Obsessed with fame

I have always defended young people against criticisms by the old, who accuse them of being lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. "My customers are mostly young," I protest, "and they read widely." Unfortunately, a recent study appears to show that they may be right, at least with regards to those born in the 1990s. Time magazine calls them the Me Me Me Generation, an entire generation obsessed with themselves and their fake Facebook/Twitter persona. (According to the National Institutes of Health in the US, 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982.)

I came across two more interesting stories.

The Marshmallow experiment

First from Wikipedia. In an experiment at the Bing Nursery School at Stanford University in the 1960s by psychologist Walter Mischel, children age four to six (over 600 took part) were led into a room and offered the choice of having one small reward (like a marshmallow) immediately, or two if they waited 15 mins. So the children sat looking at their treat after the researcher left the room. Many gave in to temptation very quickly, others took a while and a few managed to get their two treats.

In the follow-up of the experiment, researchers checking in on these same students in high school, found that those with more self-control were better behaved, less prone to addiction, and scored higher on the SAT. (Was it pure self-control or strategic thinking by the nasty little buggers?)

Walter Mischel had run a similar experiment in Trinidad a decade earlier with different ethnic groups of contrasting stereotypes. 53 children in a rural area were given the choice of a 1-cent candy immediately or a better 10-cent one in a week’s time. Mischel reported significant differences due to ethnicity, age, and the absence of a father in the family. Socio-economics didn’t seem to matter. Intact families did.

To many people it would be a no-brainer that self-control leads to productivity and success. Would you rather do the more tempting ‘lepak at the mamak’ every night with friends or work on your novel? Who is more likely to succeed in whatever they choose to do? “I have no time,” is something you’d hear often from those who’d rather waste theirs on phone calls, texting, Facebook, Twitter or whatever (not that they’d see it that way). Jocelyn K. Glei, Editor-in-Chief and Director of 99U, thinks Facebook is the new marshmallow.

G is for Grit

Second, I watched a Youtube video by Angela Lee Duckworth on TED talks, which Jade recommended, on a research she is currently undertaking with children to understand the ingredients of success. Duckworth found  that while self-control was an excellent predictor of ones ability to follow through on some types of difficult tasks, it was not the most important factor when predicting success. She was suspicious of 'talent' and 'intelligence' too. Duckworth research boiled it all down to one essential ingredient she calls 'grit' or “the perseverance and passion for a long-term goal”. Grit is single-mindedness, unwavering dedication, whatever the obstacles, no matter how long it takes.

The media largely attributed Obama's victory in the 2012 elections to the use of social media, particularly Facebook, Twitter and texting. Media has always liked hype because it's sexy and it sells. But reality is quite different. US News says: In a memo released just before Election Day, the Obama campaign claimed it had contacted one out of every 2.5 people in the country since the 2008 election, much of it through personal phone calls or knocking on doors. That number is far and above the 50 million voter contacts the Romney campaign has cited. "The best data for us was things we collected at the doors," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said. Additionally, Obama.org says that 10,000 volunteers knocked on 7 million doors on the day before the election. Now, that's grit.

And the moral of the story? One might be self-righteously indignant, or even right, but if the message is not sent out, you drop the ball. The urban middle-class can whip themselves up into a frenzy on Facebook, Twitter and other social media where broadband is ubiquitous, but in the rural areas it is done the old fashioned way -- at coffee shops, weddings, births, deaths, circumcisions, thanksgiving religious ceremonies, prayer meetings, kenduris, etc., where any politician worth his salt shows up and becomes part of the community. There is nothing like a real connection. A friend, an expatriate, sent me a photo of a kampong about three weeks before the last elections. It looked like the entire village had been gift-wrapped in blue. Even a cockroach wouldn't have been able to penetrate that fortress if it was not wearing blue. One look at the photograph and I realised that the game was up. I guessed rightly who was going to win this one, whatever the hype.

Nobody like to lose. Supporters of the losing team in football will accuse the referees of bias and/or incompetence, accuse the opponents of 'not playing the ball', and claim they were unfairly denied a penalty. A neutral observer might sympathise with the last if the difference was one goal. What if it is 44? 45 penalties? Can anyone score from every one of them? Or were you simply not prepared, being caught up in the social network hype, and didn't train hard enough?

Did you drop the ball?