Leveraging our collective 'sense of crisis' to avoid going back to business-as usual
Leveraging our collective 'sense of crisis' to avoid going back to business-as usual
host: greg, he/his, @greggish,
- Has this year of crises (especially but not exclusively the pandemic) shifted your sense of WHAT'S POSSIBLE in addressing other global or systemic challenges?
Electorally: record turnout by a huge margin. Primaries were really rough, but the main election went smoother than most elections even in the midst of a pandemic. And now the public better understands the flaws and problems... people understand the process of counting votes, etc. Hopefully this is not just a reaction in the short-term.
The demonstrations in the wake of the murder of george floyd, we've had actions every night in portland since then. Every day or night, some sort of public demonstration or march or vigil.
Our brains are not designed for how rich the information is that's coming to us. so people voted for trump in part because he's in their living room on a nightly basis. They "looked him in the eye" so there's this parasocial bonding that happened.
- Are there changes you have observed at individual, community or broader levels that you would like to see sustained or manifested in post-pandemic life?
Wikipedia for all its faults has a complicated governance structure, but it seems to be more or less arriving at the truth. It takes a lot of work, a lot of volunteers, but it's been doing an okay job. Not perfect! but that consensus-based model on finding the truth is basically working. Many high-powered Wikipedia editors (correctly) are skeptical of "appeals to authority". Wikipedia as a whole seems to be finding the right balance between trusting experts and questioning experts (in my opinion)
re technology – there's been a shift from assuming that technology is going to help us solve all these problems, and it turns out maybe these arent the problems I want to be solving.
- How can we leverage the current moment to avoid going back to business-as-usual? What are effective dialogue tactics? What about organizational strategies?
Stop trying to just push through the crisis. It's not about just working more, working harder. How do we engage in healing?
Rob's hobby horse: https://electowiki.org
ivan mentioned Zeynep Tufekci's article: https://zeynep.substack.com/p/beating-trump-was-the-easy-part
St.Louis approval voting win: https://stlapproves.org/