Crunch Time

Welcome to the outer limits

The old, funky television show “The Outer Limits” had one of the most creative openings I can remember. The screen you were watching would begin as a test pattern. Then suddenly it would begin to morph and act erratically as an ominous voice would begin to narrate,

“There is nothing wrong with your television set” it would intone, “Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. For the next hour we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.”

It seems today that we have entered a place in the outer limits. The speed of change is mind boggling. We are held captive to a test pattern and we feel as if we have no control over our situation and its extraordinary changes.

The subsequent anxiety often expresses itself as a vice-like compression deep in the gut. Our thoughts race around in our skulls first thing in the morning toward what seems an insurmountable finish line. Days become reflective, many times obsessive, about the state of our lives and the condition of our world.

It’s no wonder. I believe we are in an unprecedented time of change, the likes of which have been experienced only a few times before. It’s an evolutionary exclamation point in human history.

Alvin Toffler’s "Social Wave-Front Analysis" looks at history as a succession of rolling waves of change and asks where the leading edge of each wave is carrying us. It focuses our attention not so much on the continuities of history as on the discontinuities--the innovations and breakpoints.
The First Wave in human history was the agricultural revolution.  It was during this time we learned to cultivate the land and grow fruits and vegetables from seeds.  It lasted for thousands of years.

The Second Wave was the industrial revolution. During this time we learned to harness the energy of steam, coal, and oil to advance the ability of machines to make work more efficient and our lives more convenient.  This lasted for hundreds of years.

The Third Wave of human development is what Toffler calls the information age.  This movement is only decades in the making and we are still trying to catch up with the speed of its change and its far-reaching impact on what it means to be human.

This is our time…this is when we discover what we are really made of...

That's the irony. Our true character doesn't reveal itself when times are sedate or situations are easy. It emerges when we are brought to the brink of intense challenges.  What a great opportunity to strengthen our resolve and build the mental and emotional moxie such times require.

 

Kill yourself

Did you know you can kill yourself and still stay alive? Two new websites are providing the means to kill your virtual self - a virtual suicide.  If you feel that your virtual life is becoming shallow, repetitive, and less worth living, check 'em out.

• www.suicidemachine.org
  
• www.seppukoo.com

They will hack into your profiles, completely annihilating your online persona and leaving no trace of your former self behind.  Many people are finding it extremely liberating. The following is a news report on CNN:

Virtual Sex

In our accelerated and fragmented culture, teens and emerging adults have started to abandon dating in favor of "hooking up". This seems to be consistent with the freedom to have multiple partners as people have friends on their Facebook profile. 

An interesting article by Douglas Haddow in Adbusters, reveals that while dating is on the decline, the use of sex toys has risen sharply:  "There is a huge proliferation in "next-generation" sex dolls.  Primarily produced by RealDoll, these are life size, 100% silicone dolls that are highly detailed, fully customizable and provide a physical experience that users find comparable to actual sex.

"David Levy, Artificial Intelligence engineer and author of Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, believes that these dolls will rapidly evolve into full-blown robots and that robot-human relationships will become technologically possible and socially acceptable within a mere 20 years."

This technological quandary is creating confusion as to what it means to be fully human.  Our culture and capabilities are manufacturing desires to be less than human.  What does sex really mean when it is with a robot apart from human relationship?  It means that the robot we ultimately end up having sex with is our self. 

The lens of youth culture

For years I have subscribed to the Hedgehog Review: critical reflections on contemporary culture.  Published by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, each volume is always intriguing and worth reading cover to cover.  The following is taken from the introduction for the Spring 2009 issue focused on "Youth Culture". The quandaries it explores and the questions it raise need to be explored by all of us.

The radical and rapid transformation taking place in America and global culture are keenly seen when viewed through the lens of youth culture.

Take technological changes, for example. Young people are at the forefront of the use and adaptation of these developments, and their day-to-day experiences--their modes of being, if you will--have been markedly transformed. The way they interact with their peers, and present themselves to others is unlike that of any generation that came before them... How have these technological changes affected what it means to be human?

The cultural changes of late modernity have produced pressures to adapt to, and succeed in, an increasingly complex social sphere. This is felt acutely by the young, particularly in relation to their academic achievements...  In an effort to cope with the world around them, young people are taking more and more medications. The increase in the use of medications to negotiate these demands affects the way young people see themselves and the world around them. How does a young person understand what it means to be human or to be good when she views her struggles through a medical model?

Changes in the meaning of adulthood in contemporary life is in a state of confusion... Once a stage of life towards which to aspire, adulthood has come to be seen by many as neither inevitable nor necessarily desirable...What happens to a culture when people don't want to grow up?  What does this say about our ideals for what it means to be human and for what it means to be good?

Young people are often the first to adopt to new cultural forms, and we often express our anxieties about those new cultural forms as concerns about the young... They are the ones ultimately who will reap the benefits or the deficits of how we negotiate the cultural changes of contemporary life.

Lots of people in a short amount of time

I first saw this video at a Hyatt HR conference I was speaking at.  They were launching a change initiative for their hotels to become more "eco-friendly" and they used this to highlight the urgency in doing so. I thought of it recently and have posted it here. It is a graphic description produced by Population Connection of world population growth from 1 A.D.

Be patient as it "ticks" through the world's slowly expanding population growth and subsequent rise and fall of empires.  Then take note of the velocity of the growth beginning around 1900.  It is simply staggering.

The constants of change

My main focus over the last twenty years has been helping people effectively migrate through the quandaries of contemporary change.  Without a doubt, the recent perplexities we are encountering are unprecedented in their scope and the challenges for us is extraordinary indeed.

I've discovered too the irony that change is consistent in its effects.  The larger the scope of the change the greater these constants seem to become:

1) It is frightening: Change makes the world seem less predictable.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality, and for good reason. By 1933 the depression had reached its depth and the nation was struggling. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”  It is in this address he uttered the now infamous words, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". 

We must learn to harness fear's energy and make it our heart's ally and not its enemy. 

2) It is threatening: Change implies that what exists now is inadequate

-We can get so confident in the way we've done things in the past, that it is can be a surprising and agonizing moment to discover that it no longer works for our current condition.  When we are threatened by change we usually choose one of three stances in reponse: Retreat, Retrench, or Relaunch.  For me relaunching is the most adventuresome and leads to richer discoveries and deeper redemption.

3) It is embarrassing: Change requires admitting and understanding our past errors.

-Being vulnerable is one of the most powerful attributes we can harness.  I believe it requires two elements: Humor and Honesty.  Laughing at ourselves is one the most mature defense mechanisms human beings have at their disposal.  In spiritual terms, it is the closest we can come to confession. Being vulnerable forces us to get to the heart of the matter in deliberately open ways. It means not pointing fingers at people or the past.  It means taking responsibility. Honestly interrogating our hearts during change is the first step in moving through change unencumbered by anxiety, insecurity and blame.

Rules for new tools

The problems we face as humans are as common and enduring as our race itself.  Take the problem of communication.  Though we have developed various tools over the millenia (cave drawings, smoke signals, pony express, telegraph, etc.) to aid us in our quest to communicate one with another, ultimately the problem persists. 

That is to say, though the problems remain the same, it's the TOOLs that have changed.  Today we live in a world of overwhelming technological tools. I'm intrigued by the criteria Wendall Berry has put forth for aquiring new tools (including technological). This is taken from his article, Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer, which is a great article in itself, and caused quite a stir when he published it.

Hope it provokes your thinking as you migrate across the quandaries of contemporary life.

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

Magic happens

Today I had the honor of witnessing the Teacher of the Year ceremony at Denver Academy. It was particularly poignant since the award is now named in honor of a long time Denver Academy teacher and one of my all-time best friends, Kevin Gregier. He passed away last November (2008) from cancer at the age of 64.  I miss him every day.

The afternoon summed up so well the wonder of Kevin Gregier as a teacher and the magic of Denver Academy as a place for learning.  Wonder and magic together provide enchanting elixirs to enliven our educational quandaries:

•Learning that is centered more on the varied needs of the student than in the confines of a curriculum.

•Teaching that is liberated so educators can bring their own whimsy to their subject matter.

•A commaraderie that goes beyond selfishness, looks to the betterment of everyone, and exhibits a genuine joy to be in the company of each other.

•An awareness of a spiritual transcendence that resides not only in the hearts and minds of students but is embedded in the very nature of education itself.

•Leadership that realizes life is messy and in a constant state of flux. They are not afraid to take a risk for the sake of the contemporary student or for the enhancement of a teacher's well-being.

•An extended community of parents who take an active role in sparking the perpetual potential of every child they come in contact with.

Thank you Denver Academy and all the places like you who provide an educational environment where wonder is taught and magic happens everyday.

Cognitive Distortions

I focus on four competencies to help people effectively navigate life's accelerating changes:

• Vibrant Imagination
• Robust Collaboration
• Potent Communication
• Persistent Adaptation

In this post I want to focus on Persistent Adaptation and the awareness of cognitive distortions. These are inaccurate thoughts or ideas which maintain negative thinking and help to maintain negative emotions. I'll admit that I default into one or more of these distortions more often than I'd like.

Eliminating these distortions and negative thought can improve mood and discourage maladies such as depression and chronic anxiety. Being aware of these distortions is a powerful first step to persistently adapt to discontinuous change and its discontents. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way.

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

• Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out.

• The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He's a damn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

From: Burns, David D., MD. 1989. The Feeling Good Handbook. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Narcissism or Loneliness?

This morning I was reading an article in the USA Today entitled, Is narcissism on the upswing in the young?  Some research shows more young people today have "narcissistic traits" than in previous generations and is illustrated by a preoccupation with Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.   

Not everyone agrees. Cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling recently proposed that the clearest symbol of poverty today is dependence on “connections” like the Internet, Skype, and texting.  Only the poor — defined broadly as those without better options — are obsessed with their connections.

So, is the accelerated proliferation and popularity of social media a glaring indicator of how relationally impoverished we are or does it highlight our intrinsic narcissism?  Are we just a bunch of online bums looking for love in all the wrong places?  Do we really have nothing better to do?

One possible way to answer those questions is to unplug and take a week off from cyberspace.  Self reflection has always been critical.  When all is said and done, did you missed it and why? If you didn't miss it, why?  The answer may surprise you. It may have nothing to do with narcissim or loneliness as they say at all. Adbusters is encouraging us to digitally detox our lives this week to find out what we might discover.  For seven days, reconnect with the natural world and the flesh and blood people around you.  Take a break.  See what happens. So...I guess I'll see you next week.