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“Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.”

Alvin Toffler

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“I love technology and doubly love people; it’s the connection that’s out of whack.”

Jaron Lanier

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“The great growling engine of change – technology.”

Alvin Toffler

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The so-called paradox is that with increasing technology use we are not seeing a corresponding productivity increase. The entire discussion gets even a little wackier in that many of the so-called paradox analysts keep comparing it to electricity. Anyway. Here is my cent and a half on this topic.

First. I sometimes think we get confused in this discussion where we confuse technology growth with productivity growth. By that we seem to continuously seek to find some link, or intertwined relationship, when maybe it is best for us to evaluate productivity, as productivity, and technology, as technology. That doesn’t mean we probably shouldn’t seek some correlations, but not treat the entire relationship as causal. Personally, and I am not a systems analyst nor an economist, I would seek out what Donella Meadows called ‘leverage points’, kind of the times and places in which the factors aligned, and see what correlations occurred and what dynamics existed that may have permitted the leverage point to emerge. What that means is maybe increased productivity is contextual and time-constrained; not structural. Ponder that.

Second. Technology can gain its own momentum. Technology begets technology and mastering one technology gives rise to not only new technologies, but new technology wants and needs (basically a technology can create a future market within people’s minds as they wonder “why can’t?” and someone creates to say “you can”). I would suggest if you think about technology that way then technology becomes less of ‘the enemy’ or some adversary, but rather an extension of people’s thinking of progress. What that means is maybe technology doesn’t increase productivity, until it does.

Which leads me to speed.

I am not talking about speed as in how fast we can go, but rather speed in terms of our expectations. We are a hasty, impatient, species. It only got worse in the industrial age which was driven by the clock. Our speed became measured and, as a consequence, we began measuring our expectations. Everything lost its natural set of rhythms and patterns and assumed a measured rhythm and pattern. This isn’t to suggest things do not have rhythms and patterns, just that through the clock we have crammed the natural into the unnatural (side note: I imagine this is why we are so often disappointed because the things rhythm/pattern never exactly matches the unnatural rhythm/patterns so nothing is ever nice and tidy). In addition, once we had clocks, we constructed a structural rhythm and a pattern from which we could leverage productivity across all aspects of business, life and society. Once again, I would note this is possibly the most likely reason we are constantly disappointed because the natural never exactly fits into the unnatural boxes. All that said. Technology has a speed of its own. It just goes whether we go or not. That doesn’t mean a shitload of capitalist business people aren’t attempting to actually make money off of our unnaturally constructed speed world (through productivity), but technological progress really doesn’t give a shit about our constructed desires, it simply is and in its own way reflects its own ‘mechanical-natural’ speed, pace, rhythm and pattern. I imagine my real point in this section is that part of the technology productivity paradox is found in this asynchronistic time/speed relationship between technology speed and people speed.

“What I am against—and without a minute’s hesitation or apology—is our slovenly willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to prescribe the terms and conditions of the lives of creatures, which we have allowed increasingly for the last two centuries, and are still allowing, at an incalculable cost to other creatures and to ourselves. If we state the problem that way, then we can see that the way to correct our error, and so deliver ourselves from our own destructiveness, is to quit using our technological capability as the reference point and standard of our economic life. We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.”

Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle: An essay against modern superstition (2000)

Which leads me to the long tail of success.

What I mean by that is a version of people’s inordinate focus on immediate results. In other words, if someone doesn’t see immediate success, they deem it a failure. Headline after headline and ‘expert’ after expert will do everything they can to tear down an investment in the present as a poor investment because it’s not showing immediate returns. Shit. I have no clue how any government can get anything done under this smothering attack mode. This is a problem because there are a boatload of recent studies highlighting that often productivity success is only attained on complimentary technology innovations and not on the foundational innovation, i.e., the long tail of success. Anyway. You can parse out technology into some fairly well defined “useful versus less-than-useful’ contributions to productivity (work and life), but in doing so you ignore the dynamics of the system it is inserting itself into. Technological change does not happen in a vacuum, in fact, technology and society are inextricably bound together. Shit. Productivity does not happen in a vacuum. People shape technology and how technology shapes people and, yet, productivity continues to be measured in inflation, GDP, output, profits and ‘growth.’ Once again, the ‘system’ typically seeks causal relationships and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that in a dynamic complex system, i.e., the economy, system behavior is a reflection of the whole working together and not any one individual part. So maybe I could argue that technology IS driving productivity because it is a part of the whole that is creating success. Ok. Maybe not; but maybe. Oh. And that long tail thing. I think its absurd to not acknowledge that technology hasn’t made more people, more productive, outside the traditional office construct. We have more profitable healthy small businesses and free-lance/self-employed businesses than ever – all/many fundamentally supported and grounded in technology. Just because a large business cannot prove a productivity increase causation from technology, I don’t think we cannot argue that technology has enhanced productivity. In fact. I would argue technology has been a more effective productivity enhancer with small businesses than big businesses which is most likely an indictment against how larger businesses just cannot get shit done then a technology/productivity paradox.

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 “We find the true person only through group organization. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Thus, the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.”

Marly Parker Follett, The New State

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“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

Roy Arama

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Which leads me to say here is where it gets weird and unpredictable.

Two things are converging at the same time:

• Implementation lag. That’s the technical term for “it takes time to master tools.”
• Factory construction. That’s code for “non-human productivity”.

History has shown technology eventually transforms how we live and work, but it can take some time, i.e., implementation lag.

Businesses have to be reorganized and adopt these technologies in an effective way, and other complementary technologies have to be created to exploit the breakthroughs. This can be seen by comparing labour productivity in two different time periods. The one runs from 1870 to 1940, and it is the era of portable power, from its invention, implementation and diffusion. The other one runs from 1970 and onwards and refers to the era of information technology (IT). Labour productivity during the portable power era shared remarkably similar patterns with the IT era. In both eras, there was an initial period of roughly a quarter-century of relatively slow productivity growth. Then both eras saw decade-long accelerations in productivity growth, spanning 1915 to 1924 in the portable power era and 1995 to 2004 more recently.

The second is a bit of a wildcard in that it will drive productivity, just maybe not human productivity (or maybe not structural, just transactional). Simplistically, people discussing the impact of technology seem to like to focus on employment; or unemployment. A bit more complex, or complicated, is how technology gets implemented on a wide scale. Because this requires businesses working out the details across a variety of new plants/manufacturing/offices and the people needed to support this new approach to how the business constrict of doing business is constructed. In other words, productivity increases may be linked to technology; at some point in the future. But. Yeah. Its gonna be weird and unpredictable.

In the end.

Technology is going to grow here and there. Period. Productivity will grow here and there. Period. Technology and productivity will most likely grow together, in some places here and there, and will not in some places here and there. Period. But that isn’t a paradox. Ponder.

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“There’s nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.”

Thornton Wilder

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Well. There are a couple of things to think about with this quote.

–      What we think is not always what everyone thinks

This sounds basic. But, boy oh boy, we forget this – all the frickin’ time. In fact not only do we forget it we actually do so while remembering it.

Huh? What do I mean?

Well, c’mon, how often have you sat there and said ‘no one has been thru what I have been thru and can understand this’ or ‘no one understands how I think’ and, yet, when we look around and assess what people are doing <and thinking> we sit back and go ‘whew, I bet they’re thinking this …’

It’s kind of crazy.

It’s kind of hypocritical.

Suffice it to say whether you think you are normal or think you are abnormal what is happening inside your head is very often different than what is happening in the outside world. In other words … it is very very likely what you think is not what everyone thinks.

Next.

–      We should listen more

In business, in personal life, does not matter; we should just listen <without preconceived filters> more often.

I am fairly sure that it was Henry Miller who said “the street howls with the truth.”

Smart man.

Listen to the howls.

So let me share some observations for business.

I am an avid trend watcher, people watcher and behavior studier. I listen by watching. People give you massive cues <clues?> as to what they are thinking and why they do the things they do. You just have to listen to the music of their Life and find the beat of their individual drum. I say that because far <far> too many business people say “we need to do consumer research and hear what people say.”

Well.

You may.

But you may not have to.

In fact. Even if you do the research, if you are not a good listener, every dollar you spend on that research is wasted.

Regardless. Listening isn’t just with your ears, it is also with your nose and eyes and all your feelings.

People’s lives talk.

You may not understand the language immediately, but if you listen closely … really closely … you will understand.

Why is it so hard? Why do you have to listen so closely?

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“I do not think I’m easy to define. I have a wandering mind.

And I’m not anything that you think I am. “

Syd Barrett

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People are not easy to define. Most people are difficult to ‘slot.’

Yup.

Sorry about that.

I feel especially sorry for the people who think they are good at assessing people. The majority of them are, well, not. At best they are simply good judges of their own bias.

Anyway. We desperately WANT to slot and segment and cluster people because it makes it easier for us. But as soon as you do you stop listening. Yeah. That bias filter thing again.

Shit.

All I really know is that we need to listen more. There is nothing better for you than eavesdropping on the world on occasion. Ponder.

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“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”

Rumi

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When I started on this piece I wasn’t sure if it was about self, life, dreams or maybe even starting a business. Then I realized, in some weird way, it was kind of about all. How? Think “connection.” Or maybe connecting with something in a multi-dimensional way <emotionally, physically, experientially> which not only grounds us to us <our self>, but has a commonality to ground us to other “us’es” as well as to, well, everything <hopes, dreams, aspirations>. To me this has two aspects: stars & nothingness.

I like the thought that maybe each of us is really a star <shining brightly for something good or hopeful within ourselves as well as possibly for someone else>.

I like the thought we spin out of nothingness as people, as careers, as thinkers and as doers, scattering to find our place in the expansiveness ahead.

I like the thought that maybe, because we really are stars, we seek them to find whatever secrets they could share about us.

I like the thought that stars can be seen by anyone, anywhere if you only look up on occasion.

I like the thought that stars connect people and thoughts and dreams and wishes and … well … anything hopeful.

I like the thought that while stars are about space they are actually more about managing space by circumventing distance to activate that which can exist between stars and people.

I like the thought that stars actually embrace the strongest business building concept thru actively engaging people in a physical way … an emotional way … and an experiential way. Stars engage us, connect with us, in a way that businesses and brands should attempt to emulate any authentic way they can <because I am not sure I can find any one person who dislikes stars>.

Regardless.

Whether we truly are stars spinning out nothingness or stars simply represent our sense of ‘nothingness-to-what-could be’ mindset, it is pretty amazing to think that anything spinning out of nothingness can inevitably create one of the greatest connections a person can ever have. Stars represent life moments stitching together all that we are and all that we want to be to form thoughts & attitudes which fuel behavior.

Stars are part of everyday lives and occupy critical space in a person’s grander Life story. They never dictate behavior, but instead inspire behavior. They do so by nudging us toward both emotional and transactional personal investments into ourselves inevitably shaping life patterns, creating behavior, and ultimately encouraging us to make personal identity statements about who we are.

Stars are the beginning, middle and end of Life. They represent life and how we live it.

They are the small cornerstones to our Life stories. Somehow they transcend the transactions we make with ourselves by resonating with something inside as well as outside the moment of ‘transaction’ with the star. And maybe most importantly? This multi-dimensional transaction we make with a star perpetuates a bond which unites, influences, inspires and scatters us out of nothingness toward, well, somethingness.

I imagine that means stars ultimately represent a connection with ‘what could, or can, be.” Stars help us answer the ultimate life question: “how do people fulfill their potential and figure out who they are and what they’re capable of?”  They seem to give people a nice simple focus point which doesn’t sit there and lecture or even offer any advice, simply a feeling of possibilities.

Shit. Maybe that is all ‘Bruce-babble.’ Maybe I am giving stars too much power and too much definition.

Here is what I know for sure. We should all look at stars every once in a while:

Some of us may find hope.

Some of us may find clarity.

Some of us may find ourselves shrinking before the immensity of Life.

Some of us may see possibilities.

And some of us may find that they take the moment and make a Life transaction.

But all of us WILL find something. If we look up at all that nothingness, we will see something. Ponder.

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“I’ve never enjoyed being fully present, a muted reality has been the landscape I’ve preferred and mainly inhabited forever. Sure, feeling is good, but not too much.”
Mark Lanegan

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“Numbness keeps us from becoming.”

Glennon Doyle Melton

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While ‘increasingly short attention spans’ is a bullshit narrative it is not bullshit to say it is becoming more difficult to figure out what to pay attention to. While the internet has offered the joys of any and all knowledge at your fingertips, it has also offered the despair of being bludgeoned with a steady hailstorm of any and all knowledge (real knowledge, false knowledge, made up knowledge). This bludgeoning has either numbed us or forced us to hide our attention in smaller spaces where we only see the things we want to see.  So. Cognitively we are overloaded (and I only believe it is increasing). McLuhan outlined the issue maybe the best – ‘we ratio.’  We always ratio our attention and technology has simply re-ratioed things for us. In the process of ratioing us we are getting squeezed and, well, being suffocated.  In fact, I believe every one of us runs into a very complex Big Squeeze only amplified by technology. Ok. Let me be a bit more specific. Technology is an equal opportunity distributor of any and all content – true, untrue, useful, useless, and everything in-between. As we get squeezed by all of this we become, well, numb. This isn’t an excuse for people to be derelict in their duty to sift through the garbage to find the non garbage. It is simply a point. People are pattern seeking and within all this stuff it becomes next to impossible to discern real patterns – it is easy to become numb. This gets even trickier because AI systems are designed to recognise patterns, but, contrary to human beings, they do not understand the meaning of these patterns. So we get presented with patterns that, well, don’t exactly align with the meaning, or meaning in general, with what we understand as humans. Faced with enough of that we become numb.

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“Feeling must have rendered her numb.”

Mary Lawson

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‘.. striking a balance between humans and machines … on one side biased and arbitrary human organizations and on the other, soulless technocracy based on unfeeling machines. There is a path.”

Mike Walsh

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I would suggest we do not talk enough about overstimulation, how we numb ourselves to certain things (as a personal defense mechanism and not under some lazy reason) and the fact that the sheer amount of information we are bombarded with forces us to ‘self-ratio’ what we take in and what we assess and how we do both.

Which leads me to how we start parsing out segments & aspects of what could be construed as part of the ‘overstimulation totality.” Here is the deal. Overstimulation, while we want to blame technology, is the combination of the medium, words, pictures, movement, symbols, associations, tone of voice, etc. received in totality. Individual elements, while interesting to debate, have no real meaning on their own. It is the totality in which we begin to re-ratio our attention, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and thoughts. This is compounded by the fact technology is so pervasive it is impossible to turn off – either directly (our own use/input stimuli) or indirectly (we are interacting with people who have extended their senses to link with technology). Reality gets distorted in both the incoming stimulation and the outgoing beliefs (conclusions). This is important because many worthy ideas have been sacrificed at the altar of overstimulation. This makes me a bit uncomfortable to write, but maybe numb is a natural state for many people within the current context.

• In 1964 Marshal McLuhan (Understanding media: Extensions of Man) suggested the idea of numbness associated with the advent of a pervasive technology/media. The idea that as media propagated and became an extension of people it would impact our ‘ratio of things.’ In other words, we would have to choose to reorder what we thought about, how we thought about things and what we would do. Ultimately, should technology infringe too far as part of ‘extension’ we would purposefully numb ourselves simply as part of survival (cognitively, attention, default, etc.).

• In 1970 Alvin Toffler suggested the advent of technology and the rapid changes it would inject into our lives would inevitably create a sense of overstimulation. In other words, so much would be occurring in a finite amount of time we would cognitively go into overload.

What hath technology wrought? Numbness. I am not suggesting it is the sole culprit, but it has amplified less visible issues to visible, small issues to big issues, big issues to existential issues, and our brains have a cognitive issue with all of that. Here is what I believe (and have some research proof):

• The world is not any less, or more, linear (causal relationships exist).
• The world is not moving faster (a minute is still a minute)
• Attention spans have not decreased.
• People have not become stupider.
• Curiosity has not diminished.
• Purposeful ignorance has not increased.

What I will say is that the consequences of numbness veer widely between an inability to say “yes or no” to a steadfast “yes or no.” On one end we retreat and on the other end we become dogmatic. That is the polarization of numbness. Yeah. Even numbness has consequences. Ponder.

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“The modern spirit is a hesitant one.  Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization.

We have no more giants; only obedient ants.”

Roger Lowenstein

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Doing the right thing is a basic innate instinct.

We are all born with it.

We all embrace it.

We all actually enjoy doing it.

And, yet, it seems like more and more we are hesitating to do it. Where it once was a spontaneous unthinking everyday behavior, it is now becoming a more conscious decision making process.

Society has created this situation.

This is not an individual behavior driven situation <although the individual can certainly make a choice to go against society>. As I said upfront, left to our own devices most people will do the right thing.

How can I be sure of this?

Well. Attitudes with regard to desire to do the right thing have not changed. The attitude today remains the same as it did yesterday and the day before. In other words the spirit of goodness remains, but something is making the spirit hesitate.

Now.

To be clear. Today I am discussing ‘hesitation.’

This isn’t about not knowing what the right thing to do is nor is it about the choice itself. This is all about the moment before the moment. The moment in which your instinct kicks in, you can almost feel yourself moving or getting ready to speak and, yet, you hesitate.

Why do I think we hesitate <when our instincts tell us otherwise>?

Suffice it to say we have become a maniacally litigious society combined with a relentlessly unforgiving society.

Individual words, a slip of the tongue as it were, can lead to a law suit, being fired or even having your entire character destroyed online. In other words, society is screwing us up.

Shit.

Who wouldn’t hesitate knowing that?

This hesitation costs us, as individuals and as a culture, an exorbitant cost. It diminishes not only the random act of kindness but, in the business workplace, diminishes ethical behavior. And it diminishes in a slightly insidious way.

Insidious?

Yeah.

It’s not that in our hesitation we decide to do the wrong thing, but rather in our silence the ‘less than the right things’ steps in and assumes control.

Oh.

Please note that I purposefully say ‘diminish.’

I am certainly not going to suggest that this societal driven hesitation eliminates doing the right thing. That would be silly.

That would suggest the spirit to do the right thing, to be good, can actually be extinguished. I do not believe that is possible.

Spirit can be dampened, it can be smothered, it can be diminished, but it cannot be expunged from who and what we are as humans.

Now. Maybe even worse than the diminishing effect?

It creates ants … not giants.

Ok.

Maybe worse?

It creates situations in which deserving giants receive undeserved criticism and are cut down in the attempt to make them ant sized so the ants can assume more power than they deserve.

My point today?

We should all be giants.

All of us.

Giants of the spirit of what is right and doing what is right and kindness and generosity and integrity. And we should be giants every day, every hour and every minute. And we should have the right to feel like a giant when doing so.

Society is stealing our opportunity to our rightful place as a giant.

I believe we are in an age of heroes where society encourages less than heroic everyday behavior.

I believe we are in an age of giants where society encourages us to be ants.

I believe the modern spirit is not naturally a hesitant one.

I believe we are in an age where doing the right thing should be demanded … in Life & in business.

I believe we are in an age where we should be seeking to eliminate divisiveness, eliminate restrictions on ‘right behavior’ and eliminate the … well … hesitation of the spirit to do the right things.

Ponder.

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“Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”

not really said by Plato

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“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn

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• Pretz: concept of intrinsic worth of an individual, without regard to their birth, sex, religion or race. The poorest laborer was worthy of the respect of the most royal.

• Paratge: describes a range of moral qualities to which the whole community should aspire – generosity, kindness, honesty, sincerity, courage and tolerance.

=========================

There is a pernicious narrative that being kind just opens you up to being taken advantage of. In other words, people are not really kind because they have a “what’s in it for me” attitude. This is pernicious because it is a double-edged sword. It encourages kind people to believe that kindness isn’t valued. It encourages all people to believe that kindness is more likely to be penalized than rewarded. This triply sucks because, well, most people are kind. And they prefer to be kind.

So. Generally speaking, I am an optimist (maybe really a skeptical optimist), believe we should do more utopian thinking and believe, for the most part, humans are kind and like to coexist in a healthy collaborative way. That said. I get a little concerned that we, far too many people, do not believe people are kind. Simplistically there is a general impression that if you are kind, or nice, you are not tough — or tough enough to assume the challenges in everyday life let alone the more difficult responsibilities

At this attitude’s worst dimension, it breeds a belief ‘assholes win,’ therefore, ‘be an asshole.’  At this attitude’s slightly less worse dimension it suggests “the toughest fighters get shit done when it’s tough to get shit done.”

Now. Aspects of that latter point are true, but it seems like everyone forgets to add onto that thought “but that doesn’t mean you need to be so at the expense of kindness.”

While we could debate whether I am exactly right on what I am now going to share, the reality is that one of the most important attributes of a good person is actually “ability to make the tough decision without losing sight of kindness.” I imagine my point is that if you make the bold choice to incorporate kindness from day one <which no one seems to be pragmatically encouraging young people to do so> it just becomes something you do without thinking about it. Your life is inextricably bound to kindness and while I have no statistics to support my next point my guess is that “outcomes” are equally distributed to those bound to kindness and those not (in other words, the choice doesn’t change the overall distribution of success). So, kindness ‘success’ is captured in the fact you are just as likely to succeed on outcomes AND you can value the effort you invested in whatever outcome there is (and, I imagine, you will be more liked and respected).

Deciding to be successful and be kind is a choice**. And a big choice given the kind of shit the world tried to teach you far too often these days. Assuming responsibility for kindness … well … impacts everything. It is one of those ‘ripple affect’ type choices – with benefits in the present and in the future.

• ** note: to be clear, I believe kindness and kind acts are actually things that should be considered success, but in today’s world I am arguing that kindness does not mean you have to sacrifice the more materialistic definitions of society success.

Yeah. I do tend to believe you can affect your kindness by consciously deciding that kindness can win and that kindness does not diminish effectiveness in the pursuit of some specific outcome. The truth is that Kindness wins if you simply believe it can get injected into discrete moments of now.

Here is where I offer the unfortunate truth about kindness – you have to do something, or actually be consistently kind, to actually be kind. What I am talking about is make choices. Choose to be kind and act with kindness. In fact. In today’s world you almost have to defiantly choose to choose to be kind. As a corollary, you also have to choose to live in defiance of all that is not kind. I mean this attitudinally as well as behaviorally.**

• ** note: I almost think it is tougher for us to be consistently attitudinally kind in a world consistently attempting to tell you (a) people are not inherently kind and (b) you are weak mentally in elevating kindness

Look. Kindness doesn’t mean being a spineless jellyfish. I am not suggesting you shouldn’t call someone a jackass if they truly are a jackass, or be harshly constructively critical if that is what will get through to someone or even make the hard call where people get pissed. Sometimes life/business demands you to portray some jerk-like qualities. It does so not because it encourages you to actually be a jerk, or a jack ass, but inertia is incredibly difficult to address and, yes, sometimes you have to kick some ass to get everyone moving.

So maybe you need to selectively be a jack ass.

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“Got to mind the delicate social nuances when you inform some poor fellow that he’s a dumb motherfucker.”

Locke Lamora

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And, yet, you can be a jack ass without sacrificing kindness. What I am suggesting is if you carry kindness with you … and offer kindness as a thread of all that you do … well … kindness can win and does win.  Yeah. You can win the right way instead of just winning.

I will tell you one thing that I know for sure. There is a small sense of satisfaction; let’s call it “added value”, in everything you do if kindness is injected into the decisions and behavior. Once again, I am not suggesting being kind is a transaction. It is not. It is simply making the world better moment by moment, maybe making someone’s life just a bit better in a moment, and the reward isn’t anything to you; just that maybe the world became just a bit, if not fractionally, better. Ok. So maybe it is a transaction; a transaction with the world.

Anyway. Here is some harsh truth.

While kindness really does matter, unfortunately, in this world in which far too many people believe being kind is weak, you have to purposefully choose, or at least be self-aware, to be kind.

And therein lies my point. To get something good for all of us sometimes we have to do something that may feel a bit uncomfortable for the self. We are not machines and we need to have a sense of direction, but progress toward that direction relies on some belief that not only other humans are good, but it is just a bit easier to see the dark hearts that may seek to subvert our progress. Said another way, being kind needs some trust in humankind and a belief in kindness threaded through a society, a collection of individuals, who would like to be better tomorrow than today and recognize, collectively, we have a better chance in achieving this if we inject some kindness. That ‘trust’ does not demand proof that everyone is kind in their heart of hearts, just a steadfast belief. To be clear. Society can make this tough. But remember. We is made up of I’s, and I’s create the We. Society is not only an outlet for our individual contributions, but also a reflection of our collective contributions and beliefs. It is a place to give to as well as to receive. So maybe we should seek to create just a bit more of our world where there are fewer places for unkindness believers to hide. Maybe we should think of being kind as, well, being a good “samaritan.” Yeah. Perhaps our moments of kindness rescue strangers in ways they will never forget and, as a consequence, are just a bit more kind on occasion.

So why talk about kindness today?

I thought about this recently due to a conversation I had with a kindness kindred spirit. For just a moment in a busy day, in a business discussion, we took some time to talk about moments where we experienced kindness around the world. I would suggest that these little moments are important in a world generally mired in dystopian thinking, some misguided hopes, and relentless zero sum thinking. Those words matter because kindness and hope are inextricably linked. For what is hope without kindness embedded within it? It isn’t hope; it’s achievements, it’s outcomes, it’s outputs. It’s things, not dreams. Those are the sorts of things, as I pointed out earlier, that are often bereft of kindness. Kindness increases the value of hope. Maybe hope resides in paratge or maybe we should embrace what Alexandra Rowland suggests and maybe we kindness people just need to become punks. Ponder.

Alexandra Rowland

“We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but we’ve also been soft and forgiving and kind. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.”

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“We continuously make promises and create agreements with ourselves and others. Some of these agreements are mutually beneficial. However, when you realize that things you agreed to in the past are no longer helpful, possible, or relevant, renegotiate. Be invested enough in your situations or relationships for renegotiation to take place.”
Susan C. Young

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“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
Shirley Jackson

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I have written a number of pieces on fantasy realities and the alternative universe thinking strewn throughout today’s society. Today is more about each of us, individually, and how I believe all of us are assessing our grip on reality. This isn’t about creating a fantasy thinking space, but rather assessing what we believed was reality and some of its underpinnings. Yes. Today let’s all agree on reality.

In fantasy thinking reality is an inconvenience, but in a world in which you truly see, and understand reality as it exists, you begin to noodle the inconveniences a bit more. In other words, we all begin renegotiating reality. What I mean by that is as we look around us, we note some specific aspects of reality and begin negotiating with them in our minds even with some that could be considered traditionally sacrosanct. I tend to believe we do this all the time, but the pandemic drove the thinking a bit deeper in breadth and depth. What may make this unique is that, generally speaking, everyone is doing this at the same time individually making decisions in their own minds with their own formula Life remix .. and because of that changing some of their attitudes. This doesn’t mean that most people are flipping 180 degrees on specific aspects of reality, but what it does mean is that many many people are shifting their views maybe 2 to 5 degrees. They begin seeing reality from a slightly different point of view. And not everybody is stepping to the same side or to the same degree. I say that because I know that a lot of people want to sell books and futurists want to design a future based on what they see, but not to be ironic society all the people are actually in the middle of the renegotiation process. All the books and all the futurist experts are simply guessing. They’re guessing not only how individuals are renegotiating, but they’re guessing that there will be enough renegotiations coalescing into the view that they are projecting. Once again that is a guess.

Which leads me to the renegotiation.

Questions and questioning. The depth and breadth of the questioning is mind-numbing. Does how I work make sense? Does how I live my life make sense? Do some of the decisions I have made in the past makes sense, i.e., did society truly offer paths that were in my best interest? In fact, what is in my best interest? Whom can I believe let alone trust? It doesn’t help that with 24/7 access technology it’s no longer just our eyes and ears, it’s the rise of misinformation and disinformation and lies and selective facts often leaving us feeling distant or detached from not only reality, but from ourselves mentally and physically.  Each person has both, simultaneously, a reduced and expanded sense of reality. I would suggest we are revolting. Maybe not physically, but socially and culturally. The pandemic certainly gave us significant opportunities to be able to look pretty closely at our lives, how we interact with business and society, and rethink all aspects of our lives from our jobs, lifestyles, family, priorities, to how we actually would like the world around us to function. The pandemic simplistically bared all the pain points that maybe we had just ignored or were just niggling underneath the surface of life. I would suggest that all of this makes almost every single person push back in some form or fashion against the existing balances of power and rethinking the cornerstones of society and how it works. Basically, we are questioning everything and, hence, renegotiating reality here and there. The problem, at least for those in power (institutions, businesses, politicians) is that each of us are questioning in our own way, about our own aspects that bother us, and are individually arriving at answers. This is an extremely untidy thing happening across communities and societies in general. This doesn’t mean that at some point we won’t coalesce into some fairly agreeable version of how society, business and life should work, but for awhile its going to be a jumble of jagged edges. But, to be clear, institutions, businesses, the system in general, and the power structure will be resistant to losing any control and any power and will relentlessly attempt to impose its will on the people.

Which leads me, specifically, to business and capitalism.

The idea that a worker should devote their life to some institution and powering profits of a business, rewarding the executives and investors, is increasingly unpalatable to most workers. This has a cascading effect. What I mean by that is, if you start questioning climbing the corporate ladder, then you begin questioning the value of the things that in the past have been deemed important to climbing that ladder. That includes college. And if that begins happening, then the cascading questioning falls all the way down to looking at the entire system and the things that underpin the economy, work, and capitalism. We start questioning the economic system, where we belong in that system, and how that system rewards or penalizes us. Certainly, research is showing that while people may not have a positive view of capitalism, they aren’t interested in completely ditching capitalism, just questioning it and whether it does more harm than good in the world. This also has repercussions. For example, different political ideologies articulate how that comes to life in different ways Conservatives suggest that Progressives are seeking solutions in Marxism, socialism, and Communism. That’s not necessarily true. They’re just seeking solutions to what they deem as an unacceptable version of capitalism, but not seek to create a new ideology. Liberals suggest that conservatives are seeking solutions in authoritarianism to hammer down what they view as successful in the past (hence: conserving). Its kind of a hyper conservative culture version of a system of governing in society. This is actually happening. I imagine my larger point is that as we, individuals, cast about with our criticism of what exists, HOW we criticize is used as a tool to divide us. I think we need to be careful in discerning between questioning and criticizing. I say that because across the scope of liberals, conservatives, men, women, all races, we’re not only seeing questioning of the facets of life which were once considered sacrosanct, in many cases we’re actually seeing repudiation of facets of life once considered sacrosanct. We are, well, renegotiating reality.

Which leads me to say each person is plucking out aspects of the existing reality and challenging them.

This isn’t fantasy thinking and it only creates the appearances of ‘alternative universe thinking’, but, its reality. This renegotiation process COULD affect reality and society in a whole cloth way, or it could simply be renegotiation of aspects within a larger framework of a social contract. But none of this is fantasy, none of this is alternative universe stuff, all of it is true renegotiation. It may be confusing when viewed from a meta standpoint because it is all happening at a mesa standpoint – one person at a time. Businesses hate that because they want some standardization. Institutions hate that because they want some standardization. Governments hate that because they want some standardization. And, if we are honest, communities hate that because they want some standardization. Renegotiation is a flow state and I am fairly sure no one knows where society will flow to. It’s going to be weird and fairly uncomfortable for awhile with no clear answers. But, well, that is reality. Ponder.

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“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

Henry David Thoreau

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Well. Discussing price is always interesting. Whether it is about price in life or price as in wallet or I imagine even price of soul <head, heart, wallet>.

It’s all about the expense.

It’s all about the exchange.

Which, I imagine, ends up being about the value.

Look.

We make many decisions in life.

Every day.

Every hour.

Every minute.

In fact, I believe we make about 30,000 of the suckers a day.

And each decision is an exchange.

This is not only an exchange of doing something versus not doing something, but maybe more importantly, or of value, is the exchange involved in ‘what you have sacrificed in order to do something.’

Uhm

Yeah.

I typed the word ‘sacrificed.’

I use that word because, well, life is finite <unless you are a vampire>. To be clear, I am not speaking of “time is money”, this is more life is experiential and by doing something you will have sacrificed something else.

Yeah. I am speaking of “the exchange.” You hand over something and it will give you something in return.

Yeah. I am suggesting all your choices involve some exchange with Life and in doing so you are actually sacrificing some of the finite available to you, the Life line item on your balance sheet, as an expense for whatever choice you make. I am certainly not suggesting this is a zero sum game exchange, simply suggesting you are making a deal with Life.

I could argue this is the truest of true exchanges.

I say that because you do not get it back. You have sacrificed it. It is gone. You may find higher value in other ways in the exchange, but the cost to you, the expense, the sacrifice, the deal you have made, means it is expended and gone.

All that to say there is truly only one value you can control in all exchanges. And that is what you do. You control your decision <or your choice>. You control your part of the deal.

Which leads me to ‘not sucking’ as the criteria in thinking about it.

Because if you are going to make some exchange then, well, you can, and should, control, or manage, not sucking. This can mean not sucking as a person as well as doing some non-sucking thing or even making some deal to be able to actually do something that doesn’t suck.

“Life is about doing things that don’t suck with people who don’t suck.”

John Green

Is that too simplistic?

Shit.

I don’t know.

What I do know is we often over complicate Life.

We think, and think, and overthink, pretty much everything.

Therefore I tend to seek some simple guidelines for judging behavior <or choices>.

Not sucking seems like a pretty nice simple guideline.

It seems to feed into a more ‘higher thinking’ type criteria in that by ‘not sucking’ you seem to tap into what appears to be some of the main sources of happiness: Pleasure, Challenge and Meaning.

Some psychologists have identified these as ingredients of happiness.  They can certainly be separate paths as well as combined in a variety of ways. I imagine, ideally, we would spend most of our time doing things that incorporate all three ingredients, but, alas, that just isn’t too realistic. So, in my mind, attempt to not suck.

In fact, ponder this with regard to not sucking and the sources of happiness:

Pure Pleasure: An immediate positive sensation <a derivative of hedonism>. Activities that are pleasant <but not challenging or meaningful as in purpose> like laughing at a joke, eating chocolate, walking in the sunshine, a good memory, reading, swimming in the ocean, listening to music, anything that feels good in that exact moment.

** not sucking maximizes the pleasure.

Pure Challenge: The sense of accomplishment we get after we did something that required us to use our skills to solve a problem or meet a challenge. Exercising, job projects, writing essays, reading a challenging book, even running for the bus. You may not enjoy the activity, but you feel satisfaction afterwards.

** not sucking enhances the likelihood to meet the challenge.

Pure Meaning: Any activity that we consider to be worthwhile and that has a greater purpose. Contributing to a social cause, working to pay the bills, helping your neighbor, going to school to get closer to your dream job, generally improving yourself … or even practical activities which are not difficult to do and not pleasant either, but have a higher purpose.

** not sucking translates into ‘I don’t suck as a person.’

I went through all that just to try and prove that ‘not sucking’ is actually quite a viable objective.

Well.

Maybe not a true objective, but rather if you believe Life is an exchange, than ‘not sucking’ is a viable value to put on a choice when considering you are sacrificing a portion of your finite Life in the exchange. Ponder.

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Author’s note:

I have a vision of Thoreau spinning in his grave over the fact someone associated his wise words with ‘not sucking.’

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“The trick is in what one emphasizes.
We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy.
The amount of work is the same.”
Carlos Castaneda
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“That’s the thing about pain.  It demands to be felt”
John Green
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“Anyway, I wanted to end this on a hopeful, positive note, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is still shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit,
I’ll just say this: Nobody can guarantee that it’s going to be okay, but — and I don’t know if this will be comforting to anyone else — the possibility exists that there’s a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you are laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed.
And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it’s just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit.
I don’t know.
But when you’re concerned that the miserable, boring wasteland in front of you might stretch all the way into forever, not knowing feels strangely hope-like.”
Allie Brosh
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I have written about attention as currency , how time is elastic (but important & finite), social media distractions and even focus. All of them are partially right and partially wrong when it comes to emphasis and its demands on us. I say partially because all make demands on us at the same time. So, parsing them out one by one is an excellent exercise, but also slightly disingenuous to reality.
Suffice it to say that Life, in & of itself, is demanding.

Well. Suffice it to say that whatever we emphasize has a nasty habit of demanding attention.
And, more often than not, in our analyzing of ourselves and what is around us we emphasize the ‘less than’, the ‘imperfections’ and the pain.

They all demand to be felt.

In other words. Many things in life demand to be felt. And maybe it is because of that we numb ourselves to as many things as possible figuring it is the only way to manage our way thru the onslaught of things demanding and demanding and demanding. Pay enough attention, or give them enough emphasis, and the clamor of their cries for attention seems deafening if you listen too closely.

Regardless. I imagine it depends on what one emphasizes.

Now. Here is where I will leave the beaten path in the discussion.

There is gobs of information and advice on how to selectively focus on the right things at the right time. Smart people, Warren Buffett , Shane Parrish, etc. have weighed in on this topic and they offer some great thoughts. But. Here’s the deal. Life for most of us every day schmucks doesn’t work like ‘selective focus.’ Oh sure, we may try. But the truth is life demands to be felt, even the shit you have elected to not focus on.
So therefore, it comes down to emphasis, not choice.

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“Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and applause of the many, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.”

Longfellow
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Personally I believe most of the advice ‘expert’ books/articles give people about focus/emphasis is absurd, if not impractically nuts. I’m not opposed to encouraging focus nor do I dispel the notion that one can improve focus, but, for the most part, most advice ignores how Life demands attention. What I mean by that is most advice isolates a decision/choice and suggests you:

A. Tune out the unnecessary/unhelpful, and
B. Tune in on the specific contextual variables which are necessary/helpful.

Conceptually fabulous. Reality-wise absurd.

Here are 3 reasons why it is absurd:

1. Life never stops. If you stop you inevitably have to catch up and, well, the doom loop of onslaught of the demands increases. In other words, what the experts neglect to share with you is that there is a price to pay for selective focus.
Emphasis is a moving target and you must focus on the move.

2. Life never stops demanding attention. Selective focus is risky. The demands Life will put upon you do not cease simply because you have decided to focus on something or decide what you want to emphasize.
Often emphasis is managing some things while focusing on something else. That’s the gig.

3. Life never stops offering demands OUT OF SEQUENCE. Life is not orderly. It may not be totally random, but its rarely consistent other than through its overall consistency of demands.
Life is like a restaurant with odd little waiters bringing things you don’t always like.

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“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.”
Lemony Snicket
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None of what I just shared should suggest you shouldn’t seek to emphasize some things versus others. In fact. I tend to believe if you don’t figure out what to emphasize you will, well, just become numb. This is where life is particularly unforgiving. If you do not choose, Life will choose to bludgeon you day in and day out with things demanding your attention … and pain.

That is unsustainable. For anyone.

Make some choices. Choose things to emphasize over others. You may not always get it right, but my own experience suggests even your poor choices, while painful, are survivable. And maybe that’s my point. Life demand to be felt. If you do not choose what to emphasize and Life emphasizes everything, I fear that is not survivable. Ponder.

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“If you want to give God a good laugh, start telling him about your plans.”

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“The notion that we can’t do our jobs unless there are perfect conditions.

Objectives, target audience, key message, budget, timings, etc.

I mean yes, sure, we need those conditions to exist to do our thing well…

… but often they come in bits, due to the vagaries of organisational complexity.

Which means we’re always working in the context(s) of what we have right now.

And, by association, strategies can – and must – change given new information.

I know in theory we should get all the information beforehand, sure.

But in practice, flexing as we go is how 90% of the job actually tends to flow.”

Rob Estreitinho

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“It is optionality that makes things work and grow.”

Nassim Taleb

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Polycentric and quantum theory are different things, but today I mash them together to offer some thoughts on business.  To be clear, Polycentric theory and Quantum theory belong to distinct fields and have their own specific applications and implications.

1. Polycentric Theory: Polycentric theory is a framework in political science and economics that emphasizes the existence of multiple centers of power and decision-making within a system. It suggests that authority and governance should be dispersed among various levels and institutions rather than concentrated in a single entity. Polycentric systems often promote local autonomy and decentralized decision-making.
2. Quantum Theory: Quantum theory, also known as quantum mechanics, is a branch of physics that deals with the behavior of matter and energy at the microscopic scale. It provides a mathematical framework to understand the fundamental nature of particles and their interactions, incorporating concepts such as superposition, uncertainty, and wave-particle duality.

So let me share some similarities:

1. Non-linearity: Both theories challenge traditional linear approaches. Polycentric theory acknowledges the complex and nonlinear nature of decision-making, highlighting the interactions between multiple centers of power. Similarly, quantum theory describes the probabilistic behavior of particles emphasizing nonlinearity.
2. Emergence and Interconnectedness: Both theories recognize the importance of emergent activity and interconnected systems. Polycentric theory suggests that complex systems generate emergent properties like self-organization and adaptive behavior. Quantum theory highlights entanglement where entangled system is one where the individual particles behave as an inseparable whole.
3. Contextual and Relational Perspectives: Both theories consider the significance of context and relationships. Polycentric theory emphasizes the importance of local knowledge, cultural norms, and social relationships in decision-making. Quantum theory acknowledges that observations and measurements are context-dependent, and the behavior of particles is influenced by their interactions with the surrounding environment.

To summarize, duality, uncertainty, and entanglement are characteristics of polycentric theory, quantum theory, and business.

Which leads me to say that there is always a moment when you look around and all you see is, well, uncertainty or it feels like chaos or it feels impossible to discern any order in what is happening around you. Most of us then sit back and try and take a moment to try and think clearly because, generally speaking, the brain is programmed to find patterns and we get a bit desperate when mired in a world in which everything appears random. It is an unending struggle to bring some order to chaos – real and perceived. More often than not while preferring a pattern we find a point on which to focus. This is kind of our innate understanding of ‘polycentricity.’ Polycentric means in any given moment there is a center. Organizationally this will naturally occur, even within a hierarchy, as long as the ‘walls’ are permeable. I would argue it happens whether you want it or not (in suboptimal ways as people circumvent the system in the attempt to get shit done) and will happen in an optimal way if it is actually encouraged.

The idea of polycentric is important because centers can easily look after ‘order’ AND disorder pretty well and if the center is contextual (flows to the need/opportunity) that means freedom, agility & creativity follow it. Yeah. I just said Business is fluid (even organizationally). I believe people rarely think about business as a flow system even though we all agree that it is a permanently evolving entity, but a business is a flow of realities, many operating in dualities, with evolving centers of gravity to leverage. Regardless, the allure of quantum is the idea there are multiple histories and multiple ‘realities’ all existing simultaneously.  Ponder that for a bit with regard to business. This means history is being written situation by situation and decision by decision. That your existence resides on multiple planes, and dimensions, and you are simply vectoring, not guiding. And maybe that’s the larger point – vector versus guide. You accept your business has multiple histories, not just one, and its legacy is shaped not created.

Which leads me to confusing chaos with catastrophe.

I don’t believe business actually endures chaos (as defined by complexity theory). There can be disorder, but within the confines, construct, of a business the gyre can widen but not fall apart. Unless there is a catastrophe or catastrophic event.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Yeats

Quantum, or complexity, speaking, what does chaos look like? The trajectory wanders around forever in state space. It can never close or cross itself on one plane, yet, across planes (spiraling) its trajectory can. It remains within a confined space (constrained by its own entropy/energy) and is constantly pivoting on new points (never replicated). Kind of polycentric at all times AND continuously moving through different realities, i.e., possibilities. Its trapped yet disorderly. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this idea is quite similar to Donella Meadows leverage points. In this case they are pivot points for polycentric behavior. Some people may associate these with people (influencers in an organization). I will not. I believe they are simply pivot points made up of people interacting with systems within a specific context. This means disorganized behavior in a given situation, is not chaotic. It is simply interacting elements not in alignment toward some stated purpose, but buried within it is order (usually tied to some unstated objective, i.e., a polycentric state). Technically speaking this means the specific motion and trajectory of the activity is unpredictable in detail, yet, it always stays coherent to the attractor (some objective/vision) and always moves through the same subset of states. That narrowness of activity accounts for the order hidden in chaos and explains why its essence never changes. We may not be able to explain where the order comes from, at least in an analytical sense, but the order exists nonetheless. If you are good in business, you can feel the pulse within chaos; you just cannot see it. To the everyday schmuck it is a state of disorder. To the scientist it resides in the space between order and disorder. Technically it only appears random, looks erratic and unstable yet it contains patterns. The good news for a business is order typically resides within a confined space and is governed by a fairly rigid set of ‘rules’ <it can only act in certain ways> so it can be manageable, or at least stuff can get done, in some sense. This is most likely true because unlike scientific theory, business tends to have, and create, some boundaries and constraints. So, while there may be the appearance of disorder, and oscillation- waves – occurring in endless loops inevitably there is some sense of equilibrium and, hence, some coherence.

Which leads me to make a note of the role technology plays in a quantum business.

Technology offers the velocity to advantages (even tiny ones). It also offers velocity to disadvantages and stupid shit (even tiny ones). I say that because technology increases fluidity and decreases fluidity, in other words, it can be the friend AND the enemy to coherence. So when we speak of fluidity and liquid we need to pay attention to the content. This gets tricky because far, far, too often we speak about the ‘next natural step for this system/business’, but fluidity is rarely about steps and more about evolution in motion. Therefore, words like “framework” or ‘navigation’ or ‘redirect’ become even more important. Even things like collective intelligence and collective wisdom and collective principled behavior become even more important. But, to circle back to quantum principles, order will exist but the sense of chaos only increases with technology. Yeah. It will both highlight leverage points, polycentric moments, and encourage multiple realities or expand asymmetrical perceptions and focus. The truth is polycentricity works better with some focus driven by technology and, yes, at exactly the same time that polycentricity is more difficult because of the increased ‘noise’ created by technology.

made.

Which leads me to end by suggesting I imagine part of what I am suggesting with polycentricity and quantum business is we have to go from this crazy, fragmented, multitasking life that we live to one where we pay more attention to connectedness and the whole. In doing so it will make any perceived chaos fleeting and navigating complexity is possible.

Well, this was fun, but let’s get serious. Most businesses have no interest in multiple centers of gravity or in multiple realities. Business wants to get shit done and they want a center of efficiency and effectiveness in one reality and that one reality which delivers against specific objectives. So what most businesses do is impose centers an attempt to impose a reality. They create steering committees, task forces, assign the specific group, and ask everyone to implement a process – typically a best practice. Simplistically they take a reductionist attitude toward everything that I wrote about polycentric and quantum business. And maybe that is my point. One of the largest issues the business faces today is its inclination toward reducing things rather than expanding things. Running businesses as if pragmatism outweighs any possibilities. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out polycentricity and quantum thinking are both grounded in multiple possibilities, as in, multiple realities are possible. Ponder.

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Fun fact about quantum particles to think about with regard to people:

“All quantum particles can be classified as either fermions or bosons. Fermions are territorial hermits. Which means you can ever occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. This accounts for the orderly way that electrons fill the orbital shells around atoms waiting their turn one at a time like polite people taking their seats in the same row of a theater. Fermion’s tendency to avoid one another ultimately yields the basic laws of chemistry, the structure of the periodic table, the rules for chemical bonding between atoms and the behavior of magnets. Bosons have the opposite kind of personality. They’re gregarious. No limit to how many can I occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. In fact they prefer crowds. The more populated a state, the more attractive it becomes to others.” (Steven Strogatz)