This blog, we are a changin'

Artist: Dorothy Stevens

I listen to a young Bob Dylan as I write this post. "Come senators, congressmen,/Please heed the call/... For he who gets hurt is he who has stalled/...For the times they are a changin'."

http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/DGList/DGlist.expanded.htm

While these times feel far distant from Dylan's folk anthem of the 1960s but change is no less imperative. I am a far different person from that impressionable grade schooler whose older brother burned his draft card and fought against Vietnam. In the 1960s and '70s we all heard such clarioon calls to action: End this meaningless war! Equal rights for women! Equality among all people, no matter what their race! These were inspiring to an impressionable young girl just reaching adolescence.

Today there is no unifying ideal although the needs for social, political, environmental and economic justice are just as compelling, if not more so. We are living in a state of high anxiety. There is no common vision for a better world? Where are the voices of those fighting violence, discrimination and injustice, or driving change? Young people today may be called to action--or lulled to inaction--in myriad ways, through the echo chamber of Facebook pages where all the voices reflect their images back to each other or through the Twitter feed into the ether. The voices are fragmented and momentary.

Unlike the youth of the '60s who decided to take power into their own hands, those seeking change seem to have ceded their power, the better to deny any responsibility for the dire state of our world.

Occupy Wall Street At Times Square, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

Climate, food supply, terrorism, gun violence -- these are the crises we face, ever present. Stress, anxiety, poverty, addiction and disease epidemics that can jump the globe as tracked by Twitter: these have led us as a society to paralysis.

Our world is in crisis. The same old ways aren't working any more. Where are new remedies emerging? Who are the people willing to reframe the questions and try out new responses.

Is There a New Story Waiting to Be Told?
 However close new channels for communication and engagement in a world that is so closely interconnected, the power to make a differences seems far-removed. What is the call to action today? How can we answer? Who should we answer to?

In looking at old problems in new ways, can we drive innovation? Pass the Talking Stick seeks to tell our new story. How can we reframe crisis as opportunity? How do we use the science of story to illuminate solutions?

To begin, a few questions:

• Can we examine what stories we have been telling ourselves to see whether these portray our personal, social and political realities accurately? Are there other stories that are not being heard?
• Is there evidence that the brain retains information differently in story form than when presented through factual evidence? And if so, how to present statistics accurately yet with impact?
• People are hungry to learn. How do we teach researchers and technical subject matter experts to share their discoveries in multiple media and social media channels in plain language?

Senators, congressmen, mothers and fathers, we are shaping the world through the stories we tell ourselves, our children and each other.

Pass the Talking Stick
In fact, it is not just storytelling, but story sharing that makes us human; we all have something to say, but without an audience, it is all just babble.

So let's use this forum to tell a new story, not just about what has always been, but about what we can create. Together we can explore and realize a world in common.

The dire story of threat and fear of decline has created a world of anxiety, scarcity and uncertainty. Primitive passions appeal to the override mechanisms in our brain, awakening our default urge to run, freeze or fight.

But we know more than ever before about how our biological default mechanisms work for better and for worse, and we are discovering the tools to use planning, thinking, logic and awareness to shape a better human response.

Now is the time to use our enhanced awareness to evoke a more careful - or cared for - legacy for our children and theirs.

I suggest that if we have a new call to action today, it could be Tell-and-Listen. To tune in to each other through the power of story. What change can we put into action that will lead us to a less reactive, more conscious way of living?

Maybe the folksingers that spawned a generation of protesters was prescient in calling us together to "tune in and turn on." Today, Dylan's words may call us together as, collectively, we begin to shape this new story, buoyed by science.

"Come gather 'round people/Wherever you roam..."

CyberMonday and all that Spam

Dear Friends,

Among other interesting activities, I moderate comments on a health blog. While the blog is popular and, on any given day, we may receive 10-15 comments, in this very special time of the year, we are averaging more like a comment a minute.

While, in the main, no one objects to the blog's new found popularity, I might point out that most of these contributions seem to be unintelligible. Often, these are thinly disguised as actual comments to posts -- "Specifically where there is married life with no romance, you will have romance with no married life"-- is one I  noted as particularly irrelevant on a blog devoted to preventing teen drug abuse and addiction. Although one must also admire the daring of those discount pharmaceuticals attempting to peddle generic prescription drugs on a blog warning of the dangers of addiction!

Attention all spammers: I appreciate most those messages that demonstrate are outright selling as opposed to layering a thin veneer of commentary over an otherwise blatant spam. Nike's, Christian LaBoutain, Burberry, NFL jackets and Uggs are among the most popular, judging by the entries to-date. But social bookmarking and link building are also appreciative, though lesser known as brands.

But for those really inventive resellers, you cannot beat the creativity of wrapping a clearly fictitious article about the Israeli prime minister resigning and the PLO representative's reaction around the charade of selling pens and sunglasses:

        Israeli Defense Ecclesiastic [montblancpensonlinesale] Ehud Barak announced his acclimatization Monday, saying he inclination quit civil affairs in January to lavish more time with his family.

      His resigning mont blanc comes at a warmly delicate time for Israel, which is observing a tenuous cease-fire with the hostile Palestinian unit Hamas after an eight-day tiff that killed more than 160 people — the mind-blowing majority of them Palestinians in Gaza.

      Barak, who is married and the shepherd of three children, [montblancpensonlinesale] said Monday at a word talk in Tel Aviv that he will proceed as defense assist for the next three months, as elections are apposite in January. He said he won’t debate the elections.

     Hanan Ashrawi, a fellow of the Palestine Unshackling Consortium’s executive body, weighed in on the announcement.

     “I contemplate this signals identification [lunettesdesoleilraybans] of the futility of the military overtures in the adoption of fury as means of dealing with the Palestinians,” she said. “If it is for intimate reasons, we cannot opine, but if it’s recognition that his complete tear was based on the military proposition to public existence, then this demonstrates the recognition of the futility of militarism and violence.”

     Some Israeli factional commentators had speculated ahead of the commercial that Barak was planning to quit the government of Prime Churchman Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new center-left party.

A bid for Ehud Barak's shepharding a peace process in the Sinai, perhaps?

For all of the above, helpful links to the products abound, and in many languages: Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, English, and variations given fractured sellers helpers from Eastern Europe, not to mention the ever-present Spambots that must rely on Google algorithms and half-baked translations for their creative message management.

And the festive holiday season has just begun!

Question to the blogosphere: how are you managing this season's Spamalot? Surely there are better ways to see that actual questions and comments are addressed without succumbing to brand-name Season's Greetings!

And question to brands and their resellers: do you think your messages of cheerful consumption or comments wrapped around irrelevant stories are the most effective way of reaching consumers? Or is it just cheap and easy and you're thinking, "Couldn't hurt to cover all bases?"

I am curious to know...
Sincerely,

Robin Stevens Payes, Principal

Creating and Implementing Marketing Strategies
Health Communications and Social Marketing

WordsWork Communications LLC