Being an inveterate introvert and not a narcissist the last thing I'd ever want to be is famous. If for some reason I gained notoriety, not by evil means, I'm sure I would misuse it and be miserable. I'm happy, truly happy being a nobody.
The attention economy replaced the information economy that replaced the production economy. We only need to get back to the production economy to fix what is messed up.
I have a recent related story. About 3 years ago I concluded a group leadership book club facilitated by a dear friend that runs a company that does that sort of thing. This is a guy that does joint gigs with Tony Robbins.
At that time of this book club thing, I had been a corporate executive for almost 30 years and had attended hundreds of sessions, and read hundreds of books, on modern leadership theory. In fact, my friend that owns the leadership company was hired by me in his twenties, and he today claims I am his primary mentor... which I quickly thank him for but tell him that I knew I would probably work for him one day. And surprise, he is also the chairman of the board of directors for the non-profit corporation that I head.
One of the participants was a young man working in a role as a level-one supervisor of a few other people, and he was required by his management to attend these book events. He was negative, apathetic and cynical and continually took the path of "why does it matter?" and "commitment to any traditional employer and career is useless because they can toss you at any time". I was very intrigued with this mindset as I have a number of young employees, and my core interest has always been human behavior and motivation theory. This young man was quiet, and I would often ask him for his opinion during the Zoom sessions (I was the senior participant... the facilitator was a super sweet and young administrative type that had been trained to keep the conversation going)... I wanted to understand him better... he was an enigma to me.
After hearing enough from him over the several weeks of the club, after reading and discussing several leadership level books with the group, I came to the conclusion that he had been captured by the attention economy... video games and video entertainment... and was frankly bored with his administrative job after being bored with school and landed him the degree that got him the administrative job. His dream job was being a YouTuber.
I mentioned to the group some studies about job and life satisfaction and how, for most people, being creative and working with our hands AND mind is likely an evolutionary need to supply our mental and psychological health. I suggested to this young man that he considered having a hobby where he could be creative if his job did not provide enough of an outlet but also consider changing his job to something that gave him more creative discretion and less "following protocol and checklists". I saw this young man Friday evening at a celebration event for my friend... and he remembered me and told me that he eventually ended up doing what I had advised. He left his public sector administrative job, and went to work for a startup making a real product. He also started his own YouTube channel and was doing podcasts with a friend. But he also built a woodshop in his garage and started doing woodworking products for his home and for friends and family. He even made a custom table for someone that paid him for it. He thanked me for giving him that advice. I told him that I was happy he was in a better place, as he was a bit negative back then.
This gets me to my point. We used to be a nation where the ingredients and rewards for a good life had us inventing, creating, making, building, fixing and selling real tangible products that we would make with our hands and minds. As everything has been digitized while we have exported all of those jobs to other countries for more corporate profit and Wall Street returns... and imported other cheap labor to do that actual productive work... I believe that our psychological health has crashed. Our psychology has not yet had time to evolve to live in the high-tech world we have invented for ourselves. We are growing more apathetic, cynical and depressed because we just don't have enough real productive things to do.
I keep thinking about how we might save the nation if more young people could be provided a plot of land with a goat cheese farm operation. They would heal their broken psychology and I fucking love goat cheese.
The MAU list did not include LinkedIn which I would argue has become another "likes & clicks" platform. Years ago it was professional networking but now it has a lot of "I tied my shoes" type of achievements which are followed by likes and praise from the masses.
Being an inveterate introvert and not a narcissist the last thing I'd ever want to be is famous. If for some reason I gained notoriety, not by evil means, I'm sure I would misuse it and be miserable. I'm happy, truly happy being a nobody.
The attention economy replaced the information economy that replaced the production economy. We only need to get back to the production economy to fix what is messed up.
I have a recent related story. About 3 years ago I concluded a group leadership book club facilitated by a dear friend that runs a company that does that sort of thing. This is a guy that does joint gigs with Tony Robbins.
At that time of this book club thing, I had been a corporate executive for almost 30 years and had attended hundreds of sessions, and read hundreds of books, on modern leadership theory. In fact, my friend that owns the leadership company was hired by me in his twenties, and he today claims I am his primary mentor... which I quickly thank him for but tell him that I knew I would probably work for him one day. And surprise, he is also the chairman of the board of directors for the non-profit corporation that I head.
One of the participants was a young man working in a role as a level-one supervisor of a few other people, and he was required by his management to attend these book events. He was negative, apathetic and cynical and continually took the path of "why does it matter?" and "commitment to any traditional employer and career is useless because they can toss you at any time". I was very intrigued with this mindset as I have a number of young employees, and my core interest has always been human behavior and motivation theory. This young man was quiet, and I would often ask him for his opinion during the Zoom sessions (I was the senior participant... the facilitator was a super sweet and young administrative type that had been trained to keep the conversation going)... I wanted to understand him better... he was an enigma to me.
After hearing enough from him over the several weeks of the club, after reading and discussing several leadership level books with the group, I came to the conclusion that he had been captured by the attention economy... video games and video entertainment... and was frankly bored with his administrative job after being bored with school and landed him the degree that got him the administrative job. His dream job was being a YouTuber.
I mentioned to the group some studies about job and life satisfaction and how, for most people, being creative and working with our hands AND mind is likely an evolutionary need to supply our mental and psychological health. I suggested to this young man that he considered having a hobby where he could be creative if his job did not provide enough of an outlet but also consider changing his job to something that gave him more creative discretion and less "following protocol and checklists". I saw this young man Friday evening at a celebration event for my friend... and he remembered me and told me that he eventually ended up doing what I had advised. He left his public sector administrative job, and went to work for a startup making a real product. He also started his own YouTube channel and was doing podcasts with a friend. But he also built a woodshop in his garage and started doing woodworking products for his home and for friends and family. He even made a custom table for someone that paid him for it. He thanked me for giving him that advice. I told him that I was happy he was in a better place, as he was a bit negative back then.
This gets me to my point. We used to be a nation where the ingredients and rewards for a good life had us inventing, creating, making, building, fixing and selling real tangible products that we would make with our hands and minds. As everything has been digitized while we have exported all of those jobs to other countries for more corporate profit and Wall Street returns... and imported other cheap labor to do that actual productive work... I believe that our psychological health has crashed. Our psychology has not yet had time to evolve to live in the high-tech world we have invented for ourselves. We are growing more apathetic, cynical and depressed because we just don't have enough real productive things to do.
I keep thinking about how we might save the nation if more young people could be provided a plot of land with a goat cheese farm operation. They would heal their broken psychology and I fucking love goat cheese.
The MAU list did not include LinkedIn which I would argue has become another "likes & clicks" platform. Years ago it was professional networking but now it has a lot of "I tied my shoes" type of achievements which are followed by likes and praise from the masses.