A Journey Into Altered States of Consciousness: Introduction

In a series of post I will describe a personal journey into an altered state of consciousness – cognitive trance – that I was privileged to undertake this year. It has led to a lot of self-reflection and discoveries. First I believe it is important to set the scene.

Altered states of consciousness are according to Wikipedia “any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking state“. They can happen naturally for example during emergency situations where the brain shuts down higher cognitive functions for survival – for exemple during near death experiences, or during emergencies where some people can react with unexpected strength and endurance. It can also be generated voluntarily, sometimes using legal or illegal substances.

Some of those altered states of consciousness can be pathological (leading to significant social and personal dysfunctions); most occurrences however are transient states encountered (or actively sought after) by normal individuals. Hypnosis, meditation, mantra recitation are often cited as examples of methods to reach those states of consciousness where basically the higher functions of the brain are temporarily limited, allowing a stronger expression of the subconscious. Trance is a particular healthy state of altered consciousness that I have been exploring for a few weeks, and the following posts will recount this journey.

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How Belief in Paranormal Increases

Statistics show a significant increase in the past few years in the belief of paranormal powers, as shown in this very interesting Medium article ‘Hex Factor: Inside the Group Offering $250,000 for Proof of Superpowers‘. The article addresses efforts being made to debunk paranormal power claims.

“The fastest-growing religious affiliation in the U.S. are people with no religious affiliation, Bader says, or “nones” in sociological parlance. It’s a broad category that includes both atheists, agnostics, and people whose beliefs don’t fit with any formal religious organization. A large percentage of nones also say they believe in the paranormal. People who accept the paranormal are also more likely than those who don’t to believe in conspiracy theories.”

This trend in an increase of both conspiracy theories and paranormal claims may be linked to an increasing misalignment between people expectations and how they observe the world.

“Once those beliefs are there, they are really hard to dislodge. Our brains are exceptionally good at discounting evidence that doesn’t fit with what we already believe, and at prioritizing information that confirms our pre-existing perceptions”. However the article states that most of those claims go mute when requested to be demonstrated (which does not mean that people don’t continue to believe in them).

The increasing belief in the marvelous, the paranormal and conspiracies seem to be a mark of our times where reality becomes more difficult to apprehend in the face of the modified reality presented to us by media and screens.

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How Education and Learning are Different

Seth Godin in his post ‘The revolution in online learning‘ makes the point that education and learning are quite different. Experiencing makes learning; education being increasingly recognized as a formal process which may not lead to actual learning.

“Education is a model based on scarcity, compliance and accreditation. It trades time, attention and money for a piece of paper that promises value.” On the contrary, “we learn in ways that have little to do with how mass education is structured […] If you know how to walk, write, read, type, have a conversation, perform surgery or cook an egg, it’s probably because you practiced and explored and experienced, not because it was on a test.”

Although higher education as we know it today is clearly an institution of the industrial-age, it still provides some benefits which are more on the social side. This includes an important component of networking and knowing peers, being part of a group of students that have attended the same university in the same year or close.

However increasingly learning is understood to happen outside the formal framework of education, and this probably needs to be better recognized. The experiential part of learning cannot be dismissed, as it is really the foundation of true learning (as much as failure).

I believe education is still there to stay for a while because of its social role, but that actual learning experiences will be increasingly sought and recognized, even highlighted. In any case, be sure to have much learning in addition to education!

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How to Overcome the Fear of Publishing

Leo Babauta in his post ‘The Fear of Putting Our Work Out There‘ expands on the fear of publishing which seems to concern most of us, and how to overcome it.

I must say first that this concerns only publishing things like art of a written text – anything which is an emotional investment – because it seems we don’t have much fear publishing (sometimes stupid) pictures ourselves on social networks, maybe because we believe that they will only be available to connections.

Anyway it is true that fear is present when we push publish to the world and I still vividly remember the first time I published a post back in October 2010!

“What’s so scary? […] They might judge us, dismiss it as having no value, think we’re stupid. We’ll feel embarrassed or rejected. This uncertainty is too much to bear for many people.” We need to face our fear, and the avoidance of this possibility that is prompted by our reasonable mind. However this clearly leads to procrastination. This also means you can’t develop your ability to improve over time the quality of your interaction with the world.

Let’s face it: not many people are going to read what you wrote, or look at what you produced. At least at the start it is probably going to be family and friends so don’t worry too much about it.

There will be negative feedback, jealousy and all sorts of negative crap. Don’t let it discourage you – the more you get, the more you are on the right way and you are touching a hot button. And you’ll also get those great encouragements and some day, someone will tell you that you changed their life.

Overcoming that fear of putting your art out in the world is if course a practice. I don’t think about it too much nowadays – I don’t really care, in fact, what people may think. The first time is the hardest time. Practice makes us better, and let’s not get deterred from publishing and getting feedback.

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How I Develop as Businessman

The trigger for this post is actually that I updated my LinkedIn profile with the names of the startups I have invested in as business angel, along with the 2 I am part of the strategic council (along with the 3 private companies I am active in with significant shares). Hence I felt the need for a follow-up and update from my 2015 post ‘How I Became a Businessman‘.

Since 2015 I have invested in quite a few new companies, some of them where I am busy, some where I am only an investor. I have also developed a business angel activity with more than a dozen investments. I realize how much I am continuing to develop as a businessman along this journey, and how this changes my perspective on things.

My latest post ‘How Being an Angel Investor Requires Developing Some Personal Rules‘ is part of this reflection on my evolution. I realize, as I have witnessed and lived through some tough difficulties in some companies, and sometimes utter failures, come across crisis like the Covid crisis, how my responses to those events have become more adapted and reflective. I also realize that I think more in terms of value created in the mid and lon-term than in terms of immediate income. And I start thinking about creating synergies about companies and how projects can be developed combining expertise and dynamics.

The perspective on the world offered by the viewpoint of the businessman-investor is quite different from the traditional employee perspective. It gives me hope though as we see a generation of entrepreneurs emerging that attempt projects.

Still my conclusion is that the priority is still the people and that nothing beats relevant teams being put together to support projects. And that this is what needs to be protected and enhanced, in particular when times get tough.

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How Being an Angel Investor Requires Developing Some Personal Rules

I am a modest angel investor, still with more than a dozen investments in the past 5 years, and also an active member of a business angel association. Therefore I am always keen to read about the practice and possible alternative paths. In this excellent post ‘A Weird and Wacky Approach To Angel Investing‘, Darmesh Shah reveals an interesting approach with some useful learning points.

Of course Dharmesh Shah is a very rich entrepreneur and therefore Angel Investor, (and write checks much bigger than the ones I can afford), still I find that his approach has got nice points to it. Basically he seeks to minimize time spent, and therefore:

  • He performs absolutely no due diligence but relies on a judgment on the team
  • He does not negotiate deal terms or gets involved in negotiations
  • He does not invest in later rounds as a matter of principle
  • He always sides on the side of the founders
  • He keeps his investments separate from his main company and role

And this seems to have worked for him in his specific conditions, including in terms of returns on investment.

On some aspects I believe he is quite right – there is no way you can do due diligence on an early stage startup apart from judging the team, and it is always better to stick to the side of the founders and the general objectives of the company. However I tend to personally get more involved in a handful of investments, out of interest or friendship, and I do sometimes participate to bridge rounds (however, never to later rounds as the interest as a business angel then gets quite diluted in terms of possible returns).

In general, I observe that becoming a more frequent business angel one has to develop some rules to minimise time spent and I am currently in this process too.

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How To Achieve The Right Balance in Law-Making

In those strange days of the Covid pandemics, most governments have introduced many new laws to govern our daily life. And sometimes they seem to have forgotten some age-old advice about effective laws:

“Unnecessary laws weaken necessary laws” (Montesquieu)

“Too soft laws are not followed and too harsh laws are not enforced” (Franklin)

I particularly find the second piece of wisdom particularly applicable in a country like France where lawmakers seems to love producing new laws on everything on a regular basis, which makes thinks difficult to follow. Moreover a lot of those laws don’t get really applied because they are either too soft or too hard.

Lawmaking is a change management exercise (why edict a new law if there is nothing to change?). It is not always performed with the right approach or with the right balance to be really be effective. Reverting to age-old wisdom in the matter would be a good recommendation for lawmakers.

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How We Should Stay More Often and Longer at the Edge of Uncertainty

In this inspiring post ‘Staying at the Edge of Uncertainty‘, Leo Babauta makes that point that we should learn to stay more often and longer at the edge of uncertainty. By moving close to the limite of our safe zone, on the brink of the uncertain, is where we learn and evolve most.

“All of us do this in most areas of our lives. Sometimes, we are able to voluntarily stay in uncertainty, but those times are relatively rare, and usually we don’t like it so much. Here’s the thing: the edge of uncertainty and chaos is where we learn, grow, create, lead, make incredible art and new inventions.”

And Leo Babauta insists that generally we tend to avoid this situation and rather come back to the well-known and familiar. To achieve this goal of being more closer to the edge and more often he recommends a deliberate practice:

  1. Set aside a time
  2. Pick something you are avoiding
  3. Do it for a short time (10-15 mins)
  4. Learn to embrace uncertainty
  5. Be kind to yourself

I have to be more self conscious about being more at this edge of uncertainty.

Being at the edge of our uncertainty and learning how to stay more often there is certainly a great advice. Have you tried to do it deliberately?

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How the Unknown is Different from the Uncertain

In this very interesting article (in French) ‘L’expert et le politique face à l’inconnu‘ the authors express how there is a substantial difference between the “unknown” and the “uncertain”. In uncertainty, the context of decision-making remains somewhat stable allowing some sort of objective, analytical approach; when in a crisis, the unknown prevails: the rate at which the environment changes is faster and thus decision-making has to be done according to other criteria.

A crisis such as the covid crisis will be ranked in the ‘uncertain’ category: the knowledge and the environment changes faster than the usual environment for rational decision-making, and this is why expert groups have not always been relevant, and why political decision-making has become so important. Readability of the expertise becomes difficult, as it may change significantly in the course of time due to the fact that knowledge has changed significantly.

The most important point of the paper is that in the ‘unknown’ situation, our usual decision-making approaches are not quite relevant, but we often fail to identify that, or at least we identify it too late to be quite useful. Our organisations, reporting and decision-making processes are not fit for the ‘unknown’.

It is essential to get better at identifying those few situations that evolve so fast that they are in the ‘unknown’ category and make sure we understand that decision-making needs to be different.

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How Some Companies Now Declare the Conventional Work Week Dead

This article ‘Salesforce declares the 9-to-5 workday dead, will let some employees work remotely from now on‘ sets the scene for some transformation of the work environment in the wake of the Covid crisis (this was as a reaction to a Salesforce post itself ‘Creating a Best Workplace from Anywhere, for Everyone‘).

The idea is that while most employees will still be encouraged to drop by the office 1 to 3 days per week, they will be given far more flexibility in their work hours and conditions than previously. Some will even be allowed to work fully remotely. “An immersive workspace is no longer limited to a desk in our Towers; the 9-to-5 workday is dead; and the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks“

Fully office-based employees are now expected to be only a very small percentage of the workforce and even for them, more flexible workhours may well be the norm.

As I have often said in this blog, crisis do accelerate changes and this is definitely one that is due to happen, in particular as we work increasingly globally through videoconference and across time-zones.

The way we relate to our work, how much time it takes in our day, where and when we work, is due a complete overhaul. The 9 to 5 arrangement of the Industrial Age is now obsolete.

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How to Maintain a Middle Class in a Creative Economy

This excellent HBR article ‘The Creator Economy Needs a Middle Class‘ investigates the possible mechanisms by which a middle class can be maintained in a world where “the winner takes all” according to the rule of the complex systems and the effect of the ‘long tail’.

The interesting historical point made by the article is that the creation and maintenance of the middle class did mostly happen through government intervention in the 20th century. In the Industrial Age it made also sense to compensate adequately those workers who would also be the core consumers of products and services.

In the internet creative age, left to itself, revenue tends to concentrate on less than 1% of the creators. This is what can be observed on most social media creative platforms. This is not sustainable if we want overall revenue to remain significant while we are moving more towards a creative age. What business model can then be put in place to ensure that a larger share of revenue is spread over a larger number of people?

The paper proposes a few solutions that would need to be driven by the platforms themselves (or mandated by law to the platforms):

  1. Focus on content types with lower replay value (like podcasts rather than music)
  2. Serve heterogeneity and empower niches rather than mainstream
  3. Recommend content with an element of randomness to expose others than the winners
  4. Facilitate collaboration and community
  5. Provide capital investment to up-and-coming creators
  6. Decouple creator payout from audience demographic (which is akin to some kind of redistribution)
  7. Allow creators to capitalize on superfans (direct fan payment)
  8. Create passive (or almost passive) income opportunities for creators
  9. Offer some kind of Universal Creative Income
  10. Provide more creator education and learning (as a service)

All in all, this excellent article (which I encourage you to read) reminds us that left to themselves, platforms that disseminate creative work will not all a middle class to emerge, and that active action is required to allow this.

The key point of course is that if this is not in the economic interest of the platform itself, it will need to be mandated externally until everyone understand it is of social importance to maintain a wealthy middle-class.

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How Bots May Have Amplified the GameStop Surge

Following up on our previous post ‘How the GameStop Stock Event Ushers a New Era of Collective Resistance‘, new reports have emerged of bots having also had a significant impact on what happened to this particular stock (see ‘Did Bots Help Push GameStop And Other ‘Meme Stocks’? A New Report Says Yes!‘ or ‘Thousands Of Bots May Have Played Role In GameStop Hype: Report‘. Those bots could have influenced users of social networks by amplifying an existing trend.

“It should be noted that real human beings did indeed start the conversation and push surrounding the GameStop stock and other meme stocks. The report indicates that bots were at least partly responsible for hyping and promoting these stocks once the initial Redditor-inspired campaign took off, however.” We thus seem to be in the presence of a phenomenon of bot-amplification of a trend.

This shows how bots can amplify or conversely moderate the impact of trends on social media, depending probably on how they are driven by the people who create them.

This example, like many others, shows how public opinion can be highly vulnerable to bots that mimic social media users and serve to amplify certain trends, shares and opinions at the expense of others. It is a great opportunity to explore for those that want to highlight their views, and at the same time an issue to be regulated to make sure that opinion diversity remains and to avoid extreme trends to prevail.

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