The Economy , Corona, Riots, Corruption

The world is falling apart, what do you think will happen?

Seems to be the question so many people are asking, chaos seems to be looming and our instinct is to reach to find any form of certainty even if by guessing at the worst possible outcome.

With brains that evolved to seek certainty in a world full of chaos what can we do?

I think a good place to start is by looking at the our real world.

I was on a course about 10 years ago where the instructor had us list the stereotypes of a personal trainer. 

He then asked us to decide how closely we each (trainers all) matched that stereotype.

Our lists weren’t even close to describing any of us.

I think when we get caught up in tv and social media it’s worth doing the same with that world and our world. 

It helps to create some much needed clarity around what’s real. 

Much of what is happening at the moment reminds me of that old Chinese story about a rice farmer who lived a simple life.

He had a small field of rice that was just enough to feed and provide for his family, a wife and one son.

One day a herd of wild horses came running through the village and ran into his rice field and got stuck in the mud and made them his own.

His neighbour came by and said, “This is such good fortune. You are rich, this is amazing!”

The rice farmer said, “Good news, bad news, who knows?”

A few weeks later his son jumped on to one of the wild horses for a ride. The horse threw him off and he broke his leg.

The neighbour came over and said, “Oh no, this is such bad news!”

The farmer said, “Good news, bad news, who knows?”

A week later a Chinese general marched through his village with the army to go to war.

They took every boy in the village except the farmers son because he had a broken leg.

The neighbour came over and said, This is wonderful news, how lucky you are!”

The the farmer replies, “Good news, bad news, who knows?

There’s a lot going on right now, or at least it seems that way.

The real life data though, emotion to one side, says that this is the best it’s ever been.

That’s not to make light of anything that’s happening there is serious suffering in the word that we desperately need to fix.

That’s just to state that there is less pain, suffering, violence, oppression, hunger, sickness than ever before.

There is also more complexity than we can ever make sense of. We cannot create certainty any more.

Not by looking at the markets.
Not by listening to our leaders.
Not by listening to the News.
Not by reading on social media.
Not by looking to facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, google or anyone else to save us.

I believe that this is a huge opportunity. Not to make sense of the complexity.

Not to decide whose side you’re on (we’re all on the same side)

It is the opportunity is to stop looking outside for certainty and look inside instead.

To discover who we are, what we believe, what we will create.

In fact I don’t believe it’s just an opportunity but an imperative in a world using our data to understand us better than we current do ourselves in order to turn us into better and better consumers.

It’s the best opportunity will ever have to decide our own future and start creating it.