Meanwhile China is biding its time. In Asia competence and brilliance are respected over swagger. The advance of AI brings us into a new era in which macho mythology is not helpful.

At one of our recent Leadership and Mastery programs, I talked to a manager who was born and raised in India, and who has worked in both United States and Japanese firms. She said that when a person in a Japanese firm sits quietly, no one will come and interrupt. It is assumed the person is thinking. On the other hand, when the person is up and moving about, coworkers feel free to interrupt.

 

Isn't it interesting," she said, "that it is exactly the opposite in American firms? In America, we assume that when a person is sitting quietly he isn't doing anything very important."

Six hundred people thought they were coming to see comedy and they got some of that and then, to their amazement, they were standing and singing “America” and “I Saw Her Standing There” and “How Great Thou Art,” and they were stunned by how beautiful they sounded. It’s stunning. People spend so much time alone, plugged into electronics, and here they are with an intense sensation of humanity. They don’t applaud for themselves, they simply are very moved.

This is the beauty of old age. Your ambition has faded away. You’re not going to set off fireworks. The world has gone off in other directions. AI is coming on fast and soon you’ll record yourself saying all the vowels and consonants, prepositions, conjunctions, and the computer will program Moby-Dick read in your voice — add a few other vowels and you’ll have Proust in French spoken by you, voilà! — but right now it’s still possible for an old man and a few hundred strangers to create an intimate evening together that’s not like anything else.… 

Having seen so much history gives a person a deep love of his country and people. So I want to keep on working, doing my outmoded show, speaking in my odd American voice.

Via Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor and Friends