Thang Nguyen 555

The Olympics reinforce healthy competition: win/lose by the rules. It’s been said that our happiness depends largely on our relationship to one another e.g. Tennis Champions McEnroe later picked his rival as Best Man.

In life, it’s who we associate with at clubs (analog) on LinkedIn (digital) that matters. I was fortunate for having a string of personal and professional endorsement: from graduate-school study-mate to corporate colleagues, from bosses to partners.

My 360-degree reputational currency are intentionally diverse e.g. female, bi-continental, multi-cultural direct report etc. to self-authenticate in our age of AI, as an un-doctored profile and photo.

Over time, we extract wisdom from their “social nutrient”, a connection of our connection often influences us more per some study (six-degrees of separation). Glenn Arnold of Wheaton Journalism school for mentioning Willaim Zinsser that set me on the right course. Influencers come in all shapes and sizes: teachers, families and friends.

The Internet offers nuggets of wisdom from crowd: people we never and probably will never meet (Wikipedia). Kids in the candy store: overwhelmed by colorful choices, with untrained capacity to absorb (sugar high) or find use for. We become digital chipmunks who store food for fear of famine.

How to inoculate ourselves against bad information? Just like how to know which foods are best for our bodies. 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 (ad auctioning). 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, human last touch on those 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.

In short, “the gods must be crazy”. At times, we wish that “coke bottle” had never fell 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. Back 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 that in our jet age and Internet age, people are still doubling down on and tranquilizing themselves in rabbit hole, finding comfort in well, comfortable data set. Always work and play from home, never setting foot outside of the bubble or talk to anyone outside of 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 at the same place, only to know it better ( e.g. at Kennedy times, post-Bay of Pigs, 11,000 “advisors” to China Beach, then peaked at half a million finally dwindling down to the last 11 Marines on the last chopper out. America knowing itself – every time we read aloud the 58,220 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 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 a 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, Self photo-day. Not to mention, our friends are saved from feeling cheated for having gotten to know someone they once thought they had known.

“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 a “kid” unaccompanied (abandoned, as kids often say “my Dad went for milk”). Vividly, I can still recall getting lost, while the adults were searching for me (Tet festival at the park.) I circled back, stood on the roof of the car, holding a red balloon up high, like in a French movie.

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 peppered with self-censored wisdom of crowd will serve as 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).

Our core humanity looks up to the sky and soars. In the name of progress, each generation wants to outperform previous. Graduates want immediate entry into the workforce. French senior citizens want earlier retirement. The piece of the pie vs the percentage of GDP.

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 (and pay associated price).

At funerals, no one misses dead wood. What counts is the deceased’s kind personhood, cherished warm memories and “de-classified” hidden selves, 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 it’s still time.

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 in that particular locality or only in that summer. It’s in our heart, Notre Coeur not Notre-Dame. Compete against the clock…”how many potatoes can you eat in your lifetime”.

Keep paying forward, share some fries. Go get milk and return. In hopes that future generations connect and comprehend better without self-destruct. Grace and humility in defeat, but in competition, courage.

Paris, je t’aime. P.S. check out “Full Time” the movies about a single mom during the strike.