Not Normal or New Normal?

Did Beyoncé stop us from living our best lives?

Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash

Last week I wrote about the importance of enjoying a boring life, and why it is good for us.

Here’s part two on why we might not think that.

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Too Late?

Our economic models rely on constantly driving up productivity and boosting growth.

(I’ll write a lot more about this next year…)

Have the next generation already given up on this? Is it even possible to keep growing when things have been cut so far back?

I mentioned last week about quiet quitting; there’s also the culture of slow working, and, more broadly and difficult to measure, not giving more than is needed.

If you don’t believe you can win, no matter how hard you try and how much you commit, what does this do?

Mental health is at crisis point and I think a lot of it comes from the undue pressure that we put on people before they even have a chance to learn where they fit into this world.

This generation is entering a workplace where they’re starting their careers tidying up from the last person who sat in that desk chair, assuming they’re not still clinging on to it as they can’t retire and leave the void.

And what’s the point even doing the work when hard work won’t get you anywhere anymore?

Merit Myth

Meritocracy is now a myth. Nepo babies are an accepted part of our culture that highlight this better than anything else.

Meritocracy creates an attractive framework that if you try your best and work hard you can achieve anything.

But that doesn’t add up. Does it imply that lower-paid workers like nurses and teaching assistants don’t work as hard or don’t deserve the same rewards as financiers or politicians?

It’s why I hate the language of bootstrapping in the start-up world. Some people have bootstraps that don’t fall off on the first pull.

You’re more likely to end up as a lawyer or in finance if you had someone in your family who was a lawyer or working in finance.

Same way you’re going to be better advised if you have close friends in the same professions, and feel less intimidated asking for help.

One point I want to make on this is the deeply irritating advice that I hear when people tell others to, “Follow your passion.”

All of this creates further barriers for people. But what if we had an economy and society that created the environment for people to find the passions they can realistically make a living from?

That’s where we need to make the obvious and smooth segue to the teachings of the Goddess Arete.

The Goddess Arete

Arete is goddess of virtue, excellence, goodness, and valour or glory, and a descendent of Poseidon.

The Statue of Arete in the Library of Census Ephesus, Turkey. Photo by Özge Taşkıran.

This gives us the old Greek idea of arete.

Something can have arete, or you can strive for arete. It’s a very important concept in Greek culture.

What this means is that everything has its purpose for which it is excellent and glorious. The arete of a knife is to cut well, the arete of an eye is to see, a spade’s arete is to dig holes. But what is the arete of a person?

More important than this is the specific application of that question. The arete of a person might be something we could discuss at a high level, but the arete of you or any other individual is much trickier.

The arete of a good lawyer is to support others in legal conflict, whereas the arete of a chef is to create great meals.

Discovering your arete in an opaque economy might not be such an easy or painless task, and is especially tricky if you don’t have visibility of opportunities.

It’s something that might even seem like an alien concept if your experience and belief of work is not about finding the thing at which you can become uniquely talented, but is instead a means to an end.

Arete is something which means we understand and live our best life. A good life is where we develop our strengths, realise our potential, and become what it is in our nature to become.

It is the discovery and realisation of a person or thing's “full potential or inherent function.”

I think this is vital right now, and pertinent to why so many people are struggling with a normal life.

I’ve met so many lawyers and teachers over the years who have spent decades training and practising only to realise they feel they need to get out.

There’s a bit of the aspiration to have a good job, only to end up in a role that doesn’t play to your arete or in a system which no longer enables the realisation of this arete.

I don’t want to miss another key point in this, linked to two concepts: Professor Carol Dweck’s growth mindset idea and the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Carol Dweck’s growth mindset concept tells us that (almost) anyone can achieve greatness with the growth mindset. You just need to commit, and do deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is the difference between constant repetition and making meaningful gains by focusing on the areas where we can improve our performance.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is basically social media in the last decade. People with less knowledge on a subject are more confident in their ability than those who delve deeper and uncover the nuances.

The Dunning-Kruger effect

When you’re at the deepest valley of the Dunning-Kruger graph it can really dawn on you how big the challenge is.

Sometimes it’s important to not jump ship when you’re at the lowest ebb of your confidence, or when it gets increasingly painful to make that next step up.

Sticking At It

I wrote previously about the Helsinki Bus Station Theory (the theory that to find your own arete, you should stick to the path you’re on and let it guide you.)

There’s a reason why it gets so hard to stay on the bus.

We don’t have to ride alone, so many of us think this is the case. I think it’s Beyoncé’s fault.

Find a companion for the bus ride. Someone who will sit by you on the long journey and might even bring snacks to keep you going.

It’s more like finding a good carpool buddy.

There’s a big link here to the interdependence movement. The more we think we have to fulfil our potential, the more we feel individually responsible for our success so as to be able to fully take credit for it.

That’s where Ms Knowles played an important role.

Me vs We

It was August 2000 when Destiny’s Child released Independent Women and preached the importance of boasting about not relying on the support of others.

There’s a curious book I read a few years ago which tries to explain a concept that suggests that there’s a bit of a cycle linked to this stuff.

It’s called Pendulum, and looks at How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future, written by Roy Williams and Michael Drew.

The big idea is that society goes through cycles, as the “pendulum” swings from an emphasis on “me” to an emphasis on “we”.

It’s an interesting idea, but a lot of it needs to be taken with a bucket of salt. It can hardly be described as objective.

But when applied retrospectively, it is quite convincing.

Basically, it suggests the four cycles are towards me, away from me, towards we, and away from we in twenty year phases. It also suggests that 2023 is the midpoint between the zeniths of “we” and “me”, so very much a time of conflict.

1943 was the last year that was in this same point of transition from “me” to “we”.

2003 was the proposed last “me” peak (around the time that Independent Women was a smash hit), and 2043 would be the next high point of “we”.

1963 was the last time we had a “we” period and 1923 was the peak of “me”.

I hope this is making some sense. I’d recommend the book, but really only the first half. The second half is just a bit weird.

That Was My Idea

One thing that always annoys me is when people do the whole “I had that idea before they did” like as if they deserve credit or a percentage of the proceeds.

The best example I can think of here would be the Apple AirPods.

It doesn't matter if you had the idea for a small, lightweight bluetooth headset that you could carry around in your pocket; there’s no way that an invention like that could be created by a single person.

You need designers, you need access to market, you need chip experts, battery experts, you need the capital, you need the process.

I’ve written previously about Edison’s lab: you need to realise it isn’t all on you to make your career and your experience as an entrepreneur a success.

In case I’ve veered slightly off track (I have, it’s what I love doing most), this is the point:

I think so many people are struggling because we place too much value on rushing to find a career which is socially celebrated, and striving to do this all alone.

There are systemic reasons for why this is the case, but unless we start to call them out these issues are only going to get worse.

We could all live happy, normal, boring lives if we accepted this, and build systems that celebrate it.

Callbacks

I want to wrap up with two callbacks. First, to the comment about carpooling.

There’s a really enjoyable book written by Marc Randolph - co-founder of Netflix - called That Will Never Work all about the origin story of Netflix.

The story that I love from it is before they started Netflix he and his co-founder, Reed Hastings, used to carpool together everyday from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley and would spend the whole trip everyday pulling apart ideas for what they would do next.

They took the carpooling idea to the next level, but it meant when they found the right idea they knew exactly who to try it out with.

Second, I don’t think Beyoncé will read this, but I strangely only have one degree of separation from her so I want to make clear that I don’t hold her that much to blame. I think it’s a different idea of independence to not rely on someone else to pay for your own shoes.