The Misery of the Thinker Versus...

The Glory of the Doer!

Is Knowledge Power?

I’m a thinker and I have the personality tests to prove it.

Unfortunately, there have been many times my thinking abilities have felt more like a curse than a blessing (and recently, it has been feeling more like a curse). Sometimes the feelings associated with the curse side have been extreme self-loathing. Other times the feelings have been intense anger and frustration.

When it has felt like a blessing, I’ve felt freedom, joy, empowerment, and all sorts of positive emotions.

During the past several weeks, my emotions have been all over the place and right now—well, I’m pissed!

I’m tired of feeling powerless. And I’m not alone. So many people feel powerless and are venting their frustration to the world.

Humans have the following instinct that drives a large chunk of our behavior.

Communication

Social Media and other digital platforms (like Substack) have fueled that drive to communicate information and knowledge, on top of a massive plethora of other sources of information, resulting in a conflagration of information that can be overwhelming.

We have access to So. Much. Knowledge.

But…

In addition to how we are processing that knowledge via different ways of thinking…what are we doing with it? And, we are driven to communicate for many reasons but a big reason is because we are social creatures. But is this amplified ability to communicate empowering the collective aspect of humanity or ripping it apart?

The Digital Age has made it possible for people who are experiencing unemployment through no fault of their own to share their frustrations online. They are not just numbers anymore. Last year, when I left the security of my full-time job to experience the highs and deep lows of starting a business that wasn’t successful (but I’m standing back up again), one of my “distractions” was reading about so many people who told their stories of being laid off.

After reading their stories… guess what I had? Knowledge of the pain of unemployment that other people were experiencing. Did this result in a glorious feeling based on the capacity to do something about it? No. Despite my thinking about ways to address it, I ended up feeling more frustration, and anger than anything else. However, one crazy idea I had at the time was “crowdfunding” solutions to unemployment.

It would be like other crowdfunding platforms out there but focused on people who are out of work due to layoffs. Financial contributions would be aggregated from donors that would offset the full cost for short-duration projects for the unemployed (despite diligently applying for jobs, and some have applied to 1,000s). They would work for a network of partner organizations (small businesses, non-profits, etc.) that need people but can’t afford the full cost of hiring people. So the financial arrangement may look like this.

The platform would pay 50% of the hourly wage for a project lasting 100 hours and the partnering organization would pay the other 50%. It would be a win, win,…win.

When I shared the idea on LinkedIn, I believe only one person said they would contribute to something like that (and she is now a subscriber to this platform). I’ve been contemplating how to incorporate this with The Polymath Paradigm via The Polymath Movement subscription tier. A portion of the proceeds would go to paying for people who are unemployed as independent contractors to create content for this publication.

Now how do I translate the misery of the thinker into the glory of the doer to make this idea happen? Now that you know about it, what can you do to help?