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We have a societal obsession with the "aesthetic of competence".
We're told to trust the suit. To trust the jargon. To trust the person standing at the front of the boardroom with the polished slide deck, using phrases like "synergy," "penetrating the market," and "optimizing workflows."
We're supposed to watch that performance and think: Safe. Smart. In control.
But if you peel back the curtain, like in The Wizard of Oz, you often find something terrifyingly hollow.
We are living in an era where the appearance of mastery has become a mask for mediocrity. And it’s not just annoying; it’s dangerous.
Because while we’re busy polishing the mask, we’re forgetting how to actually solve problems.
Let’s be real for a second: "professionalism" is a made-up code.
The suit is 19th-century English fashion frozen in time. It’s a costume designed to signal: I belong to the class that makes decisions.
Since recent decades have seen new career fields popping up, a few more costume options have become available. But whether you're wearing a tie and dress shoes, a blazer over a plain t-shirt, or a logo hoodie and ill-fitting jeans, the performance is the same.
It's playing a character who knows what they're doing - whether or not the actor actually does is irrelevant.
I see this disconnect most violently in places like San Francisco, the "startup capital of the world". On paper, it’s the hub of future-thinking, high-level intellect, and exponential human success. But when I walked through the streets there a few months ago, it felt like a dystopian movie.
You can physically see the rising number of people losing their homes, right next to ads for "AI employees". Meanwhile, you have people in multi-million dollar mansions who are "bio-hacking" their way through addictions, masking it as "intellectual expansion".
You have a city that signals innovation but feels like zombie land. The aesthetic of success is everywhere, but the human reality is broken.
We're supposed to trust the "tech bro" archetype because they fit the costume of a disruptor. But are they solving the problem? Or just performing the role of the problem-solver?
This performance bleeds into how we speak.
I have a Natural Sciences degree from Cambridge, yet it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that "market penetration" just means getting people to pay you.
Why do we say "market penetration"? Why do we say "leveraging core competencies"?
We do it because simple language is terrifying.
Simple language exposes you. If you say, "I’m trying to get people to buy this," and they don’t buy it, you failed.
If you say, "We are encountering friction in our go-to-market strategy regarding market penetration," you sound like a smart person dealing with a complex external factor.
Jargon is armor. We use it to gatekeep money and status. We use it to convince ourselves and others that what we do is incredibly difficult, and therefore, we deserve to be in the room.
But here’s the truth: if you can’t explain it to a first-grader, you’re not smart. You’re just hiding.
Why are we so terrified of being exposed as a fraud?
It starts in school. Most of us were raised in a system where "I don't know" was the wrong answer. If a teacher asked you a question and you hesitated, you were shamed.
You were taught that intelligence is a database - you either have the data file in your brain, or you are dumb.
This creates a workforce of people terrified to admit ignorance. So when they get into a job, they fake it. They learn the jargon. They wear the suit. They nod in meetings.
They create an illusion of intelligence because they believe their value lies in having the answer immediately.
But real intelligence, the kind that changes the world, isn't about knowing the answer. It’s about knowing how to figure it out.
I had a teacher once, Mr. Kemp, who changed my life with a single question.
He put me on the spot in front of the whole class and asked: "Hanna, why is the sky blue?" I froze. I didn't know the answer. I felt that familiar wave of shame, the terror of looking stupid.
I looked at him with panic and said, "I don't know."
Most teachers would have moved on to the smart kid. Mr. Kemp didn’t. He said, "Okay, let’s rewind. You don't have to know the answer. Let's figure it out. What is the sky?"
"Air."
"Good. What is air?"
"Mostly nitrogen, some oxygen... molecules."
"Right. And what happens when light hits a molecule?"
Step by step, he helped me to reason from first principles. I didn't know the physics of light scattering, but I derived it.
That moment taught me the most important lesson of my career:
You don't need to memorize the world, you just need the courage to reason through it.
This brings us to the ultimate cost of the performance of competence.
We spend so much time perfecting the mask, we forget to look for the actual brilliance underneath.
We convince ourselves that we need to play a caricature of ourselves and bullshit our way through meeting rooms in order to acheive our goals.
So when we face a complex problem - whether it’s a global pandemic, a failing business model, or a loneliness crisis - we end up trying to manage the symptoms so the PR doesn't suffer.
We don't admit that we don't know the underlying illness or how to cure it - because that would mean we've failed.
But the people who actually change things - like the teams who developed the COVID vaccines in record time - didn't do it by worrying about if their suits were pressed or if their emails sounded corporate enough.
They did it by bringing their failures, their multidisciplinary interests, and their raw cognitive power to the table.
They didn't mask the problem with jargon.
They looked at the virus under the microscope and said, "I don't know what this is yet. But we’re going to figure it out."
We need to stop pretending to be experts.
We need to be brave enough to say, "I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm going to learn right now."
We need more people who bring their full, messy, authentic selves to the problem - because you can't solve a new problem with an old persona.
Stop trying to look the part. Start doing the work. The world has enough empty suits.
Rooting for the real you,
Hanna from Pulse
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P.S. This refusal to perform is the core ethos of Pulse Wrld. We’re building a space where you can drop the mask, escape the competence trap, and connect with people who value raw curiosity over the "aesthetic of success."
If you’re in Tallinn, Estonia, come experience it IRL. We host weekly social events designed to get you out of your head and into the moment.
