘mores.’ Ponder.
Because Life changing money is just that. Life changing. And no matter how good you felt about the last decision you made if and when the next one rolls around a lot of money is a lot of money.
Which leads me to say that noticing things can be painful.
If there is one place in which we ignore invisible pains, it is business. This is because business asks you to focus on some random shit which only encourages you to embrace default shit as often as you can. Even worse, it gets a bit personal. Yeah. The business world makes us think about being visible and not being ignored to an absurd level. Huh? Things like ‘you have to be your own cheerleader!” or ‘you have to promote your accomplishments’; things like that. The implication is that the only way to not be invisible is to make sure you are not ignored. Theoretically this is okay, but in practice what this mean is a lot of noise from people who are doing things just to be visible and the things they are actually doing should be ignored. But here is the truly egregious thing. This ‘be visible’ ideology cloaks the truly corrosive invisible things which create scenarios in which the invisible people of value are not deemed worthy.
Which leads me to say I say what matters to me; a lot. 
I certainly have no patience for those who are more than willing to toss out their own past words as “I said that then but now …” or “I wish I had chosen my words more carefully.” I will not suggest we should all get our words right every time <I surely don’t>, but not all words are created equal and the really important ones, the potent ones, the ones that can construct or deconstruct, you should get right. Well. At least right enough that someday in the future your career will not hang in the balance over poorly thought-out communications. Conversely, if you did think it out and your career can hang in the balance over it, well, you made a stand**. Good on you. And backing off that stand simply to get to where you want to be is, well, not good.
I know businesses are hesitant to wade into social issues. It is fraught with peril. That said. 
There are surely consequences for your actions. But far too often this discussion devolves into a simplistic binary choice – an ‘either/or’ choice. You stand for this therefore you hate that. In other words, you cannot be pro-choice and yet respectful or understanding of pro-life, you cannot desire stronger immigration rules and still be accepting of immigrants, you cannot believe in your religion and still accept that how others worship, or not worship, is meaningful. It’s all wrong because Life, in most cases, is not some simplistic binary choice. You can, and should, believe in something and yet still can, and should, be accepting and respectful of others views. To do this not only would we need to embrace respect, but also assume that most people, let’s say maybe 99% of people, do the best they can and make the best decisions they can <no matter how flawed those decisions may look in our eyes>.
business world. It wasn’t too long ago that business played a significant role in shaping society. Yeah. I said that. As Peter Drucker pointed out back in the early 1990’s in something he called “salvation by society” businesses understood that work made up a significant portion of people’s lives and therefore they had some responsibility to investing in the fabric of society and communities. As time and views have shifted toward ‘making a dollar’ and profits the work place became less and less an extension of society, but rather simply ‘a place to work and get a paycheck’.
I honestly do not despair when I look at business in today’s world, but I do get aggravated.
of opinions, misinformation and selective use of facts out of context. Experts face an instantly-gratification-desiring fragmented public in which debatable points (usually facts taken out of context) gain velocity while the experts ruminate on the proper response. This is what Toffler called 
bullshit views going viral in an environment in which there are no constraints. The expert stands no chance. Shit. No one would stand a chance. They get deconstructed into nothingness and, yet, they are somethingness we should all be caring about.
Which leads me to overstimulation.
==
Look. In the end. My point is hope is hope. And unless someone is lying just to get everyone’s unrealistic hopes up – any hope is better than no hope. It is the power to allow us to do things beyond logic and the odds. To be clear, all actions should be determined by reason, logic, and practicality within a construct of strategic hope. That is the main Hope equation. But hope is, well, hope. And it is hope for a reason. You want something better and at the same time you are not omniscient nor a future prognosticator therefore any and all hope is fraught with some potential falseness and some potential truth. That said. Hope, in and of itself, is and has always been an abstract concept and fortune, luck, hard work and preparation can guide someone toward hope or away from hope. Hope is never, and I mean NEVER, representative of certainty. Therefore, to accept any hope, you have to accept the existence of possibilities.