Simon Sinek reinforces the necessity to get beyond language and to explore the imagery and the assocations that constitute the imaginative reasoning that is at work in decision-making. He begins with the familiar conversation about our brains and it’s division of labor:

“If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, looking from the top down, what you see is that the human brain is actually broken into three major components … The neocortex is responsible for all of our rational, analytical thought and language; [O]ur limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings, like trust and loyalty. It’s also responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making, and it has no capacity for language.

Wanted to break here to highlight this; that which drives our behavior “has no capacity for language.” I also learned recently from Radiolab episode on “Stochasticity” (randomness) that it is what is known as the reward system of the brain (dopamine) is the very same system that controls movement. What we want, we move towards. And we cannot express it.

“In other words, when we communicate from the outside in, people can understand vast amounts of complicated information like features and benefits and facts and figures, it just doesn’t drive behavior. When we communicate from the inside out, we’re talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior.”

“Inside out” is a lovely way of imagining this way of listening which is always a . These are truths and pieces of insight that often have no corollary in communicative language. They simply are, and they are there to be found.

In my work, I am in constant amazement at the solidity and consistency of these metaphorical truths that reside within propositions – within the relationship consumers create between themselves, their world, and the brands they interact with. Metaphor is the first step towards unlocking these truths. And, as Sinek says, it is the purpose, the motivations, that consumers seek to associate with and support:

People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with anybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.

[myspace
I'm Awesome

SPOSE | MySpace Music Videos]

Because I probably spend too much time thinking about the distinctions that divide generations from each other, and bind them upon themselves, I couldn’t resist . . . I s’pose they share a sense of alienation and self-deprecation, but clearly the emotional tenor of each is fundamentally different. anyhoo. I don’t want to over think this, but there does seem to be some line running through from the Fresh Prince, through Beck, to where we are now: Spose.

The year is 2009. Take a peek at the video above, from recent homegrown unlikely pop/video phenomenon Spose, otherwise known Ryan Peters from Wells, Maine.Spose seems to revel in the lack of mobility, momentum and ambition. He makes a list of all the reasons that he’s awesome – most of which appear to be symptoms of Generation Y.

“Motherfucker, I’m awesome! No you’re not, dude! Don’t lie.”

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The year is 1989. I  remember first seeing DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince.  It was 1989. I was 17. Ah, high school. The video for “Parent’s Just Don’t Understand,” which is healthily referenced in the official Spose video, is all 80′s Graffiti with a narrative focused almost entirely on school shopping and trips to the mall.

“To all the kids all across the land. There’s no need to argue. Parent’s just don’t understand!”

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The year is 1993. I remember where I was when I first heard “Loser” from Beck. And I can recall pretty clearly watching the video with that sense that something new was happening and that that something was talking to me. Never mind that I wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying, I knew that it felt right.

“I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?”

Will Smith was born in 1968. “Parent’s Just Don’t Understand” came out in 1989. Beck was born in 1970. “Loser” came out in 1993. Spose was born in 1985. I’m Awesome came out last year, in 2009.

I was struck by a moment in A.O. Scott’s profile of Greta Gerwig in this Sunday’s New York Times. It is also, ostensibly, a review of what is meant to be her breakout role in Noah Baumbach’s new film “Greenberg.” It has more to do with the current, rather slow – but perhaps accelerating – shift of our cultural center away from the Boomers, towards the Generation known as X. I was reminded of this story at Slate.com about Pavement’s reunion that argues that what was once Alternative Rock is now just rock. The Boomers definition of rock is no longer the center of American culture. Anyhoo. I very much enjoyed Scott’s evocation of Generation X and wonder how right he may be that the same is happening in film

In Scott’s portrait of this actress, Gerwig is not only representative of Gen Y to Ben Stiller’s Generation X, but is also apparently redefining acting itself (it’s subtitle acts as an odd, and generationally revealing Raymond Carver homage : “Greta Gerwig is What We Talk About When We Talk About Acting”) note: this only appeared in the print version.

It is probably also worth noting that Ben Stiller, who has most likely built one of the most successful film careers of any Generation Xer, will most likely never be embraced by his own generation. Despite having been central to such large successes and cultural touchpoints as Reality Bites to Something About Mary to the Night at the Museum Series, I look forward to his Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony and the wriggling ambivalence that will invariably ripple nationwide amongst us Xers. (Yup.)

Roger belongs to a generation whose major fashion statement is a protective carapace of irony. That he is also inescapably Ben Stiller, for 20 years a master of implied air quote and a walking compendium of complications, reinforces the impression that this is a guy who thinks too much. But Florence is a different kind of person, temperamentally and generationally. It isn’t that she is any simpler or less thoughtful than he is, but rather that they don’t share the same cultural references and expetations. Disappointment - with love, with professional ambition, with the world as a whole – is an experience they share, but while Roger fights against it, Florence seems to accept it as a kind of birthright. He dwells angrily inside a cocoon of anxiety and frustrated egoism, while she takes shelter in a makeshift, modest nest : a few frinds, an O.K. apartment, a job she doesn’t hate, an occasional gig singing at a mostly empty nightclub.

Her lack of artifice attracts Roger and also brings the audience to her side, since it’s almost impossible to be on his. But authenticity, in movies and in life, is never entirely what it seems and is not in itself necessarily enough. The edges and corners of Roger’s personality can make him hard to take, but Florence’s combination of hesitancy and directness make Florence hard to get a handle on. His demographic cohort, which is also Mr. Baumbach’s, is often accused of glibness, hers of inarticulacy. To see them in collision – or in collaboration – is to witness intriguing new possibilities of expression opening up.

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Mr. Baumbach, who like Roger Greenberg is 40, carries some Generation X baggage with him from film to film : compulsive pop-culture reference-making and a fondness for characters whose emotional and cerebral intensity seems at odds with the slackness and indirection of their lives.

Ms. Gerwig comes from another planet, a parallel demographic and creative universe. She serves, in “Greenberg” and also in the retro-cult-horror movie “House of the Devil”, as the ambassador ofa cinematic style that often seems opposed to the very idea of style.

Boomers have been notoriously appreciative of Generation Y, eager to focus on the perceived optimism of the cohort that followed the disappointment and ire they reserved for the generation of slackers that immediately succeeded them. The question remains as to whether Generation X will similarly slip under the radar in it’s ability to shape American culture. Times are different – massively segmented and focused – so no Boomer-scale domination is likely, nor desired, but this piece seems to reinforce Generation X’s inability to hold the attention of its elders for very long.

UPDATE: For an exacting critique of Scott’s (and my own, perhaps) definition of generations, please check out this fine bit by Joshua Glenn at HiLoBrow.

Let’s talk about guys in packs. First, there is MTV series called The Buried Life. The concept is simple: four buddies (all guys) have generated a bucket list of adolescents that they will, we are promised, achieve over the course of the season. And, what’s more, they will pay it forward – granting the wish of someone local to their objective. (I will lean on McCracken to elucidate this).

I’ve seen one episode (where they “help” a couple give birth to their child and work at a bar to pay for travel for a young woman to visit her mother’s grave) and it is interesting for a couple reasons.

The first is that these are quintessentially american guys. Four solid, earnest, well educated and well adjusted kinda kids that can only come from the ‘burbs. It is impossible to question their intentions, but it is very possible to question their luxury and ambition. They did get a show on MTV, after all – complete with an RV that they drive. (it’s no wonder that any idea one comes up with these days reeks of possibility.)

The second is that these are all guys. It’s a buddy pic. A buddy journey. An experience of young men in pursuit of significance without the presence of women. In the episode I watched, one of the “characters” was so troubled by child-birth that he had a kind of breakdown. I can only wonder (skeptic that I am, it appeared a well paid birth).

MTV, so far as I know, is a kind of wasteland of masculinity. It is an outlet, to be sure, but very rarely does it seem to celebrate or acknowledge relationships of the young and male variety.

So it was with a bit of curiousity that I stumbled on the trailer for a move called The Human Experience. Two brothers in pursuit of the meaning of life.

Is this something or not?