Wide Wild World - a playful way I chose to refer to the experience we the living are having but will only understand when it's done.
While we are still here, I choose to feel inspired by the mistakes champions make, caring pain, loving fear, creativity, writers and anything alive and kicking. It feels good to be inspired by the simple and rather dangerous thought "What if…?"
There is one more thing I am pretty sure about in Life - there will be pain, there will be fear and a whole lot of wisdom at the bottom. This wisdom comes like an afterthought.
We then say : Oh!
Sometimes people get it at the end of their Lives while others allow it to happen while Life is happening - by accepting the gift of such strong and apparently scary emotions as : Pain, Fear, Anger.
Others are born like that. The eyes of those children are ocean deep and star bright.
This miraculous wisdom is more like a bright idea, which is more like a feeling than a thought. A feeling of goodness, newness, of possibility...
With that feeling in your body you move and talk differently, treat yourself and people around differently, see people differently, speak rarely and most importantly - think differently.
You can then see the possibility shadowed by despair, apathy, toxicity, power wars and even by evil.
The monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
This book found me now but it found millions of other reading minds before.
The story has been circling the globe and probably the universes inspiring millions of souls, human and non human.
The message of this book is : It is OK to stop for a moment, the race to the top is not everything there is, there is another way to live, a life outside the fear, the pain and beyond the limitations the society has arrived at, probably in a moment when humanity was in the dark.
The man who wrote the book, Robin Sharma, is still alive and very much kicking. The transformational experience which saved his soul, body and mind from decay changed the settings internally in a way that from that point on he was set to inspire life and the living rather than consume and distort it.
Let's talk. Make effective feedback your superpower by Dr. Therese Huston
This is a monumental book and I am amazed by the fact that not everybody which is a human body and has been destined to speak does not know about it.
Jokes aside, the book is essential when managing the traffic in communication.
It starts with 20 pages of introduction and prepping up, which made me think -Ok, let's start already! But this is a lesson in itself.
Before saying anything we need to listen. Before saying something about someone's work, appearance affecting their performance or anything which is related to the other - there must be a thinking moment when words are chosen and even more so, the intention behind is set up correctly - Do not harm, do good.
There is so much confusion about feedback.
I realize now that I probably never got the feedback I needed. In work settings and in life, I felt as if I had to figure it out by myself. I was the child who made sure the parents were fine, emotionally, and I made sure not to cause any harm. I was always outside of myself trying to see the big picture.
Feedback is the action of speaking something to life, in a way that the receiver get's the message and it inspired to do, be, feel better. There are three types of feedback- appreciation, coaching and evaluation.
First and second ones are enmeshed often. They usually come in one piece. People at the receiver end most probably don't know what to do with it other than say thank you for this big chunk of info which is not telling me anything, unless they have asked for it.
But who is asking for appreciation directly - Hey, boss, appreciate me! Or coaching - Hey boss, tell me what to do? This one is becoming probably more common and people have understood that it is fine to say : Look, I don't know! I need help and I need it from this person because I see them doing what I wish to be doing. The material in his book will teach you how to do that.
Now let's look at this documentary : Coded bias
The documentary is related to books I've been reading and mentioned here previously about the AI silent revolution. Check this.
The film is exploring the darker side of AI and the power behind it. Currently there are just a few companies in the world setting up the pace and the direction for AI which, as we have understood previously, at the moment is a tool invented by humans, orchestrated by humans but developing at a pace and in ways humans cannot understand.
Given that the world we life in now is digital, the way we get things done is digital, the way we interact with each other is through digital avatars, inside digital spaces, we as humans are not prepared for the consequences of such a life.
Our society, containing a whole range of different types of humans, shapes and colors is not represented by AI and their actions. The decisions are taken in way which is excluding a huge chunk of us. We must change that and smart people, people who fight for the good are doing that.
One more documentary exploring the wonders and dangers of virtual landscapes to be exact, the universe of video games.
I am 100% not prepared for this universe. I am nevertheless 200% curious about VR(virtual reality), humans inside it and how that is changing us.
Video games has become an industry of milliards in income and milliards of minds engaging and interacting.
It is simply dangerously seductive, it takes the human out of mortal constrains, worries and responsibilities. It is inhumanly interesting.
That is the reason why millions of young minds are locked in that virtual space. Some fall pray to it, some manage to be fascinated but still exist in a human space. Countries such as China, South Korea, Japan seem to be populated by millions of humans who have already lost the connection to the human reality.
Video games as in virtual reality is something we will probably all be living in soon, to different degrees, as we move toward a world where devices are "intelligent", interactive and always on line, live.
God help us.
Die neue Einsamkeit: Und wie wir sie als Gesellschaft überwinden können by Diana Kinnert
An audiobook which spoke into to my mind though a voice I perceived as friendly, companionate and kind.
Diana Kinnert was born in 1991, she is a bright, young, beautiful mind. An activist, political consultant, she even ran the parliamentary office of Peter Hintze.
The book is a journey though times now gone, the pandemic- caused by humans under Covid. Also about virtual reality, AI, the way we have been mesmerized by this new strange thing, colorful and playfulness of digital objects and intelligent devices.
We have become all children in a play yard. We lost the connection to each other, the connection to our past and future being caught in this strangeness, interestingness but lethal universe inside an universe, brought to life by devices.
The author is analyzing the process and the the effects which such clarity, sharing her own personal moments of deep sadness, caused by the artificial isolation so that is hard not to feel it, maybe even cry it.
The analysis is stretched across the globe, the Asian space being now the geographical, political and economical area where these changes in society and human brain activity are at the center, happening at light speed.
China, South Korea, Japan come up again as the countries where the digitalization of humans, the processes we are using to organize ourselves : the cities, the politics, the food supply chains and so on, are all going through major changes. The change is in full swing.
We do not have a way to know where this change is leading us.
A very interesting book, I like Diana Kinnert and her vision about society and politics.
Scattered minds by Gabor Mate
Gabor Mate is the probably the most sincere, open, courageous doctor and writer I know.
He is generously sharing his personal experiences, the fact that he himself is a human being affected by the Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in this book also (as he does in his other books).
He is exploring the causes for this unknown and misunderstood disorder, affecting millions who at an early age were deprived by that nurturing and reassuring presence needed in a vital way by a child, to develop a healthy and strong attachment to their caregiver, and then to the external world.
Gabor Mate is sharing the experience about himself as a child, born days after the second world war started. He was born in Budapest (Hungary) where the Jewish population was terrorizes in ways we all heard about.
During those days his mother had to leave him, in order to save his life. But sadly this caused his detachment, the estrangement from himself and the world, for a lifetime.
He grew up in a vacuum world, the addictions he then later in life developed were attempts to attach to something safe. But there is nothing safe to attach to in the external world. When this safety is missing also internally ADD is developed.
This is a book for parents, for curios adolescents, for managers for everyone who is now alive and is having difficulties in finding peace and tranquility. The subject matter is very sensitive, the effects of ADD grow deep into the human being and the struggle with it is probably a life long struggle - to connect, to feel, to stay.
Just like any other human struggle, this too is bringing up a nuance of our Human nature.
A mysterious being we all are creating, something we are trying to grasp. The struggle becomes worthwhile when wrapped up in love, a hand shake, an embrace, a smile returned.
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