You, like me, are reading the news cycle and thinking… “What the actual F*** is going on right now?”.
Governments can’t seem to decide between becoming an authoritarian state run by a megalomaniacs, or by becoming obtusely passive ‘observers’ whilst the dust settles for them to pick the side of the most fearsome bully.
Big tech seems to be taking every legal swing at our privacy with a galvanized belief that their stock price can’t possibly fall when everyone believes that the future of the world rests on AI, Big Data, ecommerce etc. etc.
Anticipating the Fed’s next announcement is actually easier than shooting fish in a barrel. The motto of ‘Do Whatever It Takes to Keep the Economy From Collapse’ source, whatever that means, is problematic on so many levels — yet our 401k’s are very appreciative.
We, the average Joe’s and Josephine’s of the world, are sitting here watching our hopes and dreams for the next year come crashing down. From couch-dreams of our 2021 jet-setting lifestyle of exotic luxury, down to the basic needs of keeping our retail jobs. We are angry, and we need someone to hate.
But do we really need someone to hate?
A dystopian future has been predicted by some pretty famous books and authors:
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Do you know what one common theme is recurring amongst all of them?
A deep realization that everything they are experiencing was preventable by our forefathers actions/inactions.
Guess what our children will think about our action/inactions this decade?
Channeling the desire to blame someone into a rationalization that our own inactions are the root cause of many of our current problems is not something everyone is capable of doing. It fundamentally requires a self-awareness of the impact of our inactions, which oftentimes individuals do not have the headspace to be able to reflect upon.
A source of my energy has been the persistent focus at being able to channel this frustration into a focused determination to do the best with the variables that I can CONTROL.
What can you, as an individual, control?
The ability to look at a given problem statement and synthesize the dependent and independent variables is something I caught on pretty late in my 4-year engineering degree. But I am immensely glad I learnt it the hard way.
Defining yourself as an ‘engineer’ even though you sucked at it is a hard grain of truth to digest, even if you aren’t lactose-intolerant. Defining yourself as a ‘problem-solver’ is a high bar to set if you can’t really solve many problems, or actively choose not to.
Think about it, how many times were you presented with a seemingly large problem you had no idea how to break-down into digestible bits, so you just gave up before even really giving it a shot?
If you’re anything like me, I’m betting it is or was frequent, and you can relate deeply.
What changed for me?
I read a couple of books to do with product management, which was the field I wanted to develop myself in fully, and couldn’t really push myself to do it until I started to learn how to code.
I coded with a purpose — I wanted to be able to do some data analysis work independently, being reliant on other teams was just not cutting it for my inner voice telling me to deliver, deliver, deliver.
Once I started doing that, through DataCamp, I realized that every problem is just a series of little problems … but in a way that was MUCH MORE practical than my engineering courses.
Now it was easy — do I have the data or the skillset to be able to do this analysis or not? Do I know who or where I can learn the necessary things to close that gap, thereby solving the problem? If yes, what’s holding me back?
What’s holding you back?
Going down that line of thinking will help you rationalize that our current situation is just a series of really big problems, and at the end of the day the average voter can only influence that which we can vote upon.
To create large scale impact without voting is a complicated problem, but awareness can drive change in bigger ways than we may think. A flash mob only happens because everyone knew what to do, when and where. A protest movement happens for much the same logistical reasons.
Whatever your viewpoint, are you passive or active? Are you informed or misinformed? What is your gap between where you want to be, and where you ought to be?
Be the voice of change you want to see. It doesn’t need to take place at work, or with family members, or on Facebook. But at the very least you can have conversations about it with your friends. Those that don’t want to ‘talk about politics’ can talk to you about problems to do with injustices in your personal life.
There is a topic that all individuals have an opinion on, and having a difficult conversation that is respectful and constructive is a necessary discomfort that we all need to go through.
Without tough conversations, tough changes will never occur.
Support causes you care about, put money or your mouth behind it. Speak about it with people and invite them to a respectful conversation. Until and unless we reflect upon our own values, how can we ask nations to reflect upon theirs?
