In today’s episode I continue with the theme that so much of the modern technocratic system is designed to keep you in fear so that your attention and energy can be monetized.
I suggest how we can all learn to focus more on decisions that increase hope and optimism.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome friends to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Hope you like the last episode it's uh, it's done really well.
Speaker:We were talking about, uh, the attention economy.
Speaker:And how we need to be diligent on where we place our attention today.
Speaker:I'm gonna go on fraction, deeper on that.
Speaker:And tomorrow we're gonna move.
Speaker:Onto one of the first of our recent listener.
Speaker:Questions user generated content.
Speaker:So, uh, you know, one of the best things I get to do on this show is just, uh,
Speaker:take your questions, challenges, problems, cuz we are all on this journey together.
Speaker:There is not a single person listening and me here behind the
Speaker:microphone have not figured out.
Speaker:How to do life perfectly.
Speaker:We're all still traveling together.
Speaker:So I get to.
Speaker:I guess the privilege of working through some of your questions.
Speaker:So we're gonna start that tomorrow, tomorrow, gonna be talking about how
Speaker:we deal with things like self judgment.
Speaker:Today, I just wanna take your fraction deeper on, um,
Speaker:this attention economy idea.
Speaker:I think it's really.
Speaker:Important that we be across this concept and its implications for our life.
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Speaker:And the greatest thing you can do is if you like what
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Speaker:cuz that, uh, it helps it to grow, helps it to reach more people.
Speaker:And the feedback and emails that I've been getting are just, uh,
Speaker:really beautiful from people that, uh, I've had the pleasure of meeting
Speaker:and a live event or somewhere else.
Speaker:So, uh, yeah.
Speaker:Look, if you're like what you're hearing, uh, let me know,
Speaker:jonathan@jonathandoyle.co dot COO let's jump in to today is the second part.
Speaker:Of the quote that I was sharing the other day, and it's going deeper
Speaker:on this idea of attention economy.
Speaker:So let me share it with you and then let's unpack a little bit and see
Speaker:how it could be relevant for your.
Speaker:Life.
Speaker:Here's the quote, the perpetual negative focus.
Speaker:On problems and melodies and outrages.
Speaker:Prevents the emergence of positive.
Speaker:Plans and projects.
Speaker:One more time.
Speaker:The perpetual negative focus on problems.
Speaker:And maladies and outrages.
Speaker:Prevents the emergence of positive.
Speaker:Plans and projects.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So in the YouTube version, there'll be a link here.
Speaker:I go pretty deep on this.
Speaker:I talk about.
Speaker:In terms of evolutionary biology, how we developed as a species,
Speaker:we are hardwired towards fear.
Speaker:Because of the need for self-preservation fear played an incredibly important
Speaker:role in the development of the human species, the survival.
Speaker:And, uh, flourishing of the human species had a great deal to do.
Speaker:With the evolutionary adaptive capacity of fear, there were many
Speaker:things worth being afraid of you put your head outside that cave 300,000
Speaker:years ago, and anything was possible.
Speaker:Pestilence would be stalking the land.
Speaker:Sabba tooth tigers were not really because they were gone before then,
Speaker:but you know, some sort of nasty thing would be there to eat you.
Speaker:And if it wasn't that it was gonna be, you know, Neighboring
Speaker:tribes that decided that, uh, your hunting grounds were better.
Speaker:So they were gonna.
Speaker:Basically start a tribal conflict.
Speaker:So there was a real evolutionary benefit to fear.
Speaker:Of course you fast forward to today.
Speaker:And I've said this many times, The fears that inhabit our world are very different.
Speaker:Um, they're very abstract, you know, in terms of, if you, if you could
Speaker:choose a time to be born in human history, this is pretty much it.
Speaker:You know, many of you have heard me talk about the, the flushing
Speaker:toilet, you know, principle.
Speaker:Um, if you're living at a time with a flashing toilet for you're doing pretty.
Speaker:Well, compared to almost every human that ever lived, you know?
Speaker:And, um, so the fears that we face are not immediate fears of death.
Speaker:We understand that there's wars and conflicts in different parts of the world.
Speaker:But the, the fears that we face abstract, can I pay my bills?
Speaker:Will my kids be okay?
Speaker:Will I find someone.
Speaker:Uh, who loved me forever, all these abstract kind of fears and
Speaker:what I wanna talk about today.
Speaker:Is just to help you continually understand the role.
Speaker:Of legacy and mainstream media and the kind of in penetration.
Speaker:Of how we are governed with media and large corporations.
Speaker:Because they're all kind of singing off the same song sheet, if you will.
Speaker:And one of the things that.
Speaker:They use is fear.
Speaker:Government uses fear because the, the more fear that government can
Speaker:inject into the system, the more.
Speaker:The great mass of people will need to believe that we must be protected from
Speaker:X fear, fill in the blank, whatever the fear happens to be economic.
Speaker:Medical, you know, uh, military, whatever it is, fill in the blank.
Speaker:I do not discount that there are genuine things going on in the world,
Speaker:but I would like you to hopefully agree with me that the preponderance of
Speaker:fear probably doesn't match up to the lived bear experience of most of us.
Speaker:So what mainstream media understands of course, is that fear sells fear,
Speaker:gains our attention because of that evolutionary biological basis.
Speaker:We are.
Speaker:If something is presented to us in a fearful sense,
Speaker:something could happen to us.
Speaker:They were more likely to pay attention.
Speaker:The longer we pay attention, the more we are a set of eyeballs into
Speaker:which advertising can be sold.
Speaker:So you can see this kind of confluence of factors that increase
Speaker:the level of fear in our culture.
Speaker:And so what this does, according to today's quote.
Speaker:Is it, I guess it's sort of soaks us in a mill year, a, a stew, if you will.
Speaker:It's like a, we are baed in fear.
Speaker:And when that happens, I think our energy and attention.
Speaker:Well, attention's fragmented, but our energy levels can be slowly restricted.
Speaker:You know, what's the point?
Speaker:Why do we bother why we should we even try to think, you know, tomorrow's
Speaker:gonna look worse than today and on and on it goes, we have this.
Speaker:Deep sense that things are getting worse.
Speaker:And no matter what happens, there's nothing we can do.
Speaker:And then it restricts that optimism.
Speaker:That leads to kind of growth and flourishing in our private lives,
Speaker:but also in our culture in general.
Speaker:Um, I read Ross do that's book.
Speaker:Uh, the decadent society, which I, think's a really important book.
Speaker:Uh, it's one of those books that, uh, you know, it's, it's a, it's a really
Speaker:good read and you come away with a, with a, with an idea that stays with you.
Speaker:And one of the points he makes in that book is that, that.
Speaker:Exploration is central to human experience.
Speaker:That a lot of the great unleashing of growth.
Speaker:And potential in human societies happened.
Speaker:As a result of exploration, you look at people like Ferd
Speaker:and Magellan, you know, leaving Portugal, sailing across the ocean.
Speaker:Naming the Pacific ocean.
Speaker:He did, you know, Pacific Pacifica means peaceful the peaceful ocean.
Speaker:And, um, you know, it was this exploratory journeys there, sort of the merchant.
Speaker:Exploring class that left Venice in the, in the modern era, you know,
Speaker:and began to open up different parts of the world in this ex, this
Speaker:desire for exploration and growth.
Speaker:You look at the migration west in the United States, the frontier spirit
Speaker:that opened up this kind of growth.
Speaker:So the was a, as much as there were risks and threats and dangers, there was also.
Speaker:An optimism.
Speaker:There was a hope, there was a sense that things could get better, that things.
Speaker:Would be more interesting to be more potential and possibility as
Speaker:we uncovered the world around us.
Speaker:I've been talking about an article I read recently from the sociologist
Speaker:Frank Ferrate who talked about it, the difference from our culture at the
Speaker:moment, as opposed to previous cultures.
Speaker:Is that previously when cultures were presented with threats and
Speaker:fear, fearful things, They, they definitely experienced fear, but
Speaker:they also experienced a sense of.
Speaker:Opportunity.
Speaker:What is the possible opportunity in what's happening here?
Speaker:And his research suggests that we've lost.
Speaker:The sense of opportunity.
Speaker:We still have the sense of fear when things happen, but we've lost the sense
Speaker:of, well, what might this bring about what potential things here could happen?
Speaker:That could be positive.
Speaker:So, what I'm getting at in this episode, my friend is to remind us all that.
Speaker:This stuff is not neutral.
Speaker:There are highly intelligent people, packaging, fear, and
Speaker:selling it to you on a daily basis.
Speaker:Now, what I've done is opt out.
Speaker:So I just opt out.
Speaker:I, I don't, I know I haven't watched mainstream television
Speaker:in probably 15, 20 years.
Speaker:Uh,
Speaker:I deleted all my social media accounts.
Speaker:I used sub stack because you can.
Speaker:Really access some extraordinarily brilliant independent journalism there.
Speaker:Um, I use a few other sources.
Speaker:I think there is a lot of great stuff on podcasts and there's people that you can.
Speaker:Follow who are really interesting.
Speaker:So I've opted outta the system.
Speaker:I just switch off.
Speaker:Even when I go to the gym, they've got about 15 television screens.
Speaker:I just pull my hat down, get my workout done.
Speaker:Don't even look at it.
Speaker:You can see the headline.
Speaker:Sometimes I glimpse and it's like,
Speaker:Uh, doctors fear new death thing happening next Tuesday at four.
Speaker:Be afraid.
Speaker:And I love how, you know, often with, you know, you, you see <laugh>, they go
Speaker:to the ad breaks and they're like, and when we come back, More fear when we
Speaker:come back something else to worry about.
Speaker:So I'm not being flippant.
Speaker:I know some of you're listening here going Jonathan.
Speaker:Seriously.
Speaker:He telling us to be uninformed.
Speaker:He's telling us to be unplugged.
Speaker:What I'm saying is this, there is a huge global governance, media marketing nexus
Speaker:that is trying to make you afraid, because if you are afraid, you are controllable
Speaker:and you will do what you are told.
Speaker:And I also think that it is stopping the creativity and optimism and
Speaker:hope that needs to spring up in our hearts on a regular basis.
Speaker:I know the other critique something you'll have was
Speaker:Jonathan, you need to be informed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I kind of get that.
Speaker:I agree with that to a point.
Speaker:But I actually think you, we all need to go and reread Steven Covey's
Speaker:circle of influence and circle of interest and circle of control.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because there's in many ways there's bug rule that we can control, like, unless
Speaker:you're running the United nations world health organization, or you're leading
Speaker:a nation there's, there's not a lot that many of us get to do to change the
Speaker:issues that are being presented to us.
Speaker:What I believe is that we get to, we get to change what's right in front
Speaker:of us, the quality of our marriages, the quality of our parenting,
Speaker:the quality of our friendships.
Speaker:How we apply ourselves to worthwhile valuable things each day of our lives.
Speaker:I think that what the fear does is it sucks us up into this great big narrative
Speaker:arc that sort of roams around the planet.
Speaker:And we forget the incredible.
Speaker:Influence that we can have in what's right in front of us.
Speaker:We can choose optimism in our daily.
Speaker:Lives now I wanna say, choose.
Speaker:I really want to get this point across.
Speaker:Optimism hope are decisions.
Speaker:They're not magical feelings that some of us have more than others.
Speaker:I have had to work very hard.
Speaker:I still have to work very hard on a daily basis to, you know, to not
Speaker:give into some of the despair, to not give into some of the hopelessness.
Speaker:You know, we, we were massively impacted.
Speaker:By some of the decisions over the last few years in terms of travel
Speaker:and speaking, and business, and, uh, I've had to work very hard not
Speaker:to descend into a bitter cynicism.
Speaker:It's a work, it's a project.
Speaker:So this isn't just a nice idea.
Speaker:Like, oh yeah, let's be more hopeful.
Speaker:Now this is a decision.
Speaker:This is a choice.
Speaker:Something we do every day.
Speaker:All some.
Speaker:Summary.
Speaker:I believe that not only is our attention being fragmented, I believe that fear is
Speaker:being used is fear is being weaponized.
Speaker:If you use that word in a way that it probably hasn't been before, simply
Speaker:because of technology is a different, it can be mainstreamed and it's
Speaker:more pervasive and endemic to the.
Speaker:System than it ever has been in human history.
Speaker:So friends, let us choose to fight back.
Speaker:Let us choose.
Speaker:To disengage from the system as much as it's practical for you.
Speaker:What can you say no to what can you watch?
Speaker:Less of?
Speaker:What can you listen to less?
Speaker:You know, how can you become more astute?
Speaker:How can you choose more hope and optimism on a daily basis?
Speaker:Okay, so just do the audit.
Speaker:That's what I say in so many episodes.
Speaker:Do the audit as you go through today, look around.
Speaker:What are you listening to?
Speaker:What are you?
Speaker:I mean, you here, right?
Speaker:You're listening to this.
Speaker:This is hopefully an optic Optim, uh, optimistic message today.
Speaker:I want you to be encouraged.
Speaker:I want you to be.
Speaker:Encouraged.
Speaker:I want you to believe that you are not a victim.
Speaker:I want you to believe that you can.
Speaker:Find the goodness in life.
Speaker:I wanna believe that you can improve your circumstance and the circumstance
Speaker:of the people that you love.
Speaker:So press on my friends, press on.
Speaker:Disconnect get more mindful about what the inputs are and choose to
Speaker:be a light in wherever you are today in your marriage, in your parenting,
Speaker:in your workplace, in your school.
Speaker:Go there today and just do the best you can to bring light and hop optimism
Speaker:and joy and hope into that space.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:God, bless you.
Speaker:Go and check out the YouTube version.
Speaker:Links you here, would you please subscribe?
Speaker:Um check out the links you can book me to speak conferences events staff training
Speaker:all that sort of stuff so go check it out god bless you guys love your heaps
Speaker:i'm praying for you all i hope that we uh we can all make the most of this
Speaker:moment in history my name's jonathan doyle this has been the daily podcast in
Speaker:you and i gonna talk again tim tomorrow.
