ATTENTION! Instagram Engagement Rates By Industry

Civilization is growing itself back up. Our adolescent attention to and use of social media is in decline (chart nearby). Adult problem-solvers want substance, not silliness. They expect bravery, not brevity. They shun pith that piques and grok elegance that enlightens.

The hammers we have created, loved, and evolved since The Enlightenment simply don’t work like they used to, do they? The age to come could be nail free, and while anyone can build a belief system or weaponize a hammer against a belief system they don’t like, is that really progress? How can props for the latest sexy, well-funded hammer wielder hold up any house built on sand? What if a hammer is a fool’s tool in today’s sandstorm?

When a hammer won’t work, what then?

Take paradox, for example. The both/and mantra has been around for millennia, and yet we swing it like a toddler trying to bludgeon true facts into submission. Are we unaware or unable or unwilling to use the skills we’ve known since at least the Iron Age? Paradox can’t be broken by mindset, motivation, or meme, but if we marry a hammer with a chisel, paradox can be sculpted into paradigm.

It’s a hard problem locating that chisel in a sandstorm. So, instead of building better chisel detectors, we argue over how to keep our tents from blowing away. We steal supplies, fire old leaders and hire new ones, complain about how some of us still live inside concrete and glass while others don’t even have a tent to pitch. We are thirsty. Tired. So unimaginative that even humor is burdensome. We believe there is too much of both and not enough and.

In fact, the sculpting tools we need are already ours. Children find them difficult to recognize, and adults often notice and either miss or dismiss them. However, some sculptors are already quietly at work, even in the maelstrom, chipping and polishing their way into adulthood.

If you have genuine curiosity and iron will, turn off the anti-social media. Take a hike…literally. Discover that mindset is nothing unless it also feels right. That there is more than intelligence within emotion. That the 80% of your head brain you don’t use is just waiting for you. That raising your consciousness is essential. That breath with awareness matters. Then, when you’ve grown up, let’s talk. Walk together.

Now that the storm has cleared, the road ahead seems unusually inviting.