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Businesses can touch the spirit

Businesses can touch the spirit

What I loved about Kotler et al.’s Marketing 3.0 concept is that it called for brands to touch the human spirit. I wonder why they positioned Marketing 4.0 as more into the digital space, when it seemed to me that “touching the human spirit” is a greater and more noble endeavor that cuts across the physical or digital space.

It sounds idealistic, but it seems so heartwarming that businesses and brands can be authentic advocates (that may even be spiritually aligned with the Advocate). In a way, there is that “alchemy” where business, commercial, and functional value can be “transmuted” into something that flourishes one’s well-being.

However, can this kind of “touching of spirits” be feasible in a “post-truth” world, where we disregard logical truths and settle for convenient emotional truths? From a Catholic and Christian perspective, I do not think this is coherent. God (Jesus, Advocate, Love, Truth) serves as our anchor and reference; a sort of “objective truth” despite our subjective perceptions.

Yes, positioning happens in the mind of consumers. But the process of developing brands may be best perceived as a co-creative activity, where managers are “architects” and consumers are “users”, together with various communities and stakeholders that enable a brand to take life. Maybe the vocation of businesses and brands is to stimulate culture and society to seek truly good goods in the spirit of flourishing, not merely just a convenient pursuit of pleasure.

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John 16:5-11. I will send (the Advocate) to you

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 144: MAY 24, 2022]

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To advocate is to unite in spirit

To advocate is to unite in spirit

I was not very familiar with how Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate. This made me reflect on how often businesses and media use the word “advocate” or “advocacy”. It seems that John, as interpreted by the Catholic faith, takes a stand to say that the Advocate (i.e., the Holy Spirit) is inseparable from Jesus Himself.

If we extrapolate this into how we should view advocacies, we can give meaning to the latter as manifesting our own spirit – inseparable from our authentic selves. Therefore, to speak of and to act our advocacies mean we are manifesting our spirit towards a benevolent cause. To share advocacies can mean a sharing of our spirits with others.

Hindi ba ito ang klase ng bayanihan na tanda ng isang tunay na Pilipino? Walang perpekto sa ating mga pinuno o mga tinuturing na bayani. Pero makakakuha tayo ng inspirasyon sa buhay nila Rizal, Bonifacio, Heneral Luna, Mabini, Tandang Sora, at iba pa, kung paano nila ginamit ang galing at talento nila para sa ikagaganda ng Pilipinas.

Our natural tendency to be collectivist and to be hospitable can speak to the goodness of our race. Huwag sana natin gawing huwad ang kinagisnan nating pakikipagkapwa-tao at bayanihan.

John 15:26-16:4a. When the Advocate comes

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 143: MAY 23, 2022]

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The words we express are opportunities to demonstrate our sense of responsibility

The words we express are opportunities to demonstrate our sense of responsibility

My mindset in using the internet and social media is that any “content” we upload or produce are forever available. Although I support data privacy, I assume that no data is truly private or secure.

I don’t think that crafting a “digital persona” separate from our “real world persona” is feasible. Living one life can already drive a person insane; what more for multiple personas?

Thus, the most consistent life is an authentic life, and the words we express in social media are opportunities for us to demonstrate our sense of responsibility. Doing otherwise is a life of BS, inauthenticity, and trolling.

John 14:23-29. Anyone who does not love me does not keep my words

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 142: MAY 22, 2022]

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Internal or external, we are all entangled

Internal or external, we are all entangled

It’s very convenient to externalize and avoid accountability. Why take the blame when it can be passed on to others? The one who catches the bomb when it explodes is just unlucky or is simply a sucker.

It is convenient to draw boundaries; madaling magkampihan. But such hard boundaries precisely prevent us from growing and flourishing.

Externalizing people just creates echo chambers. If we’re all in that chamber, confirming our narratives and bullying outside opinions, what makes us different from trolls?

In a way, critical thinking and authentic love goes hand in hand. Choosing to love something or someone with all perspectives considered – good and bad – doesn’t this parallel unconditional love?

We should embrace our entanglement with each other and transcend the arbitrary boundaries we fool ourselves with.

John 15:18-21. Because you do not belong to the world… the world hates you

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 141: MAY 21, 2022]

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To suffer with

To suffer with

When do we know the strength of one’s love? Is it by grand gestures and big surprises?

Or is it through the accumulation of moments where one chose to suffer with another, no matter the context?

Love is that continuous decision to choose the person.

John 15:12-17. Love one another, as I have loved you.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 140: MAY 20, 2022]

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Complete joy goes beyond pleasure and enables a surplus of meaning

Complete joy goes beyond pleasure and enables a surplus of meaning

Imagine a basketball player running drills, performing “planting rice”, vomitting in between, then lifting weights, doing a hundred push-ups, then shooting a thousand shots. At that moment, it can feel like the world is ending. All that blood, sweat, and tears, for a mere game?

Yet, the catharsis of winning a meaningful game transforms those suffering into deeper meaning. In this sense, joy and suffering are not incompatible; they are even synergistic, almost two sides of the same coin. A state of flow and total engagement demands a balance of skills and challenge; fighting both boredom and anxiety.

Maybe suffering is indeed a part of life, similar to pain. In itself, it is not necessarily bad; suffering and pain can be indicators of growth or a signal that somewhere in our body, mind, or heart, we need healing.

Thus, for a discerning person, the question is not how to eliminate pain and suffering altogether, but rather, how to exercise one’s agency to choose a cause worth suffering for. Maybe it’s family. Friends. Loved ones. Or country even.

Perhaps the journey towards flourishing and complete joy, like most things in life, is all about balance – pain and pleasure, skills and challenge, boredom and anxiety.

John 15:9-11. So that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 139: MAY 19, 2022]

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Growth pains

Growth pains

Growth is not necessarily pleasurable. Sometimes, it is in losing, in experiencing dilemmas, and facing “dips” where we realize how weak we are, and how far we are from really “flourishing”.

Sometimes it could also be that we’ve grown too far away from the vine, and thought that our branches are perfect already. We fail to examine ourselves.

We have no choice but to look at the proverbial mirror, identify what we may have taken for granted, and from there, seek to grow again.

John 15:1-8. I am the vine, you are the branches

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 138: MAY 18, 2022]

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Sense of peace and sense of “flow”

Sense of peace and sense of “flow”

At that precise moment of “flow” or “being in the zone”, isn’t that also the precise moment we personally experience a sense of peace? Csikszentmihalyi wrote that flow can come to be when there is a balance of boredom and anxiety; where one’s skills can reasonably adapt to the challenge or dilemma to be overcome.

And maybe the key to experiencing that sense of peace and flow is to hone our skills, especially in paying attention to ourselves and the experiences of others.

That sense of peace and flow is not a metaphorical switch to be flipped, unlike what fictional sports stories seem to suggest. One must understand one’s personal context very well before one can enter flow.

Team flow is more important; there should be synergy born from thorough understanding and insight of each other – a very strong sense of active empathy.

Kung ihahalintulad natin sa tunay na bayanihan, kailangan mag-usap at magkaintindihan tayo kahit ano pang pangkat ang kinampihan natin nitong eleksyon.

John 14:27-31a. My peace I give to you

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 137: MAY 17, 2022]

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To love is to seek the truth about the beloved

To love is to seek the truth about the beloved

If we dare claim that we are a loving person, then by necessity, we should be truth-seekers too. Ang tunay na nagmamahal, oo kinikilig sa umpisa, pero mas ginugustong kilalanin ang iniibig niya.

This means that if we dare say that we are loving persons, intelligent persons, and critical thinkers, we cannot settle for being spoonfed memes as a basis of our truth-seeking and loving. It can be a source of simple delights, but not a source of facts.

Kapag ba may crush ka, ginawan ng meme na masagwa ang picture niya, automagically bang di mo na siya crush? Hindi diba? I-coconfirm mo muna, at kung di ka torpe, kakausapin mo na siya ng diretsahan.

Ganoon din po tayo dapat sa katotohanan. Kung mahal natin ang totoo, di tayo dapat makuntento sa kilig, kailangan natin siyang kilalanin.

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John 14:21-26. And I will love him and reveal myself to him

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 136: MAY 16, 2022]

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Is social media really for love and democracy?

Is social media really for love and democracy?

“… The alleged ‘openness’ and ‘freedom’ of social networks are, as a matter of fact, neither open nor free. Instead, they are used by corporate and political agents to collect data from users, manage and manipulate the flow of information and influence voters and consumers.” (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14767430.2020.1805278?scroll=top&needAccess=true)

Both the US and Philippine elections have demonstrated how social media platforms can breed echo chambers and fake news to influence user behavior (thanks, Cambridge Analytica!). When Facebook and all other kinds of social media platforms began spreading in the early 2010s, the world felt hopeful. Social media can be a platform of interconnections and information exchange. It could democratize access and content creation for anyone who had internet.

But… What happened?

The research editorial I linked above provides some hints, and what stood out to me is the way social media is really and practically structured. Social media platforms make it easy to make impulsive reactions – a like, share, or retweet is just a click away. Facebook’s psychological experiments have been discovered and documented, and we have to be mindful of the forces that may subconsciously affect our thoughts, emotions, and actions.

(See: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users)

This presents a problem, because the ideals of democracy or even just the framing of love as an authentic decision and action presumes a person’s agency for self-determination and authenticity. If we are not mindful nor aware of how our views may be manipulated, we become unconsciously inauthentic; and worse, love and democracy just become distant concepts subject to the whims of the powers that be.

In this world of instant gratification, impulses, and hedonism, perhaps the principle we need to practice is temperance or restraint.

Do not instantly react to the post because our intuitions can easily be toyed with.

Do not instantly share posts because our minds can fall into thinking and logic traps.

Actually read the longform versions, not just the snippets and comments of a popular post.

This means that if we really want social media to be for love and democracy, we should reject being spoonfed and reclaim our agency.

Or else, we’ll be destined to become trolls.

John 13:31-33a, 34-35. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 135: MAY 15, 2022]

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