What are you waiting for?
"Nothing."
This is the state of the world when it comes to consumption and there is a whole generation and a half that have never had to wait for anything that they have demanded, everything is near the fingertips.
I remember waiting for 21 Jump Street episodes every Thursday at 9 pm, and it never seemed strange. Now, binge watching is the order of the day - everything is on-demand and everything is demanded. If a ewbpage doesn't load in .016 of a second, rage kicks in - if the car at the stoplights doesn't start moving on the green in the same time, roadrage kicks in - the doors.
Impatience is an issue.
Being impatient affects emotional response, it affects expectations, it affects the feeling of entitlement and perhaps most important, it makes it very difficult and unlikely to invest into something long-term. Without patience, one can't take advantage of the compound effects, the small amounts that add up to something much larger than the capital invested. But, this doesn't apply to just money, it applies to pretty much everything.
Last night I was talking with friends about skill development and how for example, any job requires a cluster of skills of lesser and greater importance. Being great at the core requirements doesn't mean one is good at the job. I used the analogy of an ice hockey player who can skate very well, but is poor at hitting the puck, or another who can skate well and who has good stick skills, but is unable to be in the right position at the tight time. To be a decent hockey player, all requirements have to be at least to a passing grade, for a professional, much higher.
But this also has other implications. Most people focus on where they are comfortable - what they are interested in and already good at - and neglect the difficult and uncomfortable. However, because of the work they are putting in, they build an expectation that they deserve a certain outcome, a level of entitlement. Working hard isn't enough, working at the right things is also a necessary requirement.
This also applies to other aspects of life, including social movements. We have created a system where we are able to communicate en masse and "participate" in all kinds of actions to get the feeling that we are doing something, even if not much of consequence ever gets achieved. Often, we take part based on social conformity and follow the herd, wherever the herd goes. This process is an opt-in situation and works similarly to a salesperson aiming to get the buyer to always say yes - one yes leads to the next and eventually the purchase.
The problem is that while full of drama and emotional spikes, these types of movements do not generate the long-term investment needed for healthy change, the small daily shifts that compound against each other to become a restructuring of the entire system. If anything, it is the reverse, as a group of people emotionally charged are easily led, easily manipulated and while each individual feels that they are part of something greater than themselves, they do not have a holistic view of the group itself.
These days, people get addicted to the emotional highs and feeling of mattering, which means that once the social charge has subsided, they look for the next bandwagon to get on, they move along, even though they haven't yet made a difference - but they feel they have. This leads a lock of focus and a far too short timeframe to make any significant change.
The spotlight might have been drawn for some time, but because the next news cycle invades and takes public attention, it is drawn away again. Why change the system when you can just weather the storm of public outrage and then continue on business as usual, when the public eye inevitably turns away a few moments later?
Impatience creates a lack of focus of attention and attention is a scarce resource, which is why the attention economy is so economically valuable. Real social change takes a great deal of attention to shift the paradigms and this focus has to be sustained over a significant amount of time. When the attention can keep being drawn away and split, it means that the system itself can stay in place as there is rarely enough energy to force the changes and then, enforce the changes. People participate and then forget to keep an eye on what they had "fought" for.
The next problem with all of this is that many of these events polarize of the population and while two groups might find solidarity at one event, in the next they are at loggerheads with each other. This is creates a highly fragmented group that can continually and easily be turned inward upon itself to draw attention to or away from topics by those who control the narrative.
As I have said before, the narrative isn't the story in the news, it is the one each of us holds about the world and the one that makes our purchase decisions, on everything from whether we "get fries with that" to which political slogan we support. At the end of the day though, we are subject to manipulation and, we keep buying-in to the system as we keep consuming what the system puts on our plate of attention.
If you want change in this world, eat differently and understand that real and lasting change takes time. Patience is a virtue for a reason, but it isn't about waiting, it is concerned with the outcomes of action. But just like the cluster of skills needed to develop, where that activity is placed matters. It might feel great to be part of a social movement, but it rarely leads to where people want it to go, because the leaders of it do not want it to go there. You can't change the system by asking those who benefit from the system just the way it is, to change.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Words not only of truth, put important truth. If you are waiting for someone to make changes or even following someone who promises changes, you are almost certainly wasting your time and energy that could be better focused.
Yet there have been changes. Some of them I presume to be world wide, even though I only truly know the US. Real, lasting social change comes at a glacial pace until it finally starts to move. I think that could be true for many of the things we face today. Not the least of which is crypto and blockchain technology. I ultimately believe that we will persevere but at a glacial pace. Most will get bored or tired and leave. Maybe even multiple times before the glacier visibly moves.
Thank you for another 'thinking post'. I really do appreciate them.
I sometimes try to imagine a world where the majority of the world just stop doing what they do and start doing something outside of the program. What happens if for example, everyone stopped consuming junk food, or stopped paying their tax.
Once moving, it snowballs and in time, it seems so obvious, as if it has always been that way. The resistance to new tech is a good example. In the late 80s and early 90s, most people swore they would never carry a phone with them - now, they can't be without it.
At this stage, there is the time for entry, exit and reentry - but those who enter and then hold their position as a "just in case" will benefit greatly. We have all the technological knowhow to be mainstream now, we just don't have the social support, the paradigm shift.
Thanks for taking the time to read, think and comment :)
We are a privileged generation, and because of that were also a spoilt generation. Everyone seems to over bloat their efforts and thus their expectations on rewards. As common virtues die out, it will be impossible to maintain even a somewhat functional human society, except we wanna be robots.
The now vs tomorrow battle is one I am very familiar with. Given a chance to do it over and over, 95% of the times I will always pick tomorrow over instant gratifications.
Entitlement issues on a mass scale. We are programmed already, robots made from flesh and blood.
I think if even half of us did half of this, the entire world would shift.
It takes a unique experience to drift from the norm these days, at least from my personal experience
Yes, which is part of the problem, as the norm is a position of supporting the status quo.
I always wait. Use my internet for a month and you will learn to be patient and do something else while you won't and wait and wait and sooner or later you no longer care. 👍💕
I remember taking 4-5 days to download a hundred meg or so, and that was pretty fast :)
One of the benefits of learning to wait is that other things can be done while waiting, and those things can add value to whatever it is when it finally arrives.
The parallel between impatience and impotence in the text is quite interesting and makes room for a very nice - and important - debate.
I think only some people will ever take the time to actually think about these things, even fewer will make a change in themselves upon them.
Right now it seems people want change, one of the problems is they do not know what change they want, nor how to go about achieving it. This leads to a lack of patience in people, with no plan and no idea of what outcome they want; no plan of action, no direction, no concept of the direction they are traveling leaves them in a complete state of confusion. When you are confused it is hard to have patience
But the "feeling" that they are creative and talented. =D
Es tan amplio el tema que tocas “tolerancia a la frustración” tan importante como otras habilidades, por eso en la actualidad vemos niños y jóvenes suicidándose por cosas tan sencillas como “sus padres no le compraron el teléfono que quería”, abandonando trabajos e incluso relaciones sentimentales por no tener un mínimo de tolerancia. Es una habilidad importante que como padres tenemos el deber de desarrollar en nuestros hijos.
!ENGAGE 25
Parents think they are providing for their children, while they spoil them. They think they are protecting them, while they make them less capable to cope in the world.
Así es, yo tengo una hija de 7 años y se molestaba por cualquier cosa trivial, ahora aplico algunos cambios en casa. Si desea comer una golosina le dio que debe esperar 30 minutos, si está mirando netflix no le permito ver más de 2 capítulos seguidos y así en diferentes actividades. Tratando que comprenda que las cosas en ocasiones no llegan al instante. Preparándola para la vida, pues para muchas cosas grandes de necesitará se paciente, tolerante, constante.
For sure. A little dose of life's reality is healthy for kids and something every parent should introduce. It isn't easy to find balances, but it is worth it.
ENGAGEtokens.Attention is indeed a scarce resource. And on this impatience diet society has been on for quite some time. I take it as an overstimulation of the reactive system. If you can't get it fast and as you want it you get irritated and react promptly without too much thought. Therefore.... Yes... The masses are part of this kind of mentality. The diet of the impacient ones has to change. Slowly. But it is hard to put a vision of future change in front of someone who can't see straight due to emotions.
I am not sure if they will change or the systems they use will have to change. The problem is, they seem quite content to continually lose - because they think they are winning.
Yes. How can you approach such a person? It is almost convincing the blind they are blind when they think the whole world is the way they (can't) see it.
We are the society of instant gratification. I press a button and the information of the world is at my fingertips.
"With great power, comes great responsibility"
We all have this great power.. access to endless knowledge (and.. unfortunately, we are not using it correctly).
Research papers in grade school used to require multiple sources regardless of the topic. We would need to cite 5 or more sources for a paper as simple as the United States civil war. Doing this type of research taught you how to differentiate between good sources and bad sources and it also gave you a broader perspective on a single topic. It seems like we have lost our way and will only use one source, if any, without actually validating who is saying the information that we're citing or what their sources were to get to their conclusion.
It is very disappointing to watch that this is where society is going...
We have the most access and volume as at any time in history, yet we seem to be very limited in what we consume, perhaps more so than ever before. We consume far less than what actually affects us and for more of what is irrelevant to our daily life.
One of the best periods of school I did was in English, a semester on "bias in the media" - everyone should do at least that level. Everyone should also do a basic economics course. There is a reason it is in't mandatory.
Impatience is the reason why people fall for many ponzi schemes. I learnt my lesson in 2017 in a hard way. Impatience does not allow you analyze properly. I think the social media contributes to the impatience in this generation... Everybody wants to blow..
My country people say "everything na time" meaning everything has its time . When it is your time, it is your time.
Until people can understand this , impatience will keep on building up in this generation
Impatience and greed. People want fast results with minimal effort, so look at the potential outcome, not the risks. It is why so many fall for Discord scams.
Sometimes it is so difficult to envisage the potential outcome you know?
Wow... concrete rational thought
Thanks :)
Very relevant post.
Perhaps it is always relevant, we just don't pay attention except at times like this?
There was a time when my whole family had to wait a week for an episode of X-Files. You know, the show about aliens and paranormal creatures. The thing is, i think this impatient nature of the latest generations is a by product of modernization. If we get to that level where we start pointing fingers, we might find the capitalist world order at fault. We are at a point where even the entertainment now a days are sold in wholesale. So theres that.
Do you know what drives capitalism? Consumption. Yes, it is at fault, but we as consumers can demand different and the supply changes.
With everything getting faster day by day, i don't see how the train will slow down ever.. Like today I saw a video on Youtube where linus (great tech wiz) unboxed an SSD card that is so fast that its i/o is at 29 gigs.
Now when midlevel consumers see these products, not this but similar ones, they think how it will make their life easier. But they dont care that they dont even need it. Thats how the demand increases. And then when the producers start scaling up and getting the price down where its still luxurious but more people can buy now, viola, now you have social conformity of a product that has little use for individual consumers.
It will be very hard for people to choose morale over cheap luxury.. And if that ever happens, we, humans will be the hardest working species on planet earth. Even surpassing ants. And thats quite something.
But not impossible. I don't think it even has to be so difficult, it is just that currently we choose shit and the consumption isn't just in goods, it is also politics and information. Buy shit, eat shit.
Yeah, thats some honest truth right there. When we can monetize anything, this is bound to happen.
Sometimes I think that the dystopian novels I read throughout my childhood, I might be living in one right about now.
And here we sell 3 seconds as fast.
We always talk onboarding complexity and those components, yet I’m sure that for many modern users our loading times alone are a deterrent already. Not to mention those 3 seconds to ”mark as read”.
I am wondering if this should be handled on the interface level where it appears instantly while the 3 seconds is handled in the background.
Unless there’s an update to the hive mind system which fixes it, it would be a good solution to do on interface level. Especially if like peakd there’s an error queue anyway to notify if it failed.
But it applies on multiple aspects. Take for example following people, also need to wait three seconds to follow the next one. Very poor experience if an app shows a list of recommended users or you want to start by following a bunch followed by the person who onboarded you.
These are minor details but I can imagine for select demographics they actually aren’t that minor. Even four years ago, well in the mobile first era already, 3 seconds was absolutely slow.
!ENGAGE 30
Yep, it is definitely an issue for a growing number of people, at least those who are under 30 :D
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#PoSh
Patience is indeed and excellent quality to have in one's life.
But patience for its own sake is most often worthless, as if there are no sustained actions towards the intended goal, then one is indeed waiting for nothing.
We often see the power of skills development at work in people's lives and even just basic skills can change a person's staid and settled life.
Resignation however poses a big problem. "This is my life, this is how it is and I can do nothing about it, so I am not even going to try"!
From one of the best "self-help" books ever
One of the worst excuses in life - victimhood.
Exactly-"victimhood" as an excuse at many times for sheer laziness.
"Why must I work if my name is on a list for the past 12 years, as the government has promised to build me a free house if I vote for them"?
"And I also receive a welfare allowance for each of my 8 children, so we rather wait patiently"!
I realize that the above is a bit out of the context to the field that you were discussing, but the "Gestalt" overall picture worldwide doesn't quite paint a great picture for the values of change.
Now don't laugh as I have never read this Dr Seuss. Just asked Marian and she knows him as he writes childrens books?
Certainly knows what he is talking about!
Victims always have an excuse as to why they can't.
Oh my!!! :D You are missing out. Yes, children's books of, The cat in the hat and Green Eggs and Ham, fame :)
A few years ago, I sent Oh, the places you'll go to a friend of mine on Steem. It ha valuable lessons for kids and adult alike in it.
Yeah, Marian mentioned the cat in the hat story. That peace that you posted is indeed a great one for some adults that we know.
Her sister teaches at primary school, so I will send it on to her as well.
Courtesy of an ex Aussie rock star of course!
I loved this paragraph, you're writing is very intellectual and thought provoking.
I'll tell you a lazy man would not read your posts it takes too much attention and focus to read. 🙂
Interesting in the Bible patience Is also a big virtue and part of the fruit of the spirit that every child of God should bear and manifest in their lives.
Hey! I like your topic!!! No comment for this post! I enjoy reading it!