Let Me Explain...

America's Contextual Revolution

Have you ever noticed how myopic we all are? Yeah, yeah, I know, nothing like greeting your audience with a sweeping, all inclusive, insult, eh? But, hear me out. With apologies to the enlightened and broad-minded few, most of us judge the events of our lives using an incredibly small contextual view. We tend to look at new things like medical breakthroughs or electric cars as bold, newfangled ideas that join the zeitgeist out of the proverbial thin air. Magic! Alien inspired perhaps! We tend to take, very personally, random acts like a driver who cuts us off in traffic or the wrong food order delivered after the long wait as if the gods, or just some asshole, has it in for us. We marvel at the good and are baffled by the bad always claiming to have “never seen that coming.” The astonishment - positive or negative - is almost always the result of a naivete born out of seeing life through that tiny pinhole perspective focused only on those images and understandings directly in front of our faces. It really is a dumb and dangerous way to live, that fosters a generally skewed and unreliable view of the world, which usually leads to poor choices (flipping off the driver that cuts us off, for example), horrible mistakes, and countless missed opportunities. Imagine, for example, trying to drive your car down a busy freeway with blinders restricting your view on three sides - only able to see what’s directly in front of you (a dream I’ve actually had many times, by the way). It’s scary, potentially fatal, and yet, that’s how most of us live most of the time.

When we take the time to push the blinders aside and broaden our perspective, of course, we realize that the promising new medical treatment was built on the backs of years and years of prior research. When we allow ourselves to be curious, Google informs us that the first, crude electric car was developed around 1832 and Elon Musk’s Tesla is merely a more refined version built on the back of almost two centuries of trial and error. It’s called, and by now you should be able to say it with me…CONTEXT.

The truly amazing thing is that we’ve been this way forever. Almost like we operate on a short memory loop that erases itself clean after every generational pass. And when I say forever, well, as the story goes, Adam and Eve forgot about “eternity” because a sly snake seduced them with their hunger for forbidden fruit - perhaps the all-time lack of context and perspective. I mean, snack if you must, but in the entire garden of Eden you couldn’t settle for a nice peach?

The True History of Social Media…

Flash forward to Colonial times, where you might be surprised to learn that in the years preceding the Declaration of Independence and subsequent Revolution, the colonists had no real inkling of what lay ahead. Sure, they were getting royally pissed at conditions imposed by the British, but most didn’t think of themselves as part of any collective group, nevermind a burgeoning new nation. They were British first and Virginians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, and Massachusettans, etc, second. They most definitely did not self-identify as Americans. In fact, the word was little more than a punchline used by the Brits back home to describe a bunch of uneducated hillbillies living in the backwoods of an unsophisticated cesspool…so to speak. Colonists’ concerns, anger and frustrations, were localized. Narrow views and interpretations unshared beyond the borders of their particular corner of the new world. And there they floundered in a sort of myopic abyss.

That is, until social media and a couple of key influencers came along. That’s right boys and girls - Social Media in Colonial times - I kid you not. And here we have another case related to the original point. For most of us the emergence of social media is a new fangled phenomenon directly into the arrival of Facebook in 2006, maybe My Space in 2004, or maybe it was that first blog, which the Internet tells me, was posted in 1994 on something called Links.net. But none of those theories are right. Nope. Not even close.

The Pamphlet…

With the exception of instant feedback provided by current versions of social media platforms, the Pamphlet was every bit the Facebook page of its time, covering topics from politics and scandal to gardening. And, its roots go all the way back to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Take that, Zuckerberg! In case you’re wondering, a Pamphlet was anywhere from five to fifty pages long, printed on a single broad sheet of paper and then folded in such a way to make it easy to hand out or mail. A bit of literary origami, if you will.

In 1772, Samuel Adams, let’s call him Influencer #1, began to write about the plight of the colonies under British Rule in a Pamphlet called “The Rights of the Colonists.” In it, he pointed out the commonality of their experience, colony to colony, and a collective future that needed to be considered.

“In this essay, Adams appealed to the idea of natural rights. Adams claimed that the American colonists were “entitled, to all the natural, essential, inherent, and inseparable rights, liberties, and privileges of subjects born in Great Britain.” Though Adams did not go so far as to call for American independence outright, he asked frankly, “how long such treatment will or ought to be borne.” Bill of Rights Institute

In 1774, Influencer #2, aka Thomas Paine, joined the exchange and posited similar thoughts and ideals, which of course, came together in a very big way in 1776, via perhaps the best known Pamphlet of all time…Common Sense.

“Common Sense challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain.” ushistory.org

Their writings were inspired, and carried the power to create passion and fire within the most stoic of readers, and yet, the key to their respective and collective success was the plain language referenced in the quote above. Both Adams and Paine knew their audiences and the mission. They understood the primary challenge in rallying Virginians, New Yorkers, et al, behind a common cause was getting them to first understand the issue, then the context. Never the first without the second. To achieve that goal they became the “Vox.com” or “Why Things Are” of the day - the explainers. Each took the complex issues confronting the birth of a nation and broke them down into understandable - bite-sized - explanations, then offered a reasonable view for how it all fit together. They dramatically broadened the understanding and perspective of the colonists. They influenced hearts and minds. They introduced the very idea of America and rebranded what it meant to be an American, and, as they say…the rest is history.

A Canadian Shall Lead Them…

All of this to say, I found something delightful this past week. It’s a program called “About That,” and it airs on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s streaming network. It’s a very simple show done on a very simple set with a sweatshirt wearing host, often accompanied by his producer or producers, explaining several of the top stories of the day. The first episode I watched explained the U.S. Supreme Court case regarding Internet Speech, or section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The show’s coverage was inspired and broke it down in a way that even I could understand and appreciate. And let me be honest, before watching the report on “About That,” my understanding was cursory and incomplete, at best, causing a resistance to listen or read when reports would come into my view. Now? I want to know more. Be better informed because now I care. That’s what context does. It opens closed doors. It clears the haze and ambiguity. It expands horizons and promotes enlightenment.

Giving credit where credit is due, my first exposure to “About That” came from Michael Depp’s interview with the host of the show, Andrew Chang, on the TVNewscheck.com website. In the interview, Chang talks about, first and foremost, knowing the audience that was available to them, learning their specific needs and then creating an offering that would meet them.

“We try to take those stories and not just break them down, and I don’t think of ourselves as an investigative show, but in some way we are because we take not just the news nugget of the most recent thing to happen in a story but try to try our best to assemble as much context around it. And sometimes that can mean going back a few weeks, going back a few months, or even going back a few years to try to approach a new understanding of that story.”

Such a refreshing and atypical approach from a legacy news organization, the likes of which generally operate in the same myopic, context-less environment we too often do as individuals. It’s a miracle! Ok, maybe not, but it is at least a small step forward on a path to curing what ails. If you’re still skeptical about this whole context thing, I would ask you to take a quick little test. Close your eyes and imagine going about your daily life looking at the world through that tiny pinhole or wearing those three sided blinders on I mentioned earlier, and make a note on how that feels. Then, imagine the same with a wide angle view of everything going on around you, focusing when needed, but aware of the broad view of existence that surrounds. Think about the feelings associated with each. If you’re like me…that tells you all you need to know. You can check out “About That” here.

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