“You’re an asshole.”
Progress at massive scale requires unconventional thinking. One unconventional way of thinking includes understanding where name-calling comes from. For in the marathon work that is prosecuting global change, if you’re really making progress, you’re going to be called names.
You think different. You are different. If you’re supporting Copiosis, you’re really different. That’s because you are not allowing the masses to define not only reality, your reality and what’s possible. You’re not allowing the masses define how change happens.
Name-calling is what happens when a person reaches the end of their rational operating envelope. They have lost control of their thinking capabilities. Their name-calling is an attempt to regain control of themselves and the world around them.
Give these people a break. Here’s how: ignore them. The more energy (i.e. focus) you put on what they are saying, the more you feel bad and the more they keep trying to extract attention from you. There is no progress to be made trying to convince someone who doesn’t get it. If you understand the product adoption curve, where matter comes from and your role in matter-creation, you have no reason to try to convince someone who doesn’t want to be convinced.
Focus your time instead on those who get what you’re doing. In time, even the naysayers will have to begrudgingly agree you did good.
Besides, labels are just that. Labels. They don’t do anything but limit what is possible.
When someone is calling you a name, they are trying to fit you back in their reality scope. In their discomfort in the face of new information, a new ideal, or something not fitting in their comfort-zone-reality-box, they use that box to lash out, hoping you’ll fall back in line.
Don’t. Your work is too important.
Last night I watched the movie The Accountant. In it, the main character is different. His mother early in the picture tries to put a label on it, asking the neuroscientist she’s talking with for help doing so, while his father watches on. The neuroscientist, not being of the mainstream, responds to herby saying “I’m not a fan of labels.” He goes on:
Neurologist: Your son is different
Young Chris’s Father: Sooner or later, different scares people.
Neurologist: If we let the world set expectations, they’ll stay where they are. Low.
The same is true for society. If you let the naysayers pull you back into the pot full of inaccurate absolutes, and flawed ideas about reality, well, you’re falling back into a box full of labels.
Labels are nothing but limits.