Transcending culture

Yesterday I was having an interesting conversation over coffees. There is much to be said for our cultural heritage as it's got rich stories and flavours which makes us identify with where we're from. I mean that in a fun way, not something that should limit us. I wondered out loud whether the European nations are better off as one big melting pot (economically obviously yes) where not only borders have ceased having any meaning. Is it a good thing or bad to lose our individual culture as a nation, in the way of stories and traditions that will be lost more and more, or are all of us on this planet quite happy with becoming one culture as eventually all our unique aspects will dissolve naturally? My coffee companion was pointing out that favoring such a thing as 'cultural heritage' can in fact get us stuck in a time warp and create more headaches and problems that are good for us as human beings. My feeling was that he was also referring to dictatorships and harsh ruling in the name of good ol' tradition. Excellent point.

More and more we find that the world is becoming a smaller place in the way of communication and perception. At the same time the need for making connections in Real-time in Real-life are still valued. There are Twitter evenings where people who live in the same area meet up, the same goes for Flickr, Facebook groups and other online congregations. The need for seeing each other face to face remains evident.

So what will our own identity become once it becomes quite meaningless where we are from? I can see for myself that Nico and I have stopped using Dutch traditions already, probably to the bafflement of our dear family. We feel it doesn't feel right to keep up things from our past when we live in a different culture in the present. Only a few things we really like will remain, which are more habits then anything else.

Most likely all of us will start using different points of reference once previous 'anchor' points have gone. It probably doesn't matter except what it does to us, what meaning we need for ourselves. As humans we do have the need to bounce off other people to recognize and evaluate where we are in the world of today. As everything becomes more of the same, what will stand out? Will globalization mean that we are all just Earth folk or will the desire come to the forefront to create smaller communities again as, let's face it: it's hard to really get to know everyone we meet globally. We do like to go back to our essentials as more and more people stop watching the news on television and spend time with their loved ones instead.

The more able we are to adapt and integrate those cultural values we like, the easier it is to move around and talk to others in order to get to know them. Will we really need any place to hold on to as our identity and stories reside in ourselves? It most likely will make us flexible and more open to change.

springtime

With spring officially starting next week I can see it's effect already. There are more and more people about, everyone in Dunedin is getting out of careful hibernation. I see more excitement in peoples faces and cheerful smiles. Lams and calfs jump through the paddocks. Our goatie girls are getting rounder and rounder and generally things are looking up. The weather has been increasingly pleasant.

I was reading an interesting article about design (here, through DesignDroplets). Should we be more critical about what we make? Where we set the bar, scutinize our level of competence? Interesting stuff. Mostly it's about the usefulness of Design and its merit in the world. Hm. I can see where the writer John Barratt is getting at. We can certainly muddle along and 'just do our thing' but to compare and understand our evolutionary growth you need a benchmarker to set it off to. The hilarious thing to me is that the purpose of Design is questioned and whether innovation is usefull? Oh oh. It's like saying to an overexcited toddler: no you can't run before you learn you can't run everywhere. See what I mean?

So too is the life of the wee lambs. They just get up and rush around. They might lose their mum in the process. Ofcourse monitoring and understanding is valuable. When do we know if design actually progresses in a span of a few years? Still, let the benchmark not become a governmental guideline to stop designers going forward as innovation depends hugely on the opinion and results of the one carying out the study. Design becomes excellent by thinking outside the box. It may be far harder to determine what the rules will be to judge design, then to just observe it's evolution.

Generation M: stuff that matters

Sharing with you today:

The Generation M Manifesto
by Umair Haque

"Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

• You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive,

micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing

stuff that matters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.

There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."

What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M?

Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.

Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again.

The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or

"morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.
You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.

But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's

what I mean:
"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."
Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution.

We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.
I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me:

every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.
Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?

Love,
Umair and the Edge Economy Community"

A bit about Umair:

Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business model, and strategic innovation.

If you like to read about his thoughts and about what responses he received because of this Manifesto: click here

photo by Devianart

The village is back

Whether you realize it or not: the world has been toured, discovered, walked about, talked about and experienced. It’s been blogged, transformed into Art, put on YouTube, subscribed to and launched in the theaters. What’s the next trend now that we have “explored” this sphere? Is the western world getting bored already?

We might think we’ve gone global and internet has made it so, still we are humans and we are in need of contact, are affected by our surroundings and always want products. The reality is that the world is now a global village and it’s become small again because of that too. Everything can touch another. It’s becoming an art form now to escape this world of ‘reachness’ as we want to be contacted on the one hand, and to live in peace and quiet on the other. Some of us want to “get back to our roots”. So what’s the story?

You can live your life in a fashion you want to. There are so many possibilities of how to live your life, it’s almost scary to scrawl through the channels. I find it lovely not be connected to television anymore. I don’t miss it either. My family would like me to set up Skype and get a dish sorted on our roof. We appreciate it that they are keen to be in touch, and to have skype again would be nice, but at the same time Nico and I like our quiet weekends and our ‘disconnection’ to town/world. It’s the pros and cons of the modern life. This luxury problem of lifestyle choices nowadays is almost embarrassing.

It’s not that long ago that a baker in a village had to maintain the quality of his bread or he’d be in big trouble. His neighbors would spit him in the eye if he didn’t treat them well and his income and family would be affected. You can decide to buy your bread anywhere in this decade but you may choose to buy it from a family owned business because you like what they make and you trust them. Do you find that the temptation to buy online doesn’t beat meeting an interesting human being? I always got to the post office to pay my phone bill as I used to go there when I lived in Dunedin and now I still do even though it’s a bit out of the way. I go there because they are always great to deal with, I have gotten to know them and they recognize me which is a charming bonus.

Some things will always remain the same whichever way the world changes.
Humans have the need to:

• Have a roof over our heads
• Trade to get goods we need to feed, clothe etc.
• Live in a social environment and context.

Where and how we live in that sense doesn’t matter as we may have Wireless internet or not, the human need is the same, to have our daily needs met, to live with other humans, to reach out and connect, even if the world has become a different place. Looking at the essentials we are all the same. What IS the difference really between a native tribe and a modern one? Only technology and knowledge. Neither is superior, they are just different. There are only choice and options in life. In my humble opinion we have too much luxury. Many of us chase it to a cost that extends the dollar value.

You wonder how much comes down to human evolution, and how much to common sense, in deciding what we want our lives to look like. Let’s hope that modern science does not take away that which makes us human in the first place.