What would I’ve done back then?

This will probably be one of the biggest mysteries for me in the course of my life, since I highly doubt I’ll ever live under a dictatorship. The western world has become too flat, too decentralized, too connected and over-informed for a dictatorship to be the choice of any government, and the eastern world is catching up. Fortunately, only a mad man would believe in the year 2010 that a dictatorship is an effective way to rule, whatever his objectives are. The fact that dictatorships don’t work is too obvious by now.

One obviously appreciates being born after it was over. However, this sense of gratification is not enough to prevent one from wondering how one would have reacted in such a situation. Would I have been chased because of my thoughts? Would I have been too afraid to speak up? Or worse, would the system had such a prohibitive effect on my mind that I wouldn’t even want to speak up or question the establishment?

My guess: I would have been persecuted too. Not because I would have played a subversive role (I’m not a fan of politics and choosing sides). No, I believe I would have been punished because the prohibition to ask questions would have been unbearable for me. I hold objectivity, truth and integrity over any other personal value, and a dictatorship doesn’t allow that. I’m too curious and outspoken.

What would my generation do now?

Would the current western generation of young people fight against the system to the point of risking their lives, torture and even the safety of their loved ones? Are we capable of getting involved in a cause that puts everything on the line?

I don’t know. This generation is the most outspoken and self-entitled generation the world has seen so far, and there is certainly no lack of young activists. But it’s not a hidden cause, it’s not a rebellion, it’s never pain and death what’s at stake.

Again, I don’t know.

Permanent damage

I’ve always thought that the worst thing the last dictatorship did to my parents’ generation was to install the fear of asking. There’s too much status-quo worshiping in them, no risk taking, no questioning, no shining.

I blame the dictatorship. It has poisoned the minds of Argentinians and it only keeps spreading, from generation to generation, by being afraid to be different and challenge the system. It’s not just fear of failure, it’s fear of physical consequences, fear of being noticed.

The thing that saved me and all the other out-of-the-box thinkers in Argentina I know from that poison?

The internet.

Consider sports. Players can’t play that much better than previous players. How do you keep it interesting? You talk more about it, before and after. You make them play more games. You show their highlights more times. You hold a one-hour special to announce a short decision.

Does this make you enjoy sports more? Of course not. In fact, the scarcity of past times may have been the reason you enjoyed them so much before.

The question then is, where does it end? I suspect that we will eventually witness the “Entertainment Tragedy of the Commons”:

“The tragedy of the commons describes a situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently, and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.”

That’s where we are now. We are all self-interested in being entertained, and our limited resource, enthusiasm, is depleting. The reason entertainment works less and less is because it’s becoming harder to seduce us. In other words, the marginal benefit of adding explosions and highlights is decreasing with every movie and every game.

One wonders then… what lies ahead? What happens to a society that’s addicted to new, fun, adventurous and edgy?

Permanent dissatisfaction.

We are now embarked in a quest for experiences instead of growth. I believe growth is the end that makes not only individuals satisfied but also entire communities. By limiting our enthusiasm and focusing on other things less interesting but more fulfilling, we may reach a point where entertainment actually plays its proper role:  to spice up life. Not to control it.

Some people might say that experiences make you grow, but I severely question that statement. True, some experiences will make you wiser. But traveling to get wasted in another country, or playing a new video game will not do that. Since when all fun brings wisdom? Fun is fun. It’s healthy and we need it, but it’s definitely not the way to become better, wiser or even funnier. Fun is quickly creating a generation of people that can’t find pleasure in anything for a continuous period of time. Heck, it’s creating a generation of people who can’t do anything for a continuous period of time.

Life is about choices, and with choosing comes settling. I’ve said it many times: you don’t have to settle, but you should know how to do it.

I dream of  a society that understands the importance of settling to reach high levels of satisfaction (or happiness, if that’s the word you like) like generations before mine did, but that also is brave enough to challenge stability, like generations before mine didn’t.

(Thanks to Peter Stromberg for sparking the thoughts for this post.)

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Here’s Peter’s post on the addiction culture of entertainment. Here’s Cal Newport on the construction of passion and the importance of hard focus. My posts on the limits that context imposes on us and the mistaken priority of happiness.

What do we get when entertainment is our main motivator?

Overpaid actors and players.

Weaker relationships.

The “evil” of conformity.

Lack of focus.

Personal Branding.

The level of complexity behind entertainment and its effect on people goes far beyond what one could write in a blog post. But just to make things interesting, I’ll add my theory to explain what lies ahead for our “fun” western society (mental gymnastics if you will) in the next post.

1) This one is obvious: The bad white military man that attacks poorer civilizations to steal their resources. Clear criticism towards corporatism and the American government, no further explanation needed.

2) This one is more subtle since it involves the spectator: We are embarrassed by what we have done to our planet. That’s why we, human viewers, end up wanting that they, human invaders, lose the battle. We want to learn the lesson.

Avatar makes a strong case on our primitive need to go back to a natural lifestyle. The spectator realizes that we are quickly moving towards technological progress and that living in nature is going to be impossible for most of us by now.

Our animal inside knows that societal satisfaction is less fulfilling than natural satisfaction.

Our animal inside wants us to cut ties and respect our home once again.

Our animal inside feels guilty.

You can subscribe to David’s blog here. Follow David on Twitter here.

David is a guy I respect enormously because of his integrity and the quality of his ideas. Thank you David for asking me to do this, it was a pleasure once again.

Do read my guest post “The Blur” here.

They are the pinnacle of easy entitlement.

Another example of the celebration of averageness that democracy and consumerism have created.

One more way to weaken our tolerance of failure and to stop bettering ourselves.

Believing that potential, hard work and ambition are given by the decade you were born, is the same as believing that potential, hard work and ambition are given by your constellation.

Let’s keep making everyone think they are great.

After all, the next generations will have to pay for our “greatness.”

Note: I have talked before about the timeless power of marketing, and how the world is not the best version of itself and never will be as long as connections and people skills are the ones who decide who reaches the top, instead of capability, talent and dedication. You can read my post on the topic here.

I encourage you to read Colin’s full post, but for now I want to quote this paragraph:

I would hazard to say that the great dearth of capable people in positions of power is one of the most unnecessary and harmful realities of the modern world. A fortunate few are able to leverage their abilities into notoriety and really reach their full potential, but most will never be able to do so, instead scrounging for food to stay alive while working on a cure for cancer or writing the next great philosophical treatise.

So my challenge to you is simple: this year, do everything you can to help other people succeed. Push those you know with talent and provide what assistance you can. Continue to work on your own endeavors, of course, but really make an extra effort to give others a leg up as well.

What interests me about Colin’s proposition, is that this seems to be happening more and more lately. We are collaborating in a different way.

The Change

Until now, collaboration has been focused on transactions. A win-win situation. Both give to get something in return.

The problem with that mentality is that it’s limited. There’s so much I can give to many, and there’s so much many can give to me. So, when one of the two can’t win, collaboration doesn’t happen. We have been prioritizing the gain, instead of the bond.

This is finally changing.

The future of collaboration is ego-less. In a world where people are becoming more economic and conscious of their resources (time, energy, money), there’s so much we can ask of them, regardless of what we give in return. A fair trade is not necessarily a needed trade. The only real way to create meaningful bonds and projects is to do it without expecting anything in return.

The real test comes when you have the opportunity to help someone with the previous knowledge that that person won’t be able to reciprocate. Paradoxically, the only way to do this consistently is to forget about the economic way of thinking. If you only act evaluating the reward and resources spent, you won’t contribute to this change.

The Meaning

There are many signs of society’s desire to make a change of mindset. For example, the reason we call it networking now instead of “doing business” is because there’s something shady about doing business. With business comes money, interests, conflict. With networking, we are highlighting the people instead of their profit potential. When you do business, you focus on what you can gain. When you network, you focus on how you can help (there’s still a huge expectancy of reward, but thankfully I’m seeing more and more events where “having fun” and “making friends” are the main values, with “doing business” taking a second place).

The future of collaboration is not longer about equality of status, rather than equality of consideration. You help anyone just because you can, not because they are a big deal or because you want to be on their radar. It’s not longer a matter of team, it’s a matter of them.

Just to clarify, this isn’t charity either. Charity happens either because of compassion, guilt, or a belief in a bigger goal. The future of collaboration is not nearly as rational as charity. You don’t do “because.” You just do. The emotional reward (and pain) of charity is immense. The reward of collaboration 3.0 may come eventually, but you have no logical reason to expect it.

And let’s not forget about technology and globalization. Where will we stop once this mentality and attitude spreads, once people leave their win part of the equation behind, once the whole world wants AND is able to help others?

Forget about the win-win and profit seek in a globalized and technological world of collaboration 2.0.

Collaboration 3.0 is a give-win situation, a beautiful “step back.”

No matter how inflated education is nowadays (I’m dying to see what the education industry will come up with once MBA’s fall into the commodity category), it always establishes graduations. When you graduate it means “you are done.”

Note: I also think that a degree lasts as long as the marketing heads of an institution think they can charge you, not as long as it should, but that’s a whole other post.

Most people that go through a degree in its entirety, develop some sort of rejection for information and culture. They believe that that’s what their degree was for, and now they can “relax.”

Disconnecting relaxation from growth is a serious disadvantage. When learning is limited to a specific period of time, it becomes a burden instead of a pleasure or a need.

Coming home from a walk yesterday, I saw many people graduating and partying in the street. I can assure you, you could see the expression in their eyes: “I’m never picking up a book again.”

Sad.

True education does not need to be imposed, does not expire and it certainly does not have any finish lines.

True education is a component of our everyday activity.

I know that most of the readers of this blog don’t have this problem, but most of the people outside of the online community of learners do think this way.

Those are the ones that need to embrace a holistic vision of intellectual growth.

Spread the word.

Image by http://www.wordle.net/

We live in imprecise times.

Our desires and fears are tainted with subjectivity. There’s no right or wrong, no black or white, no real or imaginary.

When equality and freedom were reached, we opened the door to countless definitions of reality. This is not to say that we are totally free and equal, but no one can argue that we aren’t living in the most liberal moment of history (especially in the western world). Even if this freedom of speech and decision making is still incomplete, it has already changed the world enough for us to analyze the consequences.

One of the most interesting and harmful effects of this “talk first, agree later” society is the multiple, consistent and “soft” redefinition of the language. In a world where everyone owns the words, because everyone is allowed to speak their mind as they see fit, there is no longer unity in language. Sure, we all pronounce the same words, but they all mean something different to each of us.

In the past, it wasn’t just language that was ruled by a select group of people, but everyone’s fates too. Of course, the world has seen constant improvement in various aspects with many of its societal changes, but not without some negative repercussions. Nowadays, we are not only choosing what we want to do with our time but we are also free to explain why and how we are going to do it. We own not only our fate, but its definition as well.

The main problem that I see with this new mindset is that the appeal spreads. Please see that I’m using the world “appeal.” This is because what may sound good isn’t necessarily good. Maybe because of an inherent drive to “help others”, maybe because it’s a business strategy or maybe because we just want to feel good about ourselves, but we are all telling others what to do and how to do it with our own specific language. And those articulated visions spread because they are solid promises of a better future. The power of the articulate language is unmeasurable. (Side note: This is why I believe that journalism has been the most hurtful industry to the globalized intellectuality of the masses).

I hate the words in the picture. Not because I don’t want to be “happy”, whatever that means, but because of their inherent imprecision. They have become so relevant in our lives, that we shape our lifestyle and make our most important decisions going after them or avoiding them. When we pursue these, we pursue subjectivity, and when subjectivity is a goal, the ways to get there are infinite. The problem is clear: only one path will work for you, so your odds of going through the right one are minimum.

With the freedom to express ourselves constantly increasing due to changes in education and technology (to name a few), this tendency of language elasticity is only going to get stronger. I believe that the only solution is to take the time needed to define those words and goals by yourself, which is not an easy task at all. We need to stop underestimating the specific comprehension of the terminology. Any other path will be the wrong path. The word can be subjective, but the feeling of making a life-changing mistake after accepting someone else’s definitions can be very real.

In the end, the most damaging consequence of language imprecision is a world with confident but lost individuals.

The result is a proud and unsettled society.

Not a good combination.

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Related articles from OwlSparks about language imprecision:

My definition of wisdom. Here is Alain de Botton’s pushing us to have our own definition of success. Here is “The Common Achievement Effect.” Here is the problem with glamorized words like “Entrepreneurship.” My theory on the biggest contradiction young people are living nowadays. My thoughts on the challenge of achieving “success” for non-profits. My criticism of our “news equal success” mentality. Yet another post on success and failure.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.” – Steve Jobs

Here’s the best reason to do whatever you feel you have to do in today‘s world, without worrying about the consequences: today’s dots are infinite.

Fifty years ago, one of the strongest arguments to keep people on the safe path was predictability. It wasn’t that hard to foresee how many possibilities a person would have depending on what they studied, where they lived and which people they knew. This happened because the variables that influenced someone’s future (let’s call them “dots”) were very few. Money, heritage, and geography mattered. You could still challenge traditional paths, but the tools and reach were limited. Changing the world fifty years ago was harder than it is today, simple as that.

If you looked back and tried to connect the dots back then, the unpredictable ones were fewer. A linear path was easy to walk.

Now, the world is flat, globalization is happening and the internet is shortening the distance between each other. When the world truly is your oyster, every aspect of your life will get affected (and probably improved) if you decide to step out of your traditional boundaries. Thanks to today’s connectivity and the increasingly popular “world citizenship” mentality, the magnetism of people’s desires can bring them together fast and easy.

The process of dot connecting does not have to be hard, but it has to be consistent. With every little challenging step that you take now, you are opening the door to countless new opportunities. There are enough dots for everyone to reach an interesting life, but you have to keep opening doors.

You need to be strong, independent, and aware that you can’t know how things will work out. If you can see the outcome clearly, rest assured that you’re going after a boring and mediocre lifestyle. If you are trying to “make sense”, then you are going after other people’s definition of “sense.”

Lives full of exciting dots don’t make sense.

Sparked by Colin Wright