Nick's Journal
Being alive for some of the 80s, the 90s, the 00s, 10s and now into the 20s, one can’t help but compare each decade as they come and go. Not just the decade itself and the culture that inhabited it, but invariably the way that you yourself experienced it. And yet despite all the personal memories and nuanced experiences that you accumulated, consensus nonetheless seems to form on those things which are considered definitive of each decade.
Often that which will stand out is the artistic expression that seemed to embody each generation. 80’s glam, 90’s grunge, rap and punk, 00’s pop, 10’s EDM. Not just music, of course. It’s obvious in the fashion, in the movies, and even in the architecture. There are so many things that are just quintessential ‘that decade’, too many to name but instantly recognizable to anyone alive at the time.
Why is that then? If we are all so different, our life journeys unique to ourselves, our tastes and preferences impossibly varied, why would there be such an alignment on a set number of things. There are many different words I could use for the phenomenon. If I was being generous I would frame it as resonance. If I was being brutally honest I would frame it as conformity. A combination of those two probably captures most of the effect and would be most fair of all.
There can be no doubt that it is not always the best expression of something that becomes the most popular after all. We would all be able to point to awful songs, movies or fashion choices that were all the rage for a brief period of time. Neither can one assert that it is entirely random or chaotic though. Alignment does line up often behind what could be argued are either the best, or at least very strong contenders thereon, of each expression.
Conformity and resonance are not what I wanted to talk about today though. In fact, they are quite literally in opposition to that which I wanted to focus on today, the topic of imagination. When we are young, our minds wander in ways that are endless. We conquer kingdoms, slay dragons, marry princes, fly in the stars and do whatever our hearts desire. And then one day when we are older, we look back on those days and we wonder what happened.
Where did those dreams go? Not just the dreams themselves, but our very ability to have those dreams? What I think happened is that our brains, and our ruthless survival instincts, get in the way. The ability to dream does not put food on the plate. It will not, in and of itself, allow you to navigate life in a way that is fine-tuned to reality. If anything, it can be in opposition to those forces. If the world is a serious one, one that is focused on productivity and on earning one’s way through life, than the ability to dream has no value.
Combine this with our instincts to fit into crowds, to get along to go along, to read the room and to adapt, and you are left with a very hostile environment for one’s imagination to flourish. To truly lean into your imagination and to let it inspire you is to welcome criticism. It is to stand outside of the crowd and to do your own thing. While the ‘hot new thing’ becomes the signal of where to spend your time to the others, you are oblivious and are spending your time on that which is most interesting to you, the thing that captured your imagination.
And I think that is why imagination has persisted against the odds. Against the overwhelming crush of society to place you in a box that it understands, one where it can very safe about predicting your outcomes, about planning on how your life will unfold. Systems crave conformity for these reasons. Not because they are inherently evil, but because they begin to focus on the whole and how best to manage it.
They do not hate individuals, but they do view them as a waste of resources and often as a risk. If you are unique, what happens if you leave? The whole will be made worse off, and that simply can’t be allowed. Better to chisel off your rough edges, to polish you into the same shape as all the others, rather than risk a key that cannot be replicated, for a lock that holds behind it critical functions.
Imagination should never survive against those odds and forces. And yet it has, as anyone with a childhood that was not plagued by undue stress or negativity can attest. When everyone else is focused on the same thing, it is simply inevitable that value begins to accumulate where they are not focused, where the competition for resources is the least. That is simply logic, its supply and demand, it is objective, something the system itself would be able to solve for if it knew how, and it always tries, by claiming to chase innovation.
Look closely though and you will see that innovation almost never happens in large systems. They aren’t built for it. Innovation requires conviction, the willingness to embrace uncertainty and to take on risk. The willingness to reject common opinion and to do things that look beyond the immediate reality and to envision what the future might look like. These are the very things that organizations select against and so expecting them to be able to combat those urges with stated policies and words is doomed to failure.
So if you have found yourself at a point in your life where your dreams seem smaller than they were before and where your mind wanders less than it did before, than consider something other than despair as your response. Consider instead that you embrace those parts of you that you have shut away in the relentless pursuit of progress, of societal approval and of safety. You might find that they are still where you left them, still waiting to be let out of the cage of modernity and set free to roam once more.
And you might just find that they will take you to places that you no longer believed existed. The treadmill replaced by the horizon, and the boundary an ever more nebulous concept, if it even exists at all.
Much love as always,
Nick