Hi 

 

Thank you for being a reader of Transition Edge. Please feel free to forward it to friends who you think might enjoy it too.

 

I’m Grant Symons. I convene Transition Edge to help us understand how we can transition to a low carbon sustainable world using leading thinking and practices.

 

OK, so what isn't there to like about good news? 

 

The stock market is up, your property value just ticked over $1.5 million, you can get a vaccine pass now, and you will soon be able to shop to you drop and revel at concerts and bars. The government is hammering the food industry in a market review aimed at lowering prices and is also about to take the building materials sector to task. Borders are opening up again soon and we even have presenters on prime time news telling us we can all now have as much 'retail therapy' as we want - excellent?

 

Volunteer groups are delivering record numbers of food parcels in record time and Covid death-rates are lower than expected. Here in NZ we are so much better off than other places in the world and its nearly another Black Friday!!!  Maybe you are on TikToc, Facebook or LinkedIN and your latest post just went viral...wonderful! And the ANZ Bank just took $1.9 billion in profit out of New Zealand for one years business... (OK that's not great news...unless you are a banker)

 

Somehow in all of this we forget to mention the increasing greenhouse gas emissions and species extinctions. And what about our physical shops and retailers? Remember the shopkeeper down the road where you could talk to a real person - they have been going out of business or killing themselves in record numbers. In fact, the government has stood by and watched as a generation of entrepreneurs have gone bust!

 

 

It is difficult to recall there being a time that news was delivered in such an upbeat way, when in reality the news isn't really that good. What is going on?

 

What is behind all this good news and feel good experience and at what cost does it come? And are we supposed to believe that below the veneer things might not be a rosy as they seem? Certainly the money making industries of advertising, promotions, trend analysis etc, lap it up. You get a short 'kick' and they get your data - you are the product, when it comes to free apps.

 

Despite these underlying trends, marketers, advertisers and sales executives have long since understood how to craft media and experiences in ways that delight us. They create an itch where there wasn't one, alter mindsets and feelings in ways that have us buy things in the moment that only days later we wonder how we could have agreed to that? And perhaps the aim wasn't to sell us a product. Perhaps it was a seductive and stimulating message that had a subliminal seed or two packaged in it.  

 

Social media platforms have been designed with your emotions and instincts in mind. The so called 'race to the base of the neocortex' saw a flurry of customer experience and interactive design activity in Silicon Valley a few years ago, which are now the algorithms that drive the social system platforms and many peoples lives. A massive human experiment of sorts. 

 

In the past there were politicians that could deliver good news or bad news through the same dead-pan expression, but today everything seems to come packaged in selfie smiles!

 

We are not trying to be kill-joy folks here. But we do wonder if all this good news and upbeat messaging has other purposes and might there be some negative side effects?

 

Perhaps, too much, positive news and stimulation comes at a cost:

If you are inclined to think we might be on to something here, you might also be wondering what the antidote might be? Some habits to develop...

Finding out what is true and real. Facing into that is tough work. But feeling as though you are being manipulated or lied to is probably going to be worse for your heath and will most likely be worse than we can imagine now, for our children or grandchildren.