Radioactive People
Fox News made space for the C and D students to feel welcome. W Bush spoke their anti-intellectualist dialect. The Orange Clown made it fashionable to just be dumb and proud. And now, we are left with Radioactive People everywhere. In our halls of Congress, Doctor’s Offices, PTA meetings, Podcasts, and more. They have always been there but far less vocal. The consequences were too high in the past for spewing racist, conspiracy laden, and purely nonsensical vitriol out into the ether. Now, it is come as you are, the more ignorant on the topic the better.
Recession Proof & Reparations
I like simple approaches. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” My recommendations and ideas are grounded by my naivety and that position has the benefit of an outsiders perspective. There is a whole practice of Citizen Science and how a fresh perspective is key to solving problems that have long perplexed or lost priority from experts. When it comes to financial policy and strategy we have been lead by the architects of fuckery who gave us housing derivatives, cash equivalents, SPACS, trickle down economics, and all other complex financial instruments they cannot explain to their grandparents. So I make no apologies for not being lettered enough to share my simple ideas below.
B-Corps
Businesses do not have a responsibility to fulfill core human principles of belonging, purpose, community, and ritual. When they try to, the outcome is a simulacra of the real thing. Often cold, plastic, and disposable. Their goal is to make money, for their shareholders, and maybe after the fact look after their stakeholders. But what if their was a corporate structure that worked differently? A way of existing for or co-existing with the mission to fulfill larger human objectives, beyond what is socially of the moment.
Eudaemonia Machine
I took on a long delayed challenge and wrote a novella during the quiet and solitude that the early days of the pandemic. By my estimation it’s nothing worth reading and unless I put serious effort into revisions, it won’t be shared more broadly. In the year that followed I also wrote a screen play inspired by a dream that consumed me one night. These creative outpourings were for me and me only. Long solitary swims out into a sea of imagination and wonder. The very doing was enough. I had reached a state of Eudaemonia (or Eudaimonia). The common link between these swells of productivity was space.
Technological Ghosts
I first thought about the idea of digital ghosts while listening to a podcast in which one of the guests on the show mentioned getting a voicemail from a deceased family member after that person died. The message had apparently been delayed by cellular network issues. That eery idea got me thinking about digital ghosts. The pictures, text messages, voicemails, documents, and more that could theoretically live on in perpetuity. I started to look around our house hunting down the sarcophaguses of the digital echos we have created. As I have been cultivating a minimalist practice over the years, I had already whittled down what little remained to a few devices. An external hard drive here and one or two other insignificant devices were all I could find.
The Freedom of Constraints
Some constraints are the result of our respective socio-economic situations. Others come from the compounding of unfortunate circumstances or bad decisions. And yet others come from self selection. The last is my favorite. The conscious creation of boundaries to set constraints in a given situation. I call it addition through subtraction.
A Meaningful Delta
I was once invited to attend a meeting to plan a meeting to schedule meetings. This was a real request from a Deloitte consultant to me while on a project in New York. I declined that invite and every single other meeting invite he sent. I wish I could say that was the last wasteful meeting invite I ever received but anyone who has worked in corporate America knows, meetings, whether meaningful or not, are all too common. They are death by a thousand paper cuts.
Deliberate Practice
The deliberate practitioner won’t just rely on one source for skill development. You have to learn across multiple mediums. Go out and read on the history of your interest, listen to podcasts, and watch how-to tutorials from masters.
Individualism–Collectivism Scale
You can trace the individualistic mindset of Americans to its founding. That pursuit of various individual freedoms fueled the don’t tread on me spirit. Whether it was the freedom of religion, the lawless expansion into occupied indigenous lands, or the right to practice morally bereft chattel slavery. Americans have demanded the room to pursue what they solely want no matter the impact to their neighbor. It is no surprise then that "the United States scores highest on the individualism end of [the individualism-collectivism scale ... and consequently] is the only industrialized country in the world that does not provide its citizens with universal health care."