2-3-4 Friday: You feel uneasy? Here's why.
‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought: The corporatisation of community, and how we no longer feel we can depend on friends to watch our backs, to introduce a job, or a partner
Have we become a society that doesn't bother (much) about developing our hyperlocal
community, in favor of what's most pragmatic?
Take the proliferation of dating apps, which I think is the easiest example of this. In the past, we would talk to someone at university. Take the risk of SMS-ing, developing a friendship, and then asking her out.
Today, we don't dare to do that. We meet only if we match, and like each other.
Or take the example of Grab. We don't even feel comfortable asking for lifts from
colleagues, or friends today. It's easier to swipe away the niggling discomfort of asking (and being in someone's debt), and just ordering the Grab.
We talk about community being a two-sided thing where people can give and receive, but we dare not ask, because we don't think anyone will give.
It used to be that with jobs, you could depend on a recommendation from a friend into a company. Or you could pull a string with an acquaintance, and ask if they have an
opening. But today, we spam LinkedIn and job portals, and hope someone gives us a job.
And even when it comes to parenting, we feel it's hard to ask a neighbour to take care of a kid for an hour. We just get a helper, pay that $900, and be done with it.
We've corporatised community. Made it professional. Convenient. Pay, and stop worrying about needing to ask anything, of anyone.
Yes, this is a global phenomenon, where
tech companies realised that they could make money from getting us to be more lazy, and to take less emotional risk.
- Don't ask for a ride, just order a ride.
- Don't ask librarians, just Google.
- Don't think, just ChatGPT it.
It's come to a point where the Singapore Government needs to set up a $50m Partnerships Fund to spur people to do good works. The Government has to pick up the tab, if we want to do good? Isn't
this a little ridiculous?
Please don't get me wrong. Yes, we shouldn't expect good-hearted individuals to endlessly fund good works. But you'd expect that these good-hearted people would be funded by other generous people. I wouldn't have thought that we'd always have to depend on the Government for everything, even a ground-up initiative. We have our networks. We dare to ask.
On the other end, our community wants to give, because we believe that
community, is everyone's responsibility.
But it doesn't seem like we have enough faith in our collective, Singaporean humanity to fund the good we want to do.
We feel uneasy, because we no longer feel we can depend on each other.
Have we as a society, really come to this state?
1 talk
We’ve today professionalized ‘community building’ and made it a proper job.
That says a
lot about what we think about community today.
1 tip
Recently I interviewed someone who worked as a ‘community manager’. I asked her what she did and she said she managed the Facebook and Instagram groups, and made sure there were friendly replies to the customers there.
I thought,
wow, how sad it must be if your own community can’t take care of their own community.
Then I stopped and
thought,
isn’t that what’s happening to Singapore and our wider world today?
We don’t feel safe enough to hand our kids to a neighbour to watch when we’re busy.
We don’t feel unashamed enough to ask someone for help introducing us into their job. We don’t feel able to give us some jobs as a freelancer.
We don’t trust our community enough, to make asks, requests, and to feel vulnerable in front of them. We keep up this
strong front, but behind, we’re really really weak. This is serious, because we look around us, and we see the crumbling of the families, communities, and institutions that used to protect us. That we knew had our back.
They’re persistently breaking trust, and citizens feel that they do not know who they can trust.
How do we change this? Take relational risk. Ask for help.
Be the help that someone else needs. Offer that hand, when you know
someone might be struggling. Don’t think of yourself as obnoxious and arrogant. Just offer it.
If they take offense, it’s not you. They might be dealing with something deeper.
But if we don’t want our world to crumble, we need to start caring for the friends, acquaintances, and people we have around us.
- That text from a friend, that we left unanswered for a long time? Reply that.
- Send an encouraging note to a friend,
telling her how much she mattered during a difficult time of your life.
- Send an unsolicited meal, coffee, gift to a friend's door.
Help one person feel the world is a friendlier place, and you’d be surprised at what you’d find.
A talk on "Being An (UN)Anxious Generation"
We're organising a talk on why we feel so jaded, and uneasy, and how we can find greater abundance within us. Join us?