Memes, voices and a marble in space
Whole earth
After ingesting a small dose of LSD one night in 1966 on his San Franciso rooftop, design & anthropology college dropout, Stewart Brand, wondered what earth would look like from space. The very next day, he had badges made, “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?”
He mailed these provocations to scientists, secretaries of state, astronauts and thinkers. His campaign was picked up by newspapers, magazines, and TV, and led directly to this:
This is astronaut Bill Anders’ photo from Apollo 8 as it made its way to the moon on December 24, 1968. He, with Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, were the first astronauts to leave Earth orbit and slingshot around the ‘dark side’ of the moon.
Today it’s hard to imagine how revolutionary this image was back then. It showed us ‘spaceship earth’, a fragile blue marble, floating in the immensity of space. As a visual reminder that the only home we have is our planet, the image cemented for many a sense of shared destiny and is credited with the rise of environmentalism and anti-consumerism that started to become mainstream in the 70s.
Q: What powerful visual could you develop that shows the ‘whole picture’ of your organisation’s impact?
Voice and governance
How much power should powerless people have? Those with a permanent and significant disability have rights to craft a life plan and be funded for supports to achieve this, under the NDIS. Those who lack the ability to live independently because of age, are entitled to care at home, and in facilities, via MyAgedCare.
But what about indigenous Australians? True, not all Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Australians are powerless, yet, enough are to have warranted the creation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. This statement aims to trigger a referendum on having recognition of First Nation people in our constitution and gives Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders a formal advisory voice on indigenous issues in parliament. Despite Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appointing its writers in 2015, on its publication two years later, he rejected it, saying that he didn’t believe enough Australians would support it in a referendum, as the notion was fundamentally inequitable.
But, since 2017, the pendulum has shifted. My state, Victoria, is negotiating a Treaty. The broadcaster, SBS, has translated it into 60 languages, high profile finance sector leaders have supported the idea as a foundation of a ‘spiritually generous’ country, and more than half of Australians in a 2020 survey supported the proposition.
Whether you do, or don’t, isn’t the issue here.
Rather, it’s worth contemplating “Who lacks power in our systems?” and whether that’s ‘the customer’, or ‘the student’, or ‘the frontline staff’, think about what benefit there might be of giving them not just a voice, but formal powers.
Q: Why would you, and how could you, build governance structures that give a voice for the unvoiced?
Memes as memes
My son Jasper thinks that a meme is something funny that spreads on the internet or via social media.
Already, at 11, he’s absorbed hundreds (no, thousands) of popular culture references that are recycled into comic characters, dances, LEGO minifigs, graffiti tags and spread via Youtube, Imgur, TikTok — and verbally amongst his friends.
But where did the idea of a ‘meme’ come from?
Richard Dawkins coined the term back in 1976. As a prolific evolutionary biologist, he popularised two ideas himself: Darwinism and atheism. It’s no coincidence that he’s a master of a good story, a sticky metaphor, and an eloquent turn of phrase. Dawkins’ original concept was a play on the word ‘gene’ being a unit of biological transmission; instead, he argued that humans also possess ‘memes’, which are units of information transmission.
But, do we possess memes, or do they possess us? We humans are expert replicators and, according to meme theory, ideas use us as hosts, rather like viruses do. We are merely transmission devices, and the most successful memes are those copied most widely. This is how we came to know how to build arches and tell time, but also do less vital things like copy styles of music, or fashion.
Genes may survive for generations, but memes even more so: the memes of Socrates, Jesus Christ, daVinci and Darwin are very healthy even today.
Q: How can you propagate ideas that generate a life of their own?
Please drop me a line if you use the questions above to stimulate insights of your colleagues or teams.
And, of course, referral is better than flattery, so please tell others about 5MSM and encourage them to read, just with a click of the ‘share’ button below.
See you next Friday,
Andrew