Where Do We Begin?

I was talking with my local “banker” this morning, a bright young man, form-fitting generation Z type of guy. I live in a small neighborhood, tucked away neatly in the morass of New York city, resembling more a small village than a mighty metropolis. So one actually gets to see and even get to know one’s banker, barber or grocer in a way that’s usually impossible in the rest of the city, a city where everything, including the people you meet,  change almost daily. A while ago while doing some business I gave him some advice on investing in crypto. I naturally assumed he would treat it with a grain of salt like most people I give crypto advice to. But it turned out he actually took that advice seriously and since we hadn’t spoken for a while he brought it up. He said he’d become very interested in crypto and wanted to know if he had any more advice. He then said something very curious, “I wonder if we stopped following Johnny Depp and all the latest celeb porn, what we could possibly do as a society?”

I said I didn’t know. But I did know that we live in a society that focuses on money, celebrity and fame to the exclusion of almost all else. Our media, our culture, our lives are focused not on making ourselves better people or making the world a better place. It’s focused on selling things, pure and simple. Having worked for years in advertising I know this to be true. That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. But although that helps create a healthy economy it generally doesn’t help create a healthy society. That’s something each of us has to determine in our own way, but I have to admit, as a group, western society doesn’t provide very much guidance.

The best advice I could give was that he was right. If one stops paying attention to what everyone else is doing, or not doing, it’s a lot easier to concentrate on what YOU are doing or more importantly what you WANT to do. I read 10-20 articles a day just to glean a useful tidbit of information I can actually use in my personal or professional life. We are all bombarded with never ending opinions and verbiage all created to sell things. Why do I have to read 1000 words before I get to a simple custard recipe: eggs, milk, sugar, flour and/or cornstarch. That’s it …done.

But that won’t score very high with Google and we all know how important that is…to Google. 

But what is REALLY important is what is important to me…what is important to you?