how to be aware in an unaware world

Tag: love

Advertising
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” Jeff Hammerbacher, an early Facebook engineer, told me. “That sucks.” Silicon Valley began to look an awful lot like Hollywood.”
Above is an excerpt taken from the popular and fascinating biography titled Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance.
I think Jeff is completely right in his sentiment. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of advertising stems from a morally unstable business model.
Advertising produces a lot of meaningless work, invisible products, and unnecessary services.
It’s also a huge waste of human potential and talent.
Reflection
If a product or service is good enough, it should sell itself. It actually needs zero advertising, beyond the initial release.
Rather than advertising, we should outreach aka talk about the things, services, etc, that we actually use and enjoy every day.
I see marketing differently than advertising too.
Marketing is just that, placing a product or service into the market and spreading the word about it. Talking about tried and tested products is far more effective and sustainable than plastering advertisements all over every place possible.
So why is advertising still so prevalent and still so widely used?
Well, for one, advertising is imposed along with a quota in mind, and structured around that quota. And boy do business love their quotas.
Really good marketing is also completely free. Because again, the product or service should sell itself.
People talk, share their interests, and slowly, with honesty, that product or service grows traction and people support it, not because they are fooled into supporting it, but because they actually intend to use it to better their lives.
Same with production, if a company sells something faster than it can produce, it will fail (or fail, re-coupe, fail again, then slimly succeed someday down the road).
Encouragement
My intention in creating these cute little blog posts is to encourage. Encouragement to live mindful, meaningful lives. Without this, my musings come very, very short of having a purpose. So this is why I share a small, completely voluntary encouragement!
I encourage us to consider what we feed the mind. To illustrate this encouragement, below is an old Cherokee parable:
A grandfather is talking with his grandson.
The grandfather says, “In life, there are two wolves inside of us which are always at battle.
One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love.
The other is a bad wolf which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear”.
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”
There is an awful lot of control we forget we have when it comes to what we watch, listen to, read, and spend our hard-earned money on.
I encourage us to write down the ten or so things we buy most daily. If we’re unsure, we can either download a spend tracking app or simply take a small notepad with us everywhere we go and write down everything we spend money on and the amount associated.
I did the latter and got an excellent grasp on where my money was going (cough Amazon cough). And slowly but surely I was able to reduce my dependence on the service and the cost associated with it to zero. That’s right, I completely deleted my Amazon account and haven’t used it for the past year or so.
Thank You
At the very end of each blog post, I also want to thank you, the reader, for tuning in to my cute little tidbits on mindfulness.
Thank you so much for reading or listening to this post, I am so incredibly blessed to have the opportunity and space to write what I love. If you have found any value in my blog, you can support me over at Buy Me A Coffee!
Three Links
And at the very, very end of every blog post here, I want to share just three links that inspired me before, during, or after each post. I will try to have an article, audio bit, and video (for those who learn from different mediums).
October 17, 2023
Photography
“Photography is nothing short of a miracle; a window into humanity, and a time machine in our pocket.”
While sitting in a picturesque, instagramable library called Starfield in Seoul, South Korea, sipping on a warm latte, and observing all these people running around frantically taking photos of the place, I had this realization:
Photography is less about the actual process of taking photos and more about mindfully observing a subject. Whether it is captured or not isn’t the point.
Reflection
I can think of no better use of the common phrase, “quality over quantity” than in photography. What defines a gifted photographer or any artist for that matter, is quality creations not mere quantity of works.
I believe that playing the numbers game is not art, it’s business (and it ought to belong there).
It’s like when Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty encounters a world-renowned photographer in some epic mountain range waiting for a rare snow leopard to emerge from a cave.
Upon finally seeing the leopard emerge from the cave, the seasoned photographer decides not to take the photo he’s waited so long for, but rather to observe the leopard in reverence and awe.
It’s observation, not capture that is the point of that scene. The greatest photos on Earth, I’d defend, are not taken at all.
I’ve been capturing moments ever since my father gave in and gave me his old Canon XTi when I was about 11 years old.
From then on I absolutely fell in love with the process of photography, but more importantly, the act of observation through the camera’s lens. A separation from the outside world and my perspective of it.
Naturally, I’m a horribly and easily distracted person, making observation quite a task, but with a daily meditation practice, photography became more of a mindful activity than a creative endeavor.
As in all forms of art, there comes quite a bit of praise and criticism, which I found difficult to navigate until I remembered, “Oh shit, this has nothing to do with the photo, but rather the seconds or even minutes before the photo”. I realized the point was to pause, think back, and tell a story.
And I began thinking about my thinking when I captured a certain photo. Remembering all that took place inside and outside my head.
Then I wrote long, descriptive captions on almost every photo I published on Instagram (not the most common approach mind you).
I want to show those who stumble upon my memories that there is so much more going on behind the photo than the photo itself can capture.
Encouragement
From the simplest drop of rain sliding down a window pane to the awestruck beauty of the Northern Lights or the sighting of a rare and beautiful thing, there are so many moments of paralyzing awe.
I encourage us to observe ourselves observing the world around us. What moments are meant to simply be observed and what moments call us to capture, caption, and share?
It is knowing that those moments that stop us in our tracks and require our entire attention are the same moments not meant to be captured.
With a little bit of mindfulness, you’ll be surprised by the amount of those moments in a single day.
I am so thankful for the journey in photography I’ve taken since picking up a camera 18 years ago and so excited for a new chapter in observing this big, beautiful, strange, and ever-changing world.
Want to see and read some of the moments I did choose to capture? They are sprawled all over my Instagram.
Links
Thank you deeply for your time and attention in reading this post, it is a rare gift these days. Feel free to comment, like, and share it. You can also support me by Buying Me A Coffee. Thank you in advance!
October 9, 2023
Consumerism
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
– Napoleon Hill
This quote is a stark reminder that the mind is one powerful tool. Bend it one way or another and it can do anything within the confines of modern physics.
For a personal example, I once set off to test and understand my level of discomfort and contentment by becoming a full-blown minimalist and living out of a backpack for at least one year.
Reflection
I reflected a good way into my minimalist self-discovery journey:
Over eight months and thousands of miles later, I now own under thirty items, including a great car that gets me all around this gorgeous country.
My next stop is Ecuador to visit a rekindled friendship from elementary school and explore the many volcanos, caves, and jungles that Ecuador offers.
After that, I will spend some time with dear family and friends in DC before jumping across the pond, as they say in England, to Portugal, and eventually all of southern Spain.
At each spare bedroom or couch, hostel dorm room, or campsite, I let go of something else. Whether it be an article of clothing or a gadget I barely use.
As such, I get to a place of intention, where what I own provides a real sense of purpose and is therefore deeply valued.
But even when something provides both those things now doesn’t mean it will provide it later. That’s when I let go.
What the mind of man can conceive and believe is incredible, and can be quite helpful and constructive.
Take harvesting for example: Farmers work day and night in the field, toiling with their hands and dragging their feet to produce a bountiful and abundant harvest. Through the process, the farmer grows proud of their work and because of it understands the earth and its provisions in great detail.
On the other hand, what the mind of man can conceive and believe is equally incredible, and can be greedy, gluttonous, and costly.
During the Industrial Revolution, man was working towards a future that was better and faster than the previous generation. This conception is called consumerism and it’s factually unsustainable.
Consumerism is both unsustainable for the planet and for human progress, it’s illogical and bewildering really.
And we are wasting such precious human talent on selling more and more and more junk.
I believe we have danced around the seriousness of consumerism for far too long just so we can lay in the comfortable piles of stuff a for little longer.
There is a tangible necessity to redefine capitalism so that it’s both beneficial for us and the planet.
How do we consciously consume without becoming overly dependent on products and their successors?
The company that immediately comes to mind is Apple. It’s a company that I have personally wasted money on my entire adult life.
Do I buy the newest iPhone? Do I upgrade to the newest AirPods? Do I wait until a newer version or do I buy it now?
The amount of time I spend contemplating Apple products and services is honestly ridiculous. My talent is wasted in rumination about a stupid new gadget or gizmo (as my dad calls them).
The fact is, Apple does make great products and services, but there is no need to upgrade every time a new version is released. Doing so costs so much hard-earned money, and more importantly, valuable time.
Apple is no different from any other company born out of capitalism, with majority shareholders, wealthy investors with lots of special interests, and a bottom line for unimpeded growth.
The questions we should be asking ourselves are:
“Does this product or service serve a purpose in my life right now?”
“Does this product or service work just fine in my life right now?”
If our answer is yes, then we can keep and use the product or service until it doesn’t serve a purpose in our lives anymore.
If our answer is no, then we can get creative, try a way to fix it, sell it, or give it to someone who would value it.
These two simple yet powerful questions remind us to come back to what matters, using our many products to fulfill us in some way, and then becoming resourceful in keeping our things in shape.
Another word for this is frugality: A prudent and sparing use or appropriation of anything.
In behavioral science, frugality has been defined as the tendency to acquire goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourceful use of already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer-term goal.
Encouragement
I know this all sounds daunting and difficult but it doesn’t need to be. All it takes is a little reflection, taking note of the things we own, and then deciding to keep them or not.
I encourage us to come back to the present moment, remembering that we already have everything we need to be happy and healthy.
And our capability to be happy and healthy is rooted in mindfulness.
Beyond this is desire, the wanting of the mind.
Remembering this will help alter our relationship with consumerism and clarify our needs.
Resources
Thank you deeply for your time and attention in reading this post, it is a rare gift these days.
Feel free to comment, like, and share it. You can also support me by Buying Me A Coffee. Thank you in advance!
October 2, 2023