Motherhood | Identity | Are you richer than your Dad? | My Performance Event | Villages | How to be good at Social Media
Even more eclectic than usual this week, if you read only one, I recommend Anoushka's piece on motherhood, what they don't tell you.
Summary
↠My Performance-Lecture, Thinking Bigly, 17 June.
--->Booking open here, FREE. Code = Bigly. If you come to only one event of mine this year. Make it this one.
↠Winnie Li on being an Asian American writer, in Asia.
↠Absolute social mobility impacted by low growth > inequality
↠Motherhood: What they don't tell you
↠How to be good at social media ( for museums)
↠Identity, Sapiens, Rural Villages, Women and coffee growing
↠YC Start-up school: amazing resource
↠David Ruebain on defending Arts Education
↠‘They Were Conned’: How Reckless Loans Devastated a Generation of Taxi Drivers
↠28 May Small Sustainabilty Meet-Up
Please come to my June 17 Performance-Talk Thinking Bigly. If you want to see me only once this year make it this.
Booking open here, FREE. Code = Bigly. Or email me for a spot.
A theatre performance talk about sustainability and how you, finance and policy can be part of the solution. What reasons do we have to be hopeful in the current crisis moment? Brief details and a couple of pictures here: https://www.thendobetter.com/thinking-bigly
It’s a form of anti-TED talk. The event is interactive and we speak to why the colour pink, koalas and interest rates; and second order thinking, plus cultural changes gives me hope on climate. Who wouldn’t take notice of a dance-off between Beyonce, Trump and Kim ? Booking open here
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I’m co-hosting a small informal sustainability meet up with some MOHURD people from China. Tues 28 May in the evening, London. Message me for details if interested.
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Fascinating discussion on identity and politics from a small group who cross a fair range of the political and identity spectrum. I was expecting more polarised views but there was broad consensus that the direction identity politics is heading was not helpful and that the complexities and nuances of identity was being lost.
I hadn’t appreciated either the pressure in the younger generation to conform or to be correctly woke or anti-woke according to tribe. Only anecdote, but the bullying/ostracising of young people eg for incorrect use of changing pronoun was alarming. It led me to believe I’m too distant from what 20s people think and do. Let alone teenagers.
I was part of a book night discussing Sapiens and a Le Guin essay. Many provoking themes with some (eg me) being more hopeful and others not. The idea of the “intersubjective myth” continues to rattle around in my head. These ideas which only gain strength because millions of people believe in it but which have powered human history. Money, religion, Empire, the US Constitution… You can quibble with Sapiens but the long lens of human history was fascinating. Strongest arguments for looking at history and for being vegan that I’ve looked at it in a while.
I saw White Pearl at the Royal Court. I don’t have any deep insights. It was fun to see different Asian women on stage some speaking in dialects like Singlish that are known to me. It was funny to hear outrageously racist Asians, in the way that it reflects a truth you know.
Above, I saw the moon and the Coney piece, Companion: Moon at the Natural History Museum.
I saw the dance-theatre piece Four Quartets choreographed by Pam Tanowitz. It is astonishing. The NYT critic at its premier called it the best dance theatre work of the century. I don’t have words for dance and this type of performance doesn’t have an easy way in for some viewers but a multitude of elements from set, art, light music and reading of the TS Eliot poems were of beguilingly beautiful artistry.
The talk afterwards with designer, dramaturg* (my former mentor, see end) dancer, choreographer and critic was a thoughtful insight into creative collaborative processes. Leaves a great deal echoing in my head.
A divided US in a type of war with China. A split UK. Protests. Countries like Yemen or Sudan falling apart with millions dying. Yet still humanity creates all these works of wonder still.
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Here my friend Winnie Li shares an opinion essay about the types of narratives Western publishers/platforms expect of Asians and Asian-American creatives - and how work can be perceived differently on the other side of the world.
“...I am glad my Korean publishers recognized the value of promoting an Asian American female author to Asian women readers, but our readerships shouldn’t be limited by race. It is truly a shame if Western publishers perceive a problematic gap between the race of an author and the race of a book’s intended readers—because there are readers of all ethnicities in the West, and we are all capable of empathy. And literature, after all, is meant to transcend such human particularities. As a Taiwanese American girl growing up in the U.S., I certainly identified with characters who didn’t come from a world anything like mine: Scout Finch, Holden Caulfield, Bigger Thomas. And indeed, it works the other way around. I’ve had white male readers say that reading Dark Chapter made them understand a bit better what it’s like to be a woman, who cried reading the scenes of the heroine’s experience of the criminal justice system. So if they can identify with a Taiwanese American heroine, then that’s already one step towards progress….”
3-5 min essay: https://electricliterature.com/being-published-in-asia-changed-everything-about-my-asian-american-writer-experience/
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Continuing my examination on inequality. I consider longitudinal absolute social mobility and the evidence that a lack of growth is a bigger factor than inequality in the drop in mobility.
Still the positive is that 55% (or is that glass half full?) of 30 years olds in the UK still earn more than their parents, although that is significantly down from the 80 to 90% of previous years.
2 Min blog with link to papers: https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2019/5/17/absolute-mobility-country-changes-contributions-of-growth-and-inequality
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Ray Dalio has opined on how capitalism needs reform. Nassim Taleb somewhat disagrees and points the blame at a lack of skin in the game for corporate managers, and the problem of big corporations over a move localist, decentralised world. Taleb is consistently localist over globalist.
https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2019/4/6/ray-dalio-on-reforming-capitalism
From Anoushka: An honest hard look at motherhood and reflection of the raw and otherworldly observations of Rachel Cusk.
...In great part, parenting is hard because of the overwhelming love and concern that assails you when you take charge of a tiny human, and love and concern leak from every page of “A Life’s Work”. In fact, to run with the military metaphors, if forewarned is forearmed, Cusk is a more valuable addition to your arsenal than the Febers, Spocks and Leachs of the world....
3 Min blog: https://spitting-yarn.com/blog/2019/5/22/honesty
Seven broad statements that may or may not help your museum do a bit better at social media.
Me: From the guy who made the Sheep “absolute unit” go viral and now has a job at Tesla doing social media. Very thoughtful for small museums and arts orgs. If senior staff at museums don't understand this, then they need to let 20s staff do it.
This Note discusses best practice for rural design. Drawing on research carried out as part of a year-long placement in South Cambridgeshire District Council, it shows how co-creating simple design principles together with local, rural communities can help justify and shape village growth. My amazing friend Hana on her recent work on growing villages and the planning process. Might seem esoteric, but insightful reflections on what rural development could and should look like.
“"...Involvement of local communities is too often minimal; consultation when proposals are already well developed, rather than dialogue throughout the design process. Planning officers need new ways to work with landowners and developers to site and design designing new developments that can earn broad support from both elected members and local communities. This needs to work with the requirements of viability and delivery to speed up the process of building much-needed new homes, not to slow it up. This research shows that this is what communities want as, in the main, they are not anti-growth in principle...." Research note here: http://www.publicpractice.org.uk/resources/growing-villages
Another amazing friend, Rebecca Morahan. She helped write these insights into women in the coffee and cocoa supply chain. On a systemic basis educating women, giving them financial security is a strongly powerful positive on sustainability according to the likes of the Drawdown Project. https://twin.org.uk/news/changing-the-terms-of-womens-engagement-in-cocoa-and-coffee/
These YC Start up school blogs and slides are astonishingly packed with good advice, case studies of success and failures and practical ideas.
An amazing resource for all start ups (esp tech) and small businesses and super insightful any student of business (which should be all active investors) https://www.startupschool.org/library
‘They Were Conned’: How Reckless Loans Devastated a Generation of Taxi Drivers
Thousands of immigrants who were chasing the dream of owning a New York taxi were trapped in reckless loans by bankers who made huge profits. NYT.
Me: Sad. Fascinating and depressing investigation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/nyc-taxis-medallions-suicides.html
David Ruebain makes the case for protecting arts and creative education not only because of a financial return but because of its creative and social capital.
"...The returns on investment in performing arts are significant, but the strength of any country and its people is about far more than the financial wealth it generates. We must challenge the dangerous narrative that equates success with the level of a graduate’s income and which reduces education to a financial transaction. If we don’t, we risk losing the next generation of artists and all that they contribute to our wellbeing and society…”
1 min blog with link to op-ed and to circus school video: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2019/5/20/in-defence-of-arts-education-investment
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One of my early dramaturg mentors, Gideon Lester (who commissioned Four Quartets) and my thanks to him here: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/9/11/thank-you-gideon
From the archive: A reflection on the film Crazy Rich Asians: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2018/9/8/am-i-a-crazy-rich-asian
Generation Z. A look at their different qualities versus Millennials