We spent US independence day at an American friend's home, eating burgers, pulled pork and hotdogs - with the potato and the tossed salad provided by us. It was nice to spend some time with a few ex-colleagues, though there was some feelings of bitterness there also. Not toward them, but listening to what is going on at the company now, I am better suited than I was earlier. And I was doing a good job then. There is a lot of disruption going on and processes and roles are changing in many ways - I could help people transition more smoothly.
Oh well.
We had many discussions throughout the evening, mostly light-hearted and teasing each other. But at the start of the evening I mentioned something about the world being pretty messed up and and another continued that everywhere you look, it is failing. However, later on in the evening I realised something that I hadn't about these people earlier, and maybe most people in general. They are all very intelligent (far more so than myself), yet they do not connect the dots between events.
For me, everything is connected, meaning that if one dumpster fire is something like the current economic situation, and another is youth crime, and the third might be the healthcare system - they are all connected. But based on some later conversations, it seems that people don't think in the same way as me on these things, and I think I have an idea as to why.
The way we consume information these days.
Before, information like "news" was pretty standard and relevant to the particular day. While there might have been several main stories, there weren't that many we couldn't understand in the context of our lives and, there was often some kind of theme with them, as there was a general alignment with what was happening both locally, and around the world. We could place ourselves in the story in some way, because it was more relevant to our daily lives.
However, nowadays, information is consumed in a piecemeal fashion, delivered in parts that are often not actually connected to our daily experience. One topic is consumed, and the next topic is something completely unrelated, and the next is something else that is not related to the first. Even the medium changes, as we shift across various platforms to collect random bits of information. However, the speed at which it pours through our senses also means we don't spend time really considering firstly the topic, and then how it is connected to everything else.
And then even when something takes our attention and our interest enough to learn a bit about it, we talk about it as if it is in a silo, disconnected from everything else. We feel we know the topic, but we do not build the entry conditions for the topic. It sits in our mind as a single item, rather than a square on the chessboard, populated by multiple pieces and many players.
Of course, this is observational and I can't speak for everyone, but as I think back to other recent conversations with different people, it has been similar. People are able to talk in a narrow field, but if the conversation leads to what I see as a connected area, it is like a "does not compute" sign flashes across their eyes and they shutdown.
I am not talking about totally disconnected threads, but thinks that may lay just to the side. And what this demonstrates to me when people are talking about some current topic, is that they have consumed some information on the topic, but haven't thought much about how it relates to their world, which would tie it to other pieces of the board. This might also imply that what they "know" is actually just thoughtless regurgitation of what they have consumed. Like vomiting up lunch - if you only ate a salad, you aren't going to vomit a cheesecake.
Just so you can visualise it.
The interesting thing is, that all things have to be connected in some way, even though the connections might be distant. However, there are plenty enough close relationships between situations that we should at least be able to acknowledge that they exist, even if we don't know all the implications. But it is more like in Friends when Joey only has enough money to buy the "V" encyclopaedia and uses it to sound smart, but then the topic changes to circumstances that start with other letters, and he knows nothing.
There is a whole alphabet of information.
And perhaps this is another reason for a lot of the challenges in parsing information to better understand it, as we probably discuss less at depth with people face to face, which means our discussions are more engineered and less dynamic than they were. And likely, more narrow with topics already set, like work meetings with an agenda, rather than the sprawling conversations of people who enjoy the challenge. People want easy.
Thinking is harder than not thinking.
I might not be right with all of the connections I make, but I think that over time, I have got pretty good at building coherent connections between what might seem unrelated topics. It is frustrating for many who speak with me though, because they think I am "off topic" whilst I do not think that, because to me, it is a natural progression of the conversation.
The reason I think I am better suited to the conditions at my old workplace now?
Because many of the changes they are making, I was trying to get started two years ago, but got pushback, because people were unwilling to change, because they didn't have to. They did have to - they just didn't know it yet, because they hadn't connected the dots.
We are predictive animals that can attempt to describe the future, and then create it. But to do so with some kind of accuracy, we have to be able to understand the connections now, where they came from, and then - where they might lead.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Be part of the Hive discussion.
And you may be rewarded.
