Cynical ideation?

This may take you longer than three seconds to read…so that’ll be a good test of the problem!

“If you are explaining, you're losing. It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem.” ~ Lawrence Lessig

So, let’s get to it. ?

I’ve been noticing a couple of bizarre but increasing trends on LinkedIn - the “older-than-Facebook” social networking platform that was once a bastion of staid professionalism (albeit couched in egoistic self-inflation). ?Lawrence Lessig wrote that “Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.” ?And this, to some degree, speaks to the dilemma of the changes I’ve been witnessing on LinkedIn over the past couple of decades (but, really, only over the last several years have they become a significant thing).

ONE: The cynical anti-guru versus the self-proclaimed (insert domain adjective) shaman?versus the quiet muser…

Granted, we are seeing every kind of self-enlightened snake oil salesperson?writhing around and creeping up through the mud of an increasingly polarized, opinionated and diverse (but ubiquitously self-serving and self-aggrandizing) morass of content.?These are the proselytizing “wisemen”?- sanctioned only by themselves (or by a gimmick of inflated “recommendations”). ?The TikTok generals that garner attention through volume, through carpet-bombing and seeming conviction.

There have been calls for regulation of the coaching and mentoring fields - as if we need more nannying to further weaken the capacity to think in the arising generations. Evolution is not confined to physiology, it extends into psychology and sociology and even social media too. “Water will find its own level”?and the charlatans will be routed before the end. Perhaps it is wiser and, ultimately, more holistically constructive, to allow the system to govern itself - empowered by the people that use it.

Then we have the “everybody is full of shit” brigade. The wannabe comedians that throw out cynical diatribes in ostensible protest at the rise of the internet guru. These are, however, an equally toxic and damaging breed, and one equally devoted to their individual promotion and follower count.

Skepticism and doubt absent (or a priori)?diligent and thorough consideration and reflection are healthy and wise. Bitterness and scorn even amidst reason to be released of it? That is just malevolent and self-serving; it is a mirror of an inner malfunction, of a personal history that has swayed a mind into paranoia and fear, of a character?being falsely expressed in the guise?of altruistic global protection.

And so, to the contemplative ruminators, the ponderers, the mullers of thought as much as w(h)ine! Arguably, I am biased as it is to this category I’d likely best assign myself. ?

Regardless of such hypocrisy of indulgent self-flattery, it can be argued that this assignation and practice is the least venomous and noxious - although, perhaps, still somewhat trite and tedious to some minds. ?These are those that simply give public voice to the meanderings of their mind, sometimes upon topics germane to current affairs, sometimes simply because the cerebral noise demanded to be heard more widely.

Whilst all can be ignored or heeded by a swift matter of choice, only the last are likely to be still about it. ?

TWO: The bane of life and the embarrassment of thinking: The absolutism of the operator over the ideator. ?How often do we read or hear sage counsel concerning some variation on the refrain that ideas are easy, it is execution that is hard? ?The “disease” for which Steve Jobs condemned John Scully.

Absolutely, execution is hard, it is far from a simple task to bring a concept to fruition, to physical reality, much less to marketability. ?No argument. ?But, without the ideas, without the eurekas, there would be nothing to develop, to learn from, to grow. ?Without imagination and dreaming and brainstorming, without bluesky meandering and intellectual wandering, we’d have no art, no culture, no joy. ?It is time to cease this overt and excessive empowerment of those gifted with operational prowess above those more gifted with the reverie of the dwam, with the insight of the non-immediate goal, with ambition beyond stepwise marching in accord to a beating drum of SOPs and KPIs. ?Now, more than ever, as we begin to enter an era of AI functionality - when operations will be ever more robotic, but creativity shall remain the domain of the organic mind honed by a dynamism and eclecticism of forces over epochs of evolution on all levels and styles. ?It is a return to the ideals of the age of the philosophers whose minds and reasonings have so shaped our world, the thoughts that have enabled us to develop our various cultures and to devise and design the comforts and conveniences we so take for granted. One can make an analogy to fossil fuels: ?we are and have been reliant upon them, destructively so. ?But, they are finite and, as we realise the limits that are approaching, we are forced to seek alternatives when the wise would’ve been preparing these consistently and even without immediate need. In research, I have previously advised governments of the risks inherent and obvious in an excessive focus upon the “bench-to-bedside” paradigm, the everything translatable before you start approach to research, the denial of the value of bluesky “I wonder what would happen if” Friday-afternoon experimenting. ?That risk is that, eventually, you will deplete your reserves of stuff to translate - and then be at the mercy of those that have sustained an imaginarium?of “pointless” academia, of research for the sake of discovery rather than for the purpose of profit and immediate commercial gratification. ?Joseph Stalin said: ?“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?” The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if, just maybe, that is part of the war of attrition against the ideator, the battle front of the operational elite - the thoughtcrime belligerence of Big Brother…

Tragically, the reality we now find ourselves in is one which Lawrence Lessig warned, a society in which “the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.” ?But, it goes beyond that, it extends into Orwellian horrors of doublespeak and newsspeak, domains in which my truth and your truth are at odds one with the other and in which this truth and that truth are arguably equally valid whilst being odd such odds. ?Truth has become a variable, not an objective reality. ?It has become a matter of vacillating opinion rather than verifiable, empirically demonstrably observation. ?Nonetheless, this is why ideas are so important - why the productive, if disagreeing discussion of conflicting perceptions and views is so vital or, as McKinsey?put it, the embracing by all of “contributory dissent”.

Overall, in such pondering and in setting our aspirations and goals, let’s aspire to the Max Ehrmann ideals - even in our LinkedIn interactions, and “go?placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. ?Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story…the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.” Which, upon inspection, echo well the words of Polonius?as he entreats Laertes in Hamlet (Act 1 Scene 3):

“And these few precepts in thy memory?see?thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue?nor any unproportioned thought his act.?Be thou familiar,?but by no means vulgar.?Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,?grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertainment?of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.?Beware?of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear’t that the?opposed may beware of thee.?Give every man thy ear,?but few thy voice.?Take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgment.?Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,?but not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man…Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.?This above all: to thine own self be true,?and it must follow, as the night the day,?thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Closing such a rambling vent and, perhaps, hypocritical diatribe by quoting Shakespeare - poncey little literati that I try to be!