W.I.E.R.D: What I Enjoyed Reading & Discussing (week 17 2021)
Some great reads from the internet this week
Pandemic
Someday, when this is all behind us, children may ask what it was like to live through a global pandemic. Given the primacy effect, we’ll probably start with the moment we realized something weird was afoot—my canceled Delta tickets, my sports-fan husband’s lost NBA season, and sense of taking off in an unfinished plane.
Though we may vividly recall “how it began,” many of our pandemic memories will be hazier.
Meaning
I find that the source of so much unhappiness in the world is our relentless hunger and quest for meaning. Society tells us to grab our life by the fucking horns, direct it toward the center of gravity known as “human purpose,” and do everything in our power to get there before we die.
In this futile pursuit of escaping the absurd, nothing will ever be good enough because we are always chasing an elusive grand narrative, our overarching meaning of life. We will forever be chasing our own tails, wondering when the hell the universe will answer our individual calls for purpose.
As the leader of an organization, group, or project, one of your top jobs is to inspire and galvanize your team through a variety of targeted communications, including live expressions, emails, videos, chats, social media posts, and presentations. These communication opportunities are critical. According to leadership expert and former CEO Douglas Conant, “Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future.”
But when leaders construct those messages, some old habits die hard — with many unknowingly choosing words that convey less commitment than intended. Using weaker words diminishes a leader’s impact and blunts their ability to inspire. This weakness is better demonstrated than explained, so I’m suggesting three linguistic tactics that will help you more accurately and powerfully say what you mean and mean what you say
In an era defined by slow growth and flatlined productivity (if not outright economic stagnation) and marked by widening inequality and underemployment, “money” feels at once deadly serious and stupidly silly. Seen from this viewpoint, the pandemic economy isn’t an anomaly but a heightened version of one possible future: a world where money is abundant but safe long-term investments are rare and where “getting rich quick” is less an American pathology and more the best bet for a stable life — assuming you think such a thing is possible with ecological catastrophe looming.
It isn’t just the sounds that make these films feel more than real. They use the absolute highest-resolution cameras available, what Chang calls “military-grade lenses.” The images on any modern television are thus crisp as fuck. Special techniques such as slow motion, time lapse, and underwater filming capture details that you simply can’t see any other way. Most series include at least one long-exposure shot of the night sky, a technique that makes the stars and Milky Way pop in a way they never will to your naked eye, no matter how far away you get from artificial lights. I am particularly obsessed with the depth of focus in many of these films’ shots. It is literally inhuman.
Thanks for reading through.