Just Be And You Are

John Robb’s writing has been on my mind a lot lately. He’s coming at ideas wearing many hats and most of them very different from mine. Hence, the initial attraction. I keep being pinged though by his idea of a Darknet, which I imagine he will have to rebrand. It sounds too ominous and few would appreciate the irony.

My understanding of resilient, networked tribes is that it’s a representation of hyper-localism. Similar to slow food or open-source networks that band around specific themes, these tribes would come together based on mutual needs and interests. What differentiates that from a special interest group? Not much actually, but it harks back to the original idea of a special interest group, before corporate donations and government lobbying made them a little too special for the rest of the public.

I’ve seen the hyper-local idea in many places, in fiction within For Us, The Living, Childhood’s End, and Speaker for the Dead, in the real world within spas & resorts, elderly homes and foreign communities in India, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore funded by the non-resident superrich. The latter is the closest the idea comes to reality.

Robb puts it best here:

My solution is to form a tribal layer. Resilient communities that are connected by a network platform (a darknet). A decentralized and democratic system that can provide you a better interface with the dominant global economic system than anything else I can think of. Not only would this tribe protect you from shocks and predation by this impersonal global system, it would provide you with the tools and community support necessary to radically improve how you and your family does across all measures of consequence. Of course, this may not be the right solution for you, but if it is…

The ancient Rome of Caesar, Crassus and Pompeius differ from modern America primarily on the education level and resources of the middle class. Power is slightly more distributed and in the event of downfall, there are more alternatives than diaspora and cross-pollination of cultures. Preservation of culture isn’t as important as preservation of information and human capital. Realizing this, people will band around similarities not on political viewpoints, but ideological ones. And what separates the ideologues of today from the Lockes, Kants, Humes and Marxists of the 19th century that spawned some of the most disturbing and historic wars of the 20th?

Technology. Specifically the communication networks developing over the internet. Transparency IS important and Robb poses a lot of questions on where to draw the line between privacy and security. While history teaches us where we went wrong, it also glaringly points out how much we thought we were right. So is the point to doubt our thinking now and stall? I don’t think so.

Evolution requires iteration and we’re simply at one point of the cycle. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for past mistakes. Just another reason to keep doing and risking, without worrying about making mistakes since they only help speed the cycle of iteration. This is what “Beta” really means. Google being the best example, of course.

What we can’t do is continue to do business as usual. It isn’t working. Next steps are tenuous and may not happen as a mass whole. Disbanding and communicating across shared networks is another version of a population coexisting. We’re experimenting with Life 2.0, or whatever version we’re in now based on historical viewpoint.

John Robb’s links alone would suffice in connecting you to the myriad future world. Here’s a recent link to predictions for the decade ahead by Kazys Varnelis. Reading it in entirety is worthwhile but draining. I left feeling potentially optimistic and assuredly pessimistic. Lots of “ifs”. Here are the highlights:

China will start slowing. The United States, EU, the Mideast and East Asia will all make up a low growth block, a slowly decaying imperium. India, together with parts of Africa and South America, will be on the rise. To be clear: the very worst thing that could happen is that we would see otherwise.

I disagree on most counts here. China’s manufacturing of inelastic goods is too entrenched for it to slow. East Asia is lower growth post-recession but they are also more recession-proof due to their “immateriality” (as mentioned in the post) and service good production. India and Africa are too rife with corruption and dependent on non-resident financial funding to thrive on their own. The reverse brain drain is helping them out, but for how long?

A greater divide will open up between three classes. At the top, the super-rich will continue controlling national policies and will have the luxury of living in late Roman splendor. A new “upper middle” class will emerge among those who were lucky enough to accumulate some serious cash during the glory days. Below that will come the masses, impossibly in debt from credit cards, college educations, medical bills and nursing home bills for their parents but unable to find jobs that can do anything to pull them out of the mire.

So much of this is self-created. The party of the 1990s and 2000s (again, credit goes to the author) and even the “progressive” consumer spending of the baby boomers has brought us to this point. Many went into debt willingly expecting a positive ROI in the end, unaware of the champagne glass tower their investments were built on. While trust in financial structures is all but gone, the mental shift from consumption to value still hasn’t occurred, primarily due to the “upper middle” class continuing with business as usual.

Some cities are simply doomed, but if we’re lucky, some leaders will turn to intelligent ways of dealing with this condition. To me, the idea of building the world’s largest urban farm in Detroit sounds smart. Look for some of these cities—Buffalo maybe?—to follow Berlin’s path and become some of the most interesting places to live in the country…

…These cities will not see real estate values increase greatly. The new classes populating them will not be rich, but rather will turn to a of new DIY bohemianism, cultivating gardens, joining with neighbors communally and building vibrant cultural scenes.

What struck me was the mention of Buffalo, where I lived for the past few years. Cost of living is certainly an attraction and if you’re not into global arbitrage, it’s a great option on the national scale (same language, same culture, no need to adopt/adapt). With dilapidated storefronts ready to be revamped, a large elderly AND student population and shoestring entrepreneurship on the rise, there’s a lot of promise. Fresh blood needs to pour in waves though because of the conservative, revisionist mentality that still holds these kinds of cities back.

The divisions in politics will grow. By the end of the decade, the polarization within countries will drive toward hyper-localism. Nonpartisan commissions will study the devolution of power to local governments in areas of education, individual rights (abortion will be illegal in many states, guns in many others), the environment, and so on. In many states gay rights will become accepted, in others, homosexuality may become illegal again.

Hyper-localism is happening right now in “green” communities, spa-like baby-boomer villages, and open-source networks (think small; journalism to blogosphere for example). In Gladwell terms, it’s 10-15 years away from achieving critical mass, and when it “tips”, the trending will drive away those who began it to either accumulate wealth quickly and estrange themselves from the crowds or go back to creating mini oligopoly-like systems of government to hold onto power. Early adoption will become a skill.

As Varnelis iterates several times cautiously, this is a fun exercise blogs like to get into. It does shape bias mindsets of readers to a certain degree so being involved signals the belief that your voice is your vote. The U.S., being beat up so often based on Rome-downfall analogies, trumps Rome on the spectrum of freedom of speech. The internet only enhances that freedom. Take a bath in information and you don’t know what you’ll come out with. Join the fun.

Jay’s always writing sensibly, especially when it comes to healthcare. His ideas are offbeat, novel, and make you do a double-take in your head about what’s really going on in the world.

His doing more, buying less post struck a chord on a different level. The picture in the post reminds me of Will Hunting’s room in Good Will Hunting, one of my favorite movies of all time. Just a place to crash, recharge and start anew.

Living simply is difficult at first because you’re forced to prioritize. To each his own though; personalized living. Some earn money and do great things for stuff, which may be their personal drive. Cant knock that. Problems arise (as in the current financial crisis) when people start buying into what others are doing, just because.

What’s your own definition of living? Cut out the media, your friends, your family, your social status and what’s “required” of you. How would you choose to live?

You showcase and you prepare to showcase. The latter builds character, strength, perseverance, confidence, yet it’s the former that’s judged, rewarded, critiqued and talked about. There’s an enormous amount of pressure to reach the end goal when the process is much more valuable. The end is a fabricated expectation that gets you to do the things that make you who you are. Usually people become the versions of themselves they want to be (or others want them to be) well before they reach their destination. The word, “perfectionist”, is an unfortunate result of people working to exact measures of success that, once achieved, leave them wanting for more. More they have to fabricate once again.

If you quit, make a mistake or get lost, it’s your recovery not your breakdown that matters. My piano teacher taught me to practice how to continue when I slipped, because she said, “what makes a master pianist is no one notices when he hiccups.”

A results-oriented culture tips the favor to those who are naturally meticulous and driven. A theme or mission or goal creates a dividing line between the haves and the have nots, defined relative to the what that society values. Can you make the cut? And if you can’t, why do you stay?

There’s a conflict of interest to note here. I love watching Dinner:Impossible, those “making-of” shows on Discovery and reading howstuffworks.com. I’m naturally a process guy and hence I’d prefer a world much more process-oriented. There is certainly self-interest involved in this post and that bias is echoed throughout the blog. Recognizing this, I make an effort to understand the reasoning behind result-orientation, though I usually come up lacking. The winners write history and it goes without saying that the more active, driven and goal-minded have primarily been the authors. The internet offers each one of us a voice to create the history we see in the moment, and this is mine.

Very. Whether it’s your desk, your desktop, your kitchen counter, your bookcase, your calendar, or whatever way you choose to organize the various idiosyncrasies of your life, it makes sense to you. You arranged it that way (or just left it there) because that’s what you like. It’s what appeals to you. It’s beautiful (to you).

People who can explain their mess to other people have an amazing ability.

If you don’t love, respect, appreciate your own mess, why will others?

Before the experiences we go through turn into memories, they become stories first. At the most basic level, we’re all storytellers. Some say it’s a lost art, but on paper that isn’t true. Look at movies, books, magazines, video games and now the unlimited amount of online content published daily. The common thread is sharing our moments with each other through a medium that helps us connect with like-minded people.

The act of telling a story though may be endangered. Growing up, I remember being captivated by storytellers at local fairs. Their presentation skills were exquisite. They knew how to hold an audience, build gut-wrenching suspense, and show you what they wanted you to see. Their medium was imagination.

Regaining this art now I believe happens through conversation. A mental shift is required first. You have to start seeing life’s events as future stories. Being stuck in a traffic jam can be annoying and worse still if you’re running out of gas. But there’s a developing story here and thinking of it this way may take the edge off and allow you to look at it as something that will soon pass.

Our frustrations with life stem not from reality but from our perspective of it. If every moment/experience/event is a story to tell later, we can converse – speak and listen – on life as it happens.

The power of words. Word choice is important. So is inflection of tone upon specific words. And most important is avoiding the distractions in speech that take away from your message, such as “um” and “uh”. Any practiced presenter will echo these observations.

Now transfer this to daily speech and think about the effect words, speech, and tone of voice can have. On your environment and the people around you. Take the word, “fear”, for example. We used to use it to communicate an emotion to another person. The emotion and the word have become so closely linked now that the word itself can produce a slight bit of that emotion. Listen carefully to the words optimistic people use and you’ll hear more positive words than negative. Their speech not only provides a circular benefit to them but also to others just by being around them more. The opposite is true for pessimistic people.

One of the easiest ways to get out of a sour mood is to start thinking about and using positive words (smiling is #1 though). Positivity is in fact contagious. Your word choice will give off a positive vibe that will be returned back to you from others. And the cycle will continue.

The first step to behavioral change is always personal experimentation.

The hyperlink is amazing. It’s pay-it-forward in action. It reduces the six degrees of separation. It connects us to people and ideas we may never have heard of simply because we stumbled upon a site.

It also contributes to trends and groupthink. Hyperlinks sometimes remind me of the buzz and gossip of the overvalued blue chips that ultimately bubbled out at the start of the century. The value of what you’re being linked is your own judgment call, but so often we empower the person that’s linking us with that judgment. Take it to the extreme. If Al Gore – as opposed to Joe Schmo – recommended a green company, you’d check it out. Al Gore certainly has the credentials, but is he becoming outdated? Maybe his personal branding campaign has started outweighing his community service message? Your call.

Too often we allow others to make judgment calls for us. The blogosphere is ruled by professional marketers and those that already have celebrity value (think Ashton Kutcher vying for 1,000,000 followers on twitter). It’s not a collusive atmosphere, but there’s a “club” mentality emerging with friends linking to friends. I still click on hyperlinks, but just like I look for conflicts of interest and financial disclosures when reading scholarly articles, I evaluate the information trail of the link itself. It’s really easy to do with any generic rss aggregator (i.e. google reader).

Why bother? Because when you open your mouth to talk about the cool thing you read or saw on the net, you’re voicing your support of it. You become a representative. Your word-of-mouth sponsorship is as much a hyperlink as the digital url hiding behind the attractive text. The value of the link is up to you.

Hierarchy is directly correlated to intimidation. The higher you go up the ladder, the more imposing the person becomes in our minds. We end up equating the position and the person. It’s a powerful effect. Even after meeting with a person and getting a consistently negative vibe, we play it down because that’s the president of so-and-so. The fear – like the title itself – is man-made. The only meaning it has is the value you give it.

When you call up Verizon or Apple, you expect great service. When you meet with the CEO of a company or a high-level politician, you expect professionalism. When you go to Bolo or Tribeca Grill, you expect amazing food. Certain brand names, like certain titles, convey a quality proposition that we grow to expect. All of which is upheld by each and every person that works for that company or embodies that role.

It really hits you when you get bad customer service from a company you expect more from or meet with an asshole corporate executive (tell him/her to check out Bob Sutton’s blog).

You realize that it’s the person, not the position that deserves your respect.

I have this theory about words. There’s a thousand ways to say “Pass the salt.” It could mean “Can I have some salt?” or it could mean “I love you.” It could mean “I’m very annoyed with you.” Really, the list could go on and on. Worlds are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.

- Christopher Walken

It’s amazing how you can say just about anything, make up a whole new word, and it’ll most likely mean something in some language. Try it, it’s pretty neat.

For example, when I hear phrases like

I’m surprised they have any meaning at all. But take alom belom, which indicates a specific method of breathing through one nostril, out the other, and then through the other nostril, out the other. I’m reminded of Native American names and the volume of information they convey through a single word or phrase. Amazing.

The other day I saw a History channel special that said that in fact Neanderthals were more apt to communicate via words because they had to work as a solid team to successfully hunt. Homo sapiens on the other hand developed tools that allowed for individual approaches to hunting and gathering that required less teamwork.

Language is just a reference point that explains common experiences. Beyond that, our emotional sense takes over and we interpret (or misinterpret) meaning.