Josh Allred's Blog

There’s a gap between:

This situation is hopeless.

And

This situation feels hopeless.

We often mistake the two. Especially, when working with the climate and the political sphere.

Finite games are designed to have winners and losers. Understanding this, there’s an innovative approach to these types of games:

Don’t play games you can’t win.

In other words, quit playing the lottery, stop spamming your resume to companies, let the other driver pass, stop pursuing a relationship that isn’t going to happen…and on and on.

You’ll save yourself a lot of headaches.

It’s easy to pretend the things we don’t understand are a miracle. But the “miracle” was the impresarios behind the scenes making things happen without the credit that is deserved.

Miracles, therefore, can be accounted for by who doesn’t receive credit in the background.

Solutions are readily available. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get in our own way to them. For instance, when the remote goes out, we know where the spare batteries are, but we are too tired to get them. You don’t need another solution; you need to follow through. Bigger problems like climate change also have solutions. But again, we can’t get out of our way to implement them. Perhaps, the problem isn’t finding solutions but the courage to implement them. (Or maybe convincing the world there is a path. Indeed, our nature is to give up when the situation feels hopeless.)

It seems like an efficient way to kill two birds, but that task is not likely to be possible if they move. While we like to think of it as a helpful metaphor for efficiency, we don’t realize how inefficient it is until we try. We often take on more than we can handle is the real lesson here. (Never mind the ecological consequences of this mentality.)

The story we tell ourselves…

Isn’t the same as the truth.

Sometimes that’s a feature. But most of the time, it gets in the way of seeing the world as it is.

The narrative is often self-serving.

Humans have always had a pull to document themselves. Since we invented finger paintings in caves or writing, we have documented what happened, leading to learning and a deeper understanding.

What’s unusual now is the tendency to share over, to the point where one creates drama that simply isn’t there to have a viral moment.

You might be thinking, for instance, that you are hallucinating. But to have the cognitive ability to open your phone and hit play to show this is probably a sign you’re just fine. Another example, hitting play to record a crying session isn’t an authentic experience either.

The best moments might not be for the world to see.

Often, when people talk about the problem of fixing capitalism, they frame it as improving social programs. They discuss social democracy—improved healthcare, maternity/paternity leave, child care, etc. The challenge is that this raises the costs of living substantially. And to pay for this, you must find the capital. Reminder that Capitalism doesn’t serve people. It serves capital. When society becomes predicated on this capital constantly to be growing, the earth and all its inhabitants take a hit. The tug of war becomes a need for better capitalism. However, none of this solves the inherent problems of capital’s constant accumulation, or where that capital comes from. It comes from invisible spaces—sweatshops in the third world. Mines where people are digging for precious minerals outside the privy of the world’s moral compass. Capitalism’s nature doesn’t know anything outside capital accumulation. And the friction is the moral compass of humans when we finally see something is wrong. Deep down, we do understand the flaws that make everyone miserable.

To optimize, there must be a standard in place. To have a standard, you must have a proven/reliable method. Which means you must measure something. Which also means someone along the way picked what that measurement was. Doesn’t mean it was a good way to measure something. It just means someone along the line decided it.

SAT scores that eventually became IQ. But does this score actually measure intelligence? What about emotional IQ, resiliency, or problem-solving?

Time on the assembly line became “production.” But is it valuable?

Are profits a signal that a company is growing? Or…does anyone like working there? Is it destroying the planet?

We have let signals become the hallmark of passing judgment. I can talk about systems thinking and the way ideas spread all day across our culture, but I am awful at fixing my car and would be the last choice to perform brain surgery. I need to outsource these things. We often do.

You might be excellent at a couple of things, but we can’t be good at everything. I suggest getting good at decision-making, changing your mind, seeing the world as it really is, looking someone in the eye and telling a story, changing the emotion in the room, and making a sale…things that won’t go away in the age of automation and AI.

Don’t get good at the standard. Instead, become great at the things that can’t be easily measured.

The default setting when sick is to wish this were over. But this is the wrong approach. It’s amazing (perhaps even a placebo effect) when you instead turn to feel the pain. Not to run away from it. Not to wish you were in the future. But to embrace it. Life isn’t just roses. It is suffering too. And we want to return to the status quo as soon as possible. When we do this, you might be surprised to discover that your body tends to let go to what it is feeling in order to the next thing in. Sounds weird. But try it. It helps to find the silver lining. When one is sick, it forces us to slow down.