2025-05-26
A Mad World
Part 1: The Roles We Play
Gary Joule's Mad World is a powerful cover song.
It's a bittersweet and melancholic tune from my past.
Why not give it a watch and listen?
The song looks at people playing their role in larger society but feeling deeply unfulfilled.
Wondering about their place in all of this.
At times, this sure feels like a Mad World.
Its mad facets emerge from any vantage point
peppered into our news and social feed.
Violence
Division
Doom & Gloom
Helplessness
You wouldn't be the only one pulled in by our Mad World.
A different point of view might help. Join me!
With a more detached perspective, we can take a sober look.
Up here the daily noise fades into the background.
We can see further into the world. Get perspective on it all:
The Good,
the Bad,
and the Ugly.
It's a worthwhile exercise to think about how you fit into the grand web of people we lose ourselves in.
I found a great way to start is making inventory of your relationships:
your professional commitments,
you as part of a family,
as a friend,
as a room mate
as a citizen...
We take many different roles in different capacities.
With that, we become a part of different systems.
The systems are interconnected. Change ripples through the field from system to system
because people like you travel from system to system.
What your organs are to you,
individuals are to these human systems.
While a simplification, I find this view a practical summary of our Mad World:
After all, what is humanity but all 7+ billion of us following our roles?
In each of these roles, you will follow values part your own and part the group's
even when neither you nor the larger group are conscious of these values.
It's good to know your priorities when it comes to all the hats you wear,
because at times, they may be at conflict and you have to choose.
What roles do you embody? What are your relationships that matter?
And when you have to choose: do you know your non-negotiables?
This clarity helps focus your limited efforts and resources on what matters most to you.
I find this approach to our Mad World helpful, because it solely focuses on what you can control
but our Mad World
won't fit on your table.
Even owning your roles completely, too much is out of your control to feel in control.
Again, we need a different vantage point to gain perspective.
Join me once more
as we zoom out from the individual to the Big Picture.
The Madness cannot be tamed
in the perspective it emerges from.
We have to think bigger.
Much bigger indeed.
The second part of this series explores the traditional VUCA model to systemically explain our Mad World