Dynamic Hypocrisy

It seems that what’s fundamental is the desire to find your thing. To feel valuable doing your thing. That seems to be same with everyone I’ve met so far. 

But what that thing is particular and distinct to each person. How people go about finding their thing. How many things they end up with. What they want to do with that thing. How they define themselves by that thing. Those aspects are unique. 

Other people can talk about how they found their thing, and what they’re doing with their thing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how you’ll find your thing. They might even have specific ideas just for you to get your specific thing. But that you have to figure out if that’s how you want to go get your thing. 

Also whether the things you do have are the things you want. And for how long you want your current thing to be your thing. You may find that your feelings will change over time with respect to your thing. 

At that point, you have to decide if it’s your thing to move on to a new thing, or if it’s your thing to stay with things. Either way, it’s fine because it’s your thing. And your feelings on your thing. 

Your thing might be plumbing, but you always thought your thing would be car repair. That disconnect will need to reconciled by you. Whether you struggle to do car repair, or decide to go into plumbing will be your call. 

That’s what was so scary when I graduated from college. All of a sudden my thing was finished, and the next thing was up to me. Nobody really could tell me what that would be. And it took me a long while to get comfortable with picking a thing. And even longer to execute on that thing. And even harder when I decided to change my thing. Because it felt like starting over. 

But looking back, I’m pretty happy with how I’ve dealt with things. Those experiences feel good to have, and now I’m looking forward to figuring out the next thing.

A reminder to myself that no villain ever thought they were the villain.

Obvious statement: not all teachers are good teachers. 

I had some semblance that the statement was true. I had some teachers that were spacey. Or disorganized. Or had terrible personalities. Or some that were just uninspiring. 

But there’s a category of teachers that always interested me. The type of teacher that actually brilliant at their topic, but still terrible at teaching. 

As I’ve started following sports deeper over the years, you see it in some genius athletes. They’re completely dominant in their skill set, but you notice that when it comes to mentoring younger teammates or transfering knowledge—they’re struggle. 

It could be a number of things. One being generally poor at communicating. Hard to pass on knowledge if you don’t have the words. But another applies to especially gifted athletes. It seems to me that certain mechanics or actions are so innate to them that it doesn’t even register to them as something to point out or draw out. 

“I dunno, I just pass the ball when it feels right.” 

You can see it in non-sports too. The scientist that brain is already wired so differently that they can envision massive experiments. But that they don’t get that others can’t hold that much in their own brains. 

What also interests me is the inverse. The category of people who are rather mediocre in their subject matter, but so articulate in teaching and communication. I used to hold it a bit against these people. “Well, you’re not so great at [X], so I dunno—grain of salt.” 

But since seeing so many savants that are utterly unable to explain what it is they’re doing—there’s something to be appreciated about those who excel at teaching despite not necessarily excelling at the topic specifically.

Again, nothing groundbreaking, but still worth it for me to remind myself that teaching is a skill in its own right.

The world of selling-and-buying art weirds me out. That’s about as deep as I go with this, so you can basically stop reading now. 

As this is more of a reminder to myself that it’s fine that someone wants pay 68-eleventy-billion dollars for a painting. Ideally because for them that painting gives them 68-eleventy-billion dollars worth of value. That the feelings it triggers in them is a theme park ride that requires 68-eleventy-billion dollars worth of tickets. 

But even at its worst, that this person is just buying a painting for 68-eleventy-billion dollars because it some sort of tax sleight-of-hand. I’m sorta like “whatever.” 

Because that painting for most people is zero. Someone paying 68-eleventy-billon dollars at a public auction means that our history books record that painting being worth 68-eleventy-billon dollars to our society. But really it’s only worth 68-eleventy-billon dollars to that one person. 

I love art, but most pieces of art I view are worth zero to me. I wouldn’t purchase them for 68-eleventy-billion dollars or $1,000 or $500 or $1. 

Well maybe for a $1, but I really don’t have the wall space. So I would have to pass anyways. (So back to $0.) 

And that’s okay.

A lot of people right now are buying the Adele album. It’s about $12.99. I’m sure for many of them, it’ll provide more than $12.99 worth of feelings and entertainment and background sounds. But for other people, they won’t buy it because they want to. So it’s $0 to them. And that’s okay. 

The value we derive from any given object, art or otherwise, is determined my us at the point of interaction. It’s highly personal. So if someone declares that they get 68-eleventy-billion dollars worth of value out of something when I don’t—that’s cool. Good for them. Meanwhile, I’m gonna go find my 68-eleventy-billion dollar something. 

Obvious: tv, movies, web, music—these mediums are getting sharper and clearer all the time. So many more pixels, and bandwidth, and delivery efficiencies. We can now see all the little wrinkles and freckles on our favorite actors. 

Also obvious: And our ability to transmit an idea or a feeling through these mediums has only grown more adept. 

Even in something like a tv commercial—an idea, a gimmick, a jingle, and a slogan all neatly fit within 30 seconds. Compared to 50s when tv was new, and commercials were 20-minute long diatribes by Flintstone characters trying to get sell you cigarettes. (Times of innocence)

For me, it’s an intriguing trend across the board. With the underlying framework that at its core—we are improving our collective ability to transmit  the wholeness of an experience. 

Persistent in my cultural consciousness, “Smell-o-vision” is a joke that lingers. I think because it underpins that despite my last statement—we aren’t quite there yet. 

No matter how well shot a field of flowers is, you know you’re still missing the smell of the plants. And the warmth of the sun. And the soil-tinged air in your nostrils. 

But something like the VR technology being the new tech darling hints that we are chipping away at that. You can imagine that if this becomes more commonplace then we start solving are transmitting more of essential experiences. 

The vertigo of a tall mountain, the smallness of entering a large cathedral, the airy growing distance of a character riding off into the sunset. Those things have traditionally gotten lost in 2D mediums. 

But we are adding more and more data (aka fidelity of the experience) to the delivery of our audiences. 

What I think about is when we reach the point where the experience is translated completely. That if I have a smell of red clay dirt in 105 degree Arizona sun, I can send that to you, and know that you smell the exact same red clay dirt and that 105 degree Arizona sun on your skin. 

What will be more overwhelming is that once our internet archives these high-fidelity experiences that we can access distinct nuances of every individuals’ moments. I’m curious that if we record two people standing in the same Arizona desert, we’re able to “play back” each one’s individually. That with one, you smell that red clay dirt the way “Tim” would, and then switch and smell what “Jill” perceived. That we can feel the sun the way it hits Tim’s 6’2” frame versus against Jill’s 5’7” body. 

Would it be different? Would it be the same? Would my personal neurons in perceiving these experiences? I have no idea, but I wanna find out.

Often when a new coach is hired, he’ll first fire everyone who wasn’t fired already. When I was young, I didn’t get that. Because sometimes the people he fired would be really qualified. They didn’t necessarily contribute to whatever losing circumstance that happened. 

But after being in a situation where I inherited a team, I get it now. It isn’t about whether they’re good people or not. Or fun. Or to some extent, really skilled. But a number of reasons could cause friction.

1. Workflow baggage. “We already tried that once.” “We didn’t really do that.” If you’re brought in to fix, then you have to find solutions. And implicitly, to fix is to have problems. Which means overall change is needed.
2. Philosophical differences. The previous team built by a person (any person, doesn’t matter) will hire people that are aligned to their framework. That composition can vary from your own, which means your team isn’t built to gel with how you want to approach a problem. 
3. Camaraderie. This one is more fuzzy because camaraderie comes from many different circumstances. If you’re lucky, “revamping” is something everyone is into. But sometimes, “fresh start” is the thing you want to bond over.

Clearing house is harsh and drastic move. But it does allow you to make certain decisions without the hurdles of the past.  

Between any two people having a conversation, they are also negotiating on how the conversation evolves. A person excited by a topic will amplify the content about that topic. Antipathy will steer away from the topic. While apathy will degrade the signal, and withdraw. 

It’s less about the particular conversational details, but rather the trajectory of the overall construction. 

Only a few mathematical terms stuck from high school, but vectors fascinated me. Really simple concept. It’s visually an arrow, and that has a direction and a magnitude (length of said arrow.) Conversations to me is multiple people taking turns elongating the magnitude, and as desired changing the direction of the arrow. 

It’s another subtlety that hard to negotiate in spontaneous internet chatter. There’s no time or patience to collaborate on the directionality, so ultimately the magnitude ends up being short.  

“You wouldn’t speak to your mother like that.”

Actually, probably yeah. I speak differently when I’m with co-workers. Or strangers. Or friends. At a party. Or at a library. Or at the supermarket. 

Growing up bilingual, it was really clear that I spoke differently around different people. Vietnamese at home, English at school. But as I’ve gotten older, it’s getting clearer that we all speak many languages. 

What’s intrigues me today is that the subtleties for context often get lost in internet conversations. Talking in a group is inherently different from an one-on-one, and yet we only have one comment thread for a news article. Even worst is everyone on that comment probably isn’t speaking the same language. 

The tricky part for the future is reintroducing the subtleties of context. 

I spend a lot of time in my head defending pop music. Not sure why. I never really get to any particular revelation. (Except for that I still enjoy it.)

But a meditative plateau that I often get to is that I eventually think about Rubik’s Cubes. Now straight-up, I was the kid that solved it by wedging a flat-head screwdriver, and prying it apart. Later I would meet a few folks in college that learned the “algorithms.” The sequences that solve any cube. They would casually do it in 3-4-5 minutes, mostly as a parlor trick. 

Like pop music, I don’t begrudge any particular relationship to solving cubes. (Probably because I’m coming from the cheaters’ end.)

But I’ve been thinking lately that the “solution” bores me. It’s aesthetically pleasing sure. Uniform colors on each side. However, I ponder on that there’s other combinations that are pleasing to me. Stripes, diagonals, varying corner colors, half-solved, quarter-solved. 

And in many ways, random is pleasing. “Unsolved” or even “scrambled” people would call it. But I don’t know…I sorta like it that way. Not to mention, like a deck of cards, there’s unique randoms. 

Tangent: They say that each shuffle of every deck of cards has never been seen before in the history of the world. 

I find myself intrigued by that. That there’s a certain scrambling of a Rubik’s Cube that we haven’t seen yet. And here we are with the time and ability and opportunity to find a new unique sequence. 

That’s what I like about pop music. Is it trite? Most of the time yes. Is it reductive? Can certainly be. Is it derivative? Totally is most of the time.

And yet each pop song is like a shuffle of a cube. A lot of the tiles are familiar, a red one, a yellow, a blue. But this time a blue sits next to a red. Whereas the last one the red was next to the yellow. 

We’re going through, and finding all the different combinations. Caring much less about getting to the “ideal solution,” but more about exploring the possibilities themselves.

I was thinking about Colbert today. And how the late show he’s created is already solid. He came in as the Letterman successor, and created a show that already felt mature and confident. What an incredible feat that is. 

What an incredible feat that I just don’t watch. 

And I’m not going to harp on that today. That’s already been written. Nor am I going to write about how white all of late night still is.

But rather the latter is an symbol of what I’ve been thinking about. Fallon has already heralded the next phase of late night. That it isn’t just that I’m not watching Colbert, but I’m not watching anybody.

Instead I’m consuming 30-90 seconds clips that bubble up. Fallon and his show has been riding that for years now. And all the others are starting to follow suit. 

And what it feels like is that there is no more late shows. All of these white males are inadvertantly creating one giant late show. And the ironic symbol is the state of lack of diversity. All of these white males are ultimately interchangable. 

Through the random machinations of YouTube and Facebook suggestions, and random clicking—I end up creating my own custom late night show that I watch at noon during lunch. It doesn’t matter if it’s Colbert interviewing, or Fallon playing Taboo, or Corden singing in a car—it’s just another guy doing a bit.

There won’t be another Leno-Letteman talk show war because there’s only one show now, and really just one white dude host that changes his name based on the skit.