Victor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be pursued; it ensues: it is the outcome of living a life of meaning and purpose. That comes from three things: doing work that matters, loving without condition, and finding meaning in our suffering.
If we wanted to rewrite that for a business, we may have to start with changing the outcome of happiness. People can be happy, but a corporation is not a person and can't be happy. I believe it can create happiness in others. Not every company would necessarily have happiness as a desired outcome, although perhaps every organization we have would make someone happy or else it would not exist. That may be part of the key - it is not that we would pursue something other than happiness but rather we need to ask who is this company supposed to make happy?
A related question may be whether it is possible to make people happy as a win-win or if happiness is a zero-sum game. Is one person's happiness at the expense of someone else's? In many sporting events, if one team wins by 5 points, the other team loses by 5 points. Most races work a little bit differently, where you'll have the first, second, and third place finishers receive medals - one overall winner but top finishers are acknowledged as well. Someone is still going to end up in last place, but finisher medals go to everyone who completes the race, knowing that finishing a marathon is still a fantastic achievement in and of itself. The Fan Favorite, Miss Congeniality, or Most Improved awards are other ways of letting more people win a little, because we recognize that more winners is better.
Golf is a little different in that a handicap can be calculated, which shows how close to par a golfer scores on average. This allows golfers of different skill levels to be ranked based on how they perform relative to their own average instead of directly head to head. As a golfer gets better, their handicap changes, forcing them to have to continue to improve. You still have one overall winner, just a different mathematical formula to end up with the final ranking. This means that if you modify the algorithm, even though everyone performs the same, the top to bottom ranking changes.
At some point, someone has to make the decision which algorithm is better, affecting who wins and who loses. A systemic conflict is created, where the winners believe the algorithm is good and the losers believe the algorithm is not good. It is said that an election is more about convincing the loser that they lost than it is about convincing the winner that they won. The winner always believes the election was fair. The loser needs to be convinced the results are fair so that they and their followers will not have reason to revolt. The U.S. has had a couple of elections where the electoral college algorithm gave the win to someone other than the winner of the popular vote, but that algorithm has survived as it provides a balance that the straight popular vote does not. Perhaps we need to take it even further and design a new system whereby everyone can win together.
Some board or card games are cooperative instead of competitive. An example of this is the board game Pandemic (which seems particularly appropriate these days). Everyone who plays either wins together or loses together. That's nice for a game, but the company who sells a cooperative board game vs. a competitive board game is trying to make money at the end of the day. There's an opportunity cost to buying their game - you can't use that cash to buy something else if you used it to buy the game.
A few years ago, Google changed its well-known motto from Do No Evil to Do The Right Thing. Just not doing something bad is different than doing something good. One kind of implies the other, but why not be explicit about wanting to do good?
It is sometimes said that integrity is what you do when no one is looking. But what about what you do when people are looking? If your proverbial mom is looking, you'll want to do the right thing, so this statement is that if you have integrity, you'll still do what makes your mom proud even if there was no way she would find out (someone has never lived in a small town, apparently). The part of this that has always bothered me is negative peer pressure or imbalanced power relationships. If you have integrity, you'll still do the right thing when people are looking - in particular those who may want to tempt you to do the wrong thing. Are you willing to stand against your so-called friends and do what is right in the face of temptation or danger? Integrity is doing what is right, period. It doesn't matter if no one is looking or if you're trying not to look silly doing the right thing when everyone is looking. We see photos of white people (students and adults) being out of control racists when the Little Rock Nine showed up to go to school. So what about those who were privately pro-integration? How willing were they to stand up to their racist friends? There are stories but too few and too far between.
I recently learned of an upgrade to the Golden Rule. The original aphorism states that we should treat others as we would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule takes this to the next level, which is that we should treat others as they would like to be treated. Not everyone is the same, so we need to adjust our responses to treat people in the way that is best for them. We need to take time to get to know them and work side by side to the point that we can give them something personally meaningful. Even this doesn't fully take into account that not everyone knows what is best for them. Adjustments still must be made when what is best for someone is not what the person wants.
Back to Frankl, if an individual can become happy by doing work that matters, loving without condition, and finding meaning in our suffering, then what is the equivalent for a company? There may be other principles that could be added, but my proposal follows a parallel structure to the original.
A company maximizes happiness within their sphere of influence by doing work that matters, treating everyone with respect, and reducing suffering.
A company has to start by choosing their sphere of influence. We can't fix every injustice in the world or provide products and services that everyone will want, but we can focus on a place where we feel like we can make an impact and choose work that will result in more good than bad. The important principle is that once we have set our sphere of influence, we have to treat everyone within that sphere with respect. This goes back to the Platinum Rule. It doesn't matter if it is customers, employees, suppliers, competitors, animals, government regulators, or people we encounter but have no official relationship with - we should cooperate with them all. We should do no evil. It is difficult to eliminate all negative externalities, but no one said this process would be easy. For the third principle, we take it one more step and not only do we not hurt others but we specifically reach out to do the right thing or the best thing. We actively work to reduce suffering. We promote building at the same time that we tear down destructive elements.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Finding Your Purpose
Notes from my continued reading on Conscious Capitalism:
Besides the day you were born, the most important day in your life is when you figure out the purpose for which you were born.
Purpose is the difference we're trying to make in the world.
How do you find your purpose? Look where your talents and the needs of the world cross.
Even further, then, they show a four-way Venn diagram with your purpose being the intersection of what you do well, what you love, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.
Questions to help discover your purpose:
Roy Spence paraphrases Aristotle, that we should do good rather than simply be good. We need to change the story, bring competitors together, and use our strengths to serve a higher purpose.
Besides the day you were born, the most important day in your life is when you figure out the purpose for which you were born.
Purpose is the difference we're trying to make in the world.
How do you find your purpose? Look where your talents and the needs of the world cross.
Even further, then, they show a four-way Venn diagram with your purpose being the intersection of what you do well, what you love, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.
Questions to help discover your purpose:
- Why was the organization originally founded?
- What were the guiding principles that this organization was founded on?
- What spirit or intention must be preserved and captured in our purpose at all cost?
- When we are at our absolute best, what is going on?
- When we love what we are doing, what is going on?
- When we’re failing, just getting by, in a slump, or not that interested in our work, what is going on?
- What is the ultimate impact we hope to make?
- When we’re at our best, what difference do we make in the lives of the people we serve?
- What is our organization’s greatest strength; what do we have the potential to be the best at in the world?
- What are we most passionate about? What do we love the most about what we do?
- Where can we have the most meaningful impact? Which big problems or needs in the world are we capable of and passionate about solving?
- What would people reward us for? What products and services would our customers happily purchase from us?
- What do you love most about this company or this brand?
- What does this company or brand do for you that no one else does?
- If this company or brand ceased to exist, what would be lost? What would you miss the most?
- At the most basic level, what do we have to offer people?
- Functional benefit: what does our offering enable people to do?
- Emotional benefit: how does our offering make people feel?
- Ultimate value: what is the ultimate value of these functional and emotional benefits in their lives?
- What is your heart calling you to do?
- What is absolutely essential for the purpose to be truly meaningful?
Roy Spence paraphrases Aristotle, that we should do good rather than simply be good. We need to change the story, bring competitors together, and use our strengths to serve a higher purpose.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Leadership
“In human relationships there are too many tacit, silent deals in which one person agrees not to demand full measure, if the other person will agree to mediocrity when excellence may be possible. In any event, the unwillingness of most leaders to set standards, to administer feedback when standards are not met, to praise clearly when standards are met, stands in the way of the development of excellence on the part of followers with inevitable loss in follower effectiveness and follower satisfaction. The leader who makes no demands of his disciples cannot really lead them at all. The sense of new excitement and new challenge generated by the gospel will be blunted by leaders who shield followers from the full demands of followership”
-Neal A. Maxwell
-Neal A. Maxwell
Friday, June 12, 2020
Conscious Capitalism
Why capitalism needs to evolve:
Capitalism has improved income, quality of life, literacy, and lifespan, but most people don't trust businesses. The invisible hand of Adam Smith has worked to increased income for many people through the industrial revolution and other changes and improvements, but the idea of shareholder maximization has had the opposite effect of decreasing efficiency and productivity.
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods pushes back against Milton Friedman's assertion that businesses should only be looking out for maximizing returns for their shareholders. Whole foods considers a range of stakeholders that should benefit from a company's existence - customers, employees, suppliers, investors, vendors, communities, and the environment.
Mackey discusses what a common answer would be to the question about the purpose of business. The first answer is always to make money. At the same time, a doctor who is very well paid will not say healthcare's purpose is to make money. It is to help people become healthy. Of course, a hospital or doctor's office is still a business and one that shuffles a lot of money through it, but there is still an overarching purpose beyond just the money itself.
He argues that legacy companies with a different mindset will have to evolve or else they will be replaced by start-ups to have a conscious capitalism approach.
What is conscious capitalism?
The metaphor is given of a caterpillar who simply consumes as much as possible, adding no value. Eventually nature takes its course and the metamorphosis to a butterfly results in a creature of light and beauty that gives back as much as it takes.
The four tenets are higher purpose (why), stakeholder integration (what), conscious culture (how), and conscious leadership (who).
Conscious capitalism goes beyond corporate social responsibility, which only mitigates some potential negative impacts without significantly building beyond that. Other concepts such as sustainability, triple bottom line, and shared value capitalism likewise do not go far enough in terms of who can benefit from the company and how.
Raj Sisodia presents conscious capitalism as a philosphy of doing business rather than a business strategy or business model. Such a philosophy will create value rather than extract value, leading to a Win-Win, rather than a Zero-Sum result. The key is patience. Such a metamorphosis cannot happen overnight, and there will be failures along the way. Companies trying to practice conscious capitalism may fail, but that does not mean it wasn't a good idea. It just means they need to keep trying.
Just like a doctor or hospital is still a business but working towards a greater purpose of improving health, really any non-profit is at the end of the day a business. The local humane society can't fulfill its mission of taking care of pets if they don't have the money from adoption fees or donations. The thrift store can't keep the lights on if no one donates their used items. Individual owners and employees can still be paid decently personally while the organization gives back to society.
The CC Credo:
We believe that:
Business is good, because it creates value.
It is ethical, because it is based on voluntary exchange.
It is noble, because it can elevate our existence.
It is heroic, because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.
Capitalism has improved income, quality of life, literacy, and lifespan, but most people don't trust businesses. The invisible hand of Adam Smith has worked to increased income for many people through the industrial revolution and other changes and improvements, but the idea of shareholder maximization has had the opposite effect of decreasing efficiency and productivity.
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods pushes back against Milton Friedman's assertion that businesses should only be looking out for maximizing returns for their shareholders. Whole foods considers a range of stakeholders that should benefit from a company's existence - customers, employees, suppliers, investors, vendors, communities, and the environment.
Mackey discusses what a common answer would be to the question about the purpose of business. The first answer is always to make money. At the same time, a doctor who is very well paid will not say healthcare's purpose is to make money. It is to help people become healthy. Of course, a hospital or doctor's office is still a business and one that shuffles a lot of money through it, but there is still an overarching purpose beyond just the money itself.
He argues that legacy companies with a different mindset will have to evolve or else they will be replaced by start-ups to have a conscious capitalism approach.
What is conscious capitalism?
The metaphor is given of a caterpillar who simply consumes as much as possible, adding no value. Eventually nature takes its course and the metamorphosis to a butterfly results in a creature of light and beauty that gives back as much as it takes.
The four tenets are higher purpose (why), stakeholder integration (what), conscious culture (how), and conscious leadership (who).
Conscious capitalism goes beyond corporate social responsibility, which only mitigates some potential negative impacts without significantly building beyond that. Other concepts such as sustainability, triple bottom line, and shared value capitalism likewise do not go far enough in terms of who can benefit from the company and how.
Raj Sisodia presents conscious capitalism as a philosphy of doing business rather than a business strategy or business model. Such a philosophy will create value rather than extract value, leading to a Win-Win, rather than a Zero-Sum result. The key is patience. Such a metamorphosis cannot happen overnight, and there will be failures along the way. Companies trying to practice conscious capitalism may fail, but that does not mean it wasn't a good idea. It just means they need to keep trying.
Just like a doctor or hospital is still a business but working towards a greater purpose of improving health, really any non-profit is at the end of the day a business. The local humane society can't fulfill its mission of taking care of pets if they don't have the money from adoption fees or donations. The thrift store can't keep the lights on if no one donates their used items. Individual owners and employees can still be paid decently personally while the organization gives back to society.
The CC Credo:
We believe that:
Business is good, because it creates value.
It is ethical, because it is based on voluntary exchange.
It is noble, because it can elevate our existence.
It is heroic, because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Unrest
Can't we all just get along?
This paraphrased quote from Rodney King back in 1992 still echoes 28 years later. Think of how much has changed in that time. How much has stayed the same?
Wars have been waged, the internet and mobile phones have transformed communication and how businesses operate, 5 U.S. presidents have served, reality TV shows (or unscripted dramas) have shifted the entertainment landscape, hip hop music has become mainstream music, and much more.
One of those presidents was our first African American president, and the hip hop music that has dominated the last couple decades was created by and is primarily still performed by people of color. But where has that really gotten us?
More and more people of color are killed in the streets. Riots break out across the country as part of protests against racial divisions and atrocious acts committed by police and everyday citizens. Perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. White America is barely aware of the existence of our own privilege.
A pandemic seems to have lowered defenses, opened doors, unified us against a common enemy, and squeezed out all but the essential from our lives. And in the middle of the pandemic with no end in sight we have race riots and protests, burning police cars, looting, a president who seems to provoke more than promote calm, and more to come as the disadvantaged are stressed by an economy in shambles. Race continues to divide us as the pandemic should be uniting us.
Can't we all just get along?
This paraphrased quote from Rodney King back in 1992 still echoes 28 years later. Think of how much has changed in that time. How much has stayed the same?
Wars have been waged, the internet and mobile phones have transformed communication and how businesses operate, 5 U.S. presidents have served, reality TV shows (or unscripted dramas) have shifted the entertainment landscape, hip hop music has become mainstream music, and much more.
One of those presidents was our first African American president, and the hip hop music that has dominated the last couple decades was created by and is primarily still performed by people of color. But where has that really gotten us?
More and more people of color are killed in the streets. Riots break out across the country as part of protests against racial divisions and atrocious acts committed by police and everyday citizens. Perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. White America is barely aware of the existence of our own privilege.
A pandemic seems to have lowered defenses, opened doors, unified us against a common enemy, and squeezed out all but the essential from our lives. And in the middle of the pandemic with no end in sight we have race riots and protests, burning police cars, looting, a president who seems to provoke more than promote calm, and more to come as the disadvantaged are stressed by an economy in shambles. Race continues to divide us as the pandemic should be uniting us.
Can't we all just get along?
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Virtual Campout
Our scout troop had a campout planned for this last weekend. It was going to be a district event at a BSA camp. It was cancelled, but we decided to hold our own event anyway. Some suggestions in BSA's weekly newsletter were to have each scout help cook dinner at home, hold a virtual campfire program, and then have everyone sleep in their own backyard.
So that's what we did.
We planned in our regular virtual troop meeting on Thursday, through Discord, what the campout would look like and made assignments for the campfire. We decided to let everyone plan their own menu based on what individuals preferred and had available at their houses to cook. We cooked hamburgers at our house. We also planned what time to meet.
At 8:30, we jumped online and had a pretty good turnout of people calling in. One family actually had a campfire in their backyard and showed it on video, while another turned on their fireplace inside, so that was nice. It started a little slow, with nobody really sure who was doing what. But once they got going, telling jokes and even one funny skit from a family who had enough people there to do a full skit, we went through 45 minutes like it was nothing. It was honestly a lot of fun, just sitting there in the dark, looking at the glowing lights of a campfire in someone else's backyard, a few moments of silence where people just sat there waiting as you normally do around a campfire, and other moments of laughter and fun as we shared funny stories. It was just nice.
I slept in my hammock and my son on the trampoline. He had a closed cell foam pad and a mummy bag and stayed warm. I had my underquilt wrapped around the hammock which made it nice and toasty. It was a fairly warm night, although I think it did get into the upper 30s for a low. I unzipped my sleeping bag about 3/4 of the way and turned it 90 degrees so the end formed a footbox and the unzipped portions just laid around me like a blanket. It was not constricting light a tight sleeping bag can be. Usually the bottom of the hammock will be cold, which is nice on a hot summer day, but not so good on a cool night. I was able to move around without having to worry about keeping my pad under me or getting all twisted around in the sleeping bag.
This week, there is a national virtual campout with some merit badge classes taught through Facebook on Saturday. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to being able to camp for real again, but this has been better than expected.
So that's what we did.
We planned in our regular virtual troop meeting on Thursday, through Discord, what the campout would look like and made assignments for the campfire. We decided to let everyone plan their own menu based on what individuals preferred and had available at their houses to cook. We cooked hamburgers at our house. We also planned what time to meet.
At 8:30, we jumped online and had a pretty good turnout of people calling in. One family actually had a campfire in their backyard and showed it on video, while another turned on their fireplace inside, so that was nice. It started a little slow, with nobody really sure who was doing what. But once they got going, telling jokes and even one funny skit from a family who had enough people there to do a full skit, we went through 45 minutes like it was nothing. It was honestly a lot of fun, just sitting there in the dark, looking at the glowing lights of a campfire in someone else's backyard, a few moments of silence where people just sat there waiting as you normally do around a campfire, and other moments of laughter and fun as we shared funny stories. It was just nice.
I slept in my hammock and my son on the trampoline. He had a closed cell foam pad and a mummy bag and stayed warm. I had my underquilt wrapped around the hammock which made it nice and toasty. It was a fairly warm night, although I think it did get into the upper 30s for a low. I unzipped my sleeping bag about 3/4 of the way and turned it 90 degrees so the end formed a footbox and the unzipped portions just laid around me like a blanket. It was not constricting light a tight sleeping bag can be. Usually the bottom of the hammock will be cold, which is nice on a hot summer day, but not so good on a cool night. I was able to move around without having to worry about keeping my pad under me or getting all twisted around in the sleeping bag.
This week, there is a national virtual campout with some merit badge classes taught through Facebook on Saturday. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to being able to camp for real again, but this has been better than expected.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
COVID19
March came in like a lion and went out like a tornado this year. The big news is the virus sweeping the world. We all were hearing about it back in February and how it was growing quickly in China and Northern Italy, as well as on a cruise ship. Even then, it wasn't taken seriously by anyone, as people I know still traveled to Southern Italy the first part of March and were still planning trips to Japan or other places near the outbreak.
Gucci, Prada, and other glamorous fashion clothing brands come from Northern Italy. They have outsourced much of their production to Wuhan, China. As the people in China have become rich off the Italian fashionista companies, they have started buying some of those companies and moving to Italy. The world truly is flat.
Bringing it home, some of the things we have had cancelled include: public school, university classes (all gone online), Sunday church services, school and comp soccer games (and practices), volleyball tournaments (and practices), piano lessons, scout meetings, weeknight church youth groups, going out to eat at restaurants, spring break trips, NCAA basketball tournament, dentist appointments, kids playing with friends, horse riding lessons, orchestra practice, and probably some other things I'm not remembering right now.
Some of the things that go on include: homework sent out virtually from teachers, piano lessons via FaceTime, hikes and walks around the neighborhood with the dog, getting takeout from restaurants, our first virtual scout meeting will be this week through Discord, one of the kids had a church youth group meeting through Zoom, I work remotely from home already, home church, orthodontist, kids playing video games, texting and social media to connect with family, grocery shopping, and snow well into Spring.
What does the future hold? In some places, it is more isolation. In others it is spreading pandemic. It is anxiety about the summer. It is fear about next year?
It is a change and a new normal. Some people claim there won't be a new normal - we'll be back to the old normal by the end of the year. I hope we have all learned something from this. Families, businesses, and other organizations will hopefully be a little more prepared, will have trimmed a little bit of the unnecessary, more people will be working from home, fewer people will live in big cities, and what else? Probably some things we still can't foresee. Hopefully we take advantage of the changes and make them be positive ones.
Gucci, Prada, and other glamorous fashion clothing brands come from Northern Italy. They have outsourced much of their production to Wuhan, China. As the people in China have become rich off the Italian fashionista companies, they have started buying some of those companies and moving to Italy. The world truly is flat.
Bringing it home, some of the things we have had cancelled include: public school, university classes (all gone online), Sunday church services, school and comp soccer games (and practices), volleyball tournaments (and practices), piano lessons, scout meetings, weeknight church youth groups, going out to eat at restaurants, spring break trips, NCAA basketball tournament, dentist appointments, kids playing with friends, horse riding lessons, orchestra practice, and probably some other things I'm not remembering right now.
Some of the things that go on include: homework sent out virtually from teachers, piano lessons via FaceTime, hikes and walks around the neighborhood with the dog, getting takeout from restaurants, our first virtual scout meeting will be this week through Discord, one of the kids had a church youth group meeting through Zoom, I work remotely from home already, home church, orthodontist, kids playing video games, texting and social media to connect with family, grocery shopping, and snow well into Spring.
What does the future hold? In some places, it is more isolation. In others it is spreading pandemic. It is anxiety about the summer. It is fear about next year?
It is a change and a new normal. Some people claim there won't be a new normal - we'll be back to the old normal by the end of the year. I hope we have all learned something from this. Families, businesses, and other organizations will hopefully be a little more prepared, will have trimmed a little bit of the unnecessary, more people will be working from home, fewer people will live in big cities, and what else? Probably some things we still can't foresee. Hopefully we take advantage of the changes and make them be positive ones.
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Music
There are a lot of shows out there about finding talent and in particular talented singers.
The Voice has a unique spin (pun intended), where the judges don't see the singers until they choose them for their team. They often comment on how appropriate the name of the show is, because that is all that is important.
The problem is that once the chairs turn, that no longer holds, as they work to teach them and are biased to members of their own team. They go with the next best thing other than another chair turn, which is hitting a button, which is the exciting part (aside from the singing). New actions beyond the chair turn include a steal, a save, and a block. But there's no way to turn the chair back around.
The Masked Singer partly solves this issue, because the participants stay behind their ornate costumes until they lose. The gimmick there is that it is a celebrity. It is someone we and the panel know, and while it is important who wins the singing competition, that part is mostly overshadowed by the discussion of their identities, followed by the actual unmasking.
What about a combination of the two? How about a reverse reality show trend where instead of a celebrity version, we do a non-celebrity version? This takes away the excitement of the guessing and unmasking, but it puts the focus where it should be - the music.
The Voice has a unique spin (pun intended), where the judges don't see the singers until they choose them for their team. They often comment on how appropriate the name of the show is, because that is all that is important.
The problem is that once the chairs turn, that no longer holds, as they work to teach them and are biased to members of their own team. They go with the next best thing other than another chair turn, which is hitting a button, which is the exciting part (aside from the singing). New actions beyond the chair turn include a steal, a save, and a block. But there's no way to turn the chair back around.
The Masked Singer partly solves this issue, because the participants stay behind their ornate costumes until they lose. The gimmick there is that it is a celebrity. It is someone we and the panel know, and while it is important who wins the singing competition, that part is mostly overshadowed by the discussion of their identities, followed by the actual unmasking.
What about a combination of the two? How about a reverse reality show trend where instead of a celebrity version, we do a non-celebrity version? This takes away the excitement of the guessing and unmasking, but it puts the focus where it should be - the music.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Social Media Fatigue
Awhile back I had posted about the problems with Facebook. It's not just Facebook, though. I won't list all the different social media sites, but I think very few don't suffer from the same issues of being designed to lead to addiction and brainwashing.
Mark Zuckerberg has just been quoted as being for free speech or freedom of expression. I get that. One of the most powerful tools for the oppressed under totalitarian regimes is the ability to use social media to get their message out to the world.
Cory Doctorow's After the Siege paints a different picture of broadcasting an oppressed society gone wrong. He also talks about how awesome it would be to put the power of technology and smart sensors into the hand of the people and not the other way around.
Why is it creepy that when I go to The Guardian's website to read Doctorow's column about corporations and the government surveilling us I get a warning about the cookies being placed on my computer to track me as I visit the site?
As important as it is to work through the issues of all the data constantly tracking everything we do, backing it up a minute to the original, less complicated thought, there's just a fatigue that sets in trying to keep up with everything.
Going back 20 years, when email was pretty much the only thing close to what you could call a social media tool, I was always on top of my email, answering any message quickly and reading everything that came to my inbox. As spam clogged things up and a variety of other options popped up, whether that was Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or just about anything else, I have found that I will generally have a primary or favorite platform at any one time. If I'm staying on top of Instagram, Twitter suffers, and vice versa. Email suffered to where I don't read most of what comes in my email and what I do read is usually days later, because I was staying on top of something else.
So 5 months ago, while on vacation, I just stopped dealing with social media. It wasn't really on purpose. I wanted to enjoy the vacation. I meant to post some pictures from it but never did, and all of a sudden it's been 5 months. When I mention it to people (sparingly, not in a vegan or crossfit way of mentioning it to people), I've not heard kickback from it. It's generally been positive, as I got the feeling they wished they could give it up, too.
I was aware of the social media fatigue before and my behavior of switching platforms and not being able to keep up with all of them at the same time, but I hadn't realized how freeing it would be to just give it all up together.
Mark Zuckerberg has just been quoted as being for free speech or freedom of expression. I get that. One of the most powerful tools for the oppressed under totalitarian regimes is the ability to use social media to get their message out to the world.
Cory Doctorow's After the Siege paints a different picture of broadcasting an oppressed society gone wrong. He also talks about how awesome it would be to put the power of technology and smart sensors into the hand of the people and not the other way around.
Why isn’t it creepy for you to know when the next bus is due, but it is creepy for the bus company to know that you’re waiting for a bus?
Why is it creepy that when I go to The Guardian's website to read Doctorow's column about corporations and the government surveilling us I get a warning about the cookies being placed on my computer to track me as I visit the site?
As important as it is to work through the issues of all the data constantly tracking everything we do, backing it up a minute to the original, less complicated thought, there's just a fatigue that sets in trying to keep up with everything.
Going back 20 years, when email was pretty much the only thing close to what you could call a social media tool, I was always on top of my email, answering any message quickly and reading everything that came to my inbox. As spam clogged things up and a variety of other options popped up, whether that was Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or just about anything else, I have found that I will generally have a primary or favorite platform at any one time. If I'm staying on top of Instagram, Twitter suffers, and vice versa. Email suffered to where I don't read most of what comes in my email and what I do read is usually days later, because I was staying on top of something else.
So 5 months ago, while on vacation, I just stopped dealing with social media. It wasn't really on purpose. I wanted to enjoy the vacation. I meant to post some pictures from it but never did, and all of a sudden it's been 5 months. When I mention it to people (sparingly, not in a vegan or crossfit way of mentioning it to people), I've not heard kickback from it. It's generally been positive, as I got the feeling they wished they could give it up, too.
I was aware of the social media fatigue before and my behavior of switching platforms and not being able to keep up with all of them at the same time, but I hadn't realized how freeing it would be to just give it all up together.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
What is real?
As we have been planning for the coming year, we have asked our scouts what life goals they have or what they want to do when they grow up. Now, I know that no one really knows what they want to do at 12, and many of us will be doing things that don't even exist when we are in high school. We want to support them in our activities. So what do a couple of them have in common? They want to be YouTubers.
I guess that makes sense, as that is the media that people connect with. I don't see their personalities fitting that model, but it's all acting and production quality.
The ironic thing is that I was at the Wal-Marts a couple weeks after this conversation, and we happened to see some local actors and YouTubers. On their channel or on Instagram they are polished, smiling, and traveling the world. From what they have shared, I know they have had some crazy trials to work through, but it is always still poised. Not at the Wal-Marts, though. This was real - unshaven, no makeup, no show.
I guess we all put on a show in whatever we do. Here's to being more real in 2020!
I guess that makes sense, as that is the media that people connect with. I don't see their personalities fitting that model, but it's all acting and production quality.
The ironic thing is that I was at the Wal-Marts a couple weeks after this conversation, and we happened to see some local actors and YouTubers. On their channel or on Instagram they are polished, smiling, and traveling the world. From what they have shared, I know they have had some crazy trials to work through, but it is always still poised. Not at the Wal-Marts, though. This was real - unshaven, no makeup, no show.
I guess we all put on a show in whatever we do. Here's to being more real in 2020!
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