Slowing down
I own “Portrait of a legend” a Sam Cooke compilation from 1951-1964. Their are thirty songs on it covering his entire career from gospel to blues. I listen to it a lot when I’m flying. The sound is amazing but all of the voices are real. Not digitally altered bits and bites. The instruments are all real and recorded live. I often imagine each instrument being played and what it would look like. I imagine Sam Cooke and his back up singers in the studio in front of those old 1950’s mics. This isn’t a strategy I’ve developed, but what ends up happening is that I only think about the music and it puts me into a semi dream state where I imagine. Slowing down enough to imagine in detail is quite an accomplishment for me.
When you are in a plane landing and looking at the city lights, what do you see?
Things look so beautiful when you are 6K feet above the ground and you can imagine what each individual light represents. Even the most run down, impoverished city in the world can look appealing when you are way above it. This is the danger of becoming too successful. When you are on the ground you see the reality of things and you hopefully become motivated to change them for the better. When you gain a little success you go to 3K feet and you imagine how things could be. Then every once in awhile you hit the ground running to make what you imagine a reality.
Then something happens. You reach 6K and the line between imagination and reality disappears, even though you are never on the ground floor. Their aren’t many people or companies that live at 6K feet, so their aren’t many people to tell you that what you imagine to be reality isn’t true.
I’ve spent the past few weeks meeting with large companies that live at 6K feet. Trying to convince them that there is a revolution happening on the ground floor. I’m sure they spend the first 5 minutes of our conversation wondering how the hell I ever made it up there.
I hope this never happens to me. Maybe I should move to the poorest community in San Francisco?
March 9th, 2006 at 8:18 am
Ejovi,
Let me help you pick a neighborhood in San Francisco.
I believe in a theory that supports that social and economic mobility is achieved by “agents” acting on “climbers”. We are ALL climbers and we are ALL agents. We are climbers when we seek to better our position, our height on the pyramid, and we are agents when we seek to improve others’ position. How much time, energy and money each one of us allocates to being a climber and to being an agent determines our profile as “mostly climber” or “mostly agent”. If people who rise higher become more and more of a climber, they are “sucking up the pull” from those higher than them, and that is detrimental to those lower than them, because there is less pull available to the lower, poorer ones. (Kind of like wertical bandwidth, uh?). In an ideal world, for every yard that you climb, you should help someone else below you climb a foot, say. This is what taxes try to do in a way, -but is government the best distribution machine?…
You near perfection when you achieve a balance between how much pull you suck (ie get help from others) and how much pull you give (ie help others), so that you maximize the overall height climbed by all climbers, including yourself. I often wonder whether the most altruistic lives might have been more efficient if they dedicated themselves to greater self-betterment before they helped others.
On airplanes we are always reminded to place the oxygen mask on OUR ADULT FACE first before we place it on a child’s…. why? Well, simple: if the adult can’t breathe he won’t be much good helping the failing child either!
Same thing in life: we need to climb with the help of others (do not kid yourself: you ONLY climb with the help of others even if they are not aware of being of help to you) before we can help others climb.
So to answer your question: NO, do NOT move to the poorest neighborhood in San Francisco. Move to one where from you will be best positioned to both move up AND help those in the poorest neighborhood get the hell out of it.
I have had these ideas for a long time regarding education. Now I realize that they can also be applied to social and economic status… maybe I should write a formal general math theory about it?… That would give The Necklaces a boost.
Hey, reader: seen my Necklaces blog?…
March 9th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
no. You will end up in Noe valley…like most of your readers
“The Poorest neighbourhood in San Francisco” ?
Come over to Hunters point, Or around Silver avenue, Visitacion Valley ? ! It is nice and with some luck you will avoid Cancer clusters. You will meet “Bills” and “Linuses” in Hunters Point, they just wont be dealing free WiFi..
There are not many poor neighbourhoods left in San Francisco. If there are, these are definitely “investment opportunities” for the up-and-comings and Gavin’s friends. It won’t be long before the middle class has left the city too. And their children… San Francisco is the most wonderful city, yet it is mostly turning into a playground for the rich and the richer, the liberal left. It is both fantastic to see this city remain an island within the evil empire; but also disheartening to realize it is an island for the wealthiest only…
“The Poorest neighbourhood in San Francisco” ? Oakland ?
If the post was about how large elephants really are, well, they are very very big indeed. It is not made to hit the ground running..
Olivier