The other day I was listening to the deep tracks channel on Sirius/XM satellite radio.   A number 2 hit song on the charts by Marc Bolan (aka T-Rex) called Children of the Revolution was playing.   The announcer introduced the song as for “The children of the revolution – may they live on forever”

Who are they?

The song is about teen rebellion.  I am guessing the announcer is referring to living on forever as a metaphoric concept, as humans don’t live forever in reality.

Is this a call for anarchy.  That is to say constant revolution is needed to revitalize and possibly this is a valid and beneficial ongoing practice.  Revolution is the meaning of life.

Too Deep?

Even I recognize this thought process is stretching a point; However, rebelling against the norm as you grow up, challenging the status-quo does have merit.

Given the deep tracks audience probably includes a few aging baby boomers, I can only surmise reverence by the announcer to the children of the revolution is mostly nostalgic.

In a way this is too bad as the drive for change during that exciting time of upheaval (the decades of 1960 and 1970) led to renewal and improvement in the human condition that continues to this day.  It really deserves much more than just nostalgic consideration.

Marc Bolan did not survive the revolution

Marc died in a car accident in London while driving his purple mini home from a drinking club.  He was not wearing his seat belt.  Perhaps this was gesture of rebellion.

For those of you not fully familiar with the works of the rock band called T-Rex (really a solo vehicle for Bolan) his biggest hit in North America was officially called “Get it On”.  The song was also known as “Bang a Gong (Get it On)” and really was just a simple entreaty to have fun.

Last month Playboy announced they were no longer going to include pictures of naked women.   The reason,  pictures of naked women are so readily available and easily accessible on the Internet they are no longer a feature draw for Playboy.

Playmate of the month and Playmate of the Year fully dressed just does not sound right to me, however, beautiful women probably do look better with clothing, albeit scantily dressed and suggestive.

Back in the 1960’s, most of us said we only bought Playboy for the articles.  By 1975 the magazines monthly circulation was 5.6 million.  Most of the readers were men who faithfully adhered to the mantra – we only read it for the articles.

For me those fabulous stories by highly acclaimed authors of the day ( Salinger, Asimov, Bradbury, Updike, Cheever to name just a few) were my own main interest in the magazine but I suspect there were those who bought it for the pictures.

Today’s monthly circulation is down to 800,000.  Clothing the women is supposed to get it back up into the multi-millions.  Personally I am not sure this will work, but worth a try I guess.  Maybe they should include my blog as a feature item.

Seeking the Forbidden

This is yet another example of a topic I posted about last week.  Humans are attracted to things that are out of reach, challenging or taboo.   If we all walked around naked not only would naked photos not work as a marketing ploy for playboy, there would not be a plethora of these photos on the internet.

Accessibility can reduce interest (this is not an absolute of course).  It is a proven fact though, that a short fall of supply can drive demand.  Basically this is how hobby collections work.  The most expensive and prized collectibles are those that are hard to find.

And so an era ends

Good bye Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith, looks like you won’t be replaced by other Playboy icons,  the nudi era is coming to an end.   Let me wipe that tear away!

Many factors contribute to your underlying basic behaviors.  Things like geographical culture, genetics, role models, living environment and so on.

Over the last week the behaviors of some younger acquaintances of mine got me thinking about social generations.  Social generations are cohorts of people who were born in the same date range and share similar cultural experiences.   The four most prominent North American social generations alive today are:

– baby boomers  (1946 to 1964)

– generation X   (early 1960’s to early 1980’s

– generation Y/millennials  (early 1980’s to early 2000’s)

-generation Z  (mid 2000’s to today)

At the risk of stereotyping …….

It is impossible (and probably stereotyping) to pin specific behaviors on a generation – as I noted there are so many factors beyond just your social generation influencing how we behave.

Still,  putting genetics, upbringing, cultural background and role models aside, I do observe some commonalities among these social groups derived from the period in which they were born.

This concept led to and reinforced my earlier observation about common behaviors among my young friends from generation X.  I have no empirical data supporting these subjective observations but here they are anyway.

My observations

There is a different attitude to accountability and responsibility and the term I have often term coined that this is the “me” generation really does seem to apply.  (And I thought it was all about me.)

One thing I really admire though is the laid back demeanor so often observed.   Oh, I am envious.

My suspicion is because this was an entitled generation (many from single child families) and as they grew up there was not that much to worry about (nuclear Armageddon was passe), the economy was relatively stable  (their parents were well and stably employed) and when they needed something it was there.

And of course the most obvious trait though is for generation Z for whom mobile devices are virtually an appendage.  What you want to talk face to face, that’s what texting is for.

And the disclaimer

Today’s post is very subjective and I am just sharing my thoughts.  Categorizing any group (by color, age, ancestry, etc) is absolutely wrong and I do not buy into it.  Fun to speculate a little occasionally though.

By it’s very definition strategic planning is high level and longer term.  This means the benefits derived from the plan can be some time in coming.

Lip Service

It never ceases to amaze me that people often discuss strategy and how strategic their approach is only to immediately turn around and react to a situation without consideration of the long term effects.   Strategies don’t work if they are just mouthed as meaningless parables to impress the followers.

Driven by Instant Gratification

So often our behaviors are driven by the need for immediate results.  We need to do it now and get our reward.  Sadly this approach is often likely to produce lower quality and less effective results.  This is not just my opinion – there are a multitude of studies on this topic, all consistent in the conclusion that strategic approaches are more likely to produce consistent high returns (just use a search engine like google to uncover a myriad of these kinds of studies)

It’s our own fault

You have probably heard this before, ” you get what you reward”.   Most often we are likely to recognize immediate behaviors and long term actions get lost under the radar.  No reward, no recognition leads to the question, why bother?

There are rare examples of corporate and other organization leaders going against this natural behavior with fabulous long term results but it is hard to do.  Just consider the way we track things, i.e.,  monthly reports, quarterly reports, annual reviews, etc.    Certainly there are cases where long term achievements are captured and analyzed but this is more the exception than the rule.

Most puzzling to me is this approach to long term over short term gratification is intuitive and logical, somehow though it is not embedded into our basic human behavior.

If you are a regular reader of this blog you have been exposed to my basic personal philosophy about life.  That is, live to maximize your own personal pleasure as long as it does not impinge on the pleasure of others.

Pleasure is a broad and basically generic descriptor that could apply to a large variety of activities/ experiences.  Yesterday I had one of these moments where the level of pleasure surprised me.

Reading Dr Seuss

One of my favorite books of all time is “Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss.  I had forgotten how much I loved that book until I read it to my grand daughter yesterday.   Funny thing is, although my grand daughter was there, to a some extent I was reading it to myself.  What a great story.

For those of you not familiar, the protagonist of the story  beseeches the subject to try eating green eggs and ham.  Ultimately the food is eaten and enjoyed.   The short words (to help with learning to read) the rhyming (to make it fun) and the story itself all combine for a great read.

Reading for Pleasure

I have always enjoyed reading, something I am sure I can attribute to my parents to some extent (regular mandatory library visits helped for sure).  Over the year’s I have read thousands of books but last night I remembered how much I enjoyed one of my first reads.

Don’t Forget

Pleasure can come from anything, it does not need to be big or small, extravagant, public or private, enduring or short.  The key is that you truly enjoy eat, embrace it, don’t begrudge yourself that moment of pleasure.