Repost: Seth Godin on Expectations and Attitude

When things get a little better every day, we take the good news for granted. It takes almost no time at all for the improvement to turn into an expectation and for the expectation to be taken for granted.

But when things decay, we can't stop thinking about the loss, extrapolating the pattern all the way to doom, and then living with that doom, long before it arrives.

This is a bug in the system of our culture, but that doesn't mean we can't work to hack it. When we curate our media intake (and create our own) and when we decide what story to tell ourselves (instead of accepting the story of someone with different objectives than ours), we can rewire our inputs and the way we process them.

Same facts, different experience. On purpose.

Source: Seth Godin, "The Asymmetry of Decay," Seth's Blog, March 5, 2015, accessed April 9, 2015, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/03/the-asymmetry-of-decay.html.

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Someone who shows up with enthusiasm made a decision before she even encountered what was going on. The same thing is true for the guy who scowls with contempt before the customer opens his mouth.

It's a choice.

This choice is contagious.

This choice changes what will happen next.

This choice is at the heart of what it takes to be successful at making change or performing a service.

More than you imagine, we get what we expect.

Source: Seth Godin, "Enthusiasm and Contempt are Both Self-Fulfilling," Seth's Blog, April 9, 2015, accessed April 9, 2015, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/04/enthusiasm-and-contempt-are-both-self-fulfilling.html.

Local culture vs. Universalization

The tendency of American culture is still readily situated within and geared towards industrialization: mass production, the lowest common denominator, selling to "everyone" by flattening the product enough to make it appealing to the average, the masses. This tendency is seen especially in the difference between musicians authentically rooted in the context of a genre, pursuing and perfecting their work here professionally and with technical precision vs. popular musicians, which takes all that is universal in each genre and flattens it to make it appealing to the masses.

Local—folk—culture is broadcast and universalized; this is the great angst of the hipster. Specific, local fashions become available at J.C. Penny.

Perhaps this tendency also has contributed to the so-called "desacralization of the sacred." For example, Gregorian chant exists for the liturgy. Now, it is available on Pandora, audio CDs (even among so-called "Traditionalist" religious who pride themselves on preserving Sacred Tradition and the sense of the sacred lost in Modernist culture, especially post-Vatican II Catholic culture), and YouTube for casual listening. It appears in a gimmicked form in movie soundtracks and documentaries. The desire to make this form of music popular comes at the price of its very purpose and soul.

On the other hand, there is a growing movement within Western culture to appreciate the unique, the niche, the specific. Businesses that insist on doing things a specific way even if it means that potential profit is lost—these attract attention and spread through word of mouth; these businesses thrive on connection and relation.

Perhaps, then, it is through relation, through connection, through the insistence on the unique soul of a particular thing that it will find its authentic vehicle for spreading and becoming appreciated for what it truly is. The sacred can hence remain as such without sacrificing itself.

Repost: Seth Godin on the Connection Revolution

22. The connection revolution is upon us

It sells the moment short to call this the Internet revolution. In fact, the era that marks the end of the industrial age and the beginning of something new is ultimately about connection.

The industrial revolution wasn’t about inventing manufacturing, it was about amplifying it to the point where it changed everything. And the connection revolution doesn’t invent connection, of course, but it amplifies it to become the dominant force in our economy.

Connecting people to one another.

Connecting seekers to data.

Connecting businesses to each other.

Connecting tribes of similarly minded individuals into larger, more effective organizations.

Connecting machines to each other and creating value as a result.

In the connection revolution, value is not created by increasing the productivity of those manufacturing a good or a service. Value is created by connecting buyers to sellers, producers to consumers, and the passionate to each other.

This meta-level of value creation is hard to embrace if you're used to measuring sales per square foot or unites produced per hour. In fact, though, connection leads to an extraordinary boost in productivity, efficiency, and impact.

In the connected world, reputation is worth more than test scores. Access to data means that data isn't the valuable part; the processing is what matters. Most of all, the connected world rewards those with an uncontrollable itch to make and lead and matter.

In the pre-connected world, information was scarce, and hoarding it was smart. Information needed to be processed in isolation, by individuals. After school, you were on your own.

In the connected world, all of that scarcity is replaced by abundance—an abundance of information, networks, and interactions.

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Source: Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams (What Is School for?), Seth Godin website, accessed July 26, 2014, http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pdf.

Memo: Implications of Post-Industrial Age on Catholic Faith Formation

The following are reflections to be pursued perhaps at another time.

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How has/does the industrial and post-industrial age influence the formation of the Catholic faith?

If school education is primarily based on mass-production, industrial flattening, enforcing obedience through fear, and diminishing initiative and experimentation, let's substitute the following:

1. School = Church
2. Principal = Pope
3. Teachers = Bishops/priests
4. Good grades = Following precepts
5. Tests = Judgment
6. Failure = Excommunication & hell
7. Lessons = Dogma/doctrine
8. Classes = Sunday Mass

Consider, then, viewing dissidence less as a sign of disobedience and more as the natural fruit of resistance to a religion filtered by a culture that no longer applies. My meaning must be very clear here:

It is not religion in itself but as it has been inculcated in an industrial/post-industrial culture.

Questioning the purpose of the multiple-choice test and its fruitfulness for today's economy and culture is analogous to questioning the receptivity of the average man to Church teaching in relation to common living.

The A+ student is the student who can memorize answers the best, not the one who experiments and finds out why the answer is the way it is. But there is a cognitive dissonance in today's cultural mindset: uniformity contrasted with individual initiative.

Even the cultural revolution of the '60s didn't change how schooling was done, how the economy was run. Clearly it affected how parishes were run, how the liturgy was celebrated. Is it possible that Catholicism today is unconsciously viewed with the same lens through which the rest of the post-industrial economy is viewed? Is it possible that reluctance to submit to authority may be partially fueled by the perception of a religious culture that inculcates fear and squashes curiosity?

Finally, what are the implications for the formation of the faith in such circumstances? What are the implications for an educational institution to call itself "Catholic"?

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This question touches upon the nature of the relation between faith and reason itself. Faith accepts God's revelation as a gift, a given; one cannot "experiment" one's way to it. The very nature of reason is dialectical and experimental; reason likes to dig into the mud of reality to discover its nature.

But people forget that reason is the interaction of the mind with being itself, which gives itself. Reason experiments with givens, the fundamental given being being itself. Being is given to reason to examine. Revelation is given to faith to accept, but reason can take revelation and examine it and draw proper conclusions.

Here it is absolutely necessary for a proper guide and custodian of revelation to keep reason from erring. St. Thomas Aquinas noted at the beginning of his Summa Theologiæ that revelation was necessary to make the truth known to man, who otherwise could have come to a knowledge of it only slowly, through much argumentation, and with the admixture of many errors.

Revelation and faith pick up where reason leaves off and make accessible that Being that transcends the created being that is within the normal purview of reason. This transcendence of faith causes darkness in reason, an obscurity because of the object accepted, God Himself.

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Our culture, then, seems stuck in a schizophrenia between: 1) scientific reductionism and industrial reasoning; 2) independent initiative and experimentation that often violates the very nature of the industrial mindset. Yet both poles feed each other—experimentation is tainted by the reductionistic worldview and limits the scope of results and their interpretation. Experimentation is ultimately not free to follow reason where reason ought to lead anyway.

Givenness also requires an attitude of receptivity, and receptivity to givens leads most directly to gratitude. These are attitudes that are often lacking in an industrial/post-industrial/reductionistic society as well as a society that elevates the individual.

The "connection economy" or emphasis on the relative and on what connects us to each other may be a possible aid in relating faith organically to basic social living and learning: liberal learning through a dedication to being or what is. A dedication to being leads inevitably to truth, which is liberating, and all being relates to all being; relation is fundamental to being itself.

Faith formation and Catholic schools, then—those that uphold cura personalis—must embrace the twofold task of 1) fostering the independent and strong use of reason and 2) relating reason within a coherent understanding of reason's place in created being and hence revelation and faith's role in reasonable and free living. But relating reason back to this coherent understanding must be guided by an authority, which is the Magisterium.

Repost: Seth Godin - "Create Your Tribe, Inspire Those Around You, and Share Your Art"

Seth Godin on Generosity

Good blog post by Seth Godin on generosity: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/04/deconstructing-generosity.html

Here it is in a nutshell:

Generosity requires:

1. Meaningful sacrifice—it can't just be a "favor," which implies some sort of recompense;
2. Kindness—i.e. a cheerful giver, one who doesn't act begrudgingly;
3. Design—there must be the sense of deliberateness, that generosity very well may not have been given;
4. Vulnerability–putting ourselves out there despite the possibility of rejection.

Bitterness kills generosity.

Becoming an "Elite"—Prudence

In May 2010, Seth Godin wrote,

In the developing world, there's often a sharp dividing line between the elites and everyone else. The elites have money and/or an advanced education. It's not unusual to go to the poorest places on earth and find a small cadre of people who aren't poor at all. Sometimes, this is an unearned position, one that's inherited or acquired in ways that take advantage of others. Regardless, you can't just announce you're an elite and become one. 

In more and more societies, though (including my country and probably yours [and I'm including virtually the entire planet here, except perhaps North Korea] ), I'd argue that there's a different dividing line. This is the line between people who are actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change, actively engaging--and people who accept what's given and slog along. It starts in school, of course, and then the difference accelerates as we get older. Some people make the effort to encounter new challenges or to grapple with things they disagree with. They seek out new people and new opportunities and relish the discomfort that comes from being challenged to grow (and challenging others to do the same). [...] 

[Becoming an elite is] because of a choice, the decision to be aware and engaged, to challenge a status quo of your choice.

Source: Seth Godin, "Are You an Elite?," Seth's Blog, May 11, 2010, accessed February 16, 2014, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/are-you-an-elite.html.

In more general terms, Godin indicates the option that is available to all regardless of their financial or living circumstances, the option to take responsibility for their actions, their lives, their orientation—and ultimately it will be either towards God or away from God. What Godin is actually talking about, when translated into the language of the Catholic heritage of moral philosophy and theology, is the difference between those with prudence (combined with a certain magnanimity) and those without it.

The Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan called this reflective self-appropriation, a series of actions by which we examine our experience, form an insight regarding it, make a judgment, and then decide to act on our insights and judgments. This process is, really, a contemporary version of what St. Thomas called the steps for acquiring prudence: reflection, judgment, action. It is a necessary step in order to be both a good human as human (for those who are legitimately ignorant of Christian revelation, wherever they may be) and a good Christian. Prudence shows us our proper goals and the right means to attain them. Magnanimity encourages us on to endeavor towards great things, those things worthy of honor, those things which give glory to God.