Back in the 1930s, David Butler produced a movie-musical entitled, "Just Imagine."
The movie describes a man that was struck by lightning in the 1930s, kept unconscious, and then revived 50 years later in the 80s! In this film, we see how people thought of what the future would appear.
Airplanes have replaced cars, people no longer have names - instead, they have handles, such as J-21, and meals come as a pill.
This post is not about the plans replacing cars, handles replacing names (but funny how that's become a thing), nor is it about steak dinners - it's about being human.
In our pursuit to make life more efficient, we look for ways to reduce - think Lean Six Sigma. How can we get from Point A to Point B faster? How can we reduce congestion on the freeways? How can we produce more for less? The classic American credo.
Clearly, there was a time when we thought meals might come in the form of pills. They're convenient - we don't need to know how to cook, and many of us know how to take pills. If you look at the food now, you might even think we're well on our way there with processed foods such as high fructose corn syrup or American cheese. But then, why is craft-beer and sourdough bread becoming a thing again?
Because I enjoy baking bread, I can tell you that sourdough takes a tremendous amount of time and effort - especially if you're growing your own starter. It's incredibly inefficient when we could simply buy "Wonder" bread from the store, or make bread using a yeast packet. In our quest for efficiency as a race, how is bread becoming exempt?
Because sourdough bread, and other artisanal products, are not about efficiency, nutrition, or the time it took to create. It's about the unspoken feeling, the magic, the delight, of eating sourdough bread.
How we might feel towards artisan-crafted goods, such as sourdough, is how we might think about these everyday situations.
Think about the frustration of waiting in line at the grocery store. We often think the stores don't have enough staff, or shoppers are acting rash. Are these really the causes?
- What if the experience of waiting was delightful?
- What if a grocery store created an app that showed real-time line length, toilet paper supply, and the best times to arrive for a quick in-and-out?
Think about the frustrations of job searching. Recruiters aren't always great about getting back to us when we don't pass. Companies don't want to provide feedback because that creates legal risk.
- What if a prospective employer offered three takeaways we could use to help with future job searches?
- What if a recruiter connected us with another role to check out?
If supermarkets, or companies, instituted even one of these suggestions - how would you feel about job searching or grocery shopping?
The logical answers are to add more staff or lines at the grocery store or protect the company from risk. The illogical answers are to create delight in a waiting line, invest in an app, or help another human find a job. They are also the answers that change the way people feel.
This is not a manifesto against logic. But it's a reminder that logic isn't always the answer. Sometimes, the problem is not what we're being told, but what we can't see. We have to use empathy, hope, and stories to better understand one another - that which can't easily be quantified.
As Separation ($s$) Increases ($Inc$), so to does demand for Connectedness ($c$)
$$Inc(s,c)$$
As we become more and more separate, I believe the chances of us longing to be more and more connected will become proportionately greater. I hope we'll embrace that longing, do things that help us feel something better, and become more human.
It might not make sense, but being human rarely does.