🌉✨The Nexialist #0107

like our parents | crossing the chasm | the MAYA principle | futures garden | idiolect | flor de maracujá | echolalia | i’m not here to make friends

Feb 09, 2023

Welcome to another cyber trip through neurons, zeroes and ones, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you ~~well~~ at least a bit curious. this week i’m spending some time with my parents in the south of brazil, close to argentina. after (i think) more than 10 years of not visiting their home, where i lived decades ago, it all feels like time-traveling: the furniture, the house, the pets, nature, the flavors, the sounds... not only looking feeling the past around me but also feeling and reimagining possible futures. i’m having a blast, feeling nourished, pampered and connected to my roots, so i write you today with extra love, a warm heart and a full belly, all necessary for the best brainsparks. read until the end for some new words, trends terms, futures resources and fabulous music. 🫀✨

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🫀like our parents

this is one of the most touching songs in the world, in my opinion, and it gets me every single time. it resurfaced in my memory as i was coming to visit my parents in their home after (more than) 10 years without doing so. so this reaction video showed up when i was looking for it.

tanya wells, who is a singing coach, does more than just react to the powerful voice of elis regina, one of brazil’s most beloved singers, but also explains/translates the context in which this was performed. in a nutshell, this happens during a dictatorship in brazil, and the song is calling out the people (us) who are not willing to change, behaving just “like our parents.” also, quite resonant with what’s happening now. it’s a punch in the stomach. you can get chills and watch the full performance with english subtitles here.

🌉crossing the chasm

by coincidence this post from mission.org appeared in my inbox, with a term that is new for me, also

Geoffrey Moore first described the “Crossing the Chasm” theory in his 1991 book of the same name. The gist is that there’s a gap between those who are eager to take risks and try new technology (the early adopters) and those who need more convincing before they adopt (the early majority).
So, how do you overcome this chasm and bring your tech (or new idea) to the masses?

read: How to Introduce People to New Ideas

🚄the MAYA principle

this reminded me about a concept that was buzzing a few years ago as the universal theory of cool: the MAYA principle - Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. the term was coined by raymond loewy, father of industrial design. he is partly responsible for that retro-futuristic 50s american dream aesthetic, as he designed cars, buses, trains, home appliances, logos, etc.

lowey’s trick was this: to sell something surprising, make if familiar. to sell something familiar, make it surprising.

it made me think how we could flip this around (and the “crossing the chasm”) and apply this to regrowth/regenerative strategies. i don’t have an answer, but my brain might spit something out (am i thinking i’m AI now??)

read: How Marketers Get You to Buy New Stuff - The Atlantic

🌱futures garden

i don’t know where this link came from, but i’m enjoying johannes kleske’s resources, which is called a futures garden. i read a couple of pieces and i just love their visualization tool.

I’ve also set up a digital garden—a space for the seedlings to grow and intertwine—at garden.johanneskleske.com. While the notes blog is for publishing ideas, the digital garden is for putting them into context and developing a wiki-style repository of terms and concepts.

👅idiolect

i got a new book in brazil and i am having such a good time. caetano w. galindo is a writer, translator and professor and brings us on a trip on how portuguese (or brazilian?) came to be the language that it is today. latim em pó (latin in powder) is an expression used by caetano veloso in the song língua (tongue) to talk about the brazilian language. i am learning so much. one of the new words that stood out is idiolect:

An idiolect is the dialect of an individual person at one time. This term implies an awareness that no two persons speak in exactly the same way and that each person’s dialect is constantly undergoing change—e.g., by the introduction of newly acquired words.

just as this plays with the idea that we each speak our very own personal languages, it brought me to freud’s idea that a neurosis is “an individual religiosity.”

In Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices (1907), his earliest writing about religion, Freud suggests that religion and neurosis are similar products of the human mind: neurosis, with its compulsive behavior, is "an individual religiosity", and religion, with its repetitive rituals, is a "universal obsessional neurosis." (wikipedia)

🌸flor de maracujá

i’m loving and dancing to this new remix from iconic gal costa. flor de maracujá (passion-fruit flower) is such a beauty and one of my favorites. dance with me! (btw, why is there no maracujá flower emoji?)

🧠echolalia

yves tumor released a new song/video recently and i can’t get enough of it. also, i learned a new word. connecting it to idiolect, i see it as this moment when we are learning/unlearning our language.

ech·o·la·li·a /ˌekōˈlālyə/ noun
1. PSYCHIATRY meaningless repetition of words just spoken by another person, occurring as a symptom of mental conditions.
2.repetition of speech by a child learning to talk.

✨i’m not here to make friends

well, this fabulous song/video came out a couple of weeks ago and it’s EVERYTHING. and with so much fabulousness, there had to be a dark force showing the prejudice around us.

read: The Sam Smith Video Backlash Is Nothing But Homophobia And Fatphobia Combined | CLASH

see you next week, MAYAs 🌹

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