duminică, 30 octombrie 2016

Seth's Blog : On your toes

In any given meeting, on any given day, most people are merely showing up. It's the 50th time he's performed that sonata. The guy in the outfield had a hard day at home before the game. The folks in the...

On your toes

In any given meeting, on any given day, most people are merely showing up.

It's the 50th time he's performed that sonata. The guy in the outfield had a hard day at home before the game. The folks in the meeting are realizing that it's yet another meeting in a long series of meetings, and wondering if it much matters anyway.

Every once in awhile, though, someone is on their toes. This cocktail party is a big deal, he thinks, because he's going to meet that agent that could change everything. It's the key presentation before launch. This performance in Carnegie Hall is... well... it's Carnegie Hall. 

We can't be on our toes all the time. It's too exhausting, and we can't keep it up.

But what happens if we decide, everyone in this room, right here and right now, at least for a little while, that we'll act as if it's the first time, or the last time, or our best shot?

What would happen if we all got on our toes, together? Just for a little while?

That's when big things happen.

       

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sâmbătă, 29 octombrie 2016

Seth's Blog : Decoding pro wrestling

Professional wrestling is fake. The blood is fake, the lack of physics is fake, the arguing with the ref is fake, the rivalries are fake... it might be professional, but it's not real. This willful disregard for reality is at...

Decoding pro wrestling

Professional wrestling is fake.

The blood is fake, the lack of physics is fake, the arguing with the ref is fake, the rivalries are fake... it might be professional, but it's not real.

This willful disregard for reality is at the heart of pro wrestling. It's a juvenile fantasy, come to life. An opportunity to make up the rules, ignore authority, and exert bullying force on others, merely because you can.

So why is Billy Corgan (of Smashing Pumpkins) one of the most successful musicians of our generation, running a pro wrestling organization?

He says it's because it's one of the last transgressive arenas left. That it's a morality play, a microcosm of the human condition, a chance to put on a show that highlights our fears and our avarice. He knows that it's fake, authenticity is a foreign concept in this world.

And what lesson can we learn from politics importing pro wrestling's mindset? Once you see it, you can't unsee the connection. Worth noting that one of the key narratives of pro wrestling is the fake within the fake--someone is always claiming that the outcome is rigged. (In wrestling, of course, it is rigged. And so is the complaining.)

Pro wrestling works as a play and a medium because the people who are part of it realize that it's fake.

It turns out that modern media is a perfect match for the pro-wrestling approach. You can put on a show, with your own media, as often as you like. And that show is, to many, remarkable, and so it spreads.

And there lies the danger, the opportunity for pro-wrestling thinking to corrupt our society: When the fans, or worse, the participants, don't realize that it's fake.

In real life, the laws of physics actually work. In real life, blood feuds rarely end well. In real life, accepting the ref's decisions is the only way to have civilization...

The filter bubble creates an echo chamber, and reality stars are pushed to be more like cartoonish pro wrestlers and less like responsible human beings. If it bleeds, it leads.

You probably work with people who are living in their own pro wrestling universe. These are people who are so in love with their version of reality and their goals that they view the real world as an affront, an intrusion on the way they insist things turn out.

Reality remains our common ground, the best one we have to work with.

       

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vineri, 28 octombrie 2016

Seth's Blog : Two kinds of filters

There's the filter bubble of the internet, in which we willingly surround ourselves only with information sources with which we agree, soon coming to the conclusion that everyone agrees with us. The other kind is the filter we can choose...

Two kinds of filters

There's the filter bubble of the internet, in which we willingly surround ourselves only with information sources with which we agree, soon coming to the conclusion that everyone agrees with us.

The other kind is the filter we can choose to build to avoid falling into a rabbit hole of wasted time, misogyny and dissatisfaction. This is to avoid the endless clicking, the hateful comments, the mind-numbing noise of the net.

Here's a hint: The first kind of filter is easy to build and satisfying in the short run. It's reassuring to believe we're right.

The second kind, the one that builds a foundation for us to do better work, is always under attack from within and without, and it's tempting to stop using it. Tempting to give up, but ultimately worth the effort.

The easier the filter is to build, the less it's worth.

       

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