The Mirror and The Algorithm: Why Soulfulness Requires Awareness (Rachael Goldfarb Meets Eric Pachman on JUST PRESS RECORD)

For all the big compute we have access to, for all the immediacy of how news can break from any corner of the world at any second of the day - we live in an age of infinite information and ever decreasing understanding.

This is my most goth/emo/Inside-Out-Sadness-character internal voice speaking its heart here.

I don’t understand and I don’t like to talk about it too much because it hurts.

So I listen to people who are finding a way. And, once in a while, I meet two people who are finding their way for shockingly similar motivators (i.e. the background mom stories you’ll find here), and I introduce them, and - the inner Joy comes out.

I introduced Rachael Goldfarb, a fractional Chief of Staff operator with White House experience and more, to Eric Pachman, a consultant turned data visualization specialist who’s cracked multi-million dollar frauds, because I see the work they are doing today.

Rachael and Eric both know how to be human in an algorithmic age.

A word that kept coming up in our talk that’s the secret why: soulfulness.

I asked Eric what it meant to him and he said, “Awake to your life… awareness of your awareness.” Rachael added (paraphrasing), “Understanding not just where you are, but where others are coming from.”

Their secret to soulfulness is that it’s not some mystical thing. It’s very grounded. It’s very much about being able to, as a leader of communication and a communicator of complex data, to be present in your actual experiences.

Eric gives a number of stories about his experiences with data and parsing it, and maybe that’s why he understands what social media is doing to our brains better than most. The algorithms we engage with push us into extremes because it’s easier for them to understand us that way. As a bonus, we’re more engaged when we’re that pigeon-holed too.

Whether you're analyzing data or navigating a crowded subway station, the problem is the same: people moving through the world without awareness of the context around them.

Rachael related it to riding the escalator on the metro, which fits her communications skillset all too perfectly, because she calls out how the most frustrating thing is to lack awareness of the others around you. It’s the people who are standing where it’s passing only, and oblivious to doing so, even when others give them kind feedback. It’s owning a personal sense of context, in an environment. It’s a sense of the world being more than you, and then you being OK with fitting into it.

Eric made a point about how there’s a difference in looking for prediction’s sake, and looking at yourself. He explained it in terms of the Zen koan of “not killing.” You can say “don’t kill,” but where do you draw the line - at brushing your arm and killing bacteria? At eating broccoli? At the death penalty?

All simple rules become complex in practice. Rachael broadened it by saying “You can never go wrong doing the right thing.” The idea with both of them is your choice of where your attention goes requires your orientation.

And where does one find that orientation? That sense of a right direction to move in? That sense that implies a boundary awareness of knowing the wrong directions to avoid?

They both learned it from their mothers. Not exactly in a specific childhood sense. They learned it from their mothers and from the experience of losing them.

Grief will force you to look in the mirror. Grief will force you to examine the directions you want to be headed in. Grief gave them an orientation to approach the rest of life through, in their own lives, and with their own families and children.

You can’t control the algorithms, or the politicians, or the news cycle.

You can control where you point your awareness today.

We can learn to build relationships on a soul to soul basis, and avoid tagging on connections profile to profile.

Rachael and Eric are living examples of what it means to be soulful. They’re living lessons in learning awareness. The moment they realized they'd walked parallel paths through grief? One of the most genuine conversations I've captured. I can’t believe I caught them meeting for the first time and get to share it with you - check it out: