Theme: EVERYONE IS EVERYTHING
26.12.2020
Everyone is everything.
In various degrees.
If someone threatens a loved one of mine, I can be Diego. Kicking their ass. Hard.
If I have to keep peace, I can be Alison.
I’m good with words.
And I hate to admit, but I can totally be Luther. A blundering sorry ass, sensitive and annoying idiot. He pisses me off the most.
And there is Ben. He is a wise and softly spoken ghost. Unseen and without noticeable physical abilities, but when all of the others fail, he saves the day. Cool. That’s me too.
And I adore Klaus. I want to have a little more of him. Demons and all. Including the fashion.
And there is Vanya. Eternally angry for feeling excluded.
I feel like her at the moment.
Excluded from the group.
And I feel anger.
Because I know I am excluded because of fear.
First it was the fear of Covid.
Being a potential danger to the group.
I understood.
I gave into the group fear.
The global fear.
Fair enough.
That is not my fear.
But it’s actually not about that.
I am now bowing to a different fear.
The fear of not being accepted.
It’s a personal fear and I see it reflected back at me.
In Jones.
First I dismissed it as silly. Because I thought it wasn’t my fear.
But now I realise that it resonates with me and hence it must be part of me. Otherwise I wouldn’t feel angry and sick with resentment.
So why do I have that fear?
Why do I feel like that, being seemingly excluded from a group, means anything?
And if I am looking at the group, are they not a little like the Hargreaves, separated within themselves, forever submitting to old behavioural patterns and harbouring outdated resentments?
Do I want to be a part of such a group? Potentially obliged to take sides or submitting to all the group drama?
I would probably not be able to be me. Freely.
But I WANT to freely be me. It’s more fun. Be Klaus.
And it actually can be more fun to be an outside solitary enigma, just watching and not getting drawn into dynamics.
Being Switzerland. (Switzerland might not be the best analogy because it’s a beautiful but dull country. Not a lot of fun. I don’t want to be no fun.)
To be more precise:
I meant Being Switzerland in terms of having my own dynamics.
Being neutral towards others’ dynamics.
And passionate when it feels important.
Instead, I want to cultivate my own power dynamics instead of believing I don’t have any and seeking protection in a group in order to indulge in their. Dynamics.
I want to feel like not having to compete.
Being without competition.
Being Vanya.
She has the most powers of all.
But her anger of feeling excluded from the group makes her a liability.
Chill out, girl!
You have totally awesome powers.
But by being angry all the time, you become destructive.
I don’t like to destroy.
I like to build.
Meaningful relationships.
Being part of a group or a tribe is a primeval thing.
It’s entrained in our system.
Because not being part of a group, being rejected, could mean certain death.
At least in the age of mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers.
The group means safety and survival.
You live together.
You hunt together.
You protect each other.
And you trust.
Each other.
But do you trust your group to do that?
To be willing to be there for you no matter what?
Cue (dis-functional) families.
Families should be the most protective, loving, supportive single group unit in humanity.
And some of them I believe are, but most of them are the complete opposite.
Why?
They are the people who know you the longest, non?
Yet they don’t seem to know you.
Or themselves for that matter. At all.
Group dynamics feeding on personal insecurities and lack of trust.
So, where is the protection there?
Everyone protects themselves from each other.
But not each other from outside influences.
This only comes with extreme outside threat to the group.
A challenge to lay aside personal differences in favour of pooling power to protect the group.
So, there is
- personal protection from each other.
- personal protection becoming group protection towards an ‘outside’ threat
One is defence … inwards
Two is offensive … outwards
Why do we feel threats?
Why do we always feel the need for protection?
From what?
We give the ‘what’ names…
Bullies
Diseases
Pandemics
(It’s funny, in 25 years looking back at 2020, we will probably be laughing at the pathetic attempt to protect ourselves from a virus with paper and string mouth caps. How archaic.)
We are majorly challenged at the moment with the need for feeling protected.
Personal protection manifested in mouth caps and self isolation.
- Personal group protection by limiting the number of people from different backgrounds grouping. Christmas and the supermarket.
- Global group protection of countries by colour coding each other and devising travel restrictions. Against each other.
But the PROTECTION OBSESSION thing is not just for 2020.
We’ve fucking have always done it.
The trigger?
FEAR
It’s human.
And it has different names.
At the moment it has the name of a famous beer brand.
A name everyone can identify with intimately because they have probably consumed/experienced it at some point.
With symptoms everyone can identify with too, since everyone probably was consumed with/experienced a rotten cold at some point.
Genius combination.
A popular name and easily recognisable.
That’s an awesome branding job, my dear, and a sure way to successful
PRODUCT ADOPTION.
FEAR, I salute you.👏🏽
This was an exemplary execution of the rules of TEXTBOOK MARKETING
A very successful product launch indeed.
And it worked like a dream.
It inspired millions.
They simply cannot stop talking about it.
Wow
Ok, so since we are talking seriously cool Marketing, let’s have a look at where we are in the Product Adoption Curve:
It looks like we have already reached the beginning of the end of the YELLOW SECTION.
Which is awesome.
The natural end to a cycle.
Now, questions are asked.
“Do I really need this shit?”
And answered.
“Naaaa, we’re done!”
We’re getting bored of the product now.
Bored of the hype.
Not buying anymore.
Therefore, in order to make a few more product sales, FEAR throws in an upgraded version to keep us buying for a little while longer.
AND to get a few more adopters.
Laggards they’re called.
Nobody wants to be one of those.
They are lame and sad.
An onomatopoeia.
Sounds like a nasty procedure.
Hey, if there are ones of us who are getting newly exited, for a moment, finally purchasing and being able to join the experience, join the conversation, feel the remainder of the hype, … then good on them.
Knock (y)ourselves out.
And there are the ones of us who pay lip service. Pretending to join the hype marginally but not engaging in the conversation. So not really buying.
Just browsing.
Annoying buggers.
Especially for the ones of us who realise what we bought into.
And some of us decided they don’t need it anymore. Not the product and not the hype.
Sure, when we were at the Drop, it was kinda exciting.
At the beginning, we were convinced we totally needed it.
And who can blame us?
In terms of experiences, nothing similar had come our way since WW2.
And you must admit: The Marketing was epic.
It was awe inspiring.
It was something completely new.
It heralded a new experience.
And it was a global experience.
We were fascinated in various degrees globally. Longitude and latitude.
It connected everyone.
No matter how rich or poor.
No matter how famous or obscure.
No matter where they lived.
No matter who they loved.
No matter what they did for a living.
THE BIG EQUALISER
I imagine it was needed.
And it had to be so utterly grotesque for us to pay attention, to see, to remind ourselves that
We are all the same.
Our fears are the same.
Our struggles are the same.
Our loves are the same.
A global family.
So we pulled together our resources and know-how (our powers) because the enemy was not each other but an outside force.
We managed to lay down our stupid sibling rivalry to work together to
SAVE THE WORLD
The Hargreaves at their most powerful.
For a moment.
If you blinked, you might’ve missed it.
Or not.
Doesn’t matter.
Fact is that 2020 was a shooting star. One of the most amazing shooting stars to behold.
Or actually, it was a fucking comet.
Just look up.
And realise that fear is nothing new, but one old thing simply coming in ever new packaging.
And is sold to us again and again and again …
In the hope that we not only keep on buying, but BUYING INTO IT.
We can be happily duped into buying the same shit over and over again if we refuse to look and smell closely.
To look beyond the packaging.
Which is cool too, if we choose not to see and instead to buy into it for the experience we believe we need, it serves a purpose. Again and again.
Fair enough.
But what a fucking awful waste of our resources, our
SUPERPOWERS
If you ask me.
But you don’t have to.
Your decision.
P.S. I hate to break it to you, mate, but on top of everything is this:
The more you expose and reject fear, the fancier the packaging becomes.
And the cleverer the marketing campaigns.
And it won’t stop until you learn to look with your eyes closed
And see.
Realise.
Shooting stars.
