TOBM.6 - Another Brick in The Wall
Making your authenticity prevail.
Welcome to the sixth edition of TOBM!
In this editorial, we will be sharing previews and full chapters of The Orange Book of Marketing with some commentaries and highlights.
Learn more about the book by clicking this link.
VI - Another Brick in The Wall
Are you, though? A truly creative person? Are artists and creatives the same thing? If so, are you both? If not, which one of them you rather be?
This is the type of question that you should let marinate in the background of your mind, reader, because perhaps you know you are creative but never really saw that as an advantage, either because you tend to keep your ideas to yourself or because your ideas and way of seeing the world makes you feel uncomprehended and seen as weird and different. How far would you be willing to go in order to truly express your authenticity? To impress your mark in history? How much embarrassment would you be able to feel until you finally realize that if creating is a condition to your existence, a purpose to your call, no true drawback or wall can really get in the way of your vocation as a creative?
Understanding this is the answer to helping you finally understand if you rather be accepted by who you are meant to be or incessantly adapt towards what others want you to be until your essence gets so fragmented that only a miracle can glue it together. To bloom in solitary dancing or to languish under the burden of approval. To live or to exist? To question or to just accept? To face mystery in order to avoid misery or to embrace invisible misery so that you don’t need to face any potential mystery?
“To be, or not to be, that is the question”
William Shakespeare
You won’t have to take a test on this chapter, nor will you be evaluated for it, so reading it is not necessary at all. It is highly recommended that you skip this chapter, but that also means that other people might read the whole book while you just partially go through it. Being different is, before anything, an extremely simple matter of consuming different information because the content, news, opinions and knowledge we absorb is what truly shapes our view of the world. Consume the same information as everyone else, and see the world like everyone else. Contempt yourself with only what you learn in an academic path, and be a professional in your field like any other. If properly embraced and protected, our inner child can very much be an eternal student of life, but truth be told, no child really wants to sit at a desk by force in order to study and learn what others want them to learn. Going through such a learning dynamic is profoundly transformative not only thanks to what we end up learning (through excess) but also because of the people and inspiring professors we come across, at the same time, it has the capacity to hurt our inner child in a way that studying becomes more of a penance than an experience of exploration and discovery. No trauma or drama, though, can really get in the way of a bold and sharp curiosity. Contrary to popular belief, the habit of reading is not about accumulating records of books read in a week. There is a fundamental difference between the act of reading and the feat of absorbing knowledge. The traditional education system obliges us to consume books and fill our brains with as much information as possible to have an indigestion of “knowledge” and unload rote memorization in order to achieve that desired grade. The maximum grade that will prove to your peers, parents, and teachers that you meet the intelligence standards established by the respected academic world while imprisoning your mind within the limits imposed by the curricula.
Throughout history, humanity has been blessed with bright minds that couldn’t fit into just one title, known as homo universalis, they understood that through the fire of discipline and the flame of curiosity and investigation, they were capable of developing any new skills that would be useful for them to create what was born in the space of their minds. True polymaths accelerated the clock of human development by solving problems that did not exist before.
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
If we are to try and find what these names have in common, we could find many different aspects, but one fact would prevail, they are not around us anymore while, in a way, they still are. Fairly because they are and will still be remembered for generations to come due to their true dedication towards life, towards the collective intelligence of fraternity, they are part of a family that never really ceases to exist because this is a family of true thirst for knowledge, hunger for wisdom, urge to build and need to serve.
Their authenticity, their courage to detach themselves from common sense so that they could think of tiny solutions for massive but unseen problems so that they could paint the way they saw the world through pure creative process. Being atemporal, still relevant or even remembered though, is only a mere reward to the true challenges they faced and that which we will never understand in full, for true kindness, sacrifice, and poetry is like sowing an immense crop of organic food for everyone you love, it really happens in the present but can only be really seen in the future, it is the exact opposite as immediate reward fairly because they already saw life as a reward and the cultivation as the true exercise of a working, purposeful and glorious life.
Amidst those names, one was the first computer programmer in history, another helped write the draft for Brazil’s first constitution, another blessed society with the beauty of Monalisa, and another was Hollywood's first female black director.
They were responsible for opening doors that we all go through every single day of our lives, paving the way for different kinds of innovations that we only know exist because they saw it first. They could only do this because they were the type of person who craves truth, the type of person who would revisit the paragraph above and not only confirm but also relate each accomplishment to the specific name by going after the information rather than just believing the author. For such kind of scepticism is not a resistance to what other people have to say or a disbelief towards the world, but a simple and fair due diligence of making sure to cross every “t” and dot every “i” so that one can truly make sure that something new has really been learned.
But they wouldn’t have accomplished what they did if they were contemptuous of the world around them, if they just accepted everything as it was presented to them and if they only studied and researched what everyone else around them did.
The issue at hand is the difference between being a human Wikipedia who loves to mention in friend circles the historical accuracy of the day Napoleon stumbled upon a piece of gravel and being a wise human who can apply with perspicacity the valuable words of an author in an important professional or personal decision moment of their life.
Reading by obligation is more of a penance than an act of evolution. For the awakening reading of the soul, born from the fruit of curiosity, is the one that has the power to move mountains because with a genuine interest in researching a subject, the absorption of the words and the magical pollination of knowledge in the atmosphere of the mind occurs in a much more natural and efficient way. The former requires accumulating stacks of books, the latter does not even require finishing a book, it is truly only necessary to be critical about the information that is being read, to question authors and to validate the truth of what is being consumed through books, the internet, reason and data correlation. The challenge, and at the same time, the secret, is to cultivate the gift of curiosity, the notorious search for wisdom that fundamentally differs from knowledge.
The strategy? Visit a bookstore without the intention of buying, in the same way, we do with clothes and other material goods that, unlike knowledge, lose their value over time and cost your money instead of generating intangible wealth in the long term. From the moment you are in an environment of treats for your brain, everything becomes easier.
The action plan? Surround yourself with books. Spread books around your office, bedroom, or living room. Set traps for your mind, which is bombarded daily by distractions, and remind it that right there, next to your coffee cup, or on your cat taking a nap on top of a copy of Sophie’s World, is that book that once piqued your interest and is constantly flirting with the idea of teaching you something new. The most important thing is not to pressure yourself; it’s the book that desires you, not the other way around. There is no obligation to read or finish it, no pressure, and you don’t need to prove to anyone, not even yourself, if you really understood those pages.
The magic? This part will blow your mind, so tighten the seatbelt. When the book dialogue with your curiosity, everything changes. Every word, every sentence, and every idea that travels from the book’s page to the dimension of your intellect becomes a part of you forever. Even if the reading doesn’t make sense at the time, there won’t be an evaluation waiting for you to test if you learned it; your brain will have as much time as it needs to calmly process and savour that gift and when you least expect it, in a few weeks, months, or even years, at a decisive moment in your life, your brain will give back to you the effort you put into curiously studying with autonomy in the past. It will highlight your work or help you solve a personal challenge.
If we are to think about it one last time before we move to another chapter, being another brick in the wall is the exact same thing as being the whole wall, fairly, because if the wall is to be moved or just brought down for lacking true utility, all the fixed bricks go with it with the exception of the loose ones who prepared their whole lives to find their own walls, to find the bricks that think likewise and to form new walls where they can not only serve as a barricade for their own ideals but also extend in shape and form until they even manage to survive the challengeful proof of time.
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The book is now available for early access through the release of an alpha edition. Readers who purchase the book in this period will guarantee the full edition when it is complete and will get new editions while it is developed.
A1.0 - The Orange Book of Marketing.pdf (Alpha V1.0)
Expect a reading with the core ideas behind the book, no summary, no pagination, and no technical details about the publication.
Expect seven chapters about creativity and the cultural context behind the transformative AI scenario we are currently living in. Get ready to forever unlock your creativity to a whole new level.
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Technical Details
Full Release Date
Est. November 2023
Cost
The current price of $42 is subject to change after the release of the final and revised edition.
Publisher
Published by Editora Sentient in Brazil.
Text Copyright © 2023 by Editora Sentient
All rights reserved.
Distribution
Distributed by Sentient LTDA in Brazil.
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Sponsored By
The Orange Book of Marketing is the first book publication by Agency, a global community of creative professionals.
Learn more about the Agency project at www.agencybrasil.com