Copying life 🔗

With a stated unawareness of times prior to my own experiences, but with my present perspective that while times change human nature is very repeatable. At some inflection point more concern was given to the consideration of others than the self. While this is possibly quite a natural process of aging, it is also possible it was influence. That pressure that you have to grow into a specific thing, in business it feels like all final destinations are management. In life maybe it's to drive a lambo or have a luxury lifestyle, full of travel and expensive foods. Logically, you will see a destination and experience the pressure to drive towards it if the world around you is flowing the same way. This could be a local community influence, family, friends, or that of other media.

Originality of thought and experimentation is how we build great things, even if we drop the lofty language and ignore the other side of this see-saw which leads to contrarianism. Copying on the other hand may express a deeper lack of control of ones environment. How does one find something new without trying? By keeping up with the Joneses, homogeny has always been something that has been forced on us in a surprising way. We laude the successful eccentric but criticise the awkward. To be clear this definition of awkward is only those who seem to be existing tangential to the norm. Forgoing that nuance of traditional human hypocrisy there is a clear place where unusual is preferable.

From the perspective of a simpler system that is software, a lot of time is spent defining the nature of "social" interactions with code, ahead of time. Within each of us is a 3PO that helps us determine how to deal with other people. Oppositionly, the interface is created in realtime and only sometimes repeated. I would allow the extrapolation that software has it easier and humans take shortcuts by copying.

As a child we learn through mocking and then progress through a rebellous phase to generate self identity. A curious process that flip-flops from very little identity to an over-abundance. Life then gets complicated a little later and the rally point is to reduce complexity through normalizing with our community. After you have seen your 10th beige to tope patio home complex a new concern begins, what is everyone doing all day? Next comes the hard question which might be the trigger for a natural midlife crisis. Similar to that previous transition from mocking to rebellion does this cycle repeat? There is a middle phase of development where rebellion is once again preferred to recertify our independence from a system that demands considerable conformity. Although, much of this is self-imposed, the systems around corporate offices and family structures leverage the need for our core needs to be leveraged against our higher emotional needs.

Consider diversity in the office, a term that rightly has been co-opted in support of underrepresented groups also includes the rest of us. Its only when we lift together do we all get to share in something better. Those that often reach the higher tiers did so with a considerable amount of conformity. That could be meeting goals or promoting company ideals but some of us who excel in these places have a personality that allows for those tradeoffs. This isn't saying that those people were or were not in conflict during that process but, repetition does become habitual, and we find ourselves repeating the dogma after enough time. You may find yourself having silenced that independent voice that represented your individual spirit. Conformity is like a disease that damages your creative tissues. The way to measure your interactions with others should be aligned ith the Big 5, of those; Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness is how we should measure our success.

Someone can always work harder than you, someone can always eat your lunch, and you may lose your business or job, but your success will be dictated by how you deal with others. This is its own kind of rebellion against capitalism's identity of humans are exploitable for money. While not a direct avocation of Marxism, there is something about servant leadership that resonates with it. Although, this may be more about a reduction in obsession with monetary assets and greed compared to our compassion for our fellow man.

Unfortunately, when we are influenced in non-conversational experiences we also lose some of our agency though reinforcement that should be met with rebellion. Your days should be spent thinking and expressing, a willingness to learn while trying not to judge others. If you start your days with your own thoughts you build a barrier against accepting the wrote of others that will invariably be pushed upon you. You should also identify who you will allow to influence you using the same measures you will use for others. You should refuse those who do not meet them, in a world where dialogs are rarer you must save your time, control your inputs and expand your outputs.