Paradigm Shift Walker

This posting is dedicated to our club President elect Flynn.  She was at Toastmasters training together with other club executives including our erstwhile current President Daniel.

As we were watching the keynote speaker she said in our conversation "that is a walking paradigm shift". this was after the presenter used the word "scotoma" and I turned around to her and said "what the heck is a scotoma?"  Like all millennials the answer was at her fingertips and even good presenters should know, that these days if you leave a word partially explained, the audience's attention can go into their mobile phones - and that is where our attention went.

The words Flynn used "walking paradigm shift" were instantly topical for me.  I am prepared to entertain a certain amount of buzz about the passing of Muhammad Ali because like anyone who was a story on our personal timelines - we pay regard and respects to them - but at the same time our life getting sucked into a news breaking story is no different at other times of a major death such as David Bowie or Prince.  The reality is that yesterday's hero's that have lived a long life are now going to start exiting stage right.

As we experience their passing the question is not how society shifts with news or how an individual consumes or relates to the modern news cycle, it is how does this communication change our communication and in that change are we learning or just broadcasting?

Here is a picture of Bob Dylan with Muhammad Ali : (Credit: Rolling Stone Magazine)

The guy on the right is really famous and really legendary.  The guy on the left is really famous and really legendary.  The difference between the two at this particular time is that Ali is now dead at 74, while only a few weeks ago Bob Dylan celebrated his 75th birthday.

The major media corporations have the death schedule set up already for Bob Dylan and they are pouring it like mucho honey right now - all material stocked up ready to run as soon as one of these two guys are done.   That is a part of communications - both of these two people are walking paradigm shifters or as I have wrote the title of this think-piece Paradigm Shift Walkers.  There is no reason why any of us don't know the full story of either life.  We for sure know at least we think we we know the life of Muhammad Ali.  Today death is ON-DEMAND and media today keeps an inventory stockpile of death stories.  There is a stockpile ready for Bob Dylan - and so on the news of his 75th birthday, the collective breath yawned but should he suddenly exit stage right also - we will be in the same kind media cycle we are now in.  O.T.T.

Lisa Gallagher posted an update that I cannot link to my hive but her link was absolutely fascinating because the news cycle finds all of us so predictable, how can we blame media outlets for serving a slosh of news that we are all eager to consume.

What possible learning do I get if I simply stated Ali was a paradigm shift walker or that Bob Dylan was a paradigm shift walker or David Bowie or Prince or even Jimi Hendrix all those years ago. For sure Ali deserves a special spotlight but in a way that he would have been proud of, to highlight the issues and concerns he advocated for and more importantly fought for.  That it takes the Comedy Central lot to create a website to inject some pause says something about the muffinhead media industry, which serve us because we fuel media ratings with our habits.

The value of the Muhammad Ali story for me is to ask myself, who in our club is a paradigm shift walker.  Maybe William could be but maybe not.  Maybe Flynn could or maybe not.  That is what gets injected back into the class if we all had the will for that injection.  But do we?

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