“National honor is the national property of the highest value.”
James Monroe
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“Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.”
Peter F. Drucker
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“Great” is a fairly amorphous thing. It is not seamless and if we are honest ‘great’ is usually reflective of a temporary state (something permanent to aspire to). For example, a business may be ‘great’ and at the same time be a quivering mass of vulnerabilities and in a constant state of work-in-progress. That said. I admit. I am a 100% business guy and I have absolutely fallen into the “seeking results by solving problems” trap on occasion. I begin there to say despite that I know in my heart of hearts that exploiting emergent opportunities is the key to business success, but in the day to day grind, especially if you enjoy solving problems, you can get focused on “boy, I sure had a good day because I solved a lot of problems.”
Problems reflect tangible almost immediate pleasure and identifiable outcomes.
Opportunities are less tangible and more hopeful.
Unfortunately, day to day business cannot run solely on hope. And leadership is more often than not defined by providing, or uncovering, or supporting, opportunities to those who seek, and need them, the most. So, happy 4th of July America and let’s talk opportunities.
Which leads me to politicians and governing opportunities.
My biggest issue with most politicians is a general lack of understanding of business and how it applies to how a government & country can be managed. In fact, I would suggest most politicians are horrible at envisioning opportunities, they simply seek out votes (salving existing problems). Now. I continue to believe a business person with no government experience can never successfully manage a country and a lifetime politician will always struggle to understand the underlying attitudes and behaviors of a successful business. In my mind I believe someone who understands attitudes & behaviors & motivations is one most likely to be a successful governing leader. To be clear. This doesn’t mean understanding anger or frustration, but rather what motivates, inspires and makes people collectively move rather than individually stand and bitch. And, pointedly, it doesn’t mean standing around, or shouting from some podium, blaming someone for all the problems America has and shouting at the top of your lungs saying “I can solve these problems.” Those asshats should seek the opportunities that exist <and there are a shitload> and exploit them. Instead of arguing over problems we should argue over which opportunities represent the best opportunities for the better progress of America, i.e., identify and exploit opportunities.
“We hope. We despair. We hope. We despair. That is what governs us. We have a bipolar system.”
Maira Kalman
Look. There will always be questions. And there will always be ‘problems.’ Making something great is most often found in looking at what is and discovering the opportunities and exploit them. To be clear, opportunities don’t reside in the past.
I can’t bring back jobs, but I can create jobs.
I can’t stop globalization, but I can exploit the local opportunities globalization offers.
I can’t recreate a dying industry or dying skills, but I can create new industries with the skills that exist.
That is how a governing entity can help make America great.
Which leads me to ‘making America great.’
If we, or some leader, creates an environment in which opportunities are exploitable, and exploited by those who are most in need, all the major issues slip away. I often wonder why instead of bitching about what is ‘holding America back from greatness’ we accept some things are great and some things are not and get on with getting on. We may not understand the reason, accept the fact there will always be more questions than answers, and ask the best questions and use the answers to discover the opportunities and exploit them. Accept the fact that even though things may not be going the way you wanted them to go or the way maybe that it should go … well … opportunities exist <if you look>.
The American dream never resides in the past. The founding fathers had a dream of what could be – a future. And the biggest gift they gave us was not any document or law or ruling guidelines; it was the gift of looking forward and not backwards. The gift to shed problems and issues and disagreements by advancing confidently in the direction of what could be.
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“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau
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Making America great will never have anything to do with building any walls, or breaking up banks, or free college, or dividing people, or gun control, or any issue we seem to invest far too much energy debating. Making America great will always have to do with seeing the opportunities that exist – not any we have to actually create – and exploiting them.
Crumbling infrastructure? We have an opportunity to build whatever infrastructure we want.
Massive debt? We have an opportunity to cut unnecessary expenses <in the real world this is called “downsizing”>.
Archaic education system? We have an opportunity to throw out the old way and build a completely new way <and this doesn’t mean privatizing education which is not a real solution>.
Manufacturing? Build plants.
I could go on and on. Every supposed “problem” America has represents an opportunity. So maybe instead of running around trying to ‘fix’ all the problems someone should sit down and say “let’s go do something great.”
“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”
Harry S. Truman
We are the ones who make history and we, people, are the ones who make up greatness. We do this through actions and words. Yeah. Words play a role. What I mean by that is the stories we tell ourselves matter. The stories we tell ourselves about people, events, the past, shape how we interpret and respond to and show up in the present and how we envision the future (possibilities). The stories ultimately become what we become. The words we use to tell ourselves stories matters. We should not deny reality, yet, we should also not deny hope for greatness.
248 years ago a relatively small group of men with really only one thing in common – a vision & the opportunity to build a country – saw opportunity as what would make the fledgling country great. And wrote some really important words down. That didn’t mean there were not problems nor did it mean they ignored problems nor did they get everything right, but they recognized the way out of almost every problem and issue was forward, not by fixing, and therefore they sought out opportunities and sought to exploit the opportunities to the benefit of a better America.
My wish for year 248 is to stop talking about what is wrong and who has done something wrong and instead talk about all the opportunities that exist. That would be a great attitude. Happy 4th.
“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”
Anaïs Nin
I used to think society’s, or civilization’s, journey could be followed left to right, maybe not on a horizontal line, more like a roller coaster, but definitely like a timeline of sorts. I imagine I thought of a bit like continuous improvement, or progress, even if it had some fits and starts.
I do know we certainly talk about it this way. Agriculture revolution, industrial revolution, whatever revolution. Internet 4.0 <implying 1.0 and upwards>. And we relentlessly tie #’s to people to show “growth” on this semi-linear journey.
But I think I was wrong. Heck. I think everyone was wrong.
I actually think the better mapping of society and civilization is viewed like an atom.
Different cultures and people and ‘civilizations’ zooming around like electrons circling the nucleus.
From a grander narrative perspective this seems like I am suggesting who we were is what we are and what we will be. And, yeah, simplistically I imagine I am on some level. And if you buy that, conceptually, because all these electrons zooming around, because culture, and civilization, is made up of billions of ‘ones,’ it may often seem like we lose our ‘center.’
We really don’t.
Honest.
We don’t.
The center is always there. It is solid. It remains, and will always remain, the compass for that which is right. The nucleus holds it all together. However. What circles the center, the billions of ones with different demands and different needs and different likes and dislikes all of which desire different accoutrements for happiness, they never remain still and very often collide with each other.
And exactly the same time there are media channels and advertising and movies and magazines all screaming at the top of their lungs trying to distract us from our center with slivers of less then meaningful distractions. Distractions that make us question our center or maybe what we think is important <which can be very different from our center>.
Let’s face it. some of the people circling the center can be real noisy shits. In addition, the shit that circles our centers can be noisy sonuvabitchs. All so noisy that, well, it can be the only thing you hear.
And therein lies my point.
I disagree with Anais. Society, or civilization, doesn’t lose its center.
It cannot.
Why?
Because the ‘ones’, the billions of electrons themselves, never lose their center.
Because we, the ones, the individuals, don’t lose our center it’s just that sometimes we lose sight of it. Or we just cannot hear it on occasion.
Or maybe we just don’t listen to it hard enough.
Or maybe it whispers to make it more meaningful for us.
I don’t really think it matters.
Because we don’t lose our center. The center is always there, it is within us, as individuals and as a whole. It is the 8 billion <give or take given the few raging assholes in the world whose center is in their ass> and it is within the ones and it is all the same center.
Call it the moral compass.
Call it the good that resides within everyone.
Call it ‘knowing what is right and what is wrong.’
Call it the soul of humanity.
But ever suggesting we lose our center?
C’mon.
We never LOSE it.
We may misplace it on occasion.
We may just not be able to hear it over the cacophony of Life.
But we never lose it.
Which leads me to losing sight of the center.
Society is an abstract idea grounded in concrete norms, principles and beliefs. The problem is that the world has become less and less concrete and more and more abstract. This creates a societal shift in which structures that bound some individual choices, institutions and guard the valuable repetitions of routines and patterns of acceptable behavior struggle to maintain their shape long enough to let society gain some shape and structure. The cacophony of the world, and some of the tools bludgeoning society, deconstruct time and space so nothing can settle. Open societies have always been vulnerable to those in power (hands of fate), but in today’s world, a globalized world with a myriad of conflicting ‘hands of power’, many of the past certainties just can’t be obtained. So society and social life retracts not to some ‘center’, but rather to safety (they are often not the same). People hide within tribes, live behind walls, carry guns, and start embracing a number of activities and habits which simply increase the sense of disorder in the world through the paradox that the individual feels they are building order. The problem is all of these actions and activities are a function of the fact that a sense of fear is embedded within, stifling our ‘center,’ and, simultaneously, permeating daily routines, attitudes and mindsets. Circling back to fate, this gives us a sense fate will always strike without warning and is indifferent to not only us, but the order and certainty we are trying to construct for ourselves individually. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that infinite progress becomes unattainable in this situation as we substitute an uninterrupted game of finite objectives and tactics and our dreams get smaller and smaller. This all gets compounded by a governing elite which encourages us to believe there is no possibility of existential security through larger collective actions and shared interests. Instead, they encourage everyone to focus on individual survival, i.e., everyone for themselves, all cloaked in self-responsibility and individual expression. All this does is increase fragmentation and continue to tear apart the basic principles of collective action and shared interests and that tears apart our natural, human, center. Paradoxically, this creates some significant issues for governance. By encouraging all of this, society no longer believes they can be protected by the state or, at minimum, they are unlikely to trust the protection offered by those governing. As a consequence, the citizenry will encourage lashing out with military force or simplistic things like tariffs or isolationism as a reflection of an acceptance that there are certain forces that they cannot control and even worse there are no longer any hopes to be able to subdue the forces which could infringe upon individual survival. This is a negative mindset, negative against globalization, negativity against collective interest, negative against interdependence, basically negative against anything that optimizes or maximizes potential progress and prosperity and certainly negative against our ‘center.’ This is a world of despair. As Oscar Wilde said: “a map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out and seeing a better country, sets sail.” Progress always resides in the chase of utopias never the realization. A utopia is always simply just an image of another universe different from the existing universe we know, or know of. What does this have to do with a quest for center? Well. The center of our being, collectively and individually, relentlessly anticipates a universe originated entirely through human imagination and human betterment. If you seek to leave a universe of grindingly monotonous life, you must imagine another world. It is at our center in which this imagination resides. Ponder.
“Trump depicts a zero-sum world in which gains for any other nation — friend or foe — automatically represent a loss for the United States. His agenda, therefore, is designed to immiserate our neighbors and partners. In the end, history and basic economic theory tell us, it will immiserate us, as well. The bad news — and it is awful — is thus that we now have a president whose foreign policy agenda essentially amounts to burning the U.S.-led international order to the ground and hoping that America can collect the lion’s share of the ashes. The good news, such as it is, is that in unveiling this agenda so brazenly and early, Trump has also fully dispelled any illusions about his presidency and the dangers it poses.”
Hal Brands
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It feels like the United States is going to get fooled into thinking an election is about one thing versus another. Televised debates often contribute to that tomfoolery or malarkey as our existing octogenarian president would say. Watching two octogenarians bludgeon each other shouldn’t fool us into believing that there aren’t two visions at stake at the moment. Let me state this up front. The election is about the MAGA Vision versus basically anything else. I state it that way because I personally would vote for an empty chair before I would vote for Trump. Would I prefer voting for say Gina Raimondo, secretary of Commerce, or Pete Buttigieg, secretary of Transportation, or Jennifer Granholm, secretary of energy, Gavin Newsom, Governor of the 5th largest economy in the world, Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, or even Wes Moore. Sure. I would prefer voting for any one of them. But that’s not my choice. My choice is anything else other than Trump and the MAGA vision.
Trump represents the MAGA Vision and a MAGA administration with absurd MAGA policies and whoever or whatever resides in the opposite chair will not. Period.
Anyone in that chair will have ideas and aspects of policies that I do not support, but they will unequivocally not support the MAGA vision of policies or the MAGA vision of America. I also believe we are fooling ourselves into believing that we should be judging this election like we have judged elections in the past. I am an unequivocal moderate. While I may have disagreed with aspects and policies of a Mitt Romney, a John McCain, or even the Dumber Bush, I never felt like their vision, which was basically a traditional Republican vision, was an existential threat to the future of the United States – and by existential I mean economically as well as ideologically. And while I’m relatively sure the United States has had a president who was amoral, a pathological liar, racist, in the past, we have never had one who has also embraced something like the MAGA vision. As a corollary, we know for a fact that we have had an out of touch, too old octogenarian, as a president, but who still embraced a vision for the United States which may not have guaranteed our prosperity and progress, but certainly didn’t threaten our position in the world. This election is about MAGA versus anything else.
Which leads me to Trump derangement syndrome.
It has been suggested by many of my acquaintances or people who glance against some of my thoughts and writings that I have Trump derangement syndrome. I do not. I recognize Trump for exactly who he is. He is an amoral, narcissistic, sociopathic liar, who has a transactional view of business and life and offers a shitload of bad, dull axe (non-nuanced), ideas. That is who he is; no more no less. My issue resides in the MAGA vision of which he is the standard bearer. So, if I have any derangement syndrome, it would be with regard to the MAGA vision and policies that are associated with it. As I stated upfront, I don’t believe this election is between two octogenarians and we are choosing the least worst option of 80 year olds. I believe this election is a choice between two visions: the MAGA vision versus another vision. And if I am deranged about anything it would be that I stand opposed to everything about the MAGA vision. This admittedly suggests that I will embrace some policies and thoughts that I am not a huge fan of because I oppose, unequivocally, the MAGA Vision. Yeah. I will. And I will live with some bad policies. But getting back to Trump. I absolutely struggle to say anything positive about Trump. But more importantly I struggle to say anything positive about Trump Administration policies and results. I have said it before and I will say it again, Trump is a dull axe thinker, a 1 trick pony and has only one gear. The Trump Administration policies mirrored Trump. They were a dull axe, a 1 trick pony, and had only one gear. Suffice it to say the world is significantly more complex than that. I certainly understand the appeal of the simple and the simplistic, the problem is it’s not particularly effective when applied against a complex system. The MAGA vision does not serve the United States well in the present and certainly does not position the United States well for the future. Call me deranged, but that seems like a relatively sane reason to not support Trump nor a MAGA administration.
Which leads me to the direction of the country.
We should always be assessing a country and its governance based on progress, prosperity, and security. Let me address security first because it is actually subservient to prosperity and progress. What I mean by that is most people or politicians discuss security by (usually) shouting quite loudly in terms of military and military power This is wrong. Maybe I should say it’s misguided. Military power is used as a tool to maintain a country’s prosperity and progress. You only use the military power to either buttress the system which enables the progress and prosperity or to protect it. We may suggest that military power is used to maintain ‘safety,’ but in most situations even safety is subservient to progress and prosperity. Therefore, I speak of security in terms of securing the networks, connectivity, and inherent globalization which enables America’s prosperity and progress. Which leads me to progress and prosperity. Because America’s progress and prosperity, whether we like to believe it or not, is actually dependent in some form or fashion with connection to the rest of the world. That doesn’t mean that in isolation the United States can’t survive economically and allow its citizenry to be able to maintain a certain lifestyle, however, if optimal progress and increased prosperity is the objective we are dependent upon the rest of the world to achieve that. Therefore, security becomes intertwined with that dependence. And this is where there is an incredibly stark difference between the MAGA vision and the other vision. The MAGA vision doesn’t even recognize the importance of allies economically. It maintains an illusion that prosperity and progress can be attained by United States alone with a zero-sum view. No sane economist, no sane geopolitics expert, no sane business person, truly believes that. That doesn’t mean the United States doesn’t need to maintain strong pillars of economic independence in order to build prosperity and progress. Those pillars of independence make the United States secure from disruptions globally as well as increase the prosperity and progress because we can export our independence to other people who are in some form or fashion dependent upon that. Therefore, progress and prosperity becomes a relatively intricate web of independence, interdependence and dependence with economic and political allies. Allies would also include countries with common interests despite the fact we may not be aligned with them with regard to democratic values. But they are not our enemies. We have a mutual interest in progress and prosperity where our desire is security of the system which enables that progress and prosperity. The MAGA vision does not embrace any of that nuance nor does it embrace any aspect of interdependence or even a glimpse of dependence upon anybody else. They seek to bludgeon anybody who we are dependent upon even at the expense of our own prosperity and progress. The other vision is the exact opposite of the MAGA vision. It embraces the nuance of progress and prosperity in the present and building for the future.
Which leads me to the delusional opposition.
In some alternative universe there are no electable democratic candidates, America is largely center-right, the left has become so radical it mirrors some communist state, America is in a shithole downward spiral, Trump is in full command of his faculties, and that MAGA represents the majority of the country. This is the delusion the MAGA vision needs the world to perceive in order to have the MAGA vision make sense. As I remind everybody, while we focus on the sheer numbers that Trump received approximately 70 million votes in 2020, that represents about 28% of all the adults in the United States. Let me say that again. 28% of all adults in the United States. MAGA, and the MAGA vision is a minority view. Most democratic officials are pretty popular and the country, as a whole, is more center left leaning, moderate, on most issues and quite accepting of liberal leaning attitudes. More importantly, the country is not a shithole, in fact the reality is the United States economy is healthy, healthier than the majority of countries in the world, and in the process of building resilient economic progress and prosperity under the current administration. If we ignore the blaring headlines about culture and values and identity wars, the reality is nobody is coming to steal guns, nobody is stopping anybody from having their own religious views, no one is trying to indoctrinate our youth, and we should all just keep our eye on the most important ball which is progress and prosperity. Until somebody can show me some real ideas within the MAGA Vision or what could be construed as the existing current Republican Party, the only ideas that I can see for progress and prosperity in the present and the future reside within the Democratic Party. And in fact, if you strip away all the MAGA rhetoric about the Democrats, the democrat party are the ones who support the ideas and the basic ideological thinking that the majority of Americans like. As the election looms, I frankly do not care who is at the top of the ticket as long as whomever is there continues to enable the best ideas for our progress, prosperity, and security of those.
Which leads me to how MAGA perverts the idea of progress.
MAGA looks at progress in terms of individuals seeking individual satisfaction in combination with an encouraging an attitude of individual escape from individually suffered discomfort. That thought is a derivative of something that Zygmunt Bauman said. He suggested that progress no longer refers to forward drive and that society, rather than chase after a target spinning along ahead of us, instead seeks to make progress under the guise of ‘a lucky escape imperative.’ In other words it inspires the urge to run away from something, a crisis or a shithole disaster, that someone is suggesting is breathing down our necks. Let me be clear. Progress is not running away from something, but rather it is running towards something. That toward something should be a desired dream of a distant goal – one which progress should, could, and would eventually bring those of us seeking it, a better world not only for us, but one that serves all human needs. It should be the pursuit of shared improvement rather than just individual survival. And maybe that is where I will end because that is where the MAGA vision begins. It doesn’t begin with any shared improvement, but rather individual fears. The MAGA vision suggests that nations have lost influence on the course of not only its own affairs, but the affairs of all people which means that it has lost influence on guiding the world toward a ‘better destination’ and has lost the ability to mount a defense against all varieties of fear. The MAGA vision encourages us all to believe this, therefore, it encourages us to dwell on your individual fear. It suggests your worry is not only an immediate worry, but a long term worry. From there they offer no real solutions for progress and prosperity, just dubious tactics to salve your individual worry. MAGA is a black hole of no solutions. I would also suggest that the real solutions are offered somewhere within the non-MAGA vision. In other words, any administration embracing ‘anything else other than the MAGA vision.”
For years I have heard people say “I don’t vote for a person, I vote for policies.” Well. It’s come-to-jesus time on that thought. Ponder.
“why should I be angry? It won’t change how you feel.”
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My anger at the world coils inside of me. It’s a directionless seething, there’s no name or face to aim at.”
The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn
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Anger is energy and energy is something to be ‘applied.’ In other words, the energy of anger needs to be used.
Which leads me to what you do when angered and how you treat others when angry.
Maybe they are the same, but I am going to treat them differently.
Desire defines what we think we need. And often defines how we act. When we don’t get what we ‘desire’ (or expect – they can be interchangeable) it sometimes can take us to places we never thought we would ever go. And it sometimes fuels us to do some amazing things as well as some amazing stupid things. Yup. sometimes we suppress it. But in the end you either face up to your actions, and how you want to act, or you will have to face the fact you are an angry person.
This desire thing has two faces: anger and disappointment. And anger and disappointment actually take up space. So much that sometime they can, without words, take up almost entire rooms. What do I mean? They can squeeze the space in a room so much you cannot breathe.
Which leads me to the fact anger squeezes conversations.
Conversations are the smallest units of change. In this case, conversations are what solves anger (as well as fuels anger). Unfortunately, anger is a problem to, and with, conversations. Everyday life is full of conversations of depth every day, some bringing a depth of joy, some bringing a depth of chaos, some bringing a depth of grief, some of anger, some of disappointment. All these conversations reflect the depth and breadth of, well, life. The deeper the authenticity, the genuineness, the integrity of conversations the deeper the meaning of conversations and, as a consequence, life. This is where the weight of kindness and unkindness shove each other. This is where guilt and contrition reside. This is where the condemning and uncondemning words and thoughts battle. This is where brute force and gentleness face each other. This is where actions have consequences. This is where learning occurs and all those action’s consequences can be redirected.
Which leads me to anger can be a gift.
Anger is a self imposed trial and therein lies its gift. Far too often we wield anger against someone, yet, rarely will it ever change how the other person feels. Anger is always about yourself not the other person. And here is where anger offers its greatest, and most tricky, gift. Anger gifts you the ability to find something where nothing exists (if you permit it to do so). You cannot carry anger, frustration, disappointment or resentment into the future. And it is rarely useful in the present. Anger is a black hole. A black hole where nothing exists – there is no past, present nor future in anger. It would be silly of me to suggest that no one should ever feel anger because it is a human thing to do. But maybe we should think of ‘anger as a black hole.’ Think about it because after anger there is typically a need for some type of forgiveness to fill the hole and move on. Maybe the mistake many of us make is to believe that we can leave the anger behind. You cannot. It leaves a hole. And holes need to be mended (or filled). I don’t have an answer of how one would ever fill up a black hole enough to ensure that which has no past, present or future ends up having some meaning. Maybe it is simply the awareness of this that permits us to be better people.
In the end.
Anger gains you nothing and costs you much, but it is always a learning experience.
I scribbled this on a random piece of paper: “I cannot be angry with you. Anger would be a waste of the moments we have and would make us weak in the face of the things yet to do.” Therein lies the gift paradox. Anger wastes moments and, yet, it offers learning moments. I imagine all I can offer is navigate the moments wisely. Ponder.
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Vladimir Lenin
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“No one is walking in saying, ‘Great, I’d love to pay full price’.”
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One of the things that drives me nuts is when people say how much better the economy was during the Trump Administration. It’s not really true, it was good, not quite as good as under Obama administration, certainly not bad, not really comparably as good as current economy, but that’s a post for a different day (and I encourage everyone to research economists like Noah Smith, Tyler Cowen or Justin Wolfers to read their thoughts).
Today I’m addressing the comparison elephant in the room: inflation.
Inflation is not the economy. It seems like the majority of people are judging the economy solely on what they perceive is inflation. Inflation perception may seem like an odd term. Heck. Inflation itself is an oddish thing. Economists define it in a nuanced way, people define it in a simplistic way, news defines it whatever way its own political winds blow way, and reality is somewhere in between. But where people think of inflation the most is with prices they pay (not causes).
So let me speak a little bit about pricing during the Trump administration years. Similar to the Obama administration years, in the Trump years corporate America scanned about their competition and tried to figure out how to be able to charge the highest possible competitive price and generate the highest profits. It’s kind of standard operating pricing procedure weighing “how much can I charge and still create significant demand.” That doesn’t mean that many of these same companies were year in year out doing things like conjoint testing (testing variables that affect the price that could be charged versus the demand increase or decrease, i.e., price sensitivity). Businesses are always trying to figure out how to have higher prices. That said, generally speaking, changing prices sends a shiver down the spine of every business as they worry about the demand effect. So, the natural arc of pricing is to establish your price within a competitive environment, watch your competition pricing, and establish a demand for your product or service based on that price. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I’ve sat in endless meetings where business people wistfully spoke of charging significantly more than they currently were charging.
Which leads me to the Trump Administration years.
Business institutions had less and less wistful conversations. Not because they actually raised their prices, but because the Trump Administration went out of their way to cut corporate taxes, offer incentivized subsidies to keep cost of goods affordable, and did a variety of things which enabled businesses to increase their profits, not their sales, without ever having to raise their price one penny. Let me reiterate that the Trump Administration also did everything they could possibly do to subsidize everything (things that effected cost of goods) to keep inflationary pricing down. The consequence of this was soaring federal level deficits, but for the most part the everyday schmuck like you and I didn’t really care because prices remained fairly stable and the headlines didn’t look any different than they had always looked in the past – pointing out day after day the soaring corporate profits. We all felt like the system was rigged, the corporations were gouging us, but we didn’t really see it at the shelf or in our pocketbooks. So, we just hated business, but didn’t hate the economy.
Which leads me to the pandemic.
Instead of theoretical, conjoint-like, testing, every business was faced with market reality and a real market test. Supply chains were disrupted, commodities – costs of goods – that were essential to their production and resources needed for services became limited or asymmetrically supplied and more costly, and consequently prices changed – most typically upwards. Oh. And everything was passed along to the buyers. What this meant in practical terms, to a business, was the sellers were able to test the market pricing (elasticity) without being blamed. They could see in real time how demand was affected by disruptions and price changes. Rightfully so everybody pointed their fingers at the pandemic, but businesses didn’t really lose a lot of sleep because they maintained their profits, for the most part adapted to the changing demand, and tried to keep their profit heads above the water. Then the pandemic ended. And businesses sat around conference rooms failing moral gut check after moral gut check. And what was that moral gut check? What to do with my pricing now that my cost of goods has decreased. This isn’t to suggest that some industries and businesses were still affected by some of the ripple effect consequences of the pandemic with regard to the cost of the goods they needed to be able to craft the products they offered to the market. But for the most part the pandemic encouraged businesses to create a more resilient production model to make their cost of the goods more stable. In addition, the corporate tax cuts stayed in place … despite the current administration wanting to increase them (government is government and nothing changed there). Many of the tariffs were removed which should have eased pricing to the buyers, but many of the businesses failed to pass along the cost savings. In addition to that the pandemic market had shown many of the businesses the price elasticity and inelasticity of their products and services. For example. My geographic market prior to the pandemic. It would not be rare to see that you could buy a two-liter bottle of Coke or Pepsi on promotion for $1 (actually 99cents) and the everyday price was always below $2 (maybe $1.99, maybe $1.89.) During the pandemic of course all prices went crazy. Coke and Pepsi’s two-liter bottle prices soared above $2 every day (usually $2.99 everyday). Uhm. Post pandemic the everyday price for a two-liter bottle is now $2.50, or above, and promotions never drop below $1.25 per 2 liter. The demand has remained exactly the same and Coke and Pepsi are getting, at minimum, $0.25 gravy, at maximum, $1.00 gouging, on every single two-liter bottle purchased. Just to complete the math on this. If they sell 1 million 2-liter bottles, they make anywhere from $250,000-$1,000,000 additional profit. Uhm. And they sell billions. Anyway. This isn’t to just pick on Coke and Pepsi, Coke and Pepsi are indicative of business. The problem is most people aren’t thinking about this the way I just finished describing it. All they see is what groceries are costing them every single day, without promotion, a dollar more per 2-liter bottle. And as they wander the supermarkets, they see the same thing. In some industries the prices have certainly decreased and, generally speaking, the majority of the pandemic pricing has decreased aligned with the realities of whatever their cost of goods increased or decreased. But when you go to the supermarket you don’t focus on the prices that lowered closer to prepandemic, you focus in on the prices of the goods that you want that you’re tired of paying pandemic pricing for. And I word it that way because that’s not inflation. That’s pandemic pricing in non-pandemic time.
“The reality is that business and investment spending are the true leading indicators of the economy and the stock market. If you want to know where the stock market is headed, forget about consumer spending and retail sales figures. Look to business spending, price inflation, interest rates, and productivity gains.”
Mark Skousen
And that’s the economic gut check on the moral gut check businesses failed. I am certainly not suggesting that the Trump Administration is to be blamed for the current pricing. They didn’t plan the pandemic and the pandemic certainly affected all businesses in terms of their supply chains and cost of goods. And just as well I can’t blame the Biden administration for not doing anything about what I’m calling pandemic pricing, which is confused with inflation, because governments are not in the business of dictating pricing that people pay. Suffice it to say, no administration would ever change the prices people pay.
“I believe that it is just a matter of time before our party pays a heavy price for President Trump’s reckless spending and shortsighted financial policies, his erratic, destabilizing foreign policy and his disregard for environmental concerns.”
McKean
But, in the end, I opened discussing what drove me nuts (the Trump administration wasn’t as great as many people think it was). Inflation in Trump times was no better than prior administrations and unless you have a crystal ball there is no way to know whether inflation would be the same, lower, or higher if the Trump administration were in place now. That said, I will suggest that the likelihood a new Trump administration would lower inflation is next to nil. Any objective observer would struggle to imagine what policies the Trump administration would have in place that would lower inflation now or even what policies would be in place that would make the economy any better now.
At this time, I tend to believe the biggest culprit is institutional pricing, not real inflation. But that’s me. Ponder.
“But the brain does much more than just recollect it inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions. The simplest thought like the concept of the number one has an elaborate logical underpinning. “
Carl Sagan
“We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopedia knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorized a certain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every opportunity, so turning them almost into a barrier between themselves and others.”
Antonio Gramsci
Velvet curtain of culture.
Iron curtain of ideology.
Samuel Huntington
==
This is a slightly different discussion about speed and speedy stuff. Farnam Street did a topnotch job outlining speed versus velocity, and I wrote an entire series on velocity, but today I am focused on speedy looking less-than-important stuff and more important slower-speed human nature, in other words, meaningful cultural movement versus superficial culture movements.
Which leads me to most culture is inertia disguised in speedy clothing.
Most culture is misidentified by 24/7 culture scam artists posing as futurists, trend spotters, and social influencers, i.e., people who monetarily benefit from hype and, most specifically, ‘speed hype’
· ** speed hype is typically captured in the ubiquitous phrase “the world is moving faster than ever.” It’s not.
Most businesses, with good intentions, get caught up in the speedy inertia wheel of doom. So, let’s talk culture in two ways:
1. culture of human whims.
2. culture of human nature.
The former is about cultural shifts, or shifting, (some big, some small) and the latter is about foundational movement (the inevitable cadence that always exists). Ultimately, this becomes a battle between whims and nature. Sure. Sometimes a whim is a reflection of some deeper human truth and has some enduring nature, but for the most part whims are whims, fads are fads, and things that look good in the ‘shift phase’ look pretty stupid in a rearview mirror. But within the battle of whims and nature the word ‘culture’ is wielded like a dull axe. To be clear, as Dick Hebdige, author of The Meaning of Style, said “culture is a notoriously ambiguous concept.” Personally, I believe we shouldn’t be landing on one definition but rather, well, “the best thing about definitions, like $100 bills, is to have plenty of them” (Robert Ardrey). That said. Simplistically, culture is the elements of human nature that make up the experiences of a group. Yeah. Culture is the work of whole peoples and their interactions. It moves at the pace of language, experiences, and stories. To be clear. Events, religion, ideologies feed into language, experiences and stories, but those things are not culture, but rather stimulus of culture. Regardless, all this means cultural truths are tied to the rhythms of human nature/biology and connectivity between peoples – the cadence of humanity. I know businesses prefer talking about profitability, objectives, and KPIs, or even what culture they may ‘have,’ but the more a business can tap into the cadence of nature and humanity, its cultural truths, the more enduring the business idea will be. I would suggest that it is through culture that we make sense of our lives so when a business taps into the movement of culture, people’s lives tend to move with it.
Which leads me to inertia or, in other words, irrelevance.
Forever is a long, long time.
And has a way of changing things.
The Fox and the Hound
We accept inertia, irrelevance, far too easily/comfortably. Why do I think irrelevance is accepted? To be fair it’s easy to confuse the irrelevant as being relevant in today’s speedy FOMO world. First. Let me point out that speed can look an awful lot like inertia. So, if you think running in the hamster wheel of hype is doing a lot of ‘important things’, you are wrong, but ‘feels’ like good shit is happening. You are more likely just doing a lot of things and the business is never really moving or gaining value. Second. A misguided understanding of value. This misunderstanding is most often discovered in opportunities missed. If you emphasize the speedy stuff, or just speed alone, as offering the highest value, you will inevitably miss out the slower moving opportunities which offer foundational, and sustainable, value. Mistaking all that speedy stuff for culture is transactional value versus enduring value and, in most cases, I would argue a business is leaving dollars on the table.
Which leads me to how to navigate offering relevant value.
First. Slow down (the world is not moving so fast you will miss anything significant). Second. I would suggest find the relevant cultural movement. To be fair, it is tricky to find the natural, biological, cadence tucked in human nature. The problem is we have a collective shortsightedness grounded in “living in the now,” but in order to maintain a thriving business you need short term results without being shortsighted and you need a long-term view while ‘being’ in the short term. I have found Stewart Brand’s pace layering an invaluable tool for thinking about how brands can ‘navigate the long now.’ In other words, ground a business in culture in terms of human insights, not popular relevant(?) culture.
Let me explain. Remember. Cultural insights are grounded in human nature. These things have a bit of timelessness to them. In pace layering terms they are the slow moving truths that people gather around, or, as James Carse said: “a culture is not anything persons do, but anything they do with each other.”
These things are easy to overlook because they are the things that hold us all together when it seems like the world is moving too fast for us (while technology is shouting at us to go faster). If a business leans into these cultural truths, human psychological truths, they construct a strong but flexible structure built to absorb shocks and, in most cases, incorporate them. Instead of breaking under stress, like something brittle, the business accommodates what the world throws at us and yet its cultural truths move so slowly, they seem like they are unchanging.
Fast learns, slow remembers.
Fast proposes, slow disposes.
Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous.
Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy.
Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.
Stewart Brand
Business walks a variety of paths every day. But today rather than looking at as terrain and paths let’s think of these paths in concentric layers. I, personally, believe everyone should think about Stewart Brand’s pace layering and from a larger perspective, societally, I believe we could all use a good lesson in navigating the long now rather than focus solely on the now (and the short term). Societally we certainly have a collective shortsightedness grounded in “living in the now,” which I would argue isn’t particularly good for any of us. But for a business that is the kiss of death. An enduring, thriving, business demands a long view and I believe that long view is found within a cultural insight. Here is the harsh truth. Most businesses skate on the superficial surface of irrelevance because they ignore cultural truths. For the most part brands are ignoring these truths for temporary happiness. Far too many brands view fads, fashion, much of social media as cultural truths and, for the most part, they are not. Cultural truths are grounded in human insights – psychological, behavioral – which power our hopes and dreams and anger and happiness and, most importantly, connection with other humans. Today’s brands see ‘culture’ in the fleeting outside world of fads and fashion and style and useless gadgets-of-the-moment which are just the momentary mindless, the irrelevant, clothed in a veneer of connectivity.
Remember. Culture is not static, its transitory. Culture is a process (that which is acquired) as well as a product (that which has been acquired). Culture is both backward looking as well as future looking (nostalgic or memory grounded as well as utopian or dream looking). Culture is a refraction, not a reflection. Culture is a macro narrative made up of micro-narratives (sub cultures).
Which leads me to infinite movement.
Business is addicted to finite stuff. Projects, initiatives, weekly goals, all rolled up n KPIs. Business loves to isolate things and ‘make them perfect’ while espousing infinite value. Look. Forever, infinite, is about time and it isn’t. What I mean is we associate forever with time and, yet, it is timeless so time is almost irrelevant to ‘infinite.’ What is relevant to forever (or let’s call it ‘the long now’’) is constancy and adaptation. Please note I never said “control.”
“We control nothing, but we influence everything.”
Brian Klass
Ah. Control. Now, being the type of outcome-oriented people we are; we actually try and apply some measurement to infinite progress (yes, measuring that sounds like an oxymoron) and all it does is increase the perception of speed and encourage inertia. We look like we’re filling up time with important things, we feel like we are filling up time with important things, we even sit around conference room tables pointing at numbers that look important, but for the most part none of those things are contributing, in any significant way, to the constancy and adaptation which is the key to navigating the layers of pace every culture and business exists upon. In fact, all of those things are just attempts to take snapshots of all the blurry unimportant things speeding by. Yeah. The numbers are an attempt to convince you that the unimportant is important.
So we measure meaningless stuff and hold on to old things, including thinking, for too long. Businesses get caught in the wretched hollow in between shiny fast moving meaningless shit and the old thinking which only increases burden on a daily basis and the people gravitating to either side of FOMO or stability. Therein lies inertia. Therein lies path dependence.
Here is the crazy thing. The whole idea of infinite far too often tethers us to our past or inertia which is not very productive. Maybe worse is as we grow away from infiniteness, we grow closer to the understanding of finiteness, measurement by measurement, fad by fad, widget by widget. Paradoxically as we focus on all the shit speeding around, all the whims and fads, we reduce nature to silly things we convince ourselves are important.
==============
“Let me tell you a truth … no matter what choice you make, it doesn’t define you.
Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we make lasts our whole life. If there’s ever a choice you’ve made that you no longer agree with, you can make another choice.”
Jonathan Maberry
============
Which leads me to paced learning.
Rather than discussing fast or slow, let’s discuss pacing – and learning. The reality is that organizations learn. That may sound a little odd because organizations are made up of people and we typically talk about learning in individualistic ways. However, organizations and the systems are implemented by people and in turn influence people’s mindsets, attitudes, and actual behaviors. So, when I say that organizations learn what I mean by that is that they encase their learning in programs and standard operating procedures that the people within the organization routinely execute. That is the system. The problem with this is that all of these programs and procedures typically generate inertia. And this inertia inevitably increases as the organization brings in new people and reward conformity to the system and its ‘learned implementation.’ This is done over and over and over again embedding past learning in the present (and future). As the successes accumulate the organization doubles down on the existing system emphasizing efficiency. The consequences of this are inevitable – the system itself becomes complacent, people learning slows, and inertia sets in. To be clear. Inertia and complacency is a double whammy to a business. It slows culture down and human nature (natural adaptation) down. So how should organizations learn? Well. As William Starbuck said “organizations must unlearn.” Unlearn is an awkward way of saying that systems must be systemically dismantled piece by piece and iteratively rebuilt. And what that means is that the people within the organization need to be self-aware enough in order to be able to influence not only organizational systems, but organizational learning. This is where hierarchy comes in. In most businesses organizations are constructed in a hierarchy. What this means is that the higher up the manager is the more likely they are to dominate organizational learning as well as organizational implementation. This means that most managers invest the majority of their energy in terms of learning the existing system and not unlearning aspects of the system, i.e., trying different things and innovation. It may sound odd, but past learning inhibits new learning. The only way to create space for new learning is to be able to discard some old learning, i.e., unlearn.
Which leads me to human nature (human movement).
Nature is never still. Nothing, in nature, is ever infinite other than possibly adaptability. This truth includes humans and human nature. Adaptability is a complex coherence of faster and slower moving aspects (static and dynamic). Typically, the aspects seek an optimal equilibrium situation through reactions and interactions (connectivity) where all become stable in a coherent sense enabling movement. In fact, maybe that defines infinite and progress. What I mean by that is optimal is only attainable in a temporary state (finite) therefore the pursuit is always infinite. This means true ‘achievement’ is not possible therefore progress is the only reality-based construct. Anyway. I would suggest the most interesting systems are dynamic in that they are non equilibrium systems that form order from actively dissipating entropy. Ah. Entropy (and its relationship to paces and pace layering). I would argue that entropy increases as the total surface of what is exposed to external stimuli is decreased. This decrease surface connectivity creates an overall increase of entropy. To be clear. “Surface” is a complex weave of whims and human nature at speed. Discerning between the two is important because if the ‘external stimuli’ you elect to expose yourself to are ‘whims’ that will only increase entropy (that is the paradox of speed). This doesn’t mean that there can’t be constant re-formation of order; just that there is an increased likelihood of entropy. I believe it was physical chemist Ilya Prigogine who viewed the paradox of evolution as one of an engine running down and the other of a living world unfolding toward increasing order and complexity. In his theory, the second law of thermodynamics – which is the law of ever-increasing entropy or disorder – is still valid, but the relationship between entropy and disorder is different. At bifurcation points states of greater order may emerge spontaneously without contradicting the second law of thermodynamics. The total entropy of the system keeps increasing, but this increase in entropy is not uniform or symmetrical. In the living world order and disorder are always created simultaneously. What this means is that there are always islands of order in all seas of disorder and their role is to maintain and increase their order. And therein lies another thought, one in which that speed, inertia, and cultural movement will always have aspects of order and disorder. Well. That thought will make every business uncomfortable.
“Strategy’s endgame is to spark movement. But as an intermediary measure, feeling moved by the process is an indicator you’re doing it right. Because if you’re doing it right, you do embody new people. New messages. New audiences. A new tone of voice. Strong vicarious vibes. And by doing so, things get raw. Raw precedes real. And real is something that provokes a response.”
Rob Estreinho
Stewart Brand, Pace Layering
Which leads me to cultural movement.
Let’s say this is about experience versus experiencing. I tend to believe most people are misguided when they focus on experiences, and selling experiences, rather than focusing on experiencing (which is more about human nature). Here’s what I mean. Experiences are an outcome of experiencing, and experiencing is a complex culmination of connections:
1. Connection to human nature.
In other words, the biology which creates the comfortable or the purposefully uncomfortable cadence that seems natural to us (note: this is actually embodied in a number of cultural cues)
2. Connection to context and environment.
This Is the environment which expands or reduces potential.
3. Connection to other humans.
In fact, human nature experiencing is autopoiesis. Autopoiesis means self-making. It is the main characteristic of life in that it is self-maintenance due to the natural internal networking of the system itself. It constantly maintains itself within the boundary of its own making. But it also implies that a living system is the totality of all of its mutual interactions, i.e., connections (as listed above). Through connections multiple mini transformations continuously take place and, yet, at its core the system/human/human nature maintains its individuality. Is this apparent contradiction between adaptation and constancy which actually explains a healthy system. I say all of that to suggest all living systems need some constancy and yet still need some change through adaptation. I say that to suggest human nature, culture, is constancy constantly, slowly, adapting.
Which leads me to end with the fact most people discuss culture incorrectly.
Human nature is at the core of culture. Whims and fads are simply temporary features of human nature’s more systemic rhythms. The reality of culture is that it is not a particular speedy thing. With that in mind, rather than giving so much attention to speedy stuff, maybe we should invest just a bit more energy focusing on the less speedy stuff. I seriously doubt we will miss out on anything truly meaningful in the process. Ponder.
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“It is misleading to argue that cultural circulation has been democratized. The means of circulation are algorithmic, and they are not subject to democratic accountability or control. Hyperconnectivity has in fact further concentrated power over the means of circulation in the hands of the giant platforms that design and control the architectures of visibility.”
“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.
“There’s a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.”
Vera Nazarian
==
“Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else’s behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another.”
George K. Simon Jr
==
Trump has probably done over 100 things, okay, thousands of things which make me sure he is unqualified to be the country leader <and make me doubt he could lead a turd out of a flushed toilet>, makes me sure I dislike his business acumen and makes me sure his moral compass <assuming he even has one> is not working. That said. Its all a game to him. He wants a “story a week” so everyone is talking about him every day and every week (if not every hour). He is of the old school “there is no such thing as bad PR” belief with a twist – he has a cadre of alternative universe storytellers who twist everything he says into some false equivalence or even “you really didn’t see, or hear, what you really did” spin. Regardless. He is playing a game. And he is playing a game with democracy and elections and the presidency. And he isn’t even hiding the fact he sees this as one big game and he is going to do whatever it takes to win his game.
He demeans us, he demeans business, he demeans democracy, he demeans the country and, maybe most importantly, he demeans the office he is suggesting he is qualified for.
It is infuriating. He treats the political process like a game show and I’m angry at the people in leadership who permit this to happen. And I’m angry that we, the ordinary people, are so angry at some shadowy ‘establishment’ that we cannot seem to assume some thread of responsibility for what is happening.
And let me tell you how angry I am about the ‘gaming.’
Because Trump has given me the opportunity to be angry hundreds of times before. The truth is that in a fairly remarkable mixture of bombastic rhetoric, double-talk, vagaries, an outright onslaught of relentless lies, he says repulsive things every day. Realistically to keep your sanity you can truly only focus on one of them at a time <which is part of his game because if I focus on one and everyone else focuses on another one and so on, how the hell can anyone put a thumb on this stupid, slippery, slimy, carnival barker? I admit, his ignorance <with regard to the constitution, global realities, everything else, was amusing at first, but it truly is Trump’s disregard for constitutional principles which is most likely the most disturbing <all the while holding up the Constitution verbally as his guiding principle>.
He doesn’t believe in freedom of the press <unless they say something nice to him>.
He doesn’t believe in freedom of speech <unless it agrees with him>.
He doesn’t believe in … well … let’s just say he is free of morality and principles which underpin the country <torture is good if the other guys do it, killing families of enemies is okay because it deters future enemy action, and ‘I’ will trump ‘we’ in decisions>.
Article II directs the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Article VI provides that treaties are part of “the supreme law of the land.” These treaties include the Geneva Conventions, which govern the conduct of war. Yet in direct contradiction to these treaties, Trump has said that the United States should have stolen Iraqi oil and that we should kill the families of terrorists. As he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “Everybody believes in the Geneva Convention until they start losing and then they say oh, let’s take out the bomb. OK. When they start losing. We have to play with a tougher set of rules.”
Let me be politically incorrect <kind of along the lines of Trump himself>. While I am not holding my 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.”
He will not. Shit. He cannot even apologize for … uhm … anything.
Donald Trump is a liar. Period.
He is a crooked con artist.
He is a spoiled rich bully with an unhealthy relationship with his own mirror <and a desire for fame>.
Trump has seemingly called everyone a liar at some point over his entire lifetime, let alone the election period, all the while offering us an onslaught of his own lies. A liar telling lies, but calling everyone else a liar, is not just an asshole, it is a reflection of the fact he believes he is simply playing a game.
He is a repugnant and ridiculous imposter with no integrity.
He is simply a game show host stirring up interest to a television audience who is only going to find that what is behind the curtain is not the dream vacation we have always wanted, but a plastic blender which runs at one speed.
Which leads me to May 26 in North Dakota:
“Politicians have used you and stolen your votes. They have given you nothing. I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for 50 years. I’m the only one.”
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.
But I continue to say the worst is that he is unapologetically playing the election like a game.
Gaming the press.
Gaming the people.
Gaming the system.
Gaming the overall construct of what is right, what is wrong and his basic strategy is confuxing everyone.
He is fucking running for the president of the United States; not the smartest game show host on tv.
Let’s be clear. Like him or not, Obama is an American and he treated his role as president seriously and with dignity. Like her or not, Clinton is an American and was serious candidate running a serious campaign understanding it is a serious role. Like him or not, Biden is a decent man, an American, and treats his role as president seriously and with dignity. Trump is an American who doesn’t really believe in America (the idea and ideals) and he is a relentless liar who cloaks himself in false patriotism to hide his lack of knowledge and overall ignorance for how serious being a president is. He is not sane nor interested in workable solutions. Trump is unwilling to put in the serious work to match the seriousness of the position. We should demand our president to lead by example and lead by assuming the mantle of responsibility, all responsibilities, of the position. Every day is bizarre, and a slap in the face to democracy and the democratic process and to the citizens, and in the realm of the Trump carnival barker show, every week seems to attain a new low.
“Talk about a lack of intestinal fortitude. Anyone who wants to try to put Joe Biden on the same plane as Donald Trump should have their mental health checked because that is just an absurd false equivalency. This is a very black and white issue here. You’re either pro-democracy or you’re not. All the other issues that we disagree about – and there are many – don’t matter if we don’t have a functioning democracy.”
Which leads me to the most dangerous part of his game.
He doesn’t really believe in democracy, he embraces autocracy. If it were just simply that, it’s important but controllable. The problem is he also believes that transactions are negotiated one on one based on a relationship. So he builds relationships and affinities with autocrats. The most obvious autocrat he’s developed a relationship with is Vladimir Putin. It has often been discussed the 2016 Trump campaign links with Russia and whether Donald Trump is actually a Russian plant. I would actually just suggest something a foreign intelligent officer said: “It doesn’t really matter if you believe that Donald Trump is a Russian asset because assets come into all shapes and sizes. And some assets don’t realize their assets. They’re the best kind.” It is undisputed that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. No sane person debates that. The Justice Department, the Mueller investigation, even the Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee, confirmed all of that. Everything portrays senior Trump Advisors eager to obtain assistance from Russia. Read any of the investigations and you’ll see a detailed list of a complex web of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians linked to a Kremlin and the Russian intelligence services. The most obvious one was Paul Manafort who was compromised having earned millions of dollars representing pro Kremlin political candidates. It is a fact that in Europe Paul Manafort handed 2016 voter targeting information to a Russian intelligence agent. Whether he knew it was a Russian intelligence agent or not is irrelevant; he handed it to him. But getting back to Donald Trump. While in the Oval Office Trump heaped praise on authoritarian thugs, entertained anti democratic European populists at the White House, rolled back US efforts to promote democracy around the world, and disrupted relations with allies. And to the chagrin of all intelligence officers around the world, during an Oval Office meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister and ambassador to Washington, Trump divulged highly classified intelligence supplied by Israel. Intelligence that was so sensitive it was not shared widely within the US government. And while the breach put at risk an operation that had given Israeli intelligence a look on the inner workings of Islamic state in Syria, the consequences of it were worse. Israel as well as the majority of other intelligence allies stopped giving the United States critical intelligence because they believed that nothing was safe once Trump had heard it. All of that is undisputed fact. He thought intelligence was a game and he shared that game with autocratic leaders, and particularly Vladimir Putin. And then of course there was Trump’s obsession with undermining NATO. Tied to his peculiar fealty towards Vladimir Putin, Trump challenged the conclusion of his own intelligence community that Moscow had meddled in the election. I would also be remiss if I didn’t note that Donald Trump met one on one with Vladimir Putin in five meetings of which there is no detailed record anywhere within the files of the US government. These are all facts. You may not like them, but they are facts. I’m not asking anyone to draw any conclusion other than Donald Trump does not take democracy seriously.
And then there was January 6th. Three and a half hours where rioters roamed the temple of American 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.
But resounding with the truth of things prophesied,
But of things with truth resounds
Но вещей правдою звучат
No v’eshchej pravdoju zvuchat
Its lips are covered with blood!
Lips covered with blood
Уста, запекшиеся кровью!
Usta, zap’vekshi’esa krovju!
——
Ophelia’s Song: Alexander Bok
=================
“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.”
–
Leonardo da Vinci
=================
59squared.
3,481.
3481squared.
12,117,361.
12,117,361squared.
1.5 billion.
That’s three degrees and I am at almost 1/5th of the entire world. Yeah. The numbers are really not that neat, but you get the point. With a single event, a single death, one person can set off a chain of events that will affect hundreds of thousands, millions and even billions of people.
Some people call this “6 degrees of separation” <although I showed it to you as only 3>. I didn’t make up the squared concept. In some form or fashion it reflects the truth of the internet of things and connectedness and it shows the likelihood that the majority of us have some connection to any event in which 5, 59 or 559 people are part of.
I say this because it makes a lot of things, well, personal. The main point here is that a person now has access and is aware of more people <true friends as well as web based friends> and can have more frequent communication due to the ‘digital revolution’.
Yet.
Social media is simply the fact that the traditional benefits of an acquaintance network <personal or professional> and friendships can be more expansively realized than before <it amplifies>. This means that truth resounds more quickly & clearly & bluntly than ever before. The other truth is that our own experiences, and Life, can then be at the mercy of crowds of friends & acquaintances — crowds providing unsolicited input & feedback & experiences all influencing hordes of additional people’s thoughts on a daily basis. This means whether you are present in one place, or not, you can be impacted in the present place you stand. You are a nomad in which the world remains your home.
Our world is now one large network consisting of two basic things – people and connections. And while many times we look at this as some forced or constructed network <Facebook, twitter, etc. provides hubs and constructs> the reality is that most people networks & connections are organically constructed. So while we like to draw out nice symmetrical shapes to define how connections work and networks are constructed the reality is that networks are more often not symmetrical.
The unique patterns in the connections determine the shapes. We reach out in asymmetrical ways to places, events and thoughts and bring them near in seconds. In addition the ties between the connections can be complicated – spanning from intense or passive.
In the business world we try to characterize networks and connections in a variety of ways. The trouble is that people are not that orderly and certainly not stagnant and they actively reshape their connections, interests and networks all the time.
But I am not here to discuss how the internet can, or cannot, affect personal relationships or a sense of individual isolation but rather this is a thought on how the internet can make things, and Life … well … smaller.
On most days the ‘quasi-truth’ that resounds in the echo chambers of what we talk about and ‘think we know’ is that the internet is isolating us … disconnects us from reality and social interaction.
So … is it possible that the internet increases connection and decreases connection at exactly the same time? Yup. The Internet connects and it isolates.
The usual assumption that most of us make about our computing and communication environment is that we are ‘always’ connected. Indeed, most of us are ‘nomads’ when it comes to computing and communications. We live in a disconnected world much of the time as we travel between our office, home, airport, hotel, car, coffee shop, bedroom, etc. We now recognize that access to computing and communications is necessary not only from one’s `home base’, but also while one is in transit and/or when one reaches one’s destination.
It is an anytime, anywhere access world. It is also, paradoxically, a ‘be anywhere at any time’ world.
That is the connected aspect which creates the whole disconnected aspect.
Well. Let’s just say we feel slightly disconnected in a connected way, of course, until something happens that tightens all the lines of connection.
It is within moments like that where the supposed 6 degrees of separation becomes less degrees and more links all of a sudden the 59squared aspect of connectedness occurs.
The world gets smaller … in fact … really fucking small.
We are brought together and something that happens to 5 people, maybe 59 people, or even 559 people, becomes an experience within our own grasp.
Which brings me back to truth and resounding.
The majority of our social networking constructs today are on the internet <or have a foundation on the internet>. Simplistically, we, the people, are connecting via the internet. What this means is that the internet muffles or amplifies our voices, events and truth <as well as lies unfortunately>.
What this means is that … well … an event, a moment, a death, an injury, resounds … resounds as in 59squared.
What THAT means is we have to face a truth whether we want to or not. Now. At that point we have a 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.
That was a sad sentence to type.
At this point, my conclusion, I imagine it may be relevant to remind everyone of 59squared and the fact that I can do one thing, one right thing … or one wrong thing … and it will resound.
“In a world with abundant computational resources where nothing is forgotten and where we are connected in pervasive, unexpected ways beyond our choice, it is reasonable to stop and ask ourselves just what kind of world we hope to create.”
Grady Booch
==
Generally speaking, how we ask ourselves what kind of world we hope to create will inevitably find that ‘how’ battling between two conflicting views. One view is that human beings are inherently altruistic and that greed and selfishness is not actually part of human nature, but rather constructed from the norms, and what is valued, of society. The other view is that human beings are centered on self and that the 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.
Which leads me to suggest, generally speaking, most people have reached a pragmatic consensus that markets and governments each have a role to play in society.
Despite this understanding the vacuum between is wretched. And it is within this vacuum within which society and humans and humanity continue to evolve typically at a snail’s pace – despite popular belief everything is rapidly changing. And even within this slow evolution there is conflict because humans get trapped in-between the fact we slowly evolve endosomatically, through our genes, and the fact there is a more rapid evolution exosomatically – through our culture. This conflict means that we will constantly drift from order to disorder, entropy and energy, self and collective, all wrapped up in an uncomfortable blanket of uncertainty.
Circling back to my opening, within this wretched inbetween we ask ourselves not only what world we 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.
Which leads me to what should we hope to create.
Let me begin with some economics. Ultimately, economically, the objective should always be helping poor people to get richer rather than economically punishing the rich This is easier said than done because it is never as simple as rich and non-rich. A bunch of things, and how people think, get bundled up in this discussion (individual power versus environment systemic issues being the main framing). That said. If we focus on non-punishment, then we just focus on a positive vision of growth which gets fairly distributed. And that conversation, in today’s world, gets warped in a confusion between value creation and value extraction. As Mariana Mazzucato said this has serious economic and social consequences. The main consequence is we would need to dismantle, in some form or fashion, how the existing economic system incentivizes, and rewards, those with power who thrive on extraction versus creation to offer value. Now I am going to get nerdy (but this is about what kind of world we hope to create, so …). At the core of this confusion is a misunderstanding of marginal utility. The marginal utility theory of value states that ‘all income is reward for a productive undertaking.’ Without saying anything else, I believe it is obvious that that is not the way our current economic system works. Well. Certainly for the majority of the working people. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Marx becomes essential reading on this. His labor theory of value was not simply an abstract idea, but an act of critique of the system. He asked, if labor produced value, why was labor continuing to live in poverty and misery? He asked, conversely if a group of people did not create value, how did they become so rich? I point that out because all of a sudden, a positive vision of growth then becomes a little bit more complex. What I mean by that is that there can be produced value growth and, separately, there can be individual wealth growth. I say that because we often look at GDP as tied to production growth in how we view whether the system is economically healthy (referring back to Mariana Mazzucato; it is not). The problem gets compounded by the fact that the outcome of production growth (as defined by today), and the growth and distribution of wealth – indirect & direct – created from that production, may actually be quite unhealthy for society. This isn’t to say that I don’t understand that everything must come from somewhere (extraction) and once something has been created it must actually go somewhere (distribution), but what we hope to create will need to be shaped from a reshaped system.
Which leads me to shaping.
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.
Which leads me to the mindset necessary in the kind of world we hope to create.
We need an adaptive mindset. An adaptive mindset is pragmatic while still embracing possibilities. It values doing shit over doing nothing and values tangible facts about today more than guesses about tomorrow. This mindset doesn’t expect that everything will work out as planned and prefers lots of smaller failures to big ones even while embracing “going big” over “going home.” This paradoxical thinking is willing to say we learned something new and now we need to change course. Basically, we learn by doing and to end up doing what is necessary to make progress. But maybe one of the unsaid things within an adaptive mindset is the fact that it embraces a belief energy potential is the key to pragmatism, possibilities, the present, and the future, i.e., energy is abundant and accessible – if you choose access it. This leverages an idea physicist James Prescott Joel: “nature, itself, is stingy with its energy and energy is neither created nor destroyed, but converted from one form into another.” I bring that to the forefront because what this suggests is that the energy within a system is one of the few guaranteed resources available. Energy always exists and if we want to create a world, we need to control and employ the existing energy. Which leads me back to an adaptive mindset (rather than talk about encouraging massive change). An adaptive mindset recognizes the pragmatic innovations in the present which can be leveraged to do the things to create the world we desire. This is helpful because it is always easier to create something from something rather than create from scratch. To be clear. This is not to suggest we should not challenge ‘the past imaginations.’ I would argue imagination is iterative thereby naturally inventing the future rather than resurrect the past. And from there we need to acknowledge that in the past almost all innovations, and imagination, were limited by their dependence upon nature in some form or fashion. Today’s innovations often strip the limits of nature often optimizing the potential of nature. Solar energy is the prime example of this. Anyway. With that we can begin to envision a world in which machines and technology result in an economy that “potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings.” (Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, 1964). While this offers some possibilities, it also creates additional issues because machines produce, but do not consume (that’s the job of humans). And the warning here resides in Vonnegut’s Player Piano where we see a dystopian future of an automated economy in which an industrialized business world is managed by few technological elite who do the work while everyone else in society faces a meaningless existence and hopeless future. It is easy to pursue this dystopian thinking especially because advancing technology is clearly pushing us toward making business, and the economy, significantly less labor intensive. It is here I posit: but what would help is if we designed a world to which we purposefully shifted to. It seems like that is the path to make things work out for people rather than simply offer theories.
“but in the end, it did matter.”
In the end, let me remind everyone it was Marx who reminds us that capitalism inevitably creates its own grave diggers. Yeah. If we seek to find the kind of world we want to create, we will have to wrestle with capitalism. Why? Capitalism will always seek to innovate, but those innovations will almost always surround a more efficient productivity and production process. Neither of those things guarantee a more effective society or a better world for people nor create a world we hope for. And maybe that is where I will end. What world do we wanna create? I would suggest if we can imagine it, we can create it, but, uhm, we may need to destroy some things to do so. Ponder.
** postscript: “hoping to create” is a big idea, in a typically little idea world. What I mean by that is often the future is envisioned by ‘fixing’ the existing system or iterating from what exists. That’s, well, little idea thinking. A ‘bigger’ idea is thinking about what kind of world we want to create – and then go about creating it. But you gotta believe you can do something like that or, well, you get stuck in the little idea world.