Call to Action 5: “Find the Others”
SXSW 2019 Special
Community. This was Rushkoff’s connecting force during his SXSW panel — the thing that we need to tap into to survive, and it’s already wired into how we are designed as human beings.
Due to a family emergency, Rushkoff ended up Skyping in to his keynote, rather than appearing live on stage in Austin. He explained that had this been to promote any other book, he might have still traveled. But in this context, staying home in NYC to care for his family, was more aligned to the rallying call in his new book, Team Human: that we must to re-shift our lives to the people around us.
If you only read this:
We use our social connections to orient ourselves, to derive meaning and purpose. Of course, fulfilled, connected people experience aloneness and individuality also, but this is not exclusive from community. Psychologists and scientists recognise that the healthiest ways of expressing autonomy happen when we feel part of a larger social context.
“Our culture is composed of more mediated experiences than direct ones,” writes Rushkoff, when arguing that our most advanced technologies are making it more difficult for us to actually connect. Never before have we desired unmediated, shared experiences as we are now — away from the constant stimulation of digital life.
Humanity and Technology is not Black and White
It is when working together, that we can achieve our greatest aspirations, and liberate ourselves from the digital tools we’ve come to rely on. Tools that — although claiming to be ‘social’ (such as social media) — also undermines our ability to connect, and collects our data to predict our future.
Ironically, the invention of one of these tools — Skype — is what allowed Rushkoff to stay in town with his family, whilst honouring his commitments. Skype allowed him to both nurture his personal connections and expand his professional reach. In our view, this situation demonstrates a vastly complex relationship between humanity and technology. Data and digital are not evil. The problem lies in how our societies and corporations manipulate technology, and how individuals are impacted by this.
We agree with Rushkoff in that there’s still time to think before we automate ourselves out of existence. But this requires conscious effort, and a specific mindset when developing new digital platforms, or pulling together marketing and other outreach strategies (for example). Continuously asking whether this potentially novel idea is one that will help bring humans together, or whether it will pull us further apart.
Relational Intelligence
Researcher Brené Brown’s keynote revolved around the topics of true belonging and connection — in an age where we feel more alone and polarised than ever before. Brené Brown was the opening speaker for the SXSW 2019 programme, which in itself says a lot about the state of things.
We need each other. (-Brené Brown)
Brown urged her audience to recognise the moments of collective joy (music concerts, sports games and other live experiences), and she concluded her talk with everyone on their feet in a moving singalong, to Townes Van Zandt’s heartbreaking ‘If I Needed You.’
How we connect and interact with each other, what Esther Perel defines as ‘relational intelligence,’ is becoming not just a ‘nice to have,’ but a necessity in how we navigate our personal and work lives (if we’re even still making that distinction!). The presence of both Perel and Brown at SXSW points to the importance of human relationships and shared experiences, in everything we do — including how we create goods, develop brand strategies and design experiences.
The dirty secret behind it all
Perhaps the ultimate example of the power of the shared experience is Burning Man. During a panel discussion with Rebecca Throne from Burning Man and Jeff Lind from Colorfactory, questions were explored around what it takes to design an emotional experience. Burning Man is an 8-day fully functioning municipality, which then completely disappears. But it inspires a community all over the world that is buzzing, and people want to create more of it in their everyday lives.
Burning Man doesn’t promote the event, selling more tickets has never been the drive — and yet it grows exponentially. Rebecca feels that the most critical thing they’ve done is build a platform for people to come together and create something themselves.
If we’re doing it right and they’re having the types of experiences that we hope they will — that changes their lives, that they are creating themselves. Then they go off and share that. They become the word on the street. We can’t get them to shut up about it. That’s the marketing dream, right? (-Rebecca Throne)
Jeff Lind shares that with record levels of depression and anxiety, Color Factory’s audiences are, in his view, pushing back on things that have come from experiencing the world through a ‘lens’.
Although the success of Color Factory is very much fuelled by Instagram, Jeff Lind states that he’s in the business of creating experiences that make people feel like a human again: such as feeling delight, and experiencing something that isn’t possible on screen.
At the end of the day, perhaps the secret to creating meaningful experiences is deceptively simple.
Jeff Lind put it best when he said:
The dirty secret behind ‘marketing’ is that good things sell themselves.
And to add that, we all know that good things are much better when experienced together.
