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Harnessing mass culture and civic life
If people often feel helpless to change mass culture, can they change public life? I believe they can. But we must first recognize that such change will require that we take a decidedly civic approach, and not merely mimic mass culture, in order to gain people’s attention and engagement.
Last week in his blog, Peter Levine, a truly gifted thinker, talked about the link between what he called civic engagement and culture. He surmised, based on Tocqueville, that a heterogeneous mass culture produces a healthy democracy. As he put it, “truly engaged citizens produce diverse cultural products.”
Peter went on to say, “But it seems clear that people feel powerless to change mass culture; that feeling demonstrates the tension between mass culture and democracy.”
Indeed, as I noted in Open for public business, too, so much of mass culture today has actually become a hyper-individualized culture. Throughout society, we have created mechanisms and opportunities for each of us to create our own individual islands of life – a kind of individual sovereignty in which we act as free-agents in everything from aggregating our own news to creating our own individual social networks. It’s less a mass culture where people cohere around ideas and trends, in the traditional sense, than a mass of individuals doing their own thing.
Thus, when notions of the public good or connectedness are talked about, they are often used in nostalgic terms, or are co-opted merely to present a mirage of community. Our politicians are guilty of this; but so too are many civic groups.
It’s clear that we’re in a really dynamic transition these days. The past is gone and we shouldn’t spend a whole lot of time pining for the community of bygone days (and for many people, those communities were not all that inclusive or healthy anyway). Nor, should we simply lament the potentially fragmenting effects of technology, or simply celebrate its transformative power.
As Peter suggests, there is a tension between mass culture and democracy. My belief is that if we seek to regain a semblance of control over democracy and public life – our very community life – than we must not make the mistake of mimicking mass culture. In doing so, we will only deepen the chasm people face, and push people farther away from the very goal they seek to achieve:- a sense of coherence about the world around them, as they live in an age of hyper-fragmentation;
- a sense of connection to one another at a time, when people increasingly see themselves as free agents;
- a sense of possibility for the public good, when people are told repeatedly that they should concern themselves only with their own good.
To regain control over public life, our task is to bring a decidedly civic approach to the challenge of mass culture. Then maybe people will step forward and we can harness the power of change around us. -
Who can hear us?
Who can hear us?
Here’s my new proposal: anyone who holds a leadership position of any kind should have to speak (let’s say, no less than three times a year) before audiences they know disagree with them, or are even hostile to their views. I’ve been thinking about this idea for awhile; but I was reminded of it again as I watched President Bush speak before the annual NAACP convention last week.
For six long years the president refused to make the trek to the NAACP podium. Indeed, NAACP and White House officials have been squabbling since day one of the administration. Who knows exactly who or what started the descent into disrespect? But the political calculations worked out this year and the two groups finally got together.
Let’s face it many leaders do everything they can to avoid audiences that hold opposing views. Such venues can be uncomfortable. It’s not unusual to hear leaders offer up contorted and silly explanations for why they can’t make an event.
But there are important reasons why we must force ourselves to enter into these uncomfortable spaces. Too often in public life and politics, we find ways to avoid one another; we too easily detach ourselves from the concerns of others; we can come to see people merely as opponents; we demonize people without second thought or reproach. Under such circumstances, the “other” becomes objectified – someone who lives outside our realm as if they occupy a different orbit.
Now, sometimes leaders split the difference and find ways to attend uncomfortable events. The conventional wisdom can be to go to the event, make nice, smooth over differences that may exist, even seek to appease the other side. It’s all an exercise in dignified civility. The question here is, when does civility become an excuse for failing to face up to our real differences?
So, I have something different in mind when I propose that we force ourselves to speak to audiences with whom we have disagreements, even where hostilities may exist.- The mere act of showing up, and making oneself present, is a public acknowledgement of other people’s humanity – a very human signal of respect that despite our disagreements, we live in a common space.
- The pointing out of why real disagreements exist requires a leader to offer an idea, a line of thought, an argument and thus for others to see that there is a thoughtfulness and thoroughness that informs that individual.
- There is a kind of entreaty at work in this approach – a call and the potential for a response. Even if the response is negative, we know there has been an exchange.
- Clearly demarcating where there are real disagreements in ideas or policy allows for a discussion to be joined – there is something to be discussed and debated, even if it can’t be readily resolved.
- Showing up means that any attempt to demonize others must be done with full accountability. If you want to take the tough shots, you must be present.
- Finally, entering these less-than-supportive environments forces the speaker to use language that serves to engage and not push away people. For after all, the speaker seeks to illuminate his or her views, to take care in what they say, and to strive to be understood rather than to obfuscate or serve up platitudes.
Think about someone you know who gives speeches, maybe even yourself. Then consider the depth and resonance of their voice if they were present in the setting I’ve described. Would their voice quiver as their words ring hollow, or would their speech reveal the forthrightness and passion of their views?
Three times a year we should give such talks and listen for the sound of our voice. Who can hear us?
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Open for public business, too
What if more and more of us went our own way in public life to pursue our own personal agenda? What if each of us was to find our own news, only to forgo that which doesn’t resonate with us? What if you and I began to see ourselves primarily as individual consumers, with little connection to one another?
Crying wolf about such trends won’t cause any of us to take notice or do anything. But something is happening in our society that we must know. In so many ways – some big, others quite small and almost imperceptible – we are moving to a new individualized society. Think back just five years or so ago; our society is a much different place.
It is not merely that our society has tended to commoditize everything, from charitable giving to volunteer service to even selling naming rights to public school buildings. It’s that the very notion of aggregated consumers is becoming a misnomer as well; we now live in a “micro world” in which each of us acts as a sovereign individual – a kind of free-agent unto ourselves.
Take, for instance, FaceBook and MySpace, which enable kids to proclaim their individuality as if they are new corporate entities or celebrities. Or, think about how we can customize products as if we own our own showrooms.
Or, take how we can create our own news products – aggregating stories that fit our distinct personal profile and interests. What’s more, new “news” products are focusing on what publishers call hyper-local coverage. I had one such product come into my home just last week. But rather than offer news, the reality is that it’s more like a high school year book in which neighbors and their kids are prominently highlighted. There’s barely any news copy other than the captions under the pictures.
At each turn we are now able to create our own world, even though there are more and more people who live around us. In fact, the larger our surroundings become, the more we opt for closer-knit circles.
On one level, trends for giving people more control can be for the best. They definitely tilt power away from large, faceless institutions, the likes of which I have railed against for much of my professional career.
But I also believe we must concern ourselves with these trends. They can deftly play on people’s narcissistic tendencies – the desire to “see and hear and celebrate me!” Moreover, there can be a kind of sense of exclusivity, even smugness – “I’m okay, who cares about you?”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with individualism or with customizing consumer products. But I often hear a kind of dismissive tone taken to the concerns I have raised here; a belief that all will work out if we merely aggregate each person’s whims and wishes.
But determining the public good requires more from us than merely going our own way. We must see and hear more than our own mere customized desires. We must open ourselves up for public business too. -
The consciousness to innovate
“We as a community like to believe that we are catalytic, but truth be told we are sustaining the old (tried & true), therefore impeding real change.” This comment was sent to me by an individual at the Dade Community Foundation (greater Miami area) during a Web cast I led last week for community foundations in the Knight Foundation communities.
It’s not often that someone is so direct and honest, let alone in a public setting. But it does happen – and when it does, it’s worth noting. It also reminds me of the recent four-day Harwood Public Innovators Lab in Baltimore. There, an individual turned to the group and said, “I am not ruthlessly strategic in my work.” He really wanted to be, but he realized he wasn’t.
Both of these comments deal with our own consciousness about what we see and do. When I hear people make statements like the one on the Web cast or in Baltimore – or when I hear myself make such statements – they aren’t necessarily offered up sheepishly as a way to express guilt, or ignorance, or to declare that our previous actions were all wrong.
Rather, such comments reflect a discovery – about how we see things, about what might come next, about how we can act.
When I heard the comment on the Web cast, my first reaction was to tell all the participants listening in how refreshing it was for someone to step up and make such a comment. Indeed, don’t you sometimes wonder how we can end up in conversations in which we talk about nearly everything but the very thing that is blocking our progress: ourselves? The same was true in the Public Innovators Lab: When the individual made his comment about not being ruthlessly strategic, it opened up the entire conversation for others. Now, we could really get down to business.
It’s funny, or at least intriguing, that at times we must say something ourselves in order to know it. But, just as importantly, at other times we can only hear ourselves when we listen to others, when we are silent, and then discover something we did see or know about ourselves.
Innovation and change, which is what my work focuses on, is made up of all kinds of content, organizational characteristics, leadership, processes, and other elements. But those elements are only as powerful as our connection to our own consciousness about where we stand and why.