Cursed with the hangover of a scarcity mindset
And muddled by what it truly means to live in an era of abundance and access.
How long does it take to shed the old way of thinking?
Change is slow and we know why. Good ideas often take many tries before they take hold. Don’t get discouraged. Let’s get shake out some of those cobwebs and banish the fog now, okay? We’ve got some serious work to do and some good trouble to brew.
Vanquishing antiquated thinking is clearly a longer process than the one snakes need to wiggle out of their casing – but it feels appropriate to think of those reptiles when pondering why everything is the way it is. We are depriving ourselves of a better world because of forces that encourage us from changing our minds. How much is it on us? How much of it is on them trying to keep us down?
And all the while they extract more and more…
Something’s gotta give.
We know we need to actively abandon antiquated thinking if we want to improve our current situation. But why don’t we then? Seems odd to know that most are all united on a need, but yet few are willing to take action.
I sort of get it. For the longest period cinema was an entire ecosystem predicated on scarcity of supply. Even series were. We watched what we got because that’s all we had. It was very limited and yet we always wanted more. Three networks meant we all watched the same thing. When there wasn’t much available in terms of alternative leisure time options, movies were by far our number one pastime. And the limited number of movies available meant if you missed it in the theater, you’d be sure to watch it when it hit cable or the video store.
Times sure have changed.
But our behavior hasn’t caught up.
Let’s be real. Those days of cinema business’ dominance have been dead for a good long time now. And yet part of our thinking is still driven by that scarcity mindset. We need to examine this phenomenon and then quickly burn it, bury it, stick a wooden spike through its heart, and make sure it will never come back.
But if life was only so simple… we aren’t just battling one demon who lost its place in this world. We have its opposite-from-another-dimension also eating up all the energy and matter from our world. Meanwhile our puny human mind not only doesn’t recognize its antiquated scarcity mindset, but we also refuse to fathom what the ramifications of this new beast on the scene means.
We mashup these two concepts into a mush of confusion and it is leaving a bad aftertaste.
You might get the picture, but I haven’t even painted in the onslaught of perfect storms for you. Technological breakthroughs arrived too fast for us to comprehend the repercussions. Social media is over twenty years old now. YouTube too is twenty years in. Streaming is readily accepted. Peak Content came and went but frankly still makes sense as a business tactic so we won’t really ever be done with it. The go-to we turned to to solve the tsunami of incoming was compression of complexity, simplifying so we never had to dive below the surface or experience a rough patch — the very things that once built strength and instinct.
We surrendered curation to the algos and did not bolt the door to Surveillance Capitalism any more than we did to Uncle Milton’s Shock Cap methods. When the Chokepoint Capitalism then became the law, again we didn’t stop that march either. The decline of privacy, ownership, and democracy waltzed on in to join the jamboree. And yeah, the rise of the oligarchs shot up the charts too. Pretty serious stuff in this toilet bowl swirl; no wonder people can’t think straight. Or won’t. Maybe they never wanted to anyway.
You do get the picture now though, right? I see it like a great monster movie: the horrible beasts of scarcity and abundance team with their spawns of simplicity and compression to fight it out as the twisters of chaos (social media, streaming, surveillance, chokepoint & media consolidation, income disparity, and democracy under attack) swirl around us. It is not so bad really. It is to be expected. It is just The Wizard Of Oz all over again, albeit on steroids and crack.
What’s true for cinema is also often true for life. If it isn’t based on The Wizard Of Oz, it is probably The Searchers or Amadeus. But we are in The Emerald City this time.
It is a law of power that power won’t surrender on its own volition. They’d rather burn down the city than give it over to the new or rightful owners. And yes, you are right. That’s exactly what is happening now.
They’d rather we all run around like headless chickens, chasing everything and nothing, and leaping off the cliff with only an anvil to hang onto. They can better keep looting the store when we act that way. Face it, everything is set up for the haves to get more, while those that make it all work keep getting less. Do we all keep smiling in the process because we think it demonstrates a virtue? Isn’t it closer to cowardice or at least procrastination?
Like the Great Oz, they are playing us with smoke and mirrors, pomp and circumstances, and bread and circuses. It looks big and scary but it is really just mindset, and we can click our heals and be back home in a jiffy. Just say the words. Or maybe we need that sweet little one to say the king is naked as the day. Where’s the torch to lead us away from the shadows dancing on the walls of our cave? Let’s go, I know the way.
First let’s look at our hangover. What are the vestiges of our scarcity mindset? We are going to toss them to the wind. It will start to free you. And what about the confusion that abundance and access facilitate? We wil bury that with yesterday’s news.
The ragged remnants of scarcity thinking.
It’s hard to accept that one of the reasons that the cinema business worked was that it was really the only game in town. We know it is a beautiful but that’s not why they showed up. The audience didn’t have a choice. I guess they could have kept farming for a few more hours… Sure, we have a good product, or even two, but quality is never enough to keep the party going.
Scarcity does make some marvelous things happen, or at least it did. You could build something, and they would come. There was only one path and it went through town where the movie palace and ball field both were. Once you ate everything offered, the only thing left to consume was what you skipped over yesterday. So you got seconds, maybe even thirds. If you finished the cycle, you were still dependent on the supply for your next shot of dopamine. All business resembles drug peddling.
Both our artists and our entrepreneurs often seem to think we live in that splendor of old. Whether you think you can build a new platform and people will show up, or you think you can make a work of art or great entertainment and it will sell or attract crowds, you are stuck in a scarcity mindset. I don’t know how to say this politely. I am sorry, but you are an idiot. The rules have changed, and you need a change to your game.
