Posts tagged “Social change

Because

JJuice cause

If you have raised a child there is an encounter you are sure to have dealt with. It is the incessantly curious moment.

It is that exchange where every statement you make is met with, “Why?” And after which, each subsequent explanation is met with another, “Why?” And so on. Why? Why? Why?

At some point the exasperated parent blurts out the one word to end all conversation:

“Because!”

“Because.” It is an interesting word. The verb “to be” combined with the verb “to cause”. Or as the old French roots would describe: “by reason of.”

“Because!”

I spend much of my professional life trying to figure out the “because” of things, specifically, the “because” of human thinking and behavior … the “becauses” of thinking a certain way, voting a certain way, giving to a certain institution, joining a certain, dare I say, “cause.”

One thing you quickly discover. Correlation is not cause. It is easy to determine correlation. That is, being able to show that if “this” happens it is very likely “that” will happen around the same time. This is most of the research you see. We sift through the numbers and we see correlations between one phenomenon and another. We even ascribe percentages to it. When this occurs or we take action “A”, then 12% of the time they open the email. But when we do something else and take action “B”, then 16% of the time they open the email. So we show correlation. But was the different action “B” the “be” “cause” of the 4% difference? It is very hard to know.

A long time ago there was a guy named Aristotle. He came up with four ways to think about or look at “causes.” A couple thousand years later, Aristotle’s approach still has value when we think about identifying “cause” in politics, marketing, and social change.

First, there is the material cause. This was the cause determined by the “material that composes the moving or changing of things.” This is the easiest of “causes” to observe and perhaps the most simplistic. It is also the least meaningful. A window broke because a rock went through it. Broken window. Cause = rock. A car engine quit because it ran out of gas. Immobile car. Cause = no gas.

You could say they “caused” the window to break and the car to stop. But were simply materials. They don’t “do” anything. They just enabled something.

It is exactly the same when we ascribe societal or behavior change as the result of a device (iPhone) or an app (GoogleMaps) or a service (Amazon). We say these things are change agents. To be sure change has happened “because” of these things. But they are only a material cause and only give a shallow answer to the “be” “cause” of change.

Second, Aristotle spoke of a “formal” cause. The formal cause results from the arrangement of things. Good examples are the harmonic of a particular musical scale that produces a pleasant sound or the algebraic formula that “causes” an arch to support weight.

Now this gets a bit more interesting. We see it in everyday life. We pay a lot of attention to the “position” of a product or service, whether it is in the supermarket or on a Google search page. Why? Because the “formal cause” or arrangement of things changes an outcome. If you’re selling something you want it to be at the end of the aisle. We pay to have our search term higher up on a page. Yes, these marketing formulas for change work, however often we’re not exactly sure why.

Let’s go further.

Third is Aristotle’s “efficient” cause. This was the cause prompted by a person or change agent. The artist Michaelangelo was the “efficient cause” of the Pieta. You might even say that Hitler was the “efficient cause” of World War II.

Again, we see parallels in assessing the “be” “cause” of developments in business and politics. Einstein. Edison. Jeff Bezos. Elong Musk. Barak Obama. We ascribe to them all manner of causes and changes in politics, society and business. Efficient cause goes beyond substance (the rock or gallon of gasoline), beyond form (the harmonic or equation) to the person or persons who were able to imagine and effectuate change.

Applied to everyday communications, the efficient “cause” are the influencers, the early adopters, the activists, networks and communities that can either make something relevant or irrelevant. So we identify the change agents and chase after them.

Finally there is Aristotle’s – well – “final” cause. This was the ultimate cause. It was and remains the most controversial. It is the cause that is determined by the intrinsic purpose and nature of a particular thing, event or being. As described (in Wikipedia!) it is the cause prompted by “the purpose for which things became.”

Now that’s a phrase to chew on.

Finding the “final” cause of things is the most difficult (and dangerous) but not surprisingly it is the one I find most fun and rewarding. It is finding the “be” “cause” of thinking and action that is due to the intrinsic nature of a person’s being and doing. We talk about it at our agency as the relevant cause. It is looking at things through the eyes, hearts and minds of people and trying to make sense out of the “why” of their attitudes and behavior. And while there, to sift through all the complexity and find out those relevant cause(s) for action.

So the conversation with the little child never ends. After every statement, phenomenon, action, event, or campaign comes the inevitable question: “why?” If we can answer the “why” and find the (be) cause behind those things, we are wiser and can make better decisions about things in the future.

Why?

Well … because!

When Progress Isn’t

Progress can set you back.

As readers of the JuiceBar know, I travel a lot. Most of that travel is in and out of Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia.

Anyone who has flown in or out of Dulles likely has an opinion about the airport’s famous “people movers” … specially made buses that were originally designed to take passengers from the terminal directly to the plane but for the past ten years simply shuttled people to the next concourse.

People movers were the things that everyone loved to hate.

Everyone wanted a subway or train.  Just like the other airports.  So the folks at Dulles built one.  A beautiful, shiny, open cavernous, glassy one.  Wide open spaces.  Smooth terrazzo floors.

Just one thing.  To get to TSA you have to go down.  Quite a ways down actually.  The lines there are long.  Then you need to walk.  You need to walk a lot.  If there were those guys in little carts, you’d want to hitch a ride with them.  You need to walk a long way and then go down again.  Way, way down.  To the shiny, glassy, train station with the smooth, polished terrazzo floors.  Now you need to wait.  When the train comes, jump on quickly or you’ll miss it.  While you’re on the train waiting to arrive at Concourse C, you should rest up.  You can’t drink any water because they made you throw that away at the TSA line, so just conserve your energy.  Because once you’ve gotten to the Concourse you’re going to be walking.  And walking.  And walking.  And that is just to get to the elevator that takes you back to the surface.  So you can walk some more to get to your actual gate.

This is the progress that isn’t.  It now takes me longer to get to the gate than before.  Much longer.  My only solace is that people now have to walk more so we get more exercise.  Maybe that will help solve our obesity problem.  Make every fly from Dulles.

The fact is that you now walk as much going in and out of the ‘new’ transit system than you would if you just stepped through the main terminal and walked straight across the tarmac to the next Concourse.

Now THAT would be progress.

I’m seeing a lot of progress that isn’t these days.

Scrambling for an electric outlet to enter something into an electrical device when writing it down with a pen and paper would do.  Twenty-five clicks to get a calendar entry to synch with all 11 of my appointment books when just having an old DayTimer would do the same in a fraction of the time.

Sometimes things get better for the worse.

Sometimes progress isn’t.

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

This is a post about being a Christian.

Today there are a lot of people writing a lot of posts and articles about the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

And well they should.  He was a great man whose vision, oratory, writings and tireless work inspired a nation to turn away – albeit slightly – from bigotry, racism and hatred.

And it is his social and political accomplishments that you’ll likely read most about today and tomorrow.  His speeches.  His marches.  Lunch counters. Protests.  Non violence.

But I want to remind others – as I remind myself – that Dr. King was a Reverend.  A preacher.  A man of faith.  A Christian.

Funny how most of us gloss over that.

I bought my wife one of Dr. King’s books for Christmas.  It sits on the coffee table.  The title of the book is Strength to Love. According to Dr. King’s wife:

“If there is one book Martin Luther King, Jr. has written that people consistently tell me has changed their lives, it is Strength to Love.  I believe it is because this book best explains the central element of Martin Luther King, Jr.’ s philosophy of nonviolence: His belief in a divine, loving presence that binds all life. … By reaching into and beyond ourselves and tapping the transcendent moral ethic of love, we shall overcome these evils.”

Read the book.  If only a chapter or two.

And if you do I challenge you to try and divorce Dr. King’s vision of a world where ‘a man would be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin’ from his Christian faith.

His understanding of racism and bigotry was an understanding of how profoundly sinful we all are.  And his belief in non-violence and sacrifice was tightly linked to his meditations on Jesus and the cross

Read Dr. King.  And be reminded of the real meaning and spirit of the Christian faith.

You might find it very different from the Christian faith you see in popular culture or hear in political dialogue.

Jesus said that if we have the faith of a mustard seed we can move mountains.  Dr. King’s faith moved an entire generation.

Read Dr. King.   And pray that more will be inspired to, like Dr. King, recapture the revolutionary loving spirit of the Christian faith.

Brain 1 – History (and Thanksgiving) 0

I’ve been plowing through a stack of books about the brain … how we process information, store it, understand it, and incorporate that information into our lives.  There’s no shortage of them.  The brain and its vagaries are hot topics, especially if you are in the behavioral marketing or communications sciences (that would be me).  I just finished a great read by Robert Burton.  It was the title that got me:

“On Being Certain:  Believing your are right even when you’re not”

Of course he wasn’t talking about you and me.  To steal the tag line from the late Senator Long, he was talking about “the person behind the tree”.  You and I … well, we’re sure we’re right.  Right?

Wrong.

Fact is, what we THINK happened in the past likely did not … at least not in the way we think.  We didn’t party as much (or as little) as we think we did in high school and college.   We weren’t as cool (or dopey) as we thought we were in our twenties.  And that summer road trip wasn’t as fun and bizarre (or mind stultingly boring) as we imagined.

Indeed … the road trip may not have even happened!

Fact is, after you finish reading Burton’s book you begin to rethink everything about what you think you know.  Because according to him a good chunk of it is something we made up along the way.

Burton explores the ‘hidden layer’ of the brain that enables us to – among other things – reinterpret history.  It is this subconscious layer that makes us certain about things that either allows us be certain about things that are either (a) dead wrong; or (b) didn’t happen.

He gives the example of Ulric Neisser‘s famous Challenger explosion study.  Ulric, a professor and psychologist, the day after the Challenger study asked his students to write down the details of that day.  Two and a-half years later he asked them again and guess what.  In a mere 30 months less than 10 percent told the same story.  A quarter of the participants told a ‘strikingly different’ story.  Most interesting was this – when shown their own original account many clung to the ‘new version’ of history.  As told by Burton:

“Many expressed a high level of confidence that their false recollections were correct, despite being confronted with their own handwritten journals.  The most unnerving was one student’s comment, ‘That’s my handwriting, but that’s not what happened.'”

I’m imagining it is why all those politicians – both left and right – say stuff about themselves that isn’t true.  Maybe it is why Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have – as noted recently in the New York Times – created their own myth about the origins of Thanksgiving and the demise of American socialism and rise of American capitalism.

Doesn’t have much to do with truth.  But for them it has become their reality.  The past is metastasized, digested and recast.  And viola!  Out pops a new reality.

This is a sad reality for people like me that are in the communications business.  Every day someone can wake up and decide that they are going to change history.  Their ‘hidden layer’ is going to process the next wave of information and decide that you’re no longer cool.

Shoot, they may even decide that you are downright evil (e.g. you may have THOUGHT that those Pilgrims were nice folks yearning for religious freedom in funny hats but in reality they were communist, collectivist, fascist zealots that were only saved when unshackled from their socialist roots and given a heavy dose of capitalism and an across-the-board tax cut.)

Seems we have to work hard just to keep history the same.

Doesn’t leave much time to make for a better future.

Fact is, what we THINK happened in the past likely did not … at least not in the way we think.  We didn’t party as much (or as little) as we think we did in high school and college.   We weren’t as cool (or dopey) as we thought we were in our twenties.  And that road trip wasn’t as fun and bizarre (or mind stultingly boring) as we imagined.

Indeed … the road trip may not have even happened!

Is social media small change?

The latest kerfuffle in social media circles has been Malcolm Gladwell’s recent piece in the New Yorker headlined “Small Change.”

In it Gladwell has the temerity of asserting that social media’s impact on social change is not all that it is cracked up to be.  Some of his jabs are sharp.   Like calling innovators ‘solipsists’ and saying that ‘they’ – that is the vaunted social media futurist gurus – ‘often want to cram every stray fact and experience into their new model.’

Ouch!

Gladwell’s argument is characteristically simple and trenchant – that online social networks do not engender either the strong commitment (and risk!) nor the organizational structure that make for social change.  Using the civil rights movement as an example, he notes that real change – substantive action in the face of entrenched power – is not social media or social networking’s strong suit.  Social media, Gladwell writes:

“is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that “give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.” (my emphasis added)

This bold assertion – that social media is just window dressing and doesn’t represent any fundamental change in how social change is achieved – has got the preachers of social media gospel in a tizzy.

One writer on MediaPost blasted back with an article eloquently entitled, “Malcolm Gladwell is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.”

Clearly Mr. Gladwell has hit a nerve.

And in my view rightly so.  It is still early in the social media revolution.  But what we have seen to date doesn’t appear to have prompted many fundamental changes in attitudes, behavior, norms, or even public policy.

One of the better rebuttals comes from Brendan Smith and Jeremy Brecher.  In it they quibble with many of the characteristics that Gladwell attributes to past social movements.  But their main point is to remind Gladwell (and all of us) to keep a clear distinction between social media as a tool and social media as an end in itself.

“Gladwell is surely right when he says social media ‘are not a natural enemy of the status quo.’ But that is only the beginning of the discussion. The pertinent question is whether social media can contribute to the process of forming social movements and effective social action, not whether social media can substitute for that process. (A telephone system is not a PTA, but it can sure as heck be useful for getting a few hundred people out to confront the school board or vote in the school board election.)”

That is — in the JuiceBar’s view — the better way to look at this.  Social media and social networks are tools.  They are to the 21st century what the telegraph was to the 20th (although I must say that better stories came out of the events around the Pony Express than out of the building of the telegraph network.

But Gladwell’s most damning criticism is the inherent conflict that arises when information and content are ‘free’.  And that is the simple fact that sustaining value and relevance is difficult when everything is free and no one has a price to pay.