The Future Is Here

THE ENERGY RACE

Delving deeper into some of the discussions on 'conspiracy theories' has taken me even further into the rabbit hole over these last couple of days. Some of the finds - things I've stumbled on before, plus new discoveries that I hadn't, have thrown up some amazing examples of technology that we've been testing & developing over the last 50 years, some of which is (officially or unofficially) in active use today.

The Power Struggle
The research and race to find better, more powerful weapons has been going on since the beginning of civilisation. In warfare, the invention and use of tools & the technologies they draw from also
potentially benefit us as advances are made for improving quality of live. As we've gained more knowledge of how to harness the laws of the universe - particularly around the middle of the 20th century with the advent of atomic physics entering the war arena, powerful weapons that could easily destroy mankind have also lead to gains, ie. atomic energy.

From the end of the second world war, it's been a race for the world's controlling powers to find increasingly greater weapons to retain power. Thankfully, a gridlock during the cold war has kept the human race from wiping itself out. But as the race continues to uncover even greater weapons technology, the questions need to focus on how we can contain this power from bringing about armageddon.

Controversial Discoveries
It's pretty frightening if you believe the pessimistic view of what life could be like in just a few tears from now - with war and control at the focus of the world's leaders. After reading the many documents, watching countless videos, and delving deeper into discussions on some pretty fascinating topics around tests (that may or may not have been) carried out (especially those around directional frequency applications), I'm starting to believe that we are not fast approaching - we are already commencing a new dawn.

Don't Panic
What matters now, is that we all educate ourselves to try and understand what's really going on and the motives behind the people who appear to conceal the truth. That way, the more we all know, the more we can collectively direct the benefits of these phenomenal life-changing technological powers towards creating a positively better world for us to live in and away from those people and powers that could destroy it.

Further Discovery
It's the mavericks like John Hutchinson (featured above), that I find the most interesting. They choose to research for little monetary gain and it's home-scientists and free thinkers like him that we need more of if we are to survive beyond the next millennium. It's becoming clearer to me, after watching footage from a Dr Judy Wood seminar video, that we have some dark powers at work with some mysterious goings on in the world that we can't yet justify. And we can't just leave things to chance trusting that the balance of good outweighs bad. Rather than watch soap operas, I urge everyone to research a little instead and try to make up their own minds what could be the truth and disregard the nonsensical.

The very fact this information in all it's guises, exists - gives some hope and confidence that we have the ability to uncover corruption and lay down a stronger foundation for better keeping an open, harmonious and free way of life in a time which could likely be the most defining point in humanity.

Justification

JUST BECAUSE

There's always a reason for why. We don't just follow blindly, we do all the things we do because we justify them in our minds first. Of course we do, we're rational beings, right? When we action a task, we would first have thought about the reasons for doing it - and after, made a justification why it's a good idea or not. Turns out, this isn't the case. We don't always have a good reason why because the word 'because' is all we need. And you'll see how many times I've used this word to justify in this post alone!

The copy machine study

A study was conducted in 1977 by Helen Langer, 'The Mother of Mindfullness' where she asked her research assistants to jump the line at the photocopier, asking just three questions to those in the queue. The answers to these questions showed that by having a justification - whether it made sense or not, was all that was needed. The results from her studies into behaviour were groundbreaking in that they help us to understand why we make decisions - good or bad. She has also made extensive studies about the illusion of control, ageing and mindfulness theory - and a book written in 2009 which I'll be adding to my reading list called, Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.

I've just read about this experiment with the Xerox machine on another one of James Clear's fantastic blog posts. It shows quite simply, how we'll allow decisions to be made even if there's no rational reason for making them. 

So what does that really mean for us making our plans for improvements?

It means that we have to constantly check our own reasoning and always question the thinking and opinions from so-called experts. There's so many ways to be caught out with marketing, popular opinion/trends, dogma/propaganda - it's all down to us at the end of the day - so if our own brains are deceiving us...we're not going anywhere. And worse - if left un-checked, this deceit can fix strong ideas in our minds that affect the rest of our thinking and we become inflexible to new ideas. 

It's really interesting once you understand that we are capable of making bad/unreasonable decisions. Because we can then see how it's possible to make more decisions & excuses based on these previously made decisions which have become cemented in our minds once we've justified them to ourselves as the truth.

Important decisions
We make many decisions throughout our day. Some of these are clearly very important like 'Is it a good time to cross the road? - yes it is, because I've checked and the road is clear'. Other thoughts are harder to make a clear decision on because they feature lower down on our priority list for important tasks. We'll have a set of possible outcomes which require more thought power/time and often in this position, we'll lazily attach a decision to these lower actions - using the higher more important decisions as a basis for justification. So, in this example: Should I get up early today? It's a decision we make based on having many positive outcomes that we know of - but unless there's a fire in the house, it comes down to making a reason why every day - and we get up purely because of that decision. Therefore, If we have a clear important reason that we can use to manage lower ranking ones - we stick to that one without question...we just need a positive & important reason.

Down tools syndrome

Yesterday, I woke with the alarm at my usual time of 5am and it was clearly not enough sleep for that day. So I justified staying in bed a little longer and that ended up being 'til 7am. It's ok. My reasoning was sound - I'm feeling a bit off-par at the moment and a bit of extra sleep will be good for me to recover from a slight cold. It's a decision to get more sleep rather than wake up so early when I don't really have to for life-saving reasons and therefore halting the cold from getting any worse.

The bit that's not ok. I then used this important reasoning to stop me doing my jobs. One by one they came up and I pushed them back/postponed and cancelled them - because I had to avoid getting a cold. It was amazing to observe this behaviour in myself - like having a health & safety officer in my head! He was shutting down the factory because of a potentially serious threat to the workers when all that was required was a temporary adjustment to the working hours. Luckily, the managers who make decisions on important factors like making money, are in a position of power to question why, because they've been known to be right on many occasions before, so my factory stayed open and I was very quickly up and running on full capacity again. 

To stay on top of these thought processes to ensure we do the things that are benefitting us the most - we just need to have a high level priority 'why' at the forefront of our minds. 

Giving Back

KIDS NEED MENTORS

It was a long time ago when I was at school and I asked what I wanted to do for a job. Teachers were all around us - but I can't say any of them really inspired me to become like them. My dad had never really talked properly about his job and I hadn't really bothered to enquire about mate's dads jobs. Where were the mentors in my day? There was no internet and I don't recall anyone giving me a list of possible jobs and their benefits for me to consider. There was a Careers Advisor and I kinda recall sitting with him and my mum discussing what I was interested in. The conversation likely went something like this:

CA: "Does he like maths?
Mum: "He's good at maths but not sure he really likes it?"
CA: "Are there any hobbies?"
Mum: "He's a good drawer"
CA: "Maybe he'd like to be a commercial artist then"
Mum: "Well, his dad is a graphic designer"

And that was it. My career sorted. Luckily, my dad got me a junior role at his old firm and because of my generation's ability to use computers - I moved up the ladder really quickly and have been in employment ever since.

Back then, there didn't seem to be many options open to the kids at my school. You were either good at sums (banker), good with hands (carpenter, plumber, mechanic, builder) or some arty type....
It seemed the school were out of touch with the real world - there was no cross-over - no connection with the people and jobs that were out there for the students to see/experience and discover what they liked - at least I can't remember any. We just had to 'get lucky' as I did, that my dad knew someone (all about who you know) and that good timing in the evolution of graphic design meant someone already used to playing with computers would be so beneficial to a company trying to keep up with the new changes in the industry.

These days, it seems there's far more options open to the kids - maybe a little too much choice though - so more difficult to choose one. Because, being 16 and told to 'pick a job' is a really tough place to be in. I didn't know what I wanted to do. But if someone had told me: This job will give you multiple options for work within the design industry, enable you to travel, be expressive, creative and you can wear what you want and make a fairly decent income above and beyond what a lot of the other jobs do. I'd have been a bit more receptive to it....

So today I'm going in to a school to talk about how great it is to work within the media business. This is the second time I've stood up in front of 50 kids. I got a real kick out of it last time - seeing a few bright young stars contemplate their position in the world - and maybe feeding off my (reminder to myself!) enthusiasm for graphic design and media. It's good to give back!