The Olympics reinforce healthy competition: win/lose by the rules. It’s been said our happiness depends largely on our relationships to one another e.g. Tennis Champions McEnroe later picked his rival for Best Man at his wedding.
In life, it’s who we associate with at clubs (analog) on LinkedIn (digital) that matters. I was fortunate having a string of personal and professional endorsement: from graduate-school study-mate to corporate colleagues, from bosses to partners.
My 360-degrees reputational currency are intentionally diverse e.g. female, bi-continental, homosexual, multi-cultural and direct report etc. to self-stamp and “self-verified” in our age of AI, with un-doctored profile and non-photoshopped photo.
Over time, we extract wisdom from digital “social nutrient”, a connection of our connection often influences us more per some study (six-degrees of separation). Thank you, Glenn Arnold of Wheaton Journalism school, for mentioning Zinserr. Influencers come in all shapes and sizes: teachers, families and friends.
The Internet offers nuggets of wisdom from crowd: people we probably will never meet (Wikipedia contributors). We’re kids in the candy store: overwhelmed by colorful choices, with untrained capacity to absorb (sugar high) or filter for use. We become digital chipmunks, storing food for fear of famine (pre-internet times).
How to inoculate ourselves against bad information? Just like how to know which foods are best for brain. We have become hoarder and sorter of data as they pour out of the firehose. Tangents stuff wears us out: information-fatigue.
The future belongs to data scientists. Neil Postman made similar comment about Television in ” Amuse ourselves to death”; little did he know the Internet and streaming usher in a biblical deluge.
The art of unsubscribing and deleting are our new lessons. Reply by Texting STOP. Non=permissible marketing (not that AI ever cares or feels rejected) just for self-preservation and sanity.
The internet and the individual, crowd wisdom and personal (paced) enlightenment, zeta bites vs mouthful bites.
People trade goods and services. This time, it’s data trading. As if we are lab rats, brokers and posers of untested wisdom. as trial-error Yelpers. Since we cannot “try them all”, we become superficial rankers, a human last touch over machine SEO.
From local village to global village, frequent face-to-face to virtual communication (with complete strangers), we experience unprecedented geographical shift and generational shift. No Fisher Temperament Index can help.
In short, “the gods must be crazy”. At times, we wish that “coke bottle” had never fallen off the sky.
Let’s go off-grid (you wish!). Per NYU study, we need a digital New Year resolution. A Sabbath break.
Wise council might come from people of different color, younger generation or past generation. Where are the Medicine men, the Chiefs and the Astrologers? In the 80’s we had Shirley MacLaine’s New Age, and Nancy Reagan’s Fortune Tellers – to schedule our State-Affairs meetings.
It baffles me in our jet age and Internet age, people still are doubling down on and self-medicated in the confinement of their own rabbit hole, finding comfort in well, comfortable (prejudicial) data set. Never setting foot outside of the bubble or talk to anyone besides their Dunbar circle (our digital security blanket). The more advanced we are, the deeper our longing for a selective past, and since we cannot recall the past, we become angry and self-destructive. 19th-century America without tax? Gilded Age without the Great Depression?
At the end of all travel, as they say, we arrive back at the same place, only to know it better (e.g. at Kennedy times, post-Bay of Pigs, 11,000 “advisors” sent to China Beach, then peaked at half a million before finally dwindling down to 11 Marines on the last chopper out. America knowing itself – every time we read aloud the 52,880 names on the marble wall). To travel means to experience not only places, but also ideas (Montaigne).
Changes from within comes after changes (often defeat) from without. The world works slowly inward as we are more receptive one layer and one generation at a time. It takes courage and loss of face, mostly shame and guilt, to course correct.
To admit we were wrong e.g. Social Media – a systemic failure – is to give ourselves much needed realignment. Self-projection are products of self-delusion. Advertisers always print two versions of mass-producing bumper stickers and T-shirts, mini-flags and presidential portraits. We might as well print ours, on Self photo-day. Not to mention, our friends are saved from feeling cheated for having formed false perception based on data we sent out.
“I look at life from both sides now” (from the long 60’s). My parents and half of my siblings have recently gone. Life transitions jolted me, as an unaccompanied adult (abandoned, as kids often say “my dad went for milk”). Vividly, I can still recall getting lost, while the adults were frantically searching for me (Tet festival at the park.) I circled back, stood on the roof of the car, holding a red balloon high up, like that French movie of the same name.
Getting lost in the crowd now repeats itself on the web. The unknown future is full of virtual strangers from strange shores, at the urge and nudge of AI (executive search anyone). Algorithm recommended. Unregulated and “self-censored” ” wisdom of crowd become our new PG -13 guardrails (Congress won’t budge beyond Section 230).
It’s frightening and uplifting.
Melinda Gates in her Stanford Commencement talks about “small waves” that lent perspectives to “big waves’” doomsday’s scenario (remember, we’re water, not waves). In the end, that’s what happened, that we become ourselves (I borrow a title).
Our core humanity looks up to the sky and soars. Every generation wants to be better and outperform previous. Graduates want immediate entry into the workforce. French citizens want earlier retirement. The piece of the pie vs the percentage of GDP is what one wants.
Our career ladder might or might not lean against the right building, either way prepaid with hefty price e.g. neglecting families and/or health, not to mention your real self and its limitations – BTW, watch “Instinct” toward the end, where Cuba Gooding confesses how deep he had sunken for playing hard and bought deep into the “game”.
It’s relationship that fulfills our lives. Things money can’t buy e.g. 360=degree reputation, self-respect (the right version of self), integrity, taste, class, memories, decency, dignity, empathy, humanity and loyalty.
Keep your authentic self. In the end, what we are most fearful to lose is what counts the most. To test this, just go out of your way and be selfless for a day.
At funerals, no one misses dead wood. What counts is the deceased’s kind personhood, cherished warm memories and “de-classified” hidden selves, wide linkage and love. How we make others feel (be-little or uplift them). To paraphrase Hemmingway” we are strong in broken places and it’s through those cracks that light can shine through”.
On your mark, get set, go! Get some personal and reputational rehab- this side of Paradise.
While in Paris, the Olympic reminds us competition is good. But it doesn’t have to be demeaning.
Competition – rules based – doesn’t just happen only in that summer. It’s in our heart, Notre Coeur not Notre-Dame. We compete against the clock…”how many potatoes can you eat in your lifetime” albeit time itself is contained within eternity.
Keep paying forward, share some fries. Go get milk and return dad! Let’s do so in hopes future generations connect and comprehend better without self-destruct. Grace and humility in defeat, but in competition, courage.
P.S. check out “Full Time” the movies – re: a single mom during the strike
Thang Nguyen 555 