by Gustavo Tanaka
October 14, 2015
from
Medium Website
Spanish version
Portuguese version
Gustavo Tanaka
Brazilian author and entrepreneur, trying to create with
my friends a new model, a new system and maybe helping
to create a new economy. |
Most of us
haven't quite realized
there is something
extraordinary happening.
A few months ago I freed myself from standard-procedure society, I
broke the chains of fear that kept me locked up into the system.
Since then, I see the world from a different perspective: the one
that everything is going through change and that most of us are
unaware of that.
Why is the world changing? In this post I'll point out the 8 reasons
that lead me to believe it.
1 - No one can
stand the employment model any longer
We are reaching our limits. People working with big corporations
can't stand their jobs. The lack of purpose knocks on your
door as if it came from inside you like a yell of despair.
People want out. They want to drop everything. Take a look on how
many people are willing to risk entrepreneurship, people leaving on
sabbaticals, people with work-related depression, people in burnout.
2 - The
entrepreneurship model is also changing
Over the past few years, with the explosion of
startups, thousands of
entrepreneurs turned their garages in offices to bring their billion
dollar ideas to life. The vortex of entrepreneurship was to find an
investor and get funded. To be funded was like winning the World
Cup, or the Super Bowl.
But what happens after you get funded?
You get back to being an employee. You may have brought in people
not sharing your dream, not in agreement with your purpose and soon
it's all about the money. The financial end becomes the main driver
of your business.
People are suffering with it. Excellent startups began to tumble
because the money seeking model is endless.
A new way to endeavor is needed.
Good people are doing it already.
3 - The rise
of collaboration
Many people have figured out that it doesn't make any sense to go on
by yourself. Many people have awakened from the “each man for
himself” mad mentality.
Stop, take a step back and think. Isn't it absurd that we, 7 billion
of us living in the same planet, have grown further apart from each
other? What sense does it make to turn your back on the thousands,
maybe millions, of people living around you in the same city?
Every time it crosses my mind, I feel
blue.
Fortunately, things are changing. Sharing, collaborative economy
concepts are being implemented, and it points towards a new
direction. The direction of collaborating, of sharing,
of helping, of togetherness.
This is beautiful to watch. It touches me.
4 - We are
finally figuring out what the Internet is
The Internet is an incredibly
spectacular thing and only now, after so many years, we are
understanding its power.
With the Internet the world is opened,
the barriers fall, the separation ends, the togetherness starts, the
collaboration explodes, the helping emerges.
Some nations saw true revolutions that used the Internet as the
primary catalyst, such as the Arab Spring. Here in Brazil we are
just starting to make a better use out of this amazing tool.
Internet is taking down mass control. The big media groups
controlling news by how it suits best what they want the message to
be and what they want us to read are no longer the sole owners of
information. You go after what you want. You bond to whomever you
want. You explore whatever you may want to.
With the advent of the Internet, the small is no longer speechless,
there is a voice. The anonymous become acknowledged. The world comes
together.
And then the system may fall...
5 - The fall
of exaggerated consumerism
For too long, we've been manipulated to consume as much as we
possibly can.
To buy every new product launched, the
newest car, the latest iPhone, the top brands, lots of clothes,
shoes, lots and lots and lots of pretty much anything we could our
hands on.
Going against the crowd, many people have understood that this of
way off. Low-consumerism, slow life and slow food are a few excerpts
of actions being taken as we speak, pointing out by contradiction
how absurdly we have come to organize ourselves.
Fewer people are using cars, fewer people are overspending, and more
people are swapping clothes, buying used goods, sharing assets,
cars, apartments, offices.
We don't need all of that they told us we needed.
And this consciousness of new
consumerism can take down any company living of the exaggerated end
of it.
6 - Healthy
and organic eating
We were so crazy we even
accepted eating anything!
It only needed to taste good, and
everything would be alright.
We were so disconnected that companies started to poison our food
and we didn't say anything! But then some people started waking up,
enabling and strengthening
healthy and organic eating.
This is only to get stronger.
But what has this got to do with economy and work? Just about
everything, I'd say.
Food production is one of the basic fundamentals of our society. If
we change our mindset, our eating habit and our way of consuming,
corporations will have to respond and adapt to a new market.
The small farmer is getting back to being relevant to the whole
chain of production. Even
people are growing plants and seeds
inside their homes as well.
And that reshapes the whole economy.
7 - The
awakening of spirituality
How many friends do you have who practice yoga? What about
meditation?
Now think back, 10 years ago, how many
people did you know by then who practiced these activities?
Spirituality, for too long, was for esoteric folks, those
weird-like and mystic people.
But fortunately, this is also changing. We've come to the edge of
reason and rationality. We were able to realize that, with only our
conscious mind, we can't figure out everything that goes by here.
There is something else going on and I'm
sure you want to get hold of that as well.
You want to understand how these things work.
How life operates, what happens
after death, what is this
energy thing people talk about so much, what is
quantum physics, how thoughts
can be materialized and
create our sense of reality,
what is coincidence and
synchronicity, why meditation
works, how it's possible to
cure using nothing but bare hands,
how those alternative therapies not approved by
regular medicine can actually
work.
Companies are providing meditation to
their employees.
Even schools are teaching the young how
to meditate. Think about it.
8 -
Unschooling trends
-
Who created this teaching model?
-
Who chose the classes you have
to take?
-
Who chose the lessons we learn
in history classes?
-
Why didn't they teach us
the truth about other ancient
civilizations?
-
Why should kids follow a certain
set of rules?
-
Why should they watch everything
in silence?
-
Why should they wear a uniform?
-
What about taking a test to
prove that you actually learned?
We developed a model that perpetuates
and replicates followers of the system. That breed people into
ordinary human beings.
Fortunately, a lot of people are working to rethink that though
concepts such as
unschooling, hackschooling, homeschooling.
Maybe you've never thought of that and even may be in shock. But
it's happening. Silently, people are being woken up and are
realizing how crazy it is to live in this society.
Look at all these new actions and try to think that everything is
normal, that all we were taught so far is normal.
I don't think it is...
There is something extraordinary happening.
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