Alexandersmap

    Tag: Kevin Kelly

    • To Be a Good Ancestor

      It’s understood that our ancestors lived in a time of darkness and brutality mixed with enlightenment and progress. History is a process of confronting and accepting the evidence we stumble across as we explore the path of humanity. We aren’t a perfect species, but we can make incremental progress towards a better world. We cannot judge ourselves today based on the actions of our ancestors, but we can learn and apply that knowledge towards a better future. This of course applies to the individual as much as the collective species. In either case, progress is active work.

      Our ancestors were the best and worst of us. We are the sum of that history: the survivors, antagonists and witnesses rolled into an underlying identity we either celebrate or work to change. We are the latest revision of our species, and the trick, as Kevin Kelly puts it, is to be good ancestors for futures generations. Just as a scale and the mirror inform us of our progress towards fitness, our work and what we invest our time and energy into determine tangible progress for our collective future.

      History suggests steady progress, even as the news suggests a spiral downward. The only thing certain is that we have our verse to be written. What we do with the opportunity is up to us.

    • Putting It All Out There

      “If today’s social media has taught us anything about ourselves as a species, it is that the human impulse to share overwhelms the human impulse for privacy.” ― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

      But all the promises we make
      From the cradle to the grave
      When all I want is you
      — U2, All I Want Is You

      They say that sharing is caring, but the twist is that the share is what we care about at all. Life is change, how we process that within ourselves is ours alone… until we share it. So much of what we think and feel becomes part of the collective with a click. What happens after the click is out of our control, but something is released from us anyway. We’ve put ourselves out there in a declaration of the moment and try to move on to the next.

      The reader is in a time machine, picking up where we left off and processing our unique stack of words into thought. Sometimes a comment coming back to me after something I’ve published throws me for a loop, and I need to re-read what I wrote to see who I was at the time. We’re each on our path to becoming, and who I’ve become after clicking publish is somewhat different than the person I was before.

      That timestamp of the moment isn’t trivial, for it’s a brief glimpse into our fragile lifetime. As the years go by, so do the moments. Is sharing a grasp for the elusive amber? We can’t be forever locked in any moment but through the media that carries on after us. Still, there’s a big difference between a journal and a blog post, isn’t there? Should there be?

      What compels us to share anything of ourselves at all? Do we need to clear space for our new identity? Are we leaving breadcrumbs for others who might be inclined to follow? Perhaps the very act of sharing of ourselves is integral to becoming whatever it is we’re moving towards. Each of us have our reasons—our why— for sharing that run beyond ourselves. This why is the puzzle in everything shared, to be discovered by others.

    • The Cumulative Force

      “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

      Re-reading Self-Reliance is always a pep talk with the Master. Sometimes I wonder at (and have written before about) the conversations Emerson and Thoreau must have had taking a walk about Concord, Massachusetts back in the day. Emerson, a dozen years older than Thoreau, might have offered more insight early on, but Thoreau measured up over time, diving deep into Transcendentalism and immersion in Nature (with a capital N). Thoreau was undoubtedly influenced by Emerson, and Emerson by Thoreau, yet each brought their own gift to the world.

      I’ve wondered at the writing lately. The content is a collection of many topics jumbled together, and much of that is by design. The scattered thoughts of one person marching through time. I’ve debated a shift to a once a week newsletter, which inherently would be more refined, more substantial and less clutter in the inbox of those who follow. But changing to a weekly post would change my habit loop in ways I wish to avoid. No, I subscribe to the Seth Godin school of daily blogging.

      So what then? Narrowing the focus to specific topics? Specializing for the pursuit of 1000 true fans? Instead of the trivial many blog posts, focus on the vital few, as Joseph M. Juran would say? If I were to monetize this site, I’d surely do that. But the goal of Alexandersmap is to seek adventure, to understand the place I find myself in (both physically and mentally) and write about it. And so it will continue as it always has been. The rest of the writing necessarily will evolve into a more focused pursuit of those vital few. But there’s something to be said for habit loops and cadence and Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours theory. Just write, often, on a diversity of topics, and the process will necessarily change you and improve the writing.

      And so here we are, one day at a time, building the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation, and seeing where it takes me. Is it a talent to write every day? Or accumulated skill? It would be brash to declare the former, and modest the latter. There’s a mix in there somewhere, but I do believe in sweat equity and making the most of the time we’re given. I’m a writer as long as I’m writing. There are plenty in this world doing the same. Whether the writing is that which I can do best? That will have to sort itself out. But I’m better for cultivating it.