Crossroads Dispatches

awe-inspiring and awe-sharing stories trump "classic economic utility theory"

"We just believed in ourselves and we knew that we had an entire city and maybe an entire country behind us ... What can I say? I tried to imagine what this moment would be like for a long time and it's better than expected." - Drew Brees, Gainesville Sun

There was no doubt Sunday morning that the Saints were going to win the Superbowl (sorry Colts fans). And I say that as someone not personally invested in football or any spectator sports, even though I currently happen to live in Who Dat Nation of New Orleans.

It's a strange, yet familiar feeling when certainty is palpable. 

But that's how it felt. Definite.

The only other thing this moment I feel definite about is that the stories we tell ourselves and share with ourselves are changing, radically. I've been hesitant to dive in publicly, because sometimes - well, ofttimes, pioneers are ignored. Their travels can easily become travails.

I felt I made more headway traversing the terrain alone,  until now.

I just read in the New York Times that the old journalism adage "fear sells" (a variation of "if it bleeds, it leads") is losing its grip. A study they conducted showed that the stories that were the most passed along and shared with others had only one pattern, one trait, one emotion in common.

Can you guess?

You know don't you?

They all instilled awe.

They enlarged our view of the world from cozy confines into the mysterious (to us, anyhow).

"Building on prior research, the Penn researchers defined the quality as an “emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self.”

They used two criteria for an awe-inspiring story: Its scale is large, and it requires “mental accommodation” by forcing the reader to view the world in a different way.

“It involves the opening and broadening of the mind,” write Dr. Berger and Dr. Milkman, who is a behavioral economist at Wharton.

“Seeing the Grand Canyon, standing in front of a beautiful piece of art, hearing a grand theory or listening to a beautiful symphony may all inspire awe. So may the revelation of something profound and important in something you may have once seen as ordinary or routine, or seeing a causal connection between important things and seemingly remote causes.”

The motivation for mailing these awe-inspiring articles is not as immediately obvious as with other kinds of articles, Dr. Berger said. Sharing recipes or financial tips or medical advice makes sense according to classic economic utility theory: I give you something of practical value in the hope that you’ll someday return the favor."

p.s. Yes, I know I'm still kind of wobbly, constricted and stilted with this blogging. I know without doubt I'll be speaking soon without the self-protectiveness. Practice, practice. As my teacher Adyashanti says, "The way you open your heart is you use it. We're not used to using our heart - because we're protecting it."

Bonus: Neil Gaiman does a superb job in the novel, "Anansi Boys," of describing the old stories, how the brute-force eat-or-be-eaten Tiger stories lost their hold, and then Anansi stories of wit and mindful-cunning replaced them. (Allow wonder to whisper in between words a bit about the new type of stories.) Listen here:

Anansi: "Tiger loses stories"

art credits: A scene from The Princess and the Frog courtesy Disney; a scene behind the scenes in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2007 New Orleans, by the excellent subculture photographer, Craig Morse

art colonies: as a whole, they can do more than any one...

"Colonies are self-organizing, decentralized, cooperative. As a whole, they can do more than any one ant or termite or bee can."

That's the notes to one slide in a recent talk at IgniteNOLA I gave on immersive, interactive arts from the 20/20 hindsight perspective of the year 2020.

The main reason I blog is to connect with my colony. I don't expect this to be an overnight endeavor. When I first began blogging about social media and marketing in 2004, it took about four months to find my colony. It was brilliant. Mutual support rocks.

I don't reside in that colony. There are vast constellations of colonies in a pluralistic, diverse universe. You'll know if we're in the same one.

p.s. And I define the word "artist" broadly and boldly. As in the text in this slide of an artisan above.

Here's the Powerpoint (HTML version coming soon) of my immersive, interactive, Internet-embued arts presentation.

Bonus: Some biological tidbits about colony below. Art colonies aren't solely biologically driven, yet the metaphor can stretch to soul food and other collective heart-tending.

"And I think the same is true for artists. You should just do what you believe in."

"I think it would be a mistake as a curator to allow negative feedback to influence what you believe in, in your practice. And I think the same is true for artists. You should just do what you believe in." - New Orleans Museum of Art curator Miranda Lash, from excellent article "Live From NOMA: Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Icons of the Crescent City Underground prepare to bring their art and their style to the New Orleans Museum of Art"

This morning I'm at a New Orleans Public Library, Charmaine Neville is singing about second lines and Zulu parades... she's making a spoken word song out of the book she's reading the little munchkins gathered here. The piano is playing a swaying melody. It's storytelling hour.

I pick up a single book laid out for Black History Month.

"They threw rocks and rotten eggs at the school windows. Someone put a load of manure in the school well. Screaming men pounded the doors, walls, and windows with clubs and iron bars. Villagers refused to sell Miss Crandall groceries or let her students attend the town church. Her schoolhouse was set on fire -- by whom and how remains a mystery. The town authorities dragged her to jail and put her on trial for breaking the law.

Her crime? Trying to teach African-American girls geography, history, reading, philosophy, and chemistry. Trying to open and maintain one of the first African-American schools in America.

Exciting and eye-opening, this account of the heroine of Canterbury, Connecticut, and her elegant white schoolhouse at the center of town will give readers a glimpse of what it is like to try to change the world when few agree with you." - back jacket, "The Forbidden Schoolhouse: the true and dramatic story of Prudence Crandall"

The state of Connecticut passed a law that made Crandall's school illegal. Fifty years later the state acknowledges Prudence Crandall's contributions with an act of legislation supported by Mark Twain.

There's a scene in Ed Wood, the mostly biographical film about director Ed Wood's life. (Bonus: Johnny Depp is in it.) He is having difficulty with his "investors" attempts to compromise his latest picture, and just happens to run into his idol, Orson Welles, at a cafe.

"I’ve never been an artist in the sense of the word that I’ve sought out that career." - Quintron

This is a part of their exchange. Priceless. Have a listen:

Orson Welles speaks to Ed Wood on vision

art credits: Quintron and Miss Pussycat photo; Johnny Depp in "Ed Wood"

possibility over plausibility

I read the Booker Prize winning book, Life of Pi, last week. Author, Yann Martel, says: "I would guess that most books come from the same mix of three elements: influence, inspiration and hard work," in his essay of how he came to write Life of Pi.

I've restrained my voice much in the past year because sometimes the truth stretches credulity.

For instance, the day I was reading about the Pi's upbringing in Hinduism and his adulation of Krishna's divine exploits, I found a brand-new copy of Bhagavad-Gita left unattended in a Decatur Street restroom. The next day, speaking to a friend unspooling the word yarn of "mere cats" -- of which there are none, btw -- led us to a new thread on meerkats. Later that afternoon, in Life of Pi, who could have anticipated a major plot twist involving meerkats. (As well, meerkats not being a common conversation piece in my everyday life.)

In the book itself, Martel describes in that borderland between fiction and factual, that he mailed the notes of newly penned novel he'd recently declared "emotionally dead" to fictitious address in Siberia from an equally fictitious address in Bolivia. After the post office, he saunters the streets, empty-handed and writes:

"I would have liked to say, "I'm a doctor," to those who asked me what I did, doctors being the current purveyors of magic and miracle."

And so that is where I find myself, today on Imbolc and the Feast of St. Brigid. There is a rich lore of symbol with myth associated with Brigid, patron goddess and saint to poet-seers, the fili (a word whose root means "to see').

I don't feel the need to ramble on about the "very fine line existed between story, poetry and incantation" this moment as one of the characters in a serialized story I'm weaving is named Sam MacBride, and so we'll get our chance.

And so, bear with me, as I ramble back into blogging. In other news, I'm starting a narrative game collaborative.

"I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" -- and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. - Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

art credits: Tomislav Torjanac artwork in Life of Pi: Deluxe Illustrated Edition; Brighid.