Tag: discovery

Marketing through fear.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Through evolution, if there has been a singular thread that the human mind has been able to hold on to apart from being creative it has been the thread of respecting and taming fear! Join me here as we take a quick look on how this space of fear- has gone to shape us, what we do as individuals and societies and why the marketing of fear is not limited only to companies that sell products and services, but runs beyond that and is much deeper than you can think! So here we go!

Fear- the most basic of human emotions and something that has gone a long way to make who we are today. Fear certainly played it’s part to ensure that as a species we survived and thrived. Experts have written books upon books on how fear helps and how it harms, so I am not going to go ahead and more to that bit, but this is the base point that we will have our piece anchored upon- the singular fact that fear works and perhaps works too well to ensure that we survive and we thrive.This is why people who do market through the angle of fear- almost always get what they set out to achieve! Let me explain!

The pandemic sure enough has brought the entire humanity face to face with a situation that even by standards of pure science and scientific research is mind boggling and giving a tough time even to the renowned experts in the respective fields of study- but what do we observe as we look around? You have anti-viral clothing- formal wear, you suddenly have anti-viral “x”,”y”, “z” and almost everything from the ball pen that you hold in your hand to the mobile cover that you may have or the humble body wash/ hand soaps all of them have been suddenly transformed into oversight anti-viral heroes sure enough with that golden sly condition of 99.99%*** written and said all over as the choreographed visual sleight is played out! Not to forget the sudden wonder foods that have cropped up which are supposed to keep you safe by boosting your immunity even as you smoke and drink and load cholesterol in your system! I mean really? The marketing through fear angle when it comes to what we consume as humans is not limited to this pandemic alone! Let us jog down the memory lane!

If you have been observant, try and recollect how food was marketed to you- whether it was that milk- for protein and health or those humble oats, that white meat, that steak, that vegan movement, that fish with supposedly the most potent pack of Omega 3 fatty acids or those canned shrimps, to the whole narrative of micro plastics in sea food, antibiotics in meat, pesticides in plants and fruits , to chemicals in formulation…so if you actually walked through this who;e circle- by now- you would have checked out almost everything that you can think of eating or drinking simply because for every one narrative that says you should have it else you will get “abc” problems, there are competing narratives which suggest exactly the opposite which say, if you have this, you will certainly get “pqr”. So finally people do what they can, ignore as much as they can, apply science if they have the time and energy and if it is available with them try to apply age old granny’s wisdom and common sense and get moving ahead in life! The people who get sold into these narratives are the ones’ who are entrapped for ever and it is these masses that are than played over by people who want to sell to them whatever they please to, whenever they choose to and at a price that they command! If you thought this fear led communication is only limited to marketing of products and services or the world of communication, think about it- there is virtually not one sector which is untouched by this malaise! Even Governments play out the same strategy, the only difference being that their playbook gets camouflaged into visual-less,boring and printed pointers (change of rules you see) which are often ignored and missed until the IRS or the tax man in your nation comes home paying a visit to you! Let me explain this space too quickly!

Governments the world over have the big task of managing societies- societies which are at times diverse, cohesive, divisive, polarized, idealistic, plural, liberal, accommodating, welcoming, closed..so on and so forth. The matter here is not about what is right or what is not so right, you need to see in this space, how is your government (if you have one!) working on the entire social fabric that you exist in- what is the story that is has been selling to you- do you or rather did you ever or maybe – do you always get a sense that the government is always trying to reach out to you and tell you something that is not right! Think about it, when was the last time that a leader of a society/ nation took to the stage and said, you had given me “x” time and I had 10 things to provide and this is what I have accomplished! Well, hardly any right? So humans, being humans- it doesn’t matter whether you are just who you are or you lead a nation- when you have nothing to say, they spin a story and since being in politics, crime won’t help, neither will any of the other vices, fear is the only instrument of choice to distract, divert and draw people to a non-issue that either doesn’t exist and if it does, blow it so much out of proportion that, by the time everyone is consumed by it- people are left wondering and saying to themselves, ” What was all that about, anyway”!

Whether they tell you stories of the enemy within or around, whether they paint the picture of climate change (even as they themselves clear forests- unknown to you!) or whether they talk about eradicating poverty- while they sustain and increase their personal wealth- all that approach is to instill fear and sell fear- aggressively or subtly to ensure they are able to manipulate and control and get what they want the society to do and allowing only permissible flexibility to resist/divert or stay non-committal- anytime that percentage threatens to wreck the balance of the social balance- an incident will come to the limelight and very often that just goes on to reinforce the stories earlier sold by marketing fear!

Final words, well, whether it is the promise of that tooth paste in your hands about being anti- whatever or that apparel which assures you 99.99%** of whatever that makes sense or it;s that news about that bad country, or bad people or those Vs Us kind of a narrative- all and each of these nudges are to make you feel vulnerable, unsafe and anxious- because it is only when you are vulnerable, opened up and exposed with a mind filled with self-doubt and confusion- that a marketeer or a government will be able to plant the seed of fear and if you make the mistake of allowing that to happen and you go on to nourish it- well you just end up writing a blank cheque to your life- some call it loyalty, I call that ignorant slavery! So what’s the way around, is there any? If everyone seems to be hell bent on manipulating and conspiring all the time! Read on!

Individual awareness, access to multiple verified sources of information and education are the essential ingredients for empowering people to compare, contrast and discern of what is actually unfolding! Debate, discussion in a directed manner to address an issue or a challenge or a developing problem are all but the next steps followed by proactive implementation of legislative steps to safeguard and govern the society with transparency and clarity! Sure enough seems to be a fairy tale, because the moment this happens, what we have is distributed ownership of society where no one member of the society is more important than the other and everyone is as equal and as important as the other person and this is what a few will never want the many to have access to and hence the story of marketing and selling through fear will go on and on unless you are able to discern at your own level and share that insight around your sphere of influence so that at least a section of the society is able to see clearly what lies ahead and is able to save the day for the many- should the time ever arise! This is the space where new leaders are born and new orders are created!

Remember, fear must be respected to be overcome, but not surrendered to! No one overcame fear by surrendering, people have always conquered fear by embracing it!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, until then stay safe and stay wise!

The life of ideas.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

With over 7.5 billion of us around, every second there is a thought, an idea coming to birth and dying away somewhere around this planet! This article tries to look into what makes ideas stick, what makes them fizzle away and why some never see the light of the day and importantly why like with everything else, its not about how many ideas but rather, what’s THE Idea, that always goes on to make the difference! So here we go!

As humans, even when as we come to this world as a fragile bundle of soft and hard parts, that wonderful hard wiring of nature- called curiosity kicks in much before we begin to connect and make real sense of the people and objects around us. The initial formative years are where all the difference is created- between genius innovators and smart innovators and day dreamers! Someone rightly said this, we are all born intelligent and smart, it’s the education (really speaking the quality of education) and the social framework that ruins our potential and with that our ideas and the intrinsic ability to ideate! Certainly I am not suggesting that education is bad or under-serving- the real issue is that much of today’s education is directed at asking individuals to think in a particular way (which serves the immediate social context!) rather than simply helping them to master the process of creative thinking! Like the great philosophers have said earlier, real teachers and masters never ask their student what to see- rather they tell them where to look- what they find, interpret, infer after seeing what they do see, is what creates that differentiation between the power of individual minds to be either awesome, rich or average! Anatomically speaking we can’t be comparing about our brains more than what we can about our complexion or natural color of our eyes or hair, what matters is irrespective of what we are endowed with, how well is that we end up using what we have rather than cribbing about what we don’t have (in many cases its good that we have what we have!) Knowing this background of competing complexities, its really a wonder that humanity has been able to come up with clutter breaking innovative thoughts, ideas and implement them and contribute to the progress which has git us to the point where we are today! Not to forget, behind every success story of an idea, are hidden hundreds, if not thousands of stories of failures and second best solutions which never saw the light of the day, simply because, when it comes to ideas-during a bygone time of our history- it was about- who arrived first and now it’s about who markets it the first! Needless to say, behind every celebrated innovator, are hidden in the closet, skeletons of hundreds of equally intelligent and wise souls- who simply were failed not because of anything to do with their idea- but the simple essence of timing- being there in that moment of time, place and audience- when it mattered the most! So where does the journey of an idea begin really? How does it unfold and what is there for us to learn and unlearn about it? Read on..

Human curiosity when given the right contextual settings rewards us back with an amazing result, ingenuity and the ability to come up with complex or simple solutions that provide relief to some pressing challenges which are in front of us! As long as the immediate surroundings are conducive, receptive and eager to adapt the idea into their fold- as a society or a nation- the idea will live to see the light of the day, then what follows the story of its extent of success is more to do with the quality and the content of the idea- how much meat that idea has intrinsically within and how much is that really dependent on the original ideator! Let me explain this! We have all now about the great surgeon in our country who changed the face of some surgical method and thereby made it easy for everyone to access and get healed! Well now since this technique is perfected by that particular individual, needless to say, as long as he stays there, it works, even if he were to train others, there is never a guarantee that they will be as good as he is or if they will continue to remain as economical and accessible as this person was! So you see, in this case this great idea will only as long as this person is there and with his going away, the context of that idea will never remain what the original thought would have been behind it! This is a classical example wherein the idea remains as the sovereign domain of the Ideator!- Nothing good or bad about it- it’s just that some ideas are supposed to stay this way as far as their lifespan is concerned! Great artistes, innovators, designers, engineers- virtually everyone whoever came up with a creative genius of an idea which could be done and executed in a specific manner- always ensured that the idea had a limited shelf life- albeit the lifetime of the original ideator!

Next, we have those moments in history where the opportunities were out there hidden in plain sight and all it took was some casual or directed observation of an individual to create a rage and a new order or etiquette within societies to adapt and move on with a new lifestyle. This is the domain of ideation wherein the birth of the idea has largely been to facilitate ease of living for humanity and all it takes is one person to observe carefully and plan out a way around the problem! Recent examples the drones that come to drop off your shopping bags, the hailing apps to get a cab or a transport, sure enough that online shopping portal- which has simply gone ahead to make our lives easy and expensive! Well, if you have a closer look to all these modern day, application driven or rather technology based ideas that have made ease of living a possibility- one thing is common that is- they are empowering, simplified, well designed end-to-end (else they would not stand a chance for a day) and they are salable, reproducible and no one is ever complaining about the format or the scheme of the model being replicated- because it just goes to add to the reinforcement power of the original idea and thereby ensures that people stay glued to this space- Basically as more and more people tend to emulate- more and more people start to believe this is the right way and tight thing to do- so these are those ideas which alter lifestyle sand bring about change, sure enough they come with their own costs and banes- which we will discuss some other time!

Finally, the space of that club of ideas, which I call them as milestones in humanity which changed the equation for us to advance further like never before! These are those ideas which come through the mind of a genius but then have to be carefully crafted, worked and developed on an ongoing basis to ensure that ideas stays in-sync with the time and continues to serve the purpose that it has been created for! Very often, this is the space of ideas that come from the areas of pure scientific research and applications that go on to work in various areas of our society from thereon! There are multitudes of industries where you can find these ideas, that exist and thrive- whether its the aviation sector, the weathermen around the world, the medicines and medical devices that keep you alive longer than you actually should be around, that technology of drip irrigation which enabled deserts to bloom, the whole concept of renewable power and integrated electronics, so on and so forth, many such- All these are what I call as great ideas that came from one mind but through collaboration, creativity and openness became better and better with time and today our world seems to be a better place largely because of these collaborative ideas that live their own life alongside us- simply refusing to go away in majority of the cases these have been iconic and a blessing; but in a few rare cases these have been colossal disasters and are as yet a looming danger on our head- yes, you guessed it right that troubled double edged sword of the connected world through social media and all that snoopy surveillance that goes along through the gadgets that we use (or at times abuse, should I say) that led to this unwanted and unwelcome development- which also has ended up sticking around with us!

To give it a kind of sense, an idea whose time has come, is perhaps the most potent force, the reality of that fact although remains within the confines of the contexts where that idea is going to be deployed and how far or how deep it serves of impacts societies! An idea, in some cases as we saw, lives as long as it’s creator lives, in a few other cases, that idea which has been crafted stays much longer even after the creator has gone away- like a gleaming monument testimony to human intellectual finesse and in yet other cases, the idea simply breathes through us and lives alongside us- with every push of a button, there’s an automated idea algorithm already shaping the future of that application that you hold today or that purchase you did today and with every action, engagement, and disengagement we are creating and contributing to the ideas of tomorrow which will either ending up serving us the way we want them to or end up altering our approach and behaviors and make us behave the way the ideas want us to! If you ever wanted to get spooked by living in an era of runway idea and ideas created by machines- well we are already into it and at the moment wading through knee deep waters and with time, we will learn to swim and dive or drown away depending upon whether we adapt or ignore!

I will leave you here, for now; do take a pause to reflect on the idea that either you are working upon or shaping and think for a moment what its is all about and whether you are altering it or you are being altered by it, for that alone will define the future of humanity and decide whether we are able to guard our innate curiosity to be ever more enterprising and ingenious or we surrender to technology to come up with predictable scenarios of the future with needless to say predictable outcomes and pathways!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article, until then stay wise, think, ideate and live that idea!

The damaging myth of Immortality!

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Ask anyone what they want to achieve in life and the eventual answer will lead you to one definite truth- “Everyone wants to be remembered”, Well reasons can be different-good or bad- duration can be different long or short- but the fact remains- people have this urge to be remembered and recalled and guess that is what is a hallmark of humanity- nothing wrong or right about this space- the real fun begins with the concept, the contextual relevance and the eventual reality of what “Immortality” really means and how it will in all probability manifest! Join me over the next few minutes in attempt to simplify and add clarity to this ambiguous space! to know and learn why, as humans we are the way we are!

To begin with the concept is as humorous it can be, I mean to be immortal essentially you have to die and the best part is once you are dead, you don’t ever know if you really have achieved what you had set out for while you are alive! Sounds weird right? but well that’s how plain stupid and ironic the whole shit is! But wait, in’st the world full of autobiographies and records of great people who have created or destroyed the world- Well sure it is, but if you dig deeper, you will realise the number of such documents only exploded exponentially since the mid- 1700’s once the ability to print and record became mechanical! Search any medieval time frame of history or even ancient records, you will always find that even the greatest of all civilizations that ever existed and flourished had a limited number of documented recordings (compared to the last 400 years) whether in text- or through inscriptions on the stones or whatever medium was possibly used! What does this tell you? A couple of things, firstly, majority of the people who got recorded in history in greater details- lived at a time when they were too brilliant or simply the finest among the best- either they weer surrounded by real idiots to look smarter or on that rare occasion (the period when science flourished early 18th century) you had a dazzling collection of the finest minds which catapulted the breakthroughs in science and technology almost simultaneously across Europe and the Atlantic! Secondly and most importantly, none of the people who came to be remembered for longer times post their departure, never lived their life pursuing “immortality” , they basically kept things as simple as they could for themselves and went through their lives doing what was best possible and the way they could create an impact with what they had within themselves and around themselves in terms of resources and competence! As they say- once you start acting to the best version of yourself the world aligns itself to serve you and your cause! Whether that is a good one or bad one – contextually differs and let’s leave it at that! So you may want to ask me around now, fine so what?

Well, the problem is that people, in today’s era go about their lives as if they are going to live forever and are so obsessed with the fallacy of creating so called “legacies at work”, “signature statements” and so on and so forth, without realizing that, given the level of complexities of our time, unless you don’t do anything which has a radical, immediate and sustaining value of creation for the greater good of humanity- you will too fade away as just another “death count” in the ocean of humanity! Perhaps you will be lucky enough if you your grand kids remember you, well that will be the maximum that you will earn- as far as your tryst with immortality is concerned! Consider this, each day whether you like of hate it- you will touch some form of plastic, nylon based material- how many of you would know the story about the people behind the invention of this material? We all know about the Wright Brothers and the first powered flight of humanity- how many of us know all the fine engineers and designers who went on to develop and build on those principles to shape the amazing machines that we fly today? Well, don’t panic neither do I know all of them, so even I am as blank as you are- this is exactly the point- you see many of these great people would have spent a major portion of their lives- at times their entire life- creating an amazing machine for humanity or some great technological value that made our lives so comfortable- but in their giving up of their whole life for this cause- what have they got in return? Unless you are some kind of driven by research and bitten by the “Why” bug, you will never want to walk into the library and find for yourself from the dusty books to learn what all transpired in those times, through the journals of science and know the efforts that went into making our lives what they are today! We are just fine with a search string on a search engine and more often then not quite happy with the unfiltered and unverified garbage that it throws at us!

As much as it is true that great inventors, innovator’s and fine people who aided and accelerated discoveries and contributed to make our lives the way they are today, never went after the maddening craze and urge to be remembered forever- by uploading selfies, writing and re-writing books or posting online videos etc– well, you may argue had the technology been there- they would have- well, who knows, may be you are right too! But the focus here is- critically about how they lived their lives- they lived their lives with a finite purpose and focus – and yes- except for those few lucky rich inventors and scientists a majority of them were average wealthy co-creators who were able to strike a balance between their work and personal lives even as they went about creating magic for the centuries ahead! So what is this telling you- Not to forsake your today for a tomorrow, especially when you are not going to be around to relish it! Well, don’t jump the gun and say, I am asking you to be selfish, I am just asking you to be honest and accept the fact that you will not be there forever- so for the time you are there- Learn to create more value and whatever that you want to create in the “now” of your time and not being bothered by anything else! Consider this, you may ace a new way to bake a chocolate cake- you use your today- each day two hours each day for a year to come up with this super wonderfully delicious chocolate cake- now you have two choices- either keep baking and serving people as long as you are alive and then the recipe dies with you or write a book – create a video and let the people relish the goodness of what they end up making for themselves! But if you try to start thinking how people will enjoy the cake over next three hundred years, after you are dead- well than you have a serious mental issue which is no more related to immortality but straight way exhibits hallucinatory streaks! These are the seemingly innocent spaces where, the misplaced understanding of immortality ends up damaging people beyond repair in their present! Want to know what immortality is really about? well read on!

If you see the classical texts of any religions or civilizations, chances are that the oldest, the finest and the most famous one’s have been written, inscribed anywhere between 5000-15000 years BCE and some of them are still revered as texts of great value- so if you now analyse the “content” of what these texts say, well they all in a way try to communicate the essence of way of living for humanity and albeit few of them would have created religious or spiritual pathways through the content created- few would be mere civilization documentations mentioning how they went about their daily lives- and whats was meant, how and why- eitehrways the common and the only thread that is unifying and found across all the continents within these seemingly “immortal” creations is the emphasis on “quality of human life, purpose, direction, way of living and societal construct”. So if you are aiming to be immortal- first and foremost your creation has to be at that caliber-that even after 5000 years from now, that work of your’s must hold good and true and if this initial challenge is not enough, you will need to have a mass followership and a real line of disciples who can continue to propagate the idea/thought in a structured manner on an ongoing basis -adapting the same with their tweaks as times evolves through the course of history!

So having given you this secret, if your business or office work- is not helping you come anywhere close to this what I just mentioned, you and I will be all, but a death count and the fallacy of immortality can rest within the confines of our families!- They too will remember if we have given anything to them of merit and value which they perceive! So if you have been wasting your present for those elusive awards, works of fiction, great business numbers and all that- thinking you will leave a legacy and people will remember you- well sorry to disappoint you- no one would really care enough! because we live in times when managing ourselves by itself has become a task unto itself and you too know it very well deep within! So what to do?

Well get a helpful dose of common-sense and start living your life by creating, co-creating experiences which will effect and lead to some value creation for the people around you and the people that you engage with! Stop hallucinating about the right and the wrong- see the context and measure what best can you deliver against the contextual frame that you operate from! If you frame is small and your delivery is large enough- who knows you may just become lucky and really be qualified enough to become an immortal soul! However like it is often the case, we move about societies wherein the societal frames are too wide and too deep and no matter how much we attempt to create a splash the water seldom causes a ripple beyond a small zone and before anyone even reacts/ reads those ripples your life is all but lost within the great history of humanity forever! Lasting fame which remains for the next century or so will be a huge achievement, if you were to ask me what constitutes to modern day equivalent of immortality! Well, and to share with you another secret, unless you work or associate with something that changes the fundamentals or builds further upon or creates value to them, rest assured all that you do or don’t will not go beyond your grand kids!

Living in the “now” to create lasting value makes more sense and is perhaps the only incremental way to achieve fame (although it may only last for a few generations), without wrecking your mind or the people around by pursuing immortality without any real context! Final words- Immortality is the domain of the fundamentals of human society which pivot on belief’s, religions, philosophies and allied areas- unless you don’t create a lasting disruption within these corridors- lasting immortality will not go beyond your third generation!

I will leave you with my thoughts here and urge you to reflect when you hold your next coffee and look away into the distant horizon, to really understand within yourself -for your own benefit- What is that you are pursuing in your “now”? Fame or Immortality or both? and importantly if you are in the right frame to grow large enough to make that count! Never wreck your today for an unchangeable past or an unknown future, the “now” alone matters and that’s the only thing that each of us has got! What we do with it alone maters!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! Before I forget, thank you for your ongoing support and the mails that come in! Keep writing and do let me know what next you want to read here!