Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky & Jerry Stocking
While a vast majority of people at the Attract Wealth Seminar liked Jerry Stocking, there were a few that didn’t. As with most things in life, there are always people who will dislike people you think are amazing.
We’ll get back to this in a bit.
Clay Shirky and Cognitive Surplus
So i am watching this fascinating character named Clay Shirky (NYU) at a web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. My fiance, Kathy, sent me a link to a video of him speaking.
As I watch Clay speak, I start to understand why I have spent so many hours studying the work of Jerry Stocking. Stick with me here, and I think you will learn something very interesting about people… and yourself in particular.
Clay discusses how people deal with big transformations. The first big transformation he talks about is the industrial revolution. How did people handle this? Gin. Yes, gin… the Beefeaters and Tangaray kind of gin you drink. Clay says there used to be little gin carts that were pushed on the streets of London, providing easy access to the libation that soothed the uncertainty of the times.
He said that society would basically and collectively drink itself into a stupor in order to cope with the massive change. It wasn’t until society woke up from this collective stupor that we ended up getting the institutions of the industrial revolution, institutions such as public libraries, museums, public education, etc.
Clay’s theory, a theory I agree with, is that until people stopped looking at change as a crisis and started looking at it as a asset, it was too stressful for them to handle. When people started to look at massive change as an asset, an asset they could design for instead of dissipate using Gin, we started to get the benefits of industrial society.
Another massive change after World War II created another method of dissipating massive change: Television. Because of the 5-day work week, there was now an abundance of time. Clay calls this Cognitive Surplus. This cognitive surplus, or excess thinking time, created its own stress on society as a whole.
How did we cope? This time, we used television.
And we’ve been in this stupor for 50 years… a full generation.
We’re beginning to see this change now. We’re starting to see the benefit of cognitive surplus, this extra thinking time, and we’re starting to understand that we can do something with it… or as Clay says, “Design for.” Shows such as Desperate Housewives have acted like a cognitive heat sync, dissipating societal thinking from overheating because of all of this extra mental time. Television has acted as a valve on a pressure cooker.
Clay says we are now waking up from a cognitive hangover, and we’re starting to act as if this extra time is an asset as opposed to a crisis. Things are starting to be designed to take advantage of this surplus of mental time instead of dissipating it.
Americans are waking up from the 200 billion hours of television we watch a year and finding that we have cognitive surplus.
He says it is time for Americans to wake up from the 200 billion hours of TV we watch a year, finding useful ways of using the 100 million hours we spent watch just the TV ads last weekend. He recommends what is called an “Architecture of Participation.”
Jerry Stocking’s Architecture
Jerry Stocking has been producing incredible Architecture of Participation in the nine years I’ve studied with him. If you can see beyond his personality, whether you like Jerry or not, and experience his architecture, you’ll understand why his work is so important for humanity as a whole. I believe Jerry is a modern Einstein, Edison, or Tesla… a person on earth to show us useful things we can do with this surplus of cognitive energy.
It’s not just Jerry.
Something happened to me from studying and applying his Architecture of Participation. People say things to me that sound like what I’ve said to Jerry for years. I have to tell you it feels odd to accept this, but at the same time, I know it means that the architecture is transferable.
It means you can learn it, too.
But before you learn it and use it, you have to be able to see it. Jerry will go for deep levels inside of you to wake you up from your stupor. He will challenge your cognitive comfort zone. You might weep, you might yell, you might laugh… but you will be moved to wake up from where you’ve been.
Whether you decide to continue your awakening or if you decide to put up defenses to your own growth is completely up to you. But one fact is undeniable: when you come into contact with Jerry Stocking, something deep will move within you.
Jerry uses the analogy of that he feels like a submarine in the yacht club. He means that all of the yachts are aware of what is showing above the water, however, they are completely oblivious to what is happening under the surface. If Jerry, or the submarine, bumps into the yacht underwater, it will appear on the surface like something uncontrollable has happened. Because they have no idea what has really happened below the surface, they have to assign their experience to something beyond their experience. The actual experience, however, is happening because of movement far deeper than they can detect.
Jerry, and the work he does, moves people to a place of deeper, ancient and new, Architecture of Participation. He is putting us in touch with a Spiritual Architecture that is useful for us. This architecture just may save the planet… at the very least, it will make it more tolerable for those that are here now and those who will come after us.
I am not saying this is perfect. It is, however, the best we have so far that I have experienced. I am open to other ways and have experimented with other ways, but nothing has even come close to the transformations I have experienced with Jerry. I never dreamed my life would be this exciting, and I am barely scratching the surface of Jerry’s work after 9 years.
How cool is that!
If you are looking for a new business to be in, then I would recommend that you tap into this new cognitive surplus in whatever way you can. It is going to be so big and the most creative will not only change the world, they will become very wealthy in the process. It is a huge opportunity.
I have not seen Jerry bump someone with his architecture who did not get upset. It is a threat to the status quo in someone. it is the end to their stupor, and nobody likes being shaken out of a deep sleep of their beliefs, patterns, and defenses.
But as you awaken to the wonderful world underneath the surface, you mind getting bumped less and less.
May 27 2008 08:00 am | General
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