Hell on Earth is a NEW TREND!

I subscribe to an online service called “Trendwatcher.com” because I believe everyone should be as informed as possible, me included. It’s a holdover from my prodigal days as a interactive marketer.

Sometimes the trendwatcher staff hits upon a really interesting “new thing.” An example was last year’s trend dubbed “INFOLUST”–the growing insatiable demand for knowing what your friends, family, investments, gurus, brands, babysitters and even pets are doing and thinking in real time. Brought to your mobile device over the web by facebook, twitter, livestream, googlewave, etc., etc.

Well, here’s a NEW TREND as of this morning, brought to you through me by the smiling folks of Trendwatcher.com:

“NOWISM.”

As in, “gotta have it/do it/smell it/eat it/touch it/know it/share it RIGHT NOW.”

Instant gratification on steroids, transmuting across the increasingly frantic and fragmented electromagnetic spectrum.

Here’s how Trendwatcher.com describes NOWISM:

“This focus on experiences, this living in the now, instead of in the future, this lust to collect as many experiences and stories as soon as possible, is addictive. Take travel: these days, it’s more of a basic consumer need than a luxury. It’s about detachment, fractional ownership or no ownership at all, trying out new things, escaping commitment and obligations, dropping formality, and of course collecting endless new experiences. No wonder tourism is and will remain one of the biggest industries in the world. For more on transient lifestyles, see our TRANSUMERS briefing.”

(Transumers are, of course, “transient consumers.” I wonder, are there any other kind of consumers?).

This ‘trend’ references the sociology and writings of Zygmunt Bauman, who lives in England as a Polish former communist and refugee from a 1980’s era Communist-led, anti-semitic pogram in his native Poland.

Bauman has dubbed this new trend “Liquid Modernity.”

This is from Wikipedia:

“Liquid Modernity is Bauman’s term for the present condition of the world as contrasted with the “solid” modernity that preceded it. According to Bauman, the passage from “solid” to “liquid” modernity has created a new and unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, confronting individuals with a series of challenges never before encountered. Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time to solidify and cannot serve as frames of reference for human actions and long-term life plans, so individuals have to find other ways to organise their lives. Individuals have to splice together an unending series of short-term projects and episodes that don’t add up to the kind of sequence to which concepts like “career” and “progress” could be meaningfully applied. Such fragmented lives require individuals to be flexible and adaptable — to be constantly ready and willing to change tactics at short notice, to abandon commitments and loyalties without regret and to pursue opportunities according to their current availability. In liquid modernity the individual must act, plan actions and calculate the likely gains and losses of acting (or failing to act) under conditions of endemic uncertainty.”

Wow. That sounds like fun. Like eating glass…

Who needs frames of reference or  careers or progress or commitments or loyalty, anyway?

Now it’s easy to see why so many of us are stressed out, depressed, addicted, medicating ourselves to a fare-thee-well.

We have “no time” because we’re spending it all checking in on our cats from the office via our home web cams.

We are distracted and unfocused because we are finishing up the Powerpoint presentation for the boss while joining the new club on facebook called “How much we hate Powerpoint” with a side-trip to Google Finance to do a quick trade.

Here’s a new product idea for this new trend: A laptop computer with multiple monitor screens.  Don’t laugh, Samsung launched one last year.

Bored out of our minds and stressed out of our skins.

BUILT TO LEAD offers a choice: Either dive into this mad stream and swim for your life, or SLOW DOWN, get on your hero’s journey, and FOCUS on what you want and are called to be in this short span of consciousness called “your life.”

Do you know where they are taking you?

Do you even know if you want to go?

Are you conscious of this new trend?

Are you conscious?

Or is that an outmoded concept? Like loyalty.