Go Flip Yourself.

I'm enraged by the current situation. I'm deeply sad that we are still guilty of such injustice. I'm concerned by the lack of empathy. I sometimes wonder wether we're truly able to be humanist - as a society.

Now I'm obsessed with one thing everyday when I look at my 1 year-old son: what can I do exactly / what should I show him / how to make sure he's actively & fully part of something much better. I believe my wife and I are capable of such a thing. Actually, we have to succeed. 

Below are first thoughts we had, we'll go through some iterations for sure, we'll need to confront this against reality, to adapt and progress. I read a lot of good intentions these past few weeks but haven't gone through much things towards babies, kids & education as a whole. How school should start tomorrow to teach differently for instance? I haven't read anything impactful on the topic so far; which saddens me. How everyone at home should start right now to raise awareness among the whole family? The list goes on.

I do think that education is key here. After all, as parents [but not only, as grand-parents as well, as godfathers, friends, brothers & sisters, aunts & uncles, teachers, etc.] we do set up examples & give some backgrounds & context for generations to come. My son isn't born racist. I see him today treat 100% equally his black & white friends at kindergarten. If we're not active & intentional though, I'm afraid he might become at some point. Because it's sneaky, it's part of our culture. Let's pause. Writing this hurts me. I want us to change. Then, I want his generation to finally experience a real humanist & peaceful world.

I'd love to know your thoughts on the topic, your realisations too, your own blindspots, your actions. It'll obviously be a continuous work-in-progress on our end.

In no particular order:

• we want our son to develop strong ties with some black kids; since I don't believe we could force any specific friendship or love; we could influence his environment though; and that's where it becomes a number game at the end. Few areas we're thinking about: geography [which type of neighborhood, city, country are we living in], school, social activities [like personally I met most of my black friends through boxing].
• this applies to ourselves as well; today our son is playing with a black friend because we met her parents and became friends with them. Though we realised we don't have a lot. Let's be more intentional with this.
• speak out against anything racist we will hear - always; coming from anyone; 'jokes' included; no matter the context: family, professional, etc. And let's be radical about it.
• get deeply involved in the historical lessons our kids will get along the way; and always provide few other angles. I remember how enlightening it was for me during my years in Singapore to read & learn about World War II through a South-East Asian angle, it felt like a totally different event [and it was a humbling experience].
• be extra-careful with the set of aspirational examples he'll get growing up [like these athletes, artists, leaders, entrepreneurs, etc.] - this one looks challenging and will also depend on the geography I think but this is very impactful. Growing up in France in the 90's I realise: highest politicians = all white; leaders in biggest corporations = all white; black people? hmmm... few in the soccer team, few artists here & there - this is bad because it doesn't reflect the reality of the french society.

Photo by Kadir Celep - we used to live in this neighborhood in Berlin

I think we bought this book few years ago, while randomly wandering around Berlin. It's called Me, You, Us by Lisa Currie. With such a title, baseline & cover, obviously it caught our eye [& easily convinced us].

We decided to slowly fill it up recently - we set a routine like one page a week more or less and I've to say: this is really fun. One of the latest page was titled: the dinner party of our dreams and the goal was to create the 'guest list'. So the way we approached it was: 'okay we already experienced the most amazing dinner of our lives: our wedding one. Period. But if we got the superpower to invite everyone we wanted right now, what would that guest list look like'.

I want to share it here for few reasons: (a) I'm a deep fan of the 'tell me what you eat/buy/watch, I'll tell you who you are' things so I find that fun here to see what that guest list could tell about me, us, at this moment of our lives (b) because obviously we change over time I wanted to keep it here and be able to get back to it in few years, see who else I might invite (c) I'd find it interesting if some of you would share yours in the comment [or send it to me directly as you prefer].

Here it goes:

• there are both of us
• Jesus
• Magellan
• Freud
• Maria Montessori
• Marie Curie
• Yuval Harari
• 2 of our friends
• Dolores Abernathy

Yep, that's what we could call a fantasy kind of dinner.

Looking at our list right now, I could quickly extract few themes that I know are currently running wild in our own minds and that we find particularly interesting: adventure, myth, cult, education, science, psychology, subconscious, friendship, love, history, rebellion, freedom, change, exploration.

I do think it reflects us. Let's see how it evolves.

Zeng Fanzhi -- The Last Supper, 2001

There is a surprising thing I don't succeed to achieve nowadays: listening to podcasts [probably among some other stuff but I'd need to think more about it]. I now realise how much that activity is tight to my commute, be it on a bike or in a bus / subway or just walking [yep, these are my only ways of commuting, no car policy at home -- some Uber rides sometimes but it's only a handful of them a month generally speaking].

Anyway, one of the last one I listened to was a discussion between Andy McCune & David Perell in the North Star Podcast. Okay I'll try to insert it directly at the bottom of this post [yep, be cool, I'm just coming back to this].

One thing struck me -- if you wanna jump right into it, it's happening at 1h37min -- Andy referred to it as something he heard 'from a friend the other night': Love, family and invention. Like his friend would have said 'if I have love, family and I've invented something, that's all I need'.

He explained it as:
- love: feeling you have people who you see, who warm your heart, who make you hair stick up [...] you see them and it's like life is whole when you're with them
- family: people that you trust, people that you know that no matter what happens they're always gonna be with you
- invention: feeling that you're an individual, that you were put on this planet for a reason

And he finally wondered wether 'what if those were just the 3 things to strive for'. I do think there is a kind of wisdom to this. I'm not entirely sure about that 'invention' part - I mean, I'm not sure about that word and if it translates the whole feeling, but I get the point. I like the fact they put creativity in that word, and beyond creativity, they include curation also. At least, that broadens the concept but it doesn't feel enough. It's maybe something more around 'building'. Like, to me, it seems less about if I've invented something rather than if I've built something. This word sounds more team-oriented as well. I'm happy to be a 'cog in the wheel' when that wheel is building some heavy stuff for society. I'm less into individuality actually [maybe that's a cultural difference]. In that regard I can't recomend enough Marc's latest essay: It's time to build. I digress.

Bottom line, thanks to Andy & David for that discussion, I enjoyed it a lot. And in a world that looks more and more complex to the most of us, getting your happiness down to such 3 'basics' [whatever the 3rd word and nuance you pick up] resonates a lot.

"So open your eyes
And hope the rest of us do
Check your mileage
And turn off
The autopilot
Cuz you're driving in autopilot
Woah"
- Doggod, "Autopilot"

I have this feeling too many times: most of us run our lives like in an autopilot mode. We all tend to like the same thing at the same time. In a sense most of humans are predictable. Pretty scary for me when I put things that way. It reminds me a startup idea by engineers I heard a while ago. They analyse someone behaviors, tastes and so on, and they come up w/ an algorithm that predicts (and pretty well) what you're gonna do next.

Wow. In fact the more I think about it the more I'm scared. And not really by the fact that we're 'analyzed' all the time; I mean it's probably a price to pay if we look for efficiency and speed; but I'm scared by the fact that our deep human nature is that easy predictable. Damn! Can you imagine that a second?

It makes probably sense in some ways. We're lazy by nature. One objective of our brain is to find the best comfort zone possible. Why? That's its way to optimize our chance to survive. At the end of the day one of the main goal of our brain is to survive. So we create patterns, routines. You enter the shop, you say 'hi', you look at the price, you order, you pay, you say 'thank you' and 'goodbye', you leave. That sequence is easy, this is secure, so you repeat it all the time exactly like that, and at the end this becomes predictable. What if sometimes you break it? Like you change one parameter. It becomes instantaneously scary. The funny thing is that one: each time you try to go out of your comfort zone you'll love it for sure! Trust me it will have wonderful effects on your brain, your inner yourself, your body itself. I loved that article by James Altucher on the subject. He tried to ask for a special price in a Starbuck. Go read it and discover how he felt at the end.

I'm afraid that most of us, humans, share the same kinda comfort zone. Which leads at the end to the same things, the same goals, the same tastes, ideas, views and so on. It's probably intensified by the media, advertising cos, fashion, trends whatever we call it but by a group of institutions and people who have a great influence on what we think. I don't blame them. I blame us. We're too easy to be influenced. We lack curiosity first and a true open-minded approach and finally, we lost our deep sense of critics.

The result? We eat what we're told to eat. We think what we're told to think. And here comes the end of the world... but it's not a problem, we found a new pair of jeans in sales. Let's go and buy it no?

"You ready?
Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no no"
- Beyonce, "Crazy in Love"

"Yeah, this is how to kill God
Holocaust, Crusades, Zionism, Jihad
Yeah, this is how to kill God
Racism, sexism, every ism is a schism"
- Apollo Brown & Ras Kass, "How To Kill God"

For a week I can't think about anything else: why, what, how some peeps around us are lead to kill some others? I'm not talking about the instant-brutal-animal-survival-mode-kinda-gut killing; I'm talking about the one you think in advance, the one you plan, the one you meticulously execute because you're victim is only this or that (put anything here like skin color, religion, nationality, family...).

Is it the fear of the other only? the misery (not only financial but also intellectual, psychological, physical you name it)? I realized this week that a big majority of fanatic killers (no matter under which fanaticism they lie) are become fanatics (ie they weren't initially). They have been trained to, indoctrinated. Why? How has been there any empty space in their mind to get infected? Worse: how to be sure that we'll never be such a victim, how? Education? Happiness? What if people could be immune to such a tragedy?

I'd love to hear read talk about create such a debate. In fact I'm sure we should manage a massive one, this is our duty, our citizen duty. If we wanna leave in peace, leave free in a democracy, in the secularism, we must ask identify and understand how to never ever fall into any -ism.

Fuck... I wanna cry scream howl shout out...

"Bitch, I'm a monster, no-good blood-sucker
Fat motherfucker - now look who's in trouble"
- Kanye West, "Monster"

I just read a book about tattoos (in french) and it rose a point in my head: some topics seem to be way to vast to be explained by words. And to my mind tattoos are an example. I've a real problem when someone says: here I'll tell you why X or Y. The thing is: most of the time the explanation is way too simplified.

I wonder wether the simple fact to put words on something simplify it right away and by itself. It's not a big deal when this thing is simple like 'how does the rain work' but when the thing is 'why people take drugs' or in our example right now 'why people get tattoos' the answer is automatically (a) for the best: a part of the global one and (b) for the worst: a lie.

I've this feeling nowadays that everyone tries to explain everything. And honestly I don't know why; well I probably imagine some possible reasons but I certainly don't have the global one. Actually if you're honest when you write and then publish a book regarding the reason why modern western societies get tattoos; you shouldn't say 'here is the book to understand why' but 'here is a book w/ inside some reasons' (which instantly means not all of them).

At that point I start to wonder about the intellectual honesty in our world.

Well if you're interesting in tattoos and specifically on the reasons why some people put something on their skin, this book could eventually be a part of the answer (at least for westerners); but if you really wanna dig deeper into that world I also suggest to follow The Tattoorialist (and they also have a book); to read that story for ex.; watch that micro-film... ahem sorry that f***** piece of art etc… etc…

Slowmotion Tattoo from GueT Deep on Vimeo.

I love writing. The thing is: I'm bad at it. Disclosure: the feeling to love something and at the same time be bad at it is weird. Interesting tho but still, it's weird. Anyway, back to our subject. I'm pretty proud of one thing actually, back in the super early days of 2013 (it was around the same period I remember, i.e Xmas, back then I was based in Singapore) I succeed to write and even publish a blog post everyday during something like 1.5 months (maybe two but I'm not really sure exactly). And you know what; it made me feel good. So good that I promised myself to start again this experience one day.

Here we are. I think it's a good period. We say that we need to make the same thing during 30 days to start to make it a habit frankly I don't know but in my own experience: it's wrong. Well even brushing my teeth isn't a habit for me although my mum forced me to do it few times a day non-stop for many many years. Anyway, writing makes me feel good (maybe great) and I hope that I could succeed to dedicate some time everyday to practice (I still hope to become good at it one day). And I know something else: you can be good at anything by practicing.

So, 2015. I won't try to publish everyday; once every two days will be good enough. I know it'll force me to write everyday and I'm already happy. And this time I target way more than 2 months. I'd like to write all along the year. This type of resolution or experience or test (whatever you call it) makes me think about the ones Emi makes for a while. I'm impressed so I give it a try right away.

Enjoy!

The following text was written by Mark on his FB page, a guy (a genius I should say right now) I really enjoy reading in general. And frankly I couldn't recommend you his blog enough.

It was funny for me to read the following this morning cause I experience today my first black friday in the US. I was astonished yesterday morning (on Thursday) when I noticed in front of the Best Buy near our offices at least a dozen of tents queuing (cause apparently the store opened at midnight)... well, nothing more to say.

Here is pure sarcasm like I love, enjoy:

'
This is just a friendly reminder to take today and give thanks to those who matter most in your life: the 40%-off Flat Screen TVs, the 2-in-1 Toaster Ovens and the buy-one-get-one-free deal on ultra-absorbent dish towels. Be grateful for all of the amazing deals and discounts our society has afforded us today. Give thanks for all of the annoying and repetitive Christmas decorations that have been up since September. For this is the day to take a moment to think back on all of the ways your mass-produced consumer products have blessed you this past year. Where would you be without them?