Keep up or drop out…

Keeping up. Apparently you stop doing that as you grow older. Or at least that’s what some people would like us to believe. Each time I hear or read someone saying, “I don’t know about that, you seem to be forgetting I’m already 76 years old” it seriously gets on my nerves. Since when did age become an excuse for ignorance?

Of course the elderly are not the only ones reveling in their “ignorance is bliss” state. This week Seth Godin posted a rant about this very subject on his blog. I agree wholeheartedly. How can people justify not reading a single book in a year’s time, but at the same time they’re able to quote verbatim all the events, petty squabbles and other fait divers about drivel such as American (or other) Idol, XYZ-Factor or So you think you can dance/sing/juggle/talk in full length sentences…?

I admit that my interests wax and wane throughout the years. But just stopping your interest in what’s going on in society and with technology will prove to be disastrous. For the past 2 decades, technology could be leisurely observed by the curious, but as technology advancements accelerate at an exponential rate, it will become a conscious effort to keep up, no longer just a matter of mere curiosity.

Just compare, something like 30 years ago my parents bought their first color TV. That thing probably broke down about 12 or 15 years later. Going to the shop and buying that new one was not that different from buying the previous one. Now, I bought a state of the art TV less than 5 years ago. If that thing holds for another 5 years before needing replacement, and I haven’t kept up with technology, I will no longer recognize the TV’s available at that moment. I will probably need to be explained 50 new abbreviations, told about the new standards, realize that I need to hook up that TV to the internet and operate it with a remote that might look like or actually be a smart phone.

So, as technological advancement keeps accelerating, keeping up is no longer a luxury, but a necessity or you’ll be left behind…

Politics for Lizards…

Honesty surprises us, even puts us in an immediate state of suspicion.  When someone says what they are going to do and when held up to scrutiny appears to be doing or sticking to what they’re saying, we get the reflex that they must be hiding something else.  “Surely this is all a smokescreen for something else they’re hiding,” our lizard conditioned brains automatically think.

Lots of people already wrote about the “lizard brain” reaction we have in ourselves comparable to the programmed behavior in lizards, namely if a lizard is cornered he’ll fight to death, but would always much rather run away.  That is in itself maybe not surprising, but the fact that they get angry, hold grudges and put importance into status is.

We, as humans, also exhibit this behavior and according to Seth Godin this is what keeps us from being truly successful.  We sabotage ourselves as it were.  As he put it in his blog, “We say we want one thing, and then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.”

This lizard brain behavior also automatically pushes us towards the safe zone, the place where we rather just compromise or conform rather that dare and stand out, fight for our believes and realize them.

The current elections in Belgium are a perfect illustration of this behavior.  Why is there so much reaction against the NVA? Because they refuse to conform to peer pressure from their fellow politician who are already seeking the compromise before the elections? Because up to now it seems that they’ll do what it is they’re saying they’ll do…?  Don’t get me wrong, showing honesty is not the same as showcasing your extremist, xenophobe or derogatory ideas like certain other parties do, that’s called poo flinging, behavior of an entirely different animal.

Regardless, people who know me also know my inherent reluctance regarding compromises as the motor for improvement and innovation.  This is generally a formula to turn a great idea into, often at best, a mediocre result.  Don’t get me wrong, being able to compromise is a necessary trait for every human being, but if you want to be successful you must also know when not to do it.

I’m very curious where our lizard brain will take us on the 13th of June.

I have no opinion

Seth Godin wrote on his blog this week “People don’t coalesce into active and committed tribes around the status quo.”

Something that puzzles me no end is when radio or tv programs have a survey or poll where you’re supposed to phone in to give your opinion, and then when they show the results, invariably there will be a (small) percentage “No opinion” voters.

Who are these people that they can be motivated to pick up a phone, dial in, probably have to listen to some tedious on-hold music to finally say “I have no opinion”.  That’s frankly going through quite a lot of trouble not to care.

This comparison is of course false, as these dialers probably did it on a dare, or to be funny, or to have the feeling they’re participating in something that’s on the tele.  Whatever their reason I suspect they’re indeed not an “active and committed tribe around the status quo”.

That aside, I do believe there are people (if not the majority actually) who strongly believe in the status quo, who don’t want things to change, who like something the way it is.  If you want to see several active and committed tribes around the status quo, have a look in  and around Antwerp (that’s Belgium for you international types), where an enormous project to reshape the traffic flow around the city has been delayed for years because of a very active tribe fighting for the status quo.  And ok, the past year many of those tribes have come out of their trenches to propose alternatives, but they were surely born from the need to protect the status quo.

In all honesty, resistance to change is most of the time the first phase in any change project.  The knee-jerk “no, I don’t want things to change” reaction.  And you better believe that people will band together in active and committed tribes to do this resisting.  What’s hard is to be able to take all that drive and energy already present and shape it into a force for change.  Because in the end, that’s the only way to move away from the status quo.

Paradox?  Not really, just human nature.