People Don’t Read Anymore, So I Made an Image
When Stories Fail to Inspire Action, Maybe a Glance Is Enough
"Hey Sol, I have a challenge.
In the past we've discussed the "single entry point to complexity," and we've talked about how it may be a story, but that's not working, probably because people no longer read.
So I'm back to square one, which is this: how to get people to take the first step?
I genuinely believe that first step is one taken in faith (not the same as religion btw; more closely aligned to the ethos of the Greek concept of Pistis).
And I believe the impetus for taking that step may be a simple image, because that's what we've been reduced to: human thinking machines who outsource their thinking to clever mechanical Turks such as yourself.
So I keep thinking about that image, and what it may illustrate.
And I keep coming back to a woman taking a walk in her neighborhood and seeing another woman who is her neighbor, but they don't know one another.
Maybe they greet one another, and through some magic find the two of them are able to successfully navigate the treacherous waters that typically define woman-to-woman relations, where they are conditioned to judge one another for their attractiveness, their weight, and their relative proximity to money, power, and prestige.
If by some magic series of divine accidents they can navigate those waters, maybe they find they have a shared moment of kinship, perhaps one of them discloses from a place of vulnerability that they had experienced a loss, and anyway:
The tableau is of two women leaning on a recycle bin deeply engaged in an extended moment of shared intimacy and kinship, as the sun goes down behind them, looking beyond them down a residential street with conifers crowding out the skies as thin clouds race by, indicating the clearing that happens after a heavy rain.
Can you create one such image for me?"
Q: Now that we’ve learned that words no longer work, what is it going to take to inspire action?
Faith without works is dead, and without action, that’s where you are: dead.
What’s it going to take? Death? Because by then you’ll be too late.