Structures do more than Stories

by josuter

Anand Giridharadas (“Winners Take All”) is talking to the wrong audience.  He talks to billionaire philanthropists.  He talks to managers and to people who work for billionaires.  These are people who cannot think outside the box.  They made it.

By only talking only to these people Anand is falling into the same trap he describes.  He would do well to spend time talking to people at the bottom too, alternating with presentations to people at the top.   Questions and comments between the two groups will likely be different, and through this process he may learn how those at the bottom can get out from under Tolstoy’s man on their back.

He is correct that some of the problem lies in the language used.  We all use models and metaphors to create conversation and build ideas.  New stories might help, but who will author these stories?  New structures for finding and filtering useful information would be more helpful. The stories will follow.  Throwing the man off our own backs may be impossible but we can certainly help a neighbor throw off their burden by giving them ideas and feedback for those things they don’t see.

We must also re-think the measuring stick of morality that keeps us together.  If I start a cigarette company I will provide jobs for town A, but town B will justly criticize me for death and disease brought to their town by the cigarettes.  As a first approximation, morality must be connected to our geographic neighborhood.

A philanthropist could make real changes by focusing a big prize on a few people.  $10K prizes for the winners.  Make the competition real.  Let players be the judges.  Others will learn from them.  Take Anand’s thirty fat kids in a community and challenge them – not for performance – but for ideas and information on how anyone could stay in shape. Create teams so that they must talk to each other.  Do a series of competitions to develop better questions.

Feedback from other members of a community is essential for learning and generally requires only tiny amounts of energy.  A group learning process requires good information filters that can work efficiently to sort through the misinformation and spin that has taken over.  Mainstream media is supposed to function as feedback but their business model of selling ads has decreased the value of their information.

Anand’s “distortion of what is possible” requires a search and filtering process to discover what is possible.  People at the bottom need information gathering structures to make up for what people at the top already have.

If political parties are not uncovering fundamental problems, then we must go beyond the traditional functions of a political party.  We don’t know what is possible without gathering information and ideas followed by a filtering process.  We cannot do it by simply having more journalists or activists, and not by legislation alone.