This is a post I have been wanting to do for a very long time. I will try to say what are the conclusions I have drawn about society and life in geral and how it can be improved in my opinion. I’m not saying I am impervious to those influences though, I feel them and have noticed that I was in fact influenced by it. Nevertheless, I found it helped me to understand the influences so that I could use those influences for the best effect.
First off, society, as in massive global force of masses. It shapes you, it forces you into thinking stuff, it is one of the primary forces in your mind growth, whether you like it or not. It’s there and you can’t avoid it. You are part of it without being aware, and you must fit. Commercial companies use this to their advantage, through trends! Trends are the ultimate capitalization of society. It is using society to make you think something that everyone thinks. Trends can be created through advertisement, media, and sometimes, a really really genious one, through word of mouth, but it’s rare. And you end up being the trends and all your behaviour is modelled after them.
Now, how do you live your life? You can live for the now, and you do while you’re a teenager, but that gets boring after a while. Some people get lost amongst complicated relationships and that I can understand. But for other people, their short term goal of getting a degree IS their long term goal! And then they get lost when they realize that the degree is not the end and be all of life’s problems. Then they get shocked and get into a working life, which gets monotonous after a while. And they spice it up through “entertainment”.
They look at entrepreneurs and successful people and think “That guy got lucky”, or “I’m not smart enough” or “I can’t do that”. I say, why not? WHY do you insist that you aren’t smart enough? Give it a shot, give your best, use yourself as best as you can, explore whatever you see interests you most… but explore! Don’t just wait for stuff to go raining on your forehead, your dreams are more important than that.
Now when you say how bad some real world situation is it boils down to this… you made it that way, but it’s not your fault, a lot of the “big” guys aren’t smarter than you but they make you think they are. Because they want to stay big! And they make you be in the same mindset which is so goddamn appealing to them. In my opinion, it’s really a question of mindset.
If we want to change “the world” we must change the mindset. This is a really bold statement. I’m saying that the way certain people think is dragging everything down for the majority, and upwards for a select minority whichs takes advantage of it. It’s the minorities’ fault though, the mindset creators and keepers. It feels right to everyone and it’s reinforced by millions!
How can we change it?
* Make people unite forcibly => catastrophe, war! That would work, but it would make some terrible conditions. In my opinion it is the only way to change the mindset quickly, but undesirable.
* Influence: Use the exact same channels that created the mindset to tear it apart. Social media, like radio and TV is obviously controlled by big companies, so there isn’t much one can do. There were ham radio stations and that was great, but too local and restricted. We have a new media though, the internet. It is uncentralized by design, so no one can control it. Just think about it. It allows anyone to have a voice to say whatever they want. More importantly it creates diversity in mindset through the diverse cultures which interact. It also gives you contact with different realities and shows you what mainstream media tries to hide. So get the word out there about documentaries like Steal This Film or storyofstuff.com! Get people using the internet. Get the word out about podcasts. And then challenge people to make content. Make everyone see how “special people” are just people who worked hard to create the opportunities. Luck is created, opportunities are made.
Don’t just stand there! Do something! 
References:
- Steal this film
- storyofstuff.com
- Where do people find the time (via clusterflock)
Thanks to Afi, Ana, Hok, Mafalda, Marita, Rui and Sofia for the wonderful opinions and input, and for all the motivation for finally getting this post out!
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It’s interesting what you say about ‘word of mouth’ trends. Viral marketing. It’s how we all got hooked onto Facebook, right? Seth Godin said in a recent blog post entitled, “First, ten” http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.html that it’s the new marketing. He’s spoken about viral marketing lots before though. Basically, you create something remarkable, and the product is so good it sells itself. Easier said than done, considerably the most subscribed to person on Youtube is Fred. http://www.youtube.com/user/fred?blend=1&ob=4 Now that’s remarkable!
I really like this bit:
They look at entrepreneurs and successful people and think “That guy got lucky”, or “I’m not smart enough” or “I can’t do that”. I say, why not? WHY do you insist that you aren’t smart enough? Give it a shot, give your best, use yourself as best as you can, explore whatever you see interests you most… but explore! Don’t just wait for stuff to go raining on your forehead, your dreams are more important than that.
I so agree with you! If you want something, you have to pull it towards you, rather than point your finger at someone else and say, “they just got lucky”.
And I can understand the big guy/ small guy mentality you are talking about. However, I don’t think it is the big guy who is keeping the small guy down. I think it’s mostly the small guys’ mindset – that they can’t cause anything. I know a lot of people who are like, “I don’t want that, I just want a simple life. My friends, good and a roof, that’s all I need. I’ll die one day anyway.” They just have a different conversation about what’s possible.
Oh, and I don’t think that a working life is necessarily monotonous – especially for people like brains like you! I think there are many interesting jobs out there – Google or any of the high-tech companies, research-based companies, etc. Again, I think the “boring job” picture is the same mentality as the “he’s luckier than me” mentality.
I like how you end by saying that everyone can play a part in change by just putting whatever they want out there on the internet – whatever it is. Basically, just doing something, instead of sitting on your arse, is what changes the world.
I like! Good job, Pedro! Thanks for posting!
Marita
You’re absolutely right about most people right now. Their long term goal is to get a degree and wait for the privileges they think it will bring.
And about thinking successful people were just lucky, it’s also their fault. Nowadays we don’t have a culture of hard work. Even the ones that make it through hard work claim that it was luck (I’ve seen it on TV). So for me, the way to change this is to work hard and change the people we can around us. And if we’re successful, we thank the hard work so that everyone stops thinking its all just luck, and start doing something too.
Hai. (as discussed on facebook!)
Very interesting post Pedro, you did well to summarize society in terms of ‘trends’ and ‘mindsets’, a model I hadn’t really thought of before. While it seems to hold for some cases, it does seem to me it’s a far spanning, umbrella of an idea which spreads itself too thin. And I must say, some parts of your post I wholeheartedly disagree with, but nonetheless it made a good read =]
In particular, I found the following parts a bit dubious:
.
- what do you mean by ‘change the world’? Why are you considering methods to influence *absolutely everybody* to ‘change the world’ at the same time? Why is it necessary? Will this make society better (seriously?)?
- though it was more of a joke, you mentioned war, but surely you meant “mindset-o-cide”
- I don’t see anything inherently wrong with the ‘small guy’ mentality. In fact, you speak as though people can only think in one of two ways: big guy and small guy, and that they are mutually exclusive. I never see it this way.
What does it *REALLY* mean for everybody to have the ‘right’ to the big-guy mindset? This is what I don’t understand most about your post. You’ve painted a half-picture. So beautiful, so lovely- but in the following part, I’ll examine the other side- the consequences of constantly empowering people to their interests.
Sure, people have aspirations and dreams, and ideally, everybody’ll work at that at their compulsion, but in reality, a society *cannot* be built upon such shaky foundations. Somebody’s got to sweep the streets, cut the local grass, operate at the power station. Labourers must carry heavy loads, paperboys must distribute the entire van-full of papers by dusk. Don’t you tell me there exists people who genuinely want to do those jobs as an aspiration.
They’re permanent jobs, alright, but the staff turnover will be high; in other words, people are forced into those jobs, and leave them as quickly as they join. And no wonder: with a society like this, where money is so empowering, anyone sells their lifeforce (body, and mind, time, and soul) to a willing employer, like a mercenary would fight for a cause they need not believe in- they fight for money. Even just temporarily.
This is the result of the sad reality that not all aspirations can be achieved in simple steps. In maths, they’d call it a “non-trivial constraint satisfaction problem”, really.
Rome was not built in a day. Nor were all the roads that lead there.
Nor were they built by 5 year-olds fresh out of nursery with their candy money.
Nor were they built by teenagers aspiring to be a city planner.
Nor were they built by the 25 year-old working in the HR department in some office, who still aspires to be a city planner, but must pay rent, and bills and MOT, and cigarettes, and food…
And when your repeated stabs at ‘forming a trend’ or ‘making a company’ has failed enough times (with severe financial repercussions), you will not blame them for the small guy mentality.
Let’s face it, not everybody has good ideas, anyway. In business, there are winners, and there are losers. You tend to forget the losers, and assume they can get back on their feet. No- they’ve done what they wanted, they tried to change the world, but their world just collapsed on them.
You simply *can’t* keep doing things. Security is a very valuable thing.
Sometimes, standing there at a bus stop, and not ‘doing anything’, as it were, may save you from the rain that you’re currently sheltered from.
Otherwise, of course, run free through the grass and open sky- but definitely look out for the cliff. Or the man-eating Manu-Eetu tribe.
————— Pedro posted a reply… ————————
Great points!
About changing the world, what I’m basically saying is that people conform too easily. They conform to situations that they hate, and they try to do stuff around those situations to disguise them. That’s what I think is wrong with the “small guy” mentality. “Yeah things suck but whatever, it’s not like we can change it”, when in fact they might be able too. And the “big guys” can easily take advantage of this mentality and indeed make it even stronger and more widespread!. That’s mostly my point. I don’t criticize (at all) if someone is totally happy with roaming the world and growing their own food on every stop. At all, that’s amazing (even though really hard). But you won’t hear those people complaining about how much it sucks that they have to grow their food or whatever. It’s quite a strong stance to do that and they recognize the responsibility (either that or they were really high when they decided to do it…).
You do raise a very interesting point on “who will clean the streets etc…”. You give them a conotation of temporary and in my opinion that’s what they all should be. Unless there is someone who really likes those jobs. Again, they should be seen as means to an end and not the end. I don’t know whether this would be possible, it’s just my pure speculation.
I am also not saying that the end goal for everyone should be to start a company or change the world. But finding a way to fulfil your dreams, that qualifies.
——————— My reply… ————————-
Aye- for those whose dreams are still achievable (which is most of the time, we’re *that* fortunate), definitely, go for it, and start now =]
p.s. this way, everything’s well documented. W00T!
Yes, follow your dreams. I believe the real problem is to have the strenght it takes to do that, and the strength it takes to cope with both the good and the bad that comes from following that path. It’s much more confortable to just stand still and let the rest of the world take control of your life. Much easier and effortless, because then wathever happens it’s not your responsability alone and it didn’t cost you as much, but then, it won’t give you as much. In the end it’s all a question of strength and choice, if we want to follow the easy path or the hard one. And both are ok, just as long you are aware that it is your choice (so you don’t get to play “Calimero”). Our life is in our hands, and the choices can be what the world says or not. Everyone should search and choose their own path, whether it is to open a new path, follow an existing one or just stand still.
Thanks everyone for your comments (and special thanks to Hok for the neat wrapup of the FB thread)!
They really made my point much stronger and clear. In such a subjective and personal topic it can be really helpful to read what other people feel about it and their reasons. Thanks again and I look forward to more interesting such conversations