Self fulfilling prophecy stems from the family of judging and bias. It’s actually a twin with an Angel and a Devil as siblings.
The Angel preaches the concept of what you envision, expands. It teaches trust and self-esteem. The minute we get clear about our ideas, visions, beliefs and destination is where we begin to make decisions, conscious and subconscious that navigate us to getting there. What you envision, expands.
In 1975 Gordon Moore predicted price performance of computing power would double every 18 months. What turned into “Moores Law” is actually not a law, according to Moore: it is self fulfilling prophecy. We produce computers that help us calculate how we can produce computers that are twice as fast. With these, we can calculate how we can produce computers that go twice as fast as the current model. Et voila, we have an exponential function of a doubling price performance of computers. no magic: the moment, we become clear and conscious about our future is when we are already creating it.
The evil brother among the twins is called bias or prejudice. And again, it is nothing but self fulfilling prophecy. We constantly seek validation to our belief-system and we find it all the time.
What we envision, expands, what we prejudice becomes reality.
I just spend a week in China – and if there is one country leads the board with articles of prejudice and bias, it would be China. We have set our ideas about China. Most of them are around fear, worry and doubt. China is a humongous, not overview-able monstrously populated country. 1/3 of the worlds population lives in China. If every Chinese would want to have one sheet of paper, we would have to deforest the whole of Austria to provide China with paper; and if next week, every Chinese would drink one can of coca cola, the fuzzy soda drink company would double their annual revenue.
Over decades, China has become the worlds heart of production and idea-copying. With the one-child-family, Chinese family transformed from workers in production to a purchasing power. Today, the country has the highest density of Billionaires and two-digit-million-population cities in the world.
All of this caters to one logic assumption: China is a Mega-Power and we’d better be careful. China is scary.
I met people in Hongkong and in Shenzhen. Hongkong is not China – that’s the first thing, I have learned. And Shenzhen has doubled its population to 20 Million in the past 10 years. Both are part of the “Greater Bay Area”, a megalopolis, spreading from Macao (entertaining) to Hongkong (trading), Shenzhen (hardware prototyping and production) to Guangzhou (a 25M Alpha Global City in Guangdong).
I would never claim to be a sinologist after a few days and conversations in China, but two things came clear to me: 1) maybe we do not have to fear China. and 2) maybe we should look deeper into self fulfilling prophecy when it comes to bias.
From every information we receive, we extract what fits our models.
And when you hear yourself saying, “I always knew” or something along the line, you might as well be trapped within your own preconfigured mindset about the topic. If that is true, another inconvenient fact is true, as well: Right now, you are not learning.
I want to invite you to this pair of thoughts: Whenever you feel confirmed in your opinion, at the same time admit to yourself a failed opportunity to learn.
Food for thoughts? Curious, as always, what you think about it. All the best Niki