Advice to Designers and Young Lovers Part 1: Getting The Silent Treatment

I thought “silent treatment” only happened to love relationships gone bad but it seems to have infected everyone. I’m not talking about friends/family, people you know and hang out with, who just forgot to answer your voice mail or email. No, I’m talking about when this happens in business; in the middle of a business deal, or worse yet, at the beginning of one.

People tell me that young business relationships are like young love relationships. You seem to like each other at the start, agree on big issues, have a few “dates”, talk about some kind of potential future event, even make plans. You might have even sent up a proposal and heard back that it was approved. They always begin with a lot of fuss and positive feedback, right?

A week goes by after this wonderful presentation (or meeting, or lunch), and then nothing. The project sounded urgent; they said they’d be in touch within a few days. Now, two weeks have gone by and you email or leave voice mail but maybe because of simple human concern too. You start to think they’ve been hit by a bus, or that their mother died. But since you aren’t the person they would have called with this kind of news, you wouldn’t know that anyway, so there you are with your____ in your hands and boy do you feel dumb!

Business = Avoidance?
Now, if I were talking about young love, something at the earliest stages of a possible long-term hookup, this would make sense. He/she just had second thoughts after the first few dates, but chose not to share them with you; and as cowardly as that sounds, it’s pretty regular behavior. No, this isn’t about the fear of wedding bells. I’m talking about work, business, money, stuff that should not be wrought with emotional discomfort and angst. I always thought that was the beauty of business: an exchange of services and cash, not psychological problems, but I have been proven wrong.

Years of therapy, piles of anti-depressants and the popularity of Dr. Oz have made no difference. We’ve become a society emotionally uncomfortable in all kinds of inappropriate places and no one ever questions why. Well…why???

My corporate clients & friends tell me that the economy, this general world instability makes people “do crazy things” (read: drop a project in the middle without explanation and ignore future contact). Sure, THAT makes sense: make a difficult situation worse for all of us by not communicating? I guess it takes courage to say “the project got canceled” or “we’ve decided to go with someone cheaper” or  “we lost the funding”, or “we need to go in another direction”. So since when did business stop requiring courage? If you can’t stand the heat, start flipping burgers for a living! It looks like the age of the wimpy entrepreneur is upon us. ( more about that in another post!)

So if your latest “new” client or new beau left you in the lurch without a sign of closure, they’ll probably never figure it out. A world full of uncertainty will never get better if we keep avoiding each other. Silence equals death has new meaning here.

 

Money Can’t Buy You Love: The Problem with Non-Profits

The saddest thing to me about non-profit organizations is that so many have the classic victim mentality. Of course, not the big successful, national ones, but this attitude is pretty common in smaller, local groups. Many don’t get beyond “startup” mode because of it.

When most people think of non-profit, they think of stuff that’s free, stuff that’s really discounted, or stuff for a very good cause. But I guess they don’t really think of the rest of it: that somehow everyone thinks good cause is reward enough. Money is something else again. There’s never enough money to make these organizations happen - for many, even on a survival level.

But I think the reason why so many non-profits fail, is because they focus on what they lack and are unaware of what they do in fact already have. They consider themselves victims of society, always on the other side of a handout. This point of view is entirely disempowering and it mostly keeps the organization in a nasty psychological loop, sometimes for decades.
Sure, you say “But non-profits don’t HAVE anything except the desire to help people (or feed them, etc etc)” They certainly don’t have money! Many non-profits are in “just squeaking by” mode so they never feel like they have much in the way of valuable assets.

But actually, the non-profit has an asset it seems to take for granted: the love, devotion, actions and commitment of its core group of people. Not just a Board of Directors, this means the person who gets the mail, or counts the money, or who will take an extra subway ride to deliver that package after work. If someone does this as a volunteer, or even as a terribly underpaid professional, their affection or commitment to this “cause” is probably priceless but it will commonly go unacknowledged and ignored.  Priceless sounds kind of dramatic, but it might be true.

If non-profits don’t begin to see abundance and “prosperity” in the talents and devotion of their own people – those unknown (or even maybe not so unknown) souls who are opening the doors in the morning, or locking the door at night –  non-profits will remain undervalued and under appreciated in society as well. The micro, after all, reflects the macro. If non-profits are under-appreciated by society, maybe it’s a reflection of their own lack of “internal” appreciation, starting with the folks inside the group who contribute their hearts and minds and make things happen. Money may not be able to buy you much of anything these days, but devotion and commitment are hard to come by at any price. Value the invisible assets you have and you will attract “real” ones.

 

9/11 and Another Short Attention Span Tragedy:

I spent some time yesterday listening to all the buzz around Charlie Sheen, his 20 questions to the president about 9/11, and all the misunderstanding and anger this seemed to create for the sleeping masses and the controlled media.

I don’t watch “Two and a Half Men” but it’s rare for any celebrity to care about anything more than their hairstyle. And it’s rare for anyone in the public to care about a celebrity unless they’re adopting African kids or found drunk in a bathroom so no matter what you think of Sheen, (me included) this is not your usual celebrity fare.

Sheen created a series of 20 questions about 9/11 to ask the president and then artistically answered the questions himself. Everyone got their pants in a bunch about this part, even though every time I heard him talk about it on internet radio, he clearly explained this and I never thought anything else. I understood it the first time I heard him, and thought it was dumb actually. I guess I felt that by just coming out publicly with the questions alone, he would make his point. While Sheen wouldn’t agree with me, adding the “artistic fiction” of the president’s answers brought the attention away from the points everyone needs to look at.

Alex Jones got in a lot of trouble with Coast to Coast AM host, George Noory, who openly said he was disappointed with Alex for putting Sheen’s stuff “out there” without saying the president’s answers were fictitious; lying to people, “misleading” them. At the end of the mock interview transcript on Alex’s site, it did say that the interview didn’t happen, but you’d have to READ THE ENTIRE THING to see that. Of course, I would have put it at the top of the interview myself; I know in advance that people have no attention span and would probably not read it through to the end. What I would have liked Noory to have said instead was “I’m disappointed with the short attention span of the American public…it’s dangerous not to pay attention”….In the end, he and Alex came together on air and cleared it up, but none of this was the discussion we really needed to have: what have the powers that be hidden about 9/11 and why?
This purposeful kind of distraction (”Sheen faked it!!!”) is created by Big Media, and successfully kept the public from the real points Sheen made: the unanswered questions about 9/11 and the fact that 8 years later, they remain unanswered.

Our stupidity and short attention span is what Big Media counts on and I guess it’s still a sure bet. A populace of under-educated, Ipod-distracted people can be told anything; then to add insult to injury, these distracted folks will monitor each other with nonsense and lies and laugh at anyone who disagrees with what they heard on CNN.

Control of our communication when it comes to what is really going on in our world is a dangerous thing to have in the hands of a very very few. Please learn more about actually how few control every piece of information publicly available in the world. 
The distractions and the lies we are fed daily will kill us…like literally.

 

Digital Television, Embroidered Kittens and The Second Coming

I doubt that any of you reading this are not digitally hooked up yet, meaning your TV watching is either digital or you’re not watching TV, right? There’s NOTHING ON TV unless you get Cable or Satellite, (or have the converter, or watch on your computer)….right? Wrong!

You don’t need digital TV to be saved! There are three channels working perfectly on the little TV in one of my bedrooms, the little TV that has no cable, no digital converter, nothing but a really low tech antenna (and I should have thrown the thing out but I didn’t yet). One channel is CBN: Christian Broadcasting Network, the 700 club, the one that’s run by Pat Robertson. I don’t know the name of the second one, but it’s also a Christian outreach network. Every time I find it, there is a drive going where listeners are asked to give gifts upwards from $500. This drive seems like it’s been going on for weeks and I’m sure it will end soon (?) Makes Jerry Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy Telethon look like a commercial break.

The third one, (surprise!) is HOME SHOPPING NETWORK, where the world of little embroidered kittens kissing each other finds a home on pink sweatshirts. Apparently, there are millions of buyers who love this stuff, and I am always perversely fascinated enough with the kittens (or the autumn pumpkins) to stop and stare in disbelief. I consider it an anthropological non-digital expedition into universes I may never know. Making known the unknown and all that.

Now, please remember that Public Broadcasting Network is not one of the three networks available, which is a bit mysterious to me, since supposedly Public Television is sponsored by THE PUBLIC. Definition of public is possibly inaccurate. Apparently losing what might be the most important audience in America (Christians and shoppers) is not an option for our handlers.

So, if you are unfortunate enough to be poor and unable to get cable or buy the box, you can still watch TV and put your pennies together for Jesus or the embroidered kitten sweatshirts. Is this some kind of secret message about consumerism and religion? What about Catholic or Jewish shoppers? Don’t Buddhists shop too?

I’m keeping my little rabbit ear TV as long as I can, because I’m waiting for 3D television; I’ll make the switch then. I figure, at this rate, in a few years, even huge screen HD won’t be enough for the American public. HSN will be transformed into the Holodeck Shopping Network and we will all be able to reach out and feel the orange sequined pumpkins for ourselves. Free 6-month subscriptions to 3DTV will be given out at your local place of worship. World Wrestling Entertainment will never be the same!

The FCC will euphemistically call 3DTV “The Second Coming” of television – it will make advertising history! “Keep watching or lose your soul.”

From Texting to Telepathy in 8 Easy Steps

So I have this new theory that text messaging will lead to a global need for mental telepathy. The way I see it, abbreviating words and sentences as a normal way to communicate will lead to abbreviating entire paragraphs until eventually we won’t have to “write” anything at all. (I created a chart/comic strip that illustrates this theory at the end of this blog…please see if you read nothing else.)

A Ridiculously Brief History of Message Making
First, a really long time ago, we had to make sounds with our mouths to communicate “things”. (You would have to be in front of someone so they could understand though.) Then, we created a code, a system that would replicate the same message in what we would later call letterforms. This was a pretty big step; mapping the sounds and meanings and making a system that a lot of people would agree to and of course, use. That way you wouldn’t have to be in front of someone to tell them you love them. (You could send them a handy block of stone instead). Even though it might take a long time to get a chisel and carve out the words (or you had to sit for a really long time with quills and write on cumbersome stuff like papyrus or parchment) this new “code” could communicate whatever message you wanted, to someone who wasn’t around at the time that you said it. Pretty handy.

Fast forward to 1865 and Gutenberg changes the whole thing when he created a machine that could reproduce those letterform codes mechanically on (not so) cumbersome pieces of paper and ultimately produce millions of the same exact message at once. The Bible was the first thing he printed. (BTY, explains a lot.)

China on the Phone
By the end of the 19th century, the telephone was the big thing. This is probably hard to imagine, but for the first time in history, you were able to hear a voice, in real time, that was sitting thousands of miles away from you and when they said “I love you” the 8000 miles between your couch and their couch in Hong Kong, sort of disappeared. And then, of course, by the end of the 20th century, telephones were in your coat pocket, the mobile was born, computers got really small and…blah blah blah. You obviously know all about that stuff so I won’t go WMHGB.

Telephones and computer technology made the text message possible; by the end of the 20th century text messaging is preferred to speaking with voices, so to speak, which is pretty much where we are today… Instant and almost invisible, it doesn’t matter where you are, what you’re doing, or even if you were moving (really fast), you’re connected. You can look like you’re sitting in that boring staff meeting, 10am Monday morning, but you’re really finding out where your boyfriend will meet you at 7pm that night.

Look Ma, No Hands! The Chip in Your Head Will Text FOR You! (IM2BZ2P)
But what if you have two large lattes in both hands while you need to reach out? I’m pretty sure in the very near future, you’ll just have to think of your boyfriend (because you want to find out where to meet him later) and the answer will just appear in your head, thanks to a tiny computer chip you have there. Instead of having to put the lattes down (!), you’ll receive a picture of the bar he’ll be at, and a clock with hands that say the time. It might even show up in HiDef, so confusion will be impossible. Your chip might come in colors too (a simple in-office visit will embed it during your lunch time), and you’ll be charged monthly for the service, like cable. Hey, what if you’ll even be able to wear a cute little 3D logo on the side of your forehead, so all your friends will know you’re hooked up! Over time, chips will get even more “entertaining” and you’ll be able to stop thinking entirely! (From the looks of Facebook walls these days, many have begun this part already). There will be a chip for everyone’s budget too. Cheaper versions would only send voice messages, not pictures, though.

All these and maybe more “great” possibilities of texting in our evolution remain to be seen. I’m not sure what happens to people like me though, since I still think in longhand. Most of the stuff I ponder doesn’t seem to be the same stuff other people think so texting lingo doesn’t work so well for me. Acronyms haven’t been invented for what goes on in my head…so EIIUTIWHTT4Y (even if I used them, I would have to translate them for you.) So, personally, I’d like to skip over the texting part and get right to the mind-reading, telepathy part (without the chip embed, TIA) but then, I’m one of those people who knows all about Remote Viewing already and besides, I love the all-natural “go chipless” idea.

Whichever way you want to say it, seems to me that the PEBHAH (problem exists between head and heart) and no amount of shortening a message can make that message more compelling or interesting. If it starts out from an under-used cranium, it comes out predictable, mundane and unquestioned by equally under-used craniums at the other end.

I say forget texting, you need TDM machines for that. Figure out the power of that thing you’ve got sitting between your ears and bring on TELEPATHY…it’s fashionably green and a lot cheaper too (unless you opt for the chip, which I strongly don’t recommend).

PS. Dedicated to Marshall McLuhan who was born the same year as my father (1911) and way ahead of his time too. And all this may make much more sense in 2070, when TimeWaner sells the chip at RiteAid…

EZ TRANSLATIONS for the longhanded few:
WMHGB: where men have gone before
IM2BZ2P: I’m too busy to (even) pee
TIA: thanks in advance
TDM: too darn many