In A World Of Spin, Meaning Is Found Within
In the current economic climate, getting noticed seems to be a requirement for success. In the past getting noticed wasn’t nearly as essential or paradoxically, as easy as it is today. Companies rely on the internet and often rely on a search engine ranking system or keyword ranking software to get their hard ware and product noticed. Many years ago when people lived in little villages everyone knew how to find what they needed. They all asked Helen or Elsa where to go to get the best stewpot. Everyone knew that Blacksmith John was best visited before 1:00, because he’d be drunk as a fiddler pay in gin. Today the world is the village and getting noticed is like listening for a whisper in the middle of a NASCAR race. The din is so great that sometimes the reason for making noise gets forgotten.
In a world of reality television and famous people are nothing more than being in the spotlight, substance often turns up missing. A business axiom states, which unfortunately is true, that money follows name recognition. It has even invaded the world of information exchange with groups bent on getting a lie repeated so often it becomes deemed the truth. There is so much spin in the world that knowing what is true and important is challenging to ascertain. Entire economies are built on slight of hand and numbers, people repeating something, or believing something that it becomes true, at least for awhile until the illusion collapses on itself. The housing crisis is a perfect example. This tendency isn’t new to human nature|, take the story of the Emperors New Clothes as indication that people often believe the perceived experts. The difference today is that there is so much media and so many ways to spin it that finding the truth is often a difficult task.
Finding worth in anything is a personal thing. A lot of folks are driven by what is popular or what is Trendy that few stop, breathe and ask themselves if it is true for them. The world has millions of great writers, amazing artists, fantastic actors, and phenomenal technology geniuses. Many times these are not the successful ones. The best at what they do are often brilliant for the sake of the craft. The craft is something they love with purity. On occasion fortune shines on them and the world sees their brilliance. Some find the path that lets their works come to light. More often then not the great minds, the great works of art, the great moments of theater, disappear without recognition. It is exciting and horrifying to think that the world has failed to benefit from a hundred Shakespeare’s and a thousand Van Gough’s.
There are a couple important aspects of this fact. First is the simple fact that if something is created to be seen, bought, or shared, it needs a public audience to see it. Exposure is simply common business sense. The more interesting revelation is that the world is filled with brilliance as yet undiscovered and unshared. Most of what is making noise is everyone clamoring over the naked Emperor pretending he is wearing fine garments.
If someone takes the time to say to themselves it doesn’t matter what others think, do I like this, does this move me, then a whole new world opens. Original thinking has become a rare and valuable commodity.



