@RealSteveHolmes – – 40 years of exploring ideas and now for 20 more

When genius speaks, everything changes, however slightly, without anyone needing to work at it.

When mediocrity speaks we all have to figure out what, if anything, was being said.

I often sit reading a dictionary for fun. Sometimes a word will especially catch my imagination and I want to share it.

The word for today is VERSATILE

First used around 1605, apparently, derived from a Latin root meaning either many-sided or capable of turning depending on where you look, but surely so much richer since it became a common term and so much deeper in meaning than a word like adaptable because it hints at a gift or a power in the person you attach it to that I think crude is its true opposite.

A person with only one track in terms of ideas or behaviours, someone who prides himself on being consistent, that person seems pitiable to me. But the versatile person can produce different moods, different approaches, different ways of thinking and even different behaviours in an appropriate way that the boring among us just cannot do.

There, that should upset somebody who mistakenly thinks I’m getting at them.

For the last sex yarrons I’ve been studying online networking styles of thought and expression, the same way you probably have only different I expect because you have a right to your opinion too…
Anyway, sod that, now that I couldn’t care less it’s starting to become clear to me that there are all sorts of infantile and idiotic styles through which people strive to be right all the time and top of the class, leader of the pack, part of the incrowd, or just “liked” or whatever.
I may comment on these more extensively as time goes by but the first type I want to talk about is the helpful teacher’s pet, the one who whenever you say something that could possibly be a question immediately bombards you with the most obvious answer as if you’re so damn stupid you can’t use Google yourself. This person is obviously still back in school and trying to impress everyone that they’ve remembered how to thunk and read the stupid books or whatever. I hate them. They never take any risks. They should be mocked, mercilously, especially the ones who give unasked for business and personal development advice at the same time as being obvious.
A close relative of this teacher’s pet is teacher’s snitch, the one who comes pounding in whenever you criticise the Germans or say anything remotely sexist, ageist, anti-anything they hold dear or inadvertently not environmental enough. This version of the thought police seems to be especially strong on the internet, I don’t know why. I never meet them in real life, or if I do they go straight in to shock and I don’t notice because I feel no empathy for the human mind whatsoever, only for the soul and the poor old body, those good bits that are constantly being bullied by the kids who want to impress teacher that we all carry within us and some people can’t help wearing on their sleeve.
I never give advice unless I am asked for it and I never give information except about myself if I think it might entertain or enrich someone else. They usually ignore me in any case, because they’re all so busy scoring points.

Ruthlessness
Stubbornness
Contrariness
Spurious facticity
Rigidity
Charm
Pointlessness
Automaticity
Chess
Theories
Ambition
Charisma
Smugness
Tidiness
Gossip
Wealth
Sports Utility Vehicles
Horror Movies
Solutions
Rescuers
Matronliness
Violence
Cunning
Secretiveness
Superiority
Fashion
Hierarchies
Witchcraft
Horse Racing
Myers-Briggs
Jungian Archetypes
Freudian Analysis
Derivatives Trading
Taxation
Torturers

I think the list is endless and that when I get around to a list of things I do admire it is likely at first to be rather shorter and it would start with

Humility

Stupid little exercise but try this:

Pick someone you don’t care for and imagine saying to them:

What I like about you is…..

The result is quite liberating.

It become somewhat more challenging when you get to the next question: what I like about me is…

My favourite is gnarly, which different dictionaries define differently to mean anything from horrible to loud to simply gnarled (like an old tree). Actually the meaning I find most inventive isThe OC type usage where it means ill tempered in a cool sort of way. The Americans are brilliant at inventing new expressions. Would you like to share any?

Knock yourself out.

Ecademy posts from recent months:

“Networking fever” is now considered the number one form of emotional disease in the world, some Australian scientists have claimed. All over the planet people have started “networking” and withdrawn from real life, seeing their virtual addiction as a source of imaginary friends and even as a way to earn a living. Some truly pitiful souls show a religious zeal, even consider it a “healing” experience for their afflictions, both physical and emotional. But ahead of them lies the tragedy of “blogger burnout”, the downside of the fever, a tragic state in which the victim finally realises that no one is really connecting with them and no money has come from all the effort they put in.

The solution? Just say NO. Ration yourself. Life is still life, just like it used to be. Go out and meet some real people and do some real work. The world will still be much the same tomorrow. Twitter does not give you back your life.

……………………………………….
Anyone else got nothing really to say? I rang my friend Enthusiasm but she was Skyping with someone else and I couldn’t face ringing my friend Depression because she never stops talking. Then I figured that they probably had nothing new to say either, so I came on here for some entrepreneurial advice and what did I find…

…………………………………………

Just thought you’d like to see a video of some well-known networkers on their hols. Skip the tedious intro so you get to the tedious meat.

…………………………………
Inspired as I have been by the increasing number of networking energineers (or should that be enterpernoirs? Ed.) who build their brand online with witty “jokes” and stories, I thought I’d have a crack at humour myself. Only trouble is, I’ve thought of the questions but but not the punchlines… Maybe those with a great deal of amusement wealth in their portfolio of expert skills and visions could help me just this once?

Q: Why did the butterfly flutter by?
A:

Q: Why did the global economy collapse?
A: ?????

Q: Why is “blogging” such a desperate activity that makes one cringe?
A: ?????

Q: Why is there just no point in anything anymore?
A: ?????

Have a go; you could win a token prize of a bouncing cheque signed by me personally.

……………………………………..

The sun was shining this morning so I thought I’d better diffuse some cheerful light to my fellow back-bedroom entrepreneurs. Questions will be taken at the end of the session.

I was filled with passion and the vision thing as a wave of emotional wealth swept over me just now and so I felt I just had to share the top tips we were given on my excellent 15 minute Master of Cheerfulness Marketing programme. So, top tips for not being happy, then; here goes:

1) discover your inner core in the next five minutes, spend a few weeks planning a new online strategy with yourself posing as an expert, fail to seduce any customers, blow a fortune on SEO and Adsense, go back to the day job in defeat

2) wind yourself up in an orgy of expert bombast where you live in a bubble from which you smile all the time and constantly output unwanted advice in a phony voice that drives people away

3) slowly build a huge network reputation for making trivial contacts and plagiarising already plagiarised articles which you post as your own and nobody reads in any case

4) devote all your days and evenings to twittering while you scratch your arms with shards of broken glass (do not try this at home)

5) find some lame jokes to tell so that you will be an embarrassing failure at popularity building

6) post slice of life “blogs” about your daily mishaps in a never-ending storm of exhibitionist self-promotion (men should think before trying this because their lives are not interesting)

7) go to the USA and expose yourself to any medium whatsoever for long enough that you become frantic, passionate, overbearing, mendacious, patronising, glib, ignorant and totally inappropriate; with this achieved return to sanity and distinguish yourself by writing thinly disguised (and of course patronising) blogvertorial about the latest MLM, affiliate marketing and cure for cancer scams

Have a lovely day and for goodness sakes BE HAPPY.

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Some popular networking personas:

Why are people moaning about the online conduct of other people when we all know it’s just a set of barely convincing and largely excruciating facades that give hardly any clue as to the real nature of the people you happen to think you don’t like very much. This is utterly silly if you stop to think but there are many people who seem to get some kind of charge out of condemning people they know nothing about. But then, as eny fule kno, self-righteousness is a delicious emotion.

My second category would be the mindless optimists who walk into this like online pub thingy every ten minutes and scream something very enthusiastic about being positive and making great connections. These people sometimes turn nasty the moment anyone demurs, however, revealing that their fluffy bunny persona is not quite so entrenched and enlightened as they might like you to believe. No, I do not want to join your “network”, thank you. It is merely an imaginary electronic list.

Category three, for me, would be those who cannot help but post every day about some new cure for cancer that happens to be available at some website they happen to be an affiliate of or which they can provide because they are distributors. I think that if you haven’t actually had cancer or lost a loved one to cancer it should be illegal for you to express an opinion about it, let alone think you understand it, let alone offer false hope for money, let alone add to the cruel lies that healthy people tell about sick people causing their own illness. It can and it may, so help you God, happen to you.

I’m sure there are many other useless categories available online and that you may be able to assist me in compiling a complete list. Thank you. I hope you found that polite enough. BRUTAL “blogs” will come at regular intervals from now so keep your eyes open for what to ignore if you are a really really nice fluffy person. I have as much right to my opinions and behaviours as you to yours and nothing has deterred me in the last six years online or the last 40 years off line.

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(You can see what moods I used to get in to when confronted with mindless “business networking” all day…)
Hi there, Networking Experts! I need your advice, and pronto….

Would it be good for developing my “personal brand” if I posted a few harmless little “blogs” asking people to get involved and answer questions. I mean: does that work?

I was thinking of asking something tame to begin with like: “Why do fools fall in love?” justified with a short splurge about obscure medical research in Australia connecting pheromones, obesity, Haikus and maybe astrology with something on YouTube thrown in….

Q1: What do YOU “think”?

Q2: what are your top ten tips for “networking”?

Q3: is it more effective in good English or should I self-righteously pretend to be slightly dyslexic to show that I’m a man of the people?

Thank you. Have a nice day.

Imminence

Immanence

If you merge them you’d get something really marvellous: a real spiritual event that was about to happen !!!

This is a word you’re unlikely to use much but it certainly makes for an interesting read and it does relate to what’s happening around here in terms of many different cultures meeting….

5.30 a.m. and unable to sleep because this one is buzzing in my head. A member at realsteveholmes asked me to start something like this, so I have. Contributions are welcome…

My assumption has always been that our intimate relations are more driven by biological imperatives than, say, friendships based on affinity alone or partnerships in projects where mutual benefit is the payoff.

For me as a man this means, I think so far, a vehicle with too powerful an engine that was absolutely driven by testosterone from the age of about nine when I would sit in class and stare longingly at the fascinating Alison C. By the time I was thirteen it was an uncontrollable drive and by the time I was sixteen only the cold latex of an ugly girdle could deter me from wanting to fuck anything female and human under the age of about forty. Clearly this does not persist so strongly all life long but it does, I’m certain, change the pathways of the brain in very powerful ways and at sixty, if I’m not behaving myself, I still sit there hoping somewhat guiltily that the leading lady will give me the privilege of witnessing her tastefully disrobing at some time in the movie, I can’t help it…

This ridiculous engine happens to be by default installed in a vehicle too fragile for its throbbing, the mashed up stew of my what, my psyche, the incomprehensible package of instincts and partial learnings that is me through nature and nurture, expressing itself in habits and addictions, trials and tribulations, triumphs and disasters, in health and in sickness, whether I have any destiny or I’m just a random creature trying to be more than just survival…

Within that package there are more yearnings that will often take precedence as motivation over my carefully polished ethics and these are often just out of reach by definition: I need them; I want them; I cling to them. Here is a list for starters:

I need other people and their respect, even though I will not shut up and behave myself to get it. I need the archetypal love of mother, father, brother and sister, even though there is no chance of me even experiencing the real thing because my childhood was an emotional disaster. I think I need to express myself, more than assembling collections of interests or developing skills of the craftsman would ever do because I truly need to be understood. And I need love, whatever that might be, which is the question here.

As a child of the age when people think it is amusing to ask what is the meaning of life and answer 42 the danger of pure cynicism is never far way and its empty promises are always tempting, so I could dismiss the whole thing as a mere reflection of that hierarchy of needs that we all believe in these days and refuse to elevate love to a special section. This might be true, for all I know.

Yet intimate love with a particular other gives me immediate access to something that is hard to come by otherwise: the pure joy of giving, focusing attention, appreciating, caring for, working for the happiness of, being inextricably linked with (at least for the time being in our mutual narratives) someone other than myself. Yes, I want to have sex with (in my case) her, but that’s not all it is because her little jokes and gesture ignite my heart in a feeling that calls me back from hell and did so even after the death of my wife by cancer. We don’t live in Hollywood, so it took some time and anguish and it nearly wrecked my heart and health, yet to feel that door open again was for me a sign that life is worth living…

What I don’t want to do, and I will dwell on this separately, is to let this fine confection mould and rot by turning it in to a relationship where we lose the mutual worship in a maze of regulation about who owes what to whom in terms of attitudes and behaviours. Never again. Take me as I am with all my faults or not at all; that’s all I owe her in return. I have acquiesced my whole life long in love by negotiation and I never want to be that desperate again. To love is at least to dare…

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