What’s important today?

Thoughts and ideas are like wine. They require some time to become delightful and understandable. To transform initial product and to form a smell and a taste.

Winter holidays are a perfect time for letting some thoughts transform silently, without a rush.

And then a small sparkle is enough to trigger the release. There are 2 examples that triggered a cascade of reflections on our current values. Something that we don’t want to become valuable, but we’ve made it valuable by supporting it.

Destructive attention

First one: happened shortly before the Christmas. For a week X was full of information and discussions happened everywhere about a girl from UK and 100 guys within one day. And her plan to 10x the amount to break a record.

This goes totally against my beliefs and values, however it popped today in my mind. Because it worked. Society gave the desired prize - attention. If attention was the goal - it worked perfectly.

No matter how disgusting is something we do - if people start talking about it we got a chance. We’re getting attention and try hard keeping as much of it as we can. This is how attention is the priciest value of today. And this is one of the many ways it is earned. We, people, make this happen. Replies, reposts, sharing - everything has its power. Once it is accumulated - it becomes visible. We should care more about what we consume and support.

Productizing everything

This one comes from another discussion I had, but it popped today because of another advertisement I saw. Guess what it was selling? That’s right, it was another IT related course.

From my personal perspective this looks much more moral according to my values. However, somehow we, people, manage to feel when something is not right. And I see more and more advertisements and “products” of a low value. And I feel those people, who release these products. They took a bunch of other courses, where they were taught to “productize”, to start with “info product”, to sell their knowledge.

In reality what everyone needs is a couple of spare Dollars, Euros etc. And starting small is the right move, I’m doing it myself. And it is tough. But failing is a part of that tough start. But it feels like many of first-timers have literally their only chance to success, therefore going all-in.

The first course, app, book in best case scenario will be average. And that’s fine. We are good to make next one better. Believing this is the only thing I can succeed with is a limiting belief. We shall retire this course, app or books in our creator’s asset list to make a better next step.

Summary

Being greedy for attention, money or appreciation is a sign of inability to see a value in ourselves. I’ve been hungry for appreciation because I needed constant confirmation of being “a good guy”. A guy, who never existed. A guy, who was fake. I can interpolate these feelings and assume it is similar for money, attention and other external confirmations.

Emptiness and incompletion caused or accompanied with loneliness - these are the motivators, that drives us too often these days. No wonder we lose on quality. Less groundbreaking scientific discoveries are made. Specialists are getting into sales and marketing, because skills of dragging attention are much more important today than knowledge.

After all it looks like we are feared. Feared, that it will end. The comfort, the power, small or big, that makes our ego shine. No one lives forever. And we’ve lost hope there is something else, behind that dark door. We want to live 200% today, because tomorrow may not come, not because today is a great day. Civilization made our environment much more secure, but we became afraid of each other instead.

Yet nothing is over while our eyes are opened and we’re breathing. We can make a change and make things right. And this is actually what is happening slowly. We were struggling in the world of information, that could not be processed by our brains due to insufficient capacity.

Now we’re relying on AI for everything, using it to shorten and analyze information for us. Doing so, we risk losing important details, trading depth for the convenience of gaining a broader perspective faster and easier. Yet, this is another trap and a different story for another post.