Precarious, provisional, perishable;

Fallible, transitory, transitive;

Ephemeral, fleeting and transient;
Here is a living being, here is a living being.

Impure, imperfect, impermanent;
Uncertain, incomplete, inconstant;

Unstable, variable, defective;
Here is a living being, here is a living being.

Listening to this song by Lenine with my eyes closed on a flight to São Paulo, I found myself in copious tears when I realized what it was about. He uses a sequence of more than 20 adjectives with supposedly negative connotations, such as imperfect or fallible, to simply describe the most original manifestation of the entire universe: life, or rather "the living being." That which exists from the sophisticated biochemical alchemy of the cosmos and manifests itself in body and soul here.

Yes. If we are alive, we are truly fickle and unstable, and never satisfied. Amidst Amaro Freitas' piano solo at the end of the song, which seems to give color and form to the explosion of life, many things clicked at once. First, poetry and art are always shortcuts for us to understand and feel what is most important. And then, how unfair we have been to ourselves, demanding perfection, eternity, balance, and completeness from mere living beings that we are. An absolute incompatibility with our own nature.

In my recent lecture at Web Summit, I highlighted the value of error, chance, and imperfection as essential for the generation of the new, both in the field of technology and innovation, but also in the very evolution of life. According to Darwin, from Archaea, the symbolic first form of life known to us up to Homo sapiens (we continue with the mania of placing ourselves as the pinnacle of existence), the only thing we can guarantee is that if it weren't for the stumbles in genetic copying, we would still be trapped in the gaseous pools of a primitive planet. We are pure accident.

And why on earth did we decide that we have to be exactly everything we are not? This crazy dictatorship of performance, productivity, and infallibility seems to be the main reason for the collective sickness we are experiencing today.

From the artificial happiness of Instagram to TikTok filters, from bizarre facial fillers to protein cocktails that promise toned muscles forever, we have created a dangerous trap for ourselves. Unattainable perfection.

The result? A sick society, with fragile and unhappy new generations, epidemics of loneliness, and mental health becoming the subject of every agenda. Cause and consequence aligning towards dark futures.

How can we create positive futures if we are too sick to imagine them? What will have to happen for us to face reality and break this vicious cycle? To begin with, perhaps we should dismantle the idea that mental health exists. It seems to be just another fiction we pursue. As if discomfort, suffering, and imbalances shouldn't happen. Normal life, as Lenin reminds us, is full of them. The pursuit of an unattainable state of health becomes the reason for illness. Thank goodness for Rivotril.

And the worst part is that things seem to be getting much more complicated. If social media is already this ego steroid with a small dose of embedded AI, with the launch of the new generations of Llama and Gemini announced by Meta and Google, the hypnotic power of screens will only worsen. A curious statistic was recently released showing that young Americans between 10 and 19 years old are 50% less likely to suffer bone fractures than previous generations. They are increasingly less exposed to real risks like riding a bicycle, skateboarding, or playing soccer. They spend an average of five to nine hours a day in front of screens. As a result, the fractures are no longer just in legs and arms, but psychological ones.

To complete the bad news, this generation is the first in history to have a lower IQ than their parents. In the book "The Factory of Digital Cretins," by the French Ph.D. in neuroscience, Michel Desmurget, he highlights the negative impacts on cognition from the excessive use of screens and, above all, the impairment of social and emotional skills. A generation with low resilience, because it is increasingly distant from the ancestral evolutionary strategies of building resistance for an individual. Falling and getting up, making mistakes to learn, failing to evolve. If we factor in the outsourcing of our intuition to algorithms like Waze or Tinder, and even more recently our imagination being delegated to generative AIs, also the topic of my Web Summit talk, what will be left of humanity?

It seems that China is taking care of that. Besides TikTok not existing there, the government has instituted a law that limits the use of video games by young people under 18 to three hours a week, and only between Friday and Sunday. In a dictatorship, it seems easy. Here, I see my friends, parents of young people and teenagers, struggling with increasingly complex daily dilemmas. Having the courage to fight against giving a cell phone to a 10-year-old child, even if all their school friends already have one, or even finding a way to limit teenagers' screen time without them freaking out and saying they're going to kill themselves, has proven to be a nightmare. Good thing I'm past that phase!

An antidote to all this? According to Gilberto Gil: Life is pain and confusion, Life is sound and passion, Life is love.

I return to this article with the lessons from SXSW about social intelligence. There's no way around it. We'll have to invest in love, in relationships, in close encounters, in hugs. We'll have to read more to young children, invite them to irresistible activities like camping near waterfalls, climbing trees to eat fruit straight from the tree, and horseback riding. For teenagers, we need to create spaces for them to socialize in the real world, such as learning to play instruments. It's hard to imagine a better opportunity to exercise social intelligence than forming a band. As always, the challenge seems to be creative.

I think about how brands could be allies in this crucial project of social regeneration. How, from their positions of power, without demanding an increase in the level of awareness of CEOs but rather an instinct for maintaining relevance, could they offer products and services that truly stimulate social intelligence, helping to dismantle prejudices, unattainable standards, and unhealthy routines? What could Patagonia or Nike offer as an incentive for children and young people to abandon video games in favor of outdoor sports? How could Lego or Mattel partner to create irresistible analog toys? How could Apple leverage all its expertise in Design and UX to encourage young people to collectively embark on healthy adventures? Or, why not, how can the (anti)social networks that created much of the problem not take on the challenge of reinventing themselves for the good of humanity and a more dignified place for their brands in history?

Let's get to work, everyone!

Listen to the song Vivo by Lenine here.

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