Let’s face it; hamburgers are an American original. I’ve been on a diet for 50 years; I still must have a burger 3 or 4 times a year. My favorite chains?
But, this Forbes piece may move SMASHBURGER up.
I’ve been in a very intense travel/work schedule, so have not posted here in a while. But I think I’m back now.
Just read an absolutely fascinating piece in Salon: “How Music Changes our Brain.” Sample quotes:
“…noise is the second greatest pollutant in the world today. Environmental noise affects cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment in kids, sleep disturbance, tinnitus, not to mention just plain annoyance. If it’s too loud, whether it’s classical music, rock, whatever, it’s not good for us. And the numbers are just beyond me. The study said noise cost up 45,000 DALY [disability-adjusted-life years, meaning 45,000 years of “healthy” life worldwide are taken away by noise] per year.
“I just returned from a week in New York City, and I have a little decibel app on my iPhone. On the subways it registered way over 100 decibels. When I was outside, I found myself covering my ears and needing to use my noise reduction headphones.
“…a background rhythm will help and assist somebody with dyslexia or autism to speak and read in rhythm. Exposure to different kinds of patterns — high range, mid-range, low range, slow tempo, medium, high tempo — can help bring order to their thinking. In a 2001 study, one researcher found that brain activity changes when there is soothing music, and there is biological evidence that we can actually remove a great deal of the tension in frustrated children by exposing them to more soothing sounds.
“Our hearing decreases radically after the age of 60, and often by the time we are in our 80s we don’t hear high frequencies and some sounds become more annoying and more confusing. Under different kinds of medication, tinnitus becomes more frequent. It’s a symptom, not a disease. By learning to tap a rhythm as one speaks with an elder, to use a drum, a simple hand drum, the size of a tambourine, to be able to translate and transfer the organization of speech and thought becomes much more effective. There’s a company called Oval Window that produces floors that vibrate, so elders they can literally hear better through the vibrations.
“Silence is part of the brain’s pattern. It helps it reintegrate, like sleep, but we can’t shut our ears like we shut our eyes…I love exploring iTunes, but you only get 20 seconds of something to see if you like it. It’s like an all-you-can-eat food bar, but you need to understand the nutrition of it. If you’re changing music every 30 seconds, then be sure to have 2 minutes of real silence in there. It goes back to chew your food so to speak before you swallow it.”
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Several years ago, I visited Walt Disney World’s “Living with the Land” display. That exhibit features “aeroponic” fruits and vegetables — plants that grow in the air. I vividly remember the tomatoes circulating through the nutrient-rich air on a conveyor belt. Amazing; completely exposed roots, and tomatoes boiling out the ends of the plant.
That astonishing exhibition has become, for me, a metaphor of our culture. We live in a hothouse. Ideas, products, and even political figures just seem to materialize in midair.
For example, four years before he was elected President of the United States and de facto leader of the free world, Barack Obama was essentially unknown. In many ways, he still is.
Consider aeroponic economics: In the three weeks since Osama Bin Laden was killed, a few eager entrepreneurs have made millions selling tee-shirts that celebrate his death. Instant wealth; dollars boiling out the end of a PayPal account.
As I’ve spent time in this hothouse, I’ve thought much about what this means for the issue of leadership. Historically, we followed people because they were parents, village elders, rabbis, very wealthy, or the ones with the guns.
Obviously, today’s culture grants credence and authority much faster and easier.
So, what does it take to establish credibility in the aeroponic culture?
According to Seth Godin, all it takes is a story. In a recent posting, he wrote, “Too often marketers take a product and try to invent a campaign. Much more effective is to find…A story that resonates and a tribe that’s tight and small and eager…Sell a story that some people want to believe. In fact, sell a story they already believe.”
He’s right. That’s how the “nutrients” in our aeroponic culture recently produced one enormous (and weird) fruit. It all started when an elderly, and very obscure, man said the world would end on May 21. Nothing unusual there; people have always espoused strange opinions. Most of them sit on porches, whittling, and talking to themselves. But that story was embraced by a small, tight, and eager tribe — the apocalyptic crowd. And (assisted by a bored and immature news industry) it grew very fast and very large.
Think of it; a completely non-biblical idea roared into great credibility with a tribe that takes the Bible literally.
Yes, it was a story they already believed. I grew up in a branch of that “tight and small and eager” tribe. Our tribal storytellers (preachers) regularly tried to scare the hell out of us by repeating a story we all believed. Perhaps all such “fruit,” aeroponic or not, leaps from a story.
However, the most relevant question for us is: How do we conduct ourselves in the aeroponic culture?
Navigating the low-hanging fruit can be tricky. Things appear very suddenly all around us. We have no warning at all. In fact, we often have to duck or weave to avoid getting clobbered by some new and shiny product, idea, image, etc.
But the “new” fruit really isn’t new at all. An apple is an apple. The matrix of growth really isn’t relevant.
Humans have always had the choice in how to respond to things that appear in their environment. Wisely or foolishly.
Don’t you wish everyone knew that, when “strange fruit” appears in front of us, we don’t have to talk about it, blog it, Facebook it, preach against it, YouTube it, write books about it, or even attack it.
If we choose any of those responses, we become part of the nutrients that grow it.
But, some will ask, “Doesn’t it demand a response? Don’t we have a responsibility to stand up for truth?”
It doesn’t, but even if it did, the best way to do that is to be quiet. According to Proverb 26:20, “For lack of wood the fire goes out, And where there is no whisperer, contention quiets down.”
That is true in any time, any place, and in any kind of growth conditions.
Let’s try it.
