Blow Smoke

The influencers are influenced by their own reflection

Some phrases don’t appear in the Russian-to-English dictionary

Joe Keithley fronted a punk band called D.O.A. He still does. He’s also a city councillor in Burnaby, BC. “War On 45”, which had eight songs on it but was called an E.P. because it was only 20 minutes long, has been out for over 40 years. Keithley’s motto has always been “Talk - Action = Zero”, which maths wrong because it implies that Talk is equal to Action but it does (very) accurately describe how words become surrogates for the actual doing. That’s just lip service and lip service makes me sick.

The laziness of words without action disgusts me, especially when my own words aren’t expressed in action, but my disapproval can’t change anyone but me. I seek a signal amidst the noise, filtering and interpreting, and the process wears me down. It’s hard to evade and even harder to confront the insipid influencers who offer nothing but dressed-up hype and shiny pleasure bait — they really do get me down. It’s all so empty. And it was inevitable.

We manifested this reality by seeking convenience, and accomplishment without difficulty. We have accepted that appearance is reality, convinced that the tip IS the iceberg and whatever truth hidden beneath may be concealed long enough to snatch for the prize and get away with it. Recently, we’ve seen several frustrated individuals doing the snatching, fully exposing the ugliness beneath as it breaches the surface to get what is ‘rightfully’ owed them. The video of an adult female demanding that a father and son give her the baseball she believed was hers after trying to snatch it up when the home run landed near her seat is ugly indeed. Bullying the quicker, luckier fellow who scooped it to give her the ball she deserved because ... well, who knows why? But it sure rocketed her to internet stardom. And viral is indeed an accurate term for these video records, exposing the virus of entitlement, broken social contracts, and the utter abandonment of the Golden Rule. Is this a new phenomenon wherein people trot their online personalities into public or has it always been like this and what’s new is the constant, insistent video coverage?

And the virus got me too, distracting me from the point. See how media works?

A strong segment of the economy these days depends on lip service. The right, organically produced, amateur-in-appearance product endorsement can be a powerful marketing play, even when the protagonist is an unaccomplished figurehead. You know, a 20-something child who steers or entices the susceptible to change the way they speak or dress or posture, and encourages the audience to buy whatever IT is from them or their commercial partners. But if the secret to succeeding with minimum effort or looking like X or Y is to simply be younger than an accumulation of decades of poor choices, well, how could any conscious person actually be influenced? I guess that’s the problem, consciousness, or lack thereof. Instead, we have become our appetites so physics-defying cleavage, here-for-one-day abs, overly-taut skin, over-exploited locations, and the promise of easy riches really do trick consumers into seeing what they want to see, and believing what they want to believe, truthful or not. The influencers are just as easily influenced by their own reflection as any other person who can’t separate signal from noise.

If you’re going to say it or push it I believe it’s important to have done something, to have lost as well as gained, to have earned the broadcast frequency rather than your position having been an accident. This is Talk + Action and the sum is always greater than its integers. Those who actually know a thing and DO something with it, who work for it and use it, and eventually learn from it, now those folks are interesting. They have wisdom to pass along.

I talk a lot. I’ve hawked products. I was selective and tried hard not to pimp anything that didn’t align with my own values. Sometimes I wrote ruthless, honest reviews of products that I was paid to use because few products are ever as good as their marketing. Anyway, the point of that talking, writing, teaching, and training has been to open eyes, reorient thought, to change what people expect of themselves, and how they behave. I’ve always believed it important to share knowledge, and wisdom, the experiences that could help others live their lives, perhaps differently. That’s real, and useful influence, NOT what’s mistaken for it. The collective illusion is shockingly prevalent, and difficult to resist. It infiltrates the psyche, affecting individual self-image and behavior too.

I have seen how deeply entrenched our self-delusion can be and how well the mirror lies, or we do in front of it. I remember watching a friend train some students in the gym. One of them was a quitter, and quick with excuses. He was a big puffed-up guy who dropped the 20lb dumbbells during the 30/30 Push Press caper, settled for 10lb DBs, and eventually quit with those too. All the while looking in a mirror. How could the big, swollen man — muscular and attractive by some standard but unable to hold two 10-pound weights overhead — be blind to the truth of his reflection? Of course, his shoulder was sore, his back was tweaked, he did a heavy chest workout yesterday, he’d have to see the chiropractor now, etc. He recited a litany of justifications, empty words to gloss over the fact that his appearance was not reality. I was astonished. Why would he pay a talented and conscientious coach to train him and then not listen? Why would he quit doing the exercises that will improve him, his self-proclaimed objective? Why would he lie?

Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants. Maybe he knows but doesn’t understand what it will take to achieve it. Ignorance is a fine explanation for misguided effort. But ignorance disguised with posturing and self-delusion isn’t, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Maybe he was just paying lip service to the idea of wanting to change, fashionable as it was in that time and place.

On the other hand, I know people who will go whatever distance they must go, or are told to go, despite knowing how crushed they’ll be at the end of it. These men and women are willing to trade current discomfort for future improvement. They are willing to look weak and incapable to others while they figure things out because they know that once they do it will show in their actions and character in the future. Or because they don’t give a fuck what others might think, now or then.

Some years ago I was riding bikes with my old climbing partner, in a period when he wasn’t as fit as he would like. He hadn’t spent much time on the road, spinning pedals recently but the ability to concentrate mental and physical power that made him such a great climber hadn’t faded. He can apply it to whatever he chooses, and take it as far as he likes, or is willing to recover from. The mental strength that allowed him to push beyond limitations — real, self-imposed and otherwise — in the mountains, is a tool he can use for and against other things. Having earned it, this capacity is with him forever. His virtue needs no signal, it’s obvious in his carriage.

Knowing you will be physically crushed by an experience and volunteering for it anyway might be the definition of confidence. The desire to confront Self can overcome the doubt we face ahead of an unpredictable outcome. Knowing it will be hard, and hard for a long time, and you might not finish, but still toeing the line shows belief in the Self, and in the ability to assimilate and recover, mentally and physically. Knowing you are going to look imperfect without caring what observers may think or say liberates. This freedom is a key to self-improvement. And it can never be sold or bestowed by a popular influencer.

Sometimes the insight we share doesn’t seem like wisdom at all, except perhaps in the rearview mirror. But even when we joke our character and values show through. A favorite memory from visiting Tadjikistan in the early-90s is of teaching the English phrases I thought most useful to one of the local gals in the Moskvina base camp, below what was still called Peak Communism at the time. Our hosts called her an interpreter but winked when saying it, and hinted that she was a State agent assigned to gather information on and from foreign climbers. The first phrase I taught was, “I don’t care what you think,” which is universal in its appeal and application. And it can be aimed at influencers (both real and fake) or anyone in any social situation who is seeking to capture and steer our attention. After we left the Pamirs, and in the many years since, I’ve often wondered whether our “interpreter” found the phrase as useful as I have, or perhaps took it to heart and went her own way.