It’s Time to Reclaim Our Right to Be Human
The strongest force in the universe is a human being living consistently with his identity.
—Tony Robbins
I’d like to blame industrialization for the problems we see in our struggle to be human. The modern workplace began with the clunk, clack of the machines of our Victorian brethren. First, there was the development of noisy, smelly steam engines and factories, which destroyed the livelihood of the artisans and then there was the push for efficiency through design. Taylor (1911) bought us ‘scientific management’ but this was just the beginning of a cacophony of management approaches that have scourged the workplace focused on the machinations of what we do and how efficiently we do things. However, in truth, the human, the ‘who we are’, was lost long before Stephenson’s Rocket (1826) puffed its way into the history book. The very origin of our names: Smith, Potter, Cooper, Mason, Taylor, Tyler, Baker, and Spicer—are all based on occupations, on what we do. It seems it is part of the human condition to label and categorize people by what we see them doing, rather than enjoying understanding who they are. Part of that is ease and speed. Labels help us to categorize and make sense of the world that we live in. It is true the Victorians went a little bit overboard, categorizing and measuring everything in the drive for modernity and scientific understanding, but it has to be said that it’s difficult to label what makes someone . . . them. Your job title isn’t who you are. It corresponds to some activity that you do that you get paid for, but even then the label doesn’t exactly sum you up neatly because there’s all this other stuff that you do that lies on the edges or outside of the box that a job title places you in.
Take being a parent for instance. Very often, a ‘stay-at-home mom or dad’ is reduced to ‘looks after the kids’, but whether intended to be funny or a serious pushback against this demeaning of their role in society, stay-at-home parents will fight back with a list of job titles that looking after the kids involves citing everything from housekeeper to finance director, to search and rescue, particularly for lost toys. However, despite the large number of jobs a mom or dad does, even these titles do not encompass who that person really is. Many parents decry their loss of self in the midst of diapers and school runs, feeling that they can’t be who they are when all their energy is focused on wiping little Johnny’s snot from his nose. In part, this is because what we do, our jobs, are an extension of who we are.
In many ways, our work helps us to define self. Maslow (1962) used the term ‘self-actualization’ to describe the point at which we become self-fulfilled and our jobs help us do that. Not everyone has the privilege of working in a profession or workplace that is fulfilling, and I would argue that the loss of self extends beyond the struggles of a stay-at-home mom or dad to all those who lose who they are in a job that sucks the life out of them. For too many, the dream job or the goal to work somewhere, doing something that is meaningful remains out of reach. It is in many ways, the point of this book, to challenge you to find an occupation that helps you to BE you and not settle for just doing a job. This shouldn’t be the preserve of the rich or the lucky few. It has to be a determined resistance against accepting second best and a false presumption that there is nothing better for you.
The Challenge to BE in the Modern World
In a technologically driven global economy, everything is digitalized. Hundreds of thousands of gigabytes of data are reduced to a series of 0 and 1 sequences and transferred across the ether every second of everyday. We now live in the networked society, where our lives are played out, not just in the streets where we live and work, but in a virtual world where our identity is tied to the number of followers and likes we have.
This revolution has occurred quickly; the first desktop computers only became available in the mid1970s, broadband internet arrived in 2000, and 3G making mobile access possible in 2001. Social networking began in 2003 with MySpace and, within a decade, we were more connected and networked than ever before. It has transformed work, not just in how we do it, but what work we do and it has transformed the way we live our lives. We are now encouraged to build our online footprint, share our information, and contribute content to be found, seen, and heard. If we get notice, we go viral. It’s no longer just about our qualification to do a job or our skills at least in the traditional sense. Those with a talent to entertain, pull epic pranks, or just pull together great cat memes can all be recognized and lauded. Putting faces to names is no longer a problem. We can Google anyone and chances are, in less time than it takes to order a Skinny White and armed only with a name and small amount of details, we are likely to find a picture of anyone, a detailed profile, and numerous thoughts and ideas that they have shared with the world.
However, the way we engage with the virtual world is completely different from the way we live in the real world. We present a public relations version of reality. The virtual reality is not the same as reality, reality. Celebrity news reports suggest that Kim Kardashian took several thousand selfies on a four-day vacation to Mexico, but only spent four hours on the beach. That’s not a holiday; that’s work. It also begs the question as to how many photos that made the grade were filtered, cropped, and touched up to be uploaded, a presentation of a fake reality. So, when we read the job titles people give themselves on social media platforms, it is not like a job title you are given to denote a job you do. Unlike the real world where the job title we are given is based upon the context of our position within an organization in recognition of our ranking within an industry, we can label ourselves anything we like. We can call ourselves expert or declare ourselves an authority in anything, merely by adding the tag ‘expert’ to our profile. There is no qualification to being an expert, no bar that has to be reached that separates an expert from a no-expert. You simply have to know, or be good at pretending to know, more than someone else. This development of fakery isn’t a new phenomenon; people have postured and posed as professionals from the moment that doing so gave them an economic and social advantage. I’m also fairly convinced that for many of those who have a title or have earned the professional prefix probably spend a greater amount of time worrying that they are going to be ‘found out’ as not really knowing what they are talking than the rest of worry about achieving that level of recognition. In many ways, the acquiring of titles and recognition is the biggest game of charades that has ever been played by society.
However, what is clear is that web 2.0 enables us to fabricate and construct a false reality, than say, someone writing a book, who can only become an expert if their expertise is recognized as such by those people who have read the book. In fact lies and fake news is such a problem, it’s become a thing in its own right. You can choose to avoid taking things at face value and take time to research, find out, and investigate to find the truth. But what if the truth, online at least, is manufactured? What if, the information you are reading has been planted, created, and tested to ensure that what you are reading, though not true, is endorsed by those we trust, paid for, and manipulated to such an extent that it becomes truth.
This is no small thing, because job titles and professional expertise represent something culturally. It has meaning and importance. The labels we use to describe a person’s worth, they give or take away authority and with that our power to get things done. From an early age, we are conditioned to understand the difference a title makes to our position in society and the way we are treated if we are the one with the title. In the UK, we have hereditary titles such as Her/His Majesty (HM) used by the Queen and HRH, Her/His Right Honorable, holders of which are children of HM, and hold that title by accident of birth. We also have a chivalric honor system, which bestows titles on people for their services to the arts and sciences, charitable works, and public service. This system confers the title of Sir and Dame and rewards the holder with a position of knighthood, though, I presume without the horse and armor. Professions also exclude those who are not part of the club through the use of monikers, whether it is Doctor, Professor, Chartered etc. or postnominal titles. The title or letters after your name are given as recognition of professional competence and qualification, and with it, bestow an expectation of expertise. These titles exist because they matter. They confer an importance; a cut above others, and the same is true in corporate life. President, Vice President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; they all give prestige and privilege. It is, therefore, not a surprise that we adapt our titles online to make us sound more important, more qualified, and more worthy of respect.
There are many things about the world we live in that are good and provide exciting opportunities, but there are also many things that bring darkness and reduce our humanity. One of the most disturbing aspects about social media is the increase in superficial comparison. Who we are has become less important than the image we project and our outward appearance of success. Mental illness is rising with 24 percent of adults suffering from mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression (NHS Digital, 2014). In part, this is driven by our need to compare our mundane ordinary lives to the perfect more glamorous life portrayed by others on social media. Although portraying ourselves in pictures is not new, Hans Holbein (1497–1593) wouldn’t have had a career if he couldn’t paint portraits for Northern European royalty and the wealthy aristocracy, it’s primacy as a form of self-expression is. The combination of social media accounts and the technology offered by front-facing cameras on the iPhone 4 in 2010 spawned the modern selfie trend (Losse, 2013).
Today, selfies are part of the online marketing of self. The mass population now has an opportunity to explore portraiture without the need of an accomplished and expensive artist. A mode of self-expression, it is used to provide a sense of self, while, at the same time, providing a record of self-observation. But, due to the ability to take as many selfies as necessary to get the best angle, light, and deliver that killer photograph, the selfie we upload is actually an expression about who we desire to be.
The obsession with self-image, or rather the doctoring of selfie images, means that our understanding of self is being eroded. For some, this is simply narcissism, placing us, quite literally, at the center of the world in which we live. For others, there is a sense that selfies have taken on a life of their own, which has meant that they normalize idealized perfection and posturing, while stripping away authenticity. Filters and photo manipulation tools means that we can banish wrinkles, reduce waist sizes, and enhance assets in ways that even the most flattering of portrait artists would have been embarrassed to succumb to. This, in turn, has led to an increase in plastic surgery among young people as they seek surgical fixes to perceived imperfections. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgery, 15.9 million cosmetic surgery procedures were performed in the US in 2015, a rise of 115 percent since 2000 (ASPS, 2016). The result is that many young people look like clones or previously natural beauties have gone under the knife to emerge with an esthetically pleasing version of themselves, which, all the same, doesn’t quite look right. However, in the UK, there seems to be a backlash, with cosmetic surgery levels falling by 40 percent in 2016 (Grierson, 2017). Apparently this phenomenon is due to an increase in ‘real’ social media celebrities. Which even when typing the sentence reeks of absurdity. REAL social media celebrities are not real. They are not the person you see when the Youtube video ends. They are the edited version of a virtual reality that has a tenuous connection to the person they are when not under self-imposed scrutiny.
Our lives are being documented in ways that could never have been imagined by the diarists of yesteryear. Everything we do is recorded in full Technicolor glory, and that means we have to be more than ordinary. It’s like a permanent competition to seem interesting. My daughter’s school sends home the class cuddly toy for the weekend with one of the children. If you read through the adventures of the stuff toy it would appear that every member of my daughter’s class has a fabulously amazing weekend of fun activities and adventures every weekend. Ever the subversive, I refused to change our plans from ‘pajama day’ and a ‘family film time’ after a particularly busy and tiring week working in the Middle East; glamorous, international businesswoman Monday to Friday, knackered mother who needs a lie in at the weekend. The pressure to perform is ridiculous, and this is an exercise book sent home by primary school teachers for ‘fun’. This psychology of attraction goes beyond simply trying to develop romantic attachment, it is linked to an interpersonal judgment (Byrne, 1961) that is the bread and butter of our social interactions. Status and health are the foundations of our social standing and acceptance. It is, therefore, unsurprising that our social media ‘status’ becomes an unending competition to do something interesting.
It is no longer possible to simply enjoy cheese on toast. Every meal has to look like a gourmet dinner so we can insta or snapchat a picture of our food intake. The way we look has become more important as we are judged on the selfies we post, there are increasing levels of eating disorders as young people engage in an unending pursuit of physical perfection to compete and people get into debt trying to buy into the last status symbols. It’s an exhausting and permanent cycle of being on display. The Internet is the modern day Versailles, a mirage of sumptuous ceremony and a living tableaux of human vanity. We ignore the reality of unfulfilling lives and instead feed ourselves on fake news, choosing to spend our time living in our social media bubbles to insulate us from the truth.
More than Just a Number
As we grow up, we have become used to being attributed numbers. Social security number, employee number, driver’s license number, passport number, bank account number; in the UK, we have NHS numbers, NI numbers, council tax references, and every item or service that you buy is attributed a contract number. We end up with so many numbers it is impossible to keep them all in our heads, so whenever we ring up a service we have to have the number to hand because they can’t find ‘us’ if we don’t have a number.
The systems we have to navigate in the modern world to organize our lives throw up many ridiculous scenarios. I have been in a bank lobby where a regular customer, who the counter staff welcomed by name, couldn’t draw money out of her account because she didn’t have her card, or her account number. The staff couldn’t provide her with the account number because she didn’t have proof of who she was, even though they knew who she was. Or take the example of my husband who received a phone call from a service provider to his mobile phone, but because he ‘failed’ the security question and didn’t have his account number to hand they couldn’t discuss his account with him, even though they were the ones who rang him. In regards to life online, in 2012, Philip Roth was forced to write an open letter to Wikipedia in the New Yorker because he was unable to get a correction about his own novel posted on the Wikipedia page because he, the author of the book, was not a credible source. Only after the open letter was published, did Wikipedia allow the correction to be made. The mind boggles as to how machines, rules, and the processes we submit our lives to have managed to become so dictatorial that human intervention is no longer considered a valid reason to question the outcome, but here we are. “Computer says no” is funny because we have all experience being prevented in being able to do something, because of a machine.
The real tragedy in all of this is that we have allowed ourselves to be stripped of who we are. It is no wonder that many fall into despair and depression when individuals are faced with a world where no one connects with them on an authentic level. Our transactions and activities on the Web are monitored by algorithms, which attribute categories to us and label us for marketing in order to sell us more goods and services. We are no longer human beings who think, feel, and exist; we are data to be exploited and used for nefarious purposes.
But, it is not just faceless corporations who assign us to a category. We tag ourselves with labels “I am a [job title/race/gender/sexual orientation etc.]” but in the midst of all this labeling, tagging, and numbering, we forget who we really are, losing ourselves in the process. We are so busy trying to describe what we do, we don’t have the time to explore who we are, what our potential talent could lead us to be. In education, our quirks are beaten out of us, and we learn to conform to norms and standards of behavior, which are deemed socially acceptable. Like machines, we are expected to get ‘with the program’ and keep inside the lines, instead of pursuing a purpose that is decidedly multicolored and refuses to be restricted by the norms and expectations of others. In a society, which offers a world of opportunity and possibility, we are becoming more homogenized and alike than we would care to admit. I look at young women on the train and their faces, thick with makeup, have lost their personal quirks in a pursuit for standardized perfection. Even CVs which should be something that should be something, that is, as individual as we are all, begin to read alike; excellent communication skills, goal orientated, motivated, strong work ethic. In our pursuit of standing out from the crowd, our actions result in bland replication and sameness. These are the CVs that make me want to scream “who are you?” The real you, not the social media selfie, or twenty tips for getting your next job standardized profile. If we were to strip away the onion layers of frippery and fakery, what is left? That’s the challenge to BE.
Stop thinking about how to present yourself to common standards and begin to embrace how unique and wonderful you are. Rather than losing track of the talent you have, pursue an awakening of self-awareness. Stop allowing yourself to be shuttled into doing a job you hate, for money that you can barely survive on. We must stop calling ourselves successful if we have money at the end of the month when we no longer know why we are doing what we are doing. If we don’t have any purpose to our lives other than to reaching the next pay check, then we are not reaching our full potential; we are existing and we deserve more than to just simply exist.
We have stopped being, and we are doing lots of stuff, some of it really good, but none of it connecting us to who we are and what we should be doing. We have become victims of imprisonment and haven’t even noticed that we have lost our freedom to be who we are supposed to be. You might remember the moment you gave up dreaming, dismissing you hopes as if they were childlike toys that needed to be packed away along with your Action Men and Barbie Dolls, but we have a lot to learn from children in re-establishing a belief that we CAN BE something amazing, unique, and wonderful. In fact, we already are.
It’s time to stop. You are more than a social media profile can ever show. You are more than a number or username that resides in an impenetrable system. It’s time to reclaim who you are. It’s time to stop doing and start being. The challenge to Be and not to Do requires you to put aside your doubts and past hurts, to realize that you can determine the path you take and that the thoughts and dreams that we hold close are a reflection of who we are.
Manage Your Career Tool #1 – Your Personal Brand Profile
This tool is one that I developed over a number of years, which is based upon principles of product brand design. It may seem strange, having exhorted you to become more human, to use a tool that has its beginnings in products and services. However, the whole point of brand development in marketing is to help describe and develop a brand that gives the product human traits and characteristics. The marketing industry uses Aristotle’s ingredients for persuasion; ethos, pathos, and logos to imbue products with credibility and character, create an emotional response in consumers, and use reason to persuade us to buy in the promise. At the same time, ironically, the recruitment industry has been removing these elements from CVs to professionalize them, aka. Turning us all into robots.
The tool uses the psychology of randomization to burrow into your subconscious and force you to reveal a little a bit about who your really are. Some people working through this tool may find it simple to use, others a painful endeavor. Whatever your experience, I encourage you to work through it diligently, and not shy away from words that might make you feel uncomfortable or vulnerable. The aim is help you to articulate who you really are and that shouldn’t be edited out.
There are four tasks to complete:
Task 2 – Meet. . .
Task 3 – A profile for. . .
Task 4 – Who are you?
Do not second-guess yourself and trust in the process. The end result should be a true reflection of who you really are, capturing your true character, and appealing to the reader on an emotional and rational level. Be honest and truthful in completing this task and the end result will be a powerful statement, which you can use as a professional profile on your resume or curriculum vitae.
Task 1 – What Are You?
Complete the table below answering the question:
If you were a (see list below) what would you be and Why? Example: Color Red – I am Bright, Vibrant, Passionate
Transfer the things that you have put in the ‘WHAT’ column in Task 1 into the table below. Describe each of these ’things’ as if they were a person. Tell me about their personality, characteristics, behaviour, attitudes etc. Write as if you were introducing him or her to me and you were providing a brief profile.
Write a Profile for a person, at least 8 sentences long, which use the words or phrases in the Why and Meet (What) column in Tasks 1 and 2. Just to be clear. You are writing this profile for a person who you are introducing to someone else (if it helps, think about writing a profile for this person for one of your clients). But use the ’words’ and ’phrases’ you’ve already written—even if the language may be something you would normally shy away from using.
This Person is
Rewrite and Polish Task 3, but start the profile with [Your Name]. Do not change words or phrases to something that you haven’t used in the previous tasks, but do make sure it makes sense for you.