Category Archives: Modernization

I Predict There Will Be More Wild Ass Predictions

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‘New York City is done!’

‘Office work is done!’

‘Higher education as we know it is done!’

‘Long distance travel is done!’

Why are so many highly educated people making such dumb, over-the-top predictions? Besides the fact that education and wisdom have never been closely correlated, it’s because the prognosticators are desperate to be heard above the din of the social media cacophony. PLEASE listen to my podcast. PLEASE read my twitter feed, ‘insta’, blog, book.

Scott Galloway is Exhibit A of this modern tendency towards hyperbole. Subtly, nuance, and ambiguity—the stuff of complexity—is passe, and we have the scramble to be relevant on social media to thank for that.

Lo and behold, New York City real estate values are on the rise again. Executives are desperate to have employees return to offices, college life looks and feels very familiar, and have you been in an airport lately? A bit more hybrid learning, telemedicine, and remote work aside; most ‘rona-inspired changes in behavior are proving relatively superficial despite the pandemic’s legs.

I would like you to prove me wrong on this, but neither do I expect many of the heartfelt proclamations of personal transformation to stick. Maybe a vicious virus can inspire a personal ‘reset’ of sorts in the short-term. Maybe people will simplify their lives; strike a healthier work-life balance; and commit more deeply to their family, friends, and neighbors. But as soon as the virus begins to fade, watch for long established habits to return. Human nature endures.

Ultimately though, when it comes to brash, facile predictions, maybe resistance is futile, in which case I predict the UCLA Bruin football team will win the Pac-12*.

*The last time that happened, Blockbuster Video was killin’ it.

Paragraph To Ponder

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“In July, the I.M.F. estimated that an investment of $50 billion in a comprehensive campaign for vaccination and other virus control efforts would generate some $9 trillion in additional global output by 2025 — a ratio of 180 to 1. What investment could hope to yield a higher rate of return? And yet none of the members of the Group of 20 have stepped up, not Europe, not the United States, not even China. Billions of people will be forced to wait until 2023 to receive even their first shot.”

Adam Tooze, What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?

Clickbait

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Sprawled out on beach towels at bucolic Tolmie State Park, the twenty something daughters  explain the concept of “clickbait” to their Sexty Sixty momsie.

“I follow a photographer mom’s blog who often titles her posts something like “We’re Having A Baby. Just to get you to click on it. But then you quickly find out that they’re ‘talking about maybe having another baby sometime or not'”.

Which got me thinking about the humble blog. Given the late summer doldrums, maybe it needs a jolt of clickbait. Why fight the fake news, maybe I should just Sheryl Sandberg into it. So look for upcoming posts tentatively titled. . .

  • My Brush With Death
  • The President Called Me About Afghanistan
  • I’m Starting My Own Business
  • I Dunked On Rudy Gobert
  • I Had Two Holes-In-One In One Round
  • I Hacked Rate-My-Professor
  • We’re Having A Baby

Paragraph To Ponder

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You can suffer from marriage burnout and parent burnout and pandemic burnout partly because, although burnout is supposed to be mainly about working too much, people now talk about all sorts of things that aren’t work as if they were: you have to work on your marriage, work in your garden, work out, work harder raising your kids, work on your relationship with God (‘Are You at Risk for Christian Burnout?’ One Web site asks. You’ll know you are if you’re driving yourself too hard to become an ‘an excellent Christian.’) Even getting a massage is ‘bodywork’.

Jill Lepore, It’s Just Too Much, The New Yorker, 5/24/21

Thursday’s Required Reading

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1. 12 year old grandmaster. 

2. Ultra cycling’s underdog has no patience for haters. 

3. On infrastructure. Why does it cost so much to build things in America? 

4. The power dynamic between humans and Yosemite National Park.

5. On ‘small travel’. Making discovery, not distance, travel’s point.

A Hard Pass On Psychedelics

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Ever pressed pause and asked yourself why LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs are trending?

Here are some explanations from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“Hallucinogenic and dissociative drugs have been used for a variety of reasons (Bogenschutz, 2012; Bonson, 2001). Historically, hallucinogenic plants have been used for religious rituals to induce states of detachment from reality and precipitate ‘visions’ thought to provide mystical insight or enable contact with a spirit world or ‘higher power.’ More recently, people report using hallucinogenic drugs for more social or recreational purposes, including to have fun, help them deal with stress, or enable them to enter into what they perceive as a more enlightened sense of thinking or being. Hallucinogens have also been investigated as therapeutic agents to treat diseases associated with perceptual distortions, such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, and dementia. Anecdotal reports and small studies have suggested that ayahuasca may be a potential treatment for substance use disorders and other mental health issues, but no large-scale research has verified its efficacy (Barbosa, 2012).”

Apart from the potential to help with substance abuse disorders and other mental health issues, I don’t find any of the other rationales convincing. Their appeal seems to speak to people’s discontentment with having more of their needs met than any other people at any other time in world history. 

Maybe this is just another case of Okay Boomerism, but I never wake up wishing for more mystical insight. More Sea Salt Caramel gelato in the freezer yes (or dark Raspberry Chocolate), but not a more enlightened sense of thinking or being. I’ll be sitting this one out because I’m content with my current anemic level of insight, thinking, and being. 

Influencia

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“Cristiano Ronaldo’s marketing power appeared to be on full display this week when his removal of two bottles of Coca-Cola from the podium at a press conference coincided with a $4 billion drop in the company’s market value.

Before speaking to the media on Monday in Budapest a day before Portugal’s Euro 2020 opener against Hungary, the Juventus star moved the Coca-Cola bottles out of the frame and held up a bottle of water before saying, ‘Agua.’

Coca-Cola’s share price dropped from $56.10 to $55.22 soon after Ronaldo’s gesture, while the company’s market value dropped from from $242 billion to $238 billion. Coca-Cola is an official sponsor of the European Championship.”