The catfight and the construction site
We’re quick to stop to see the car wreck, the billionaire having a meltdown, or the professional wrestlers pretending to be political leaders. But it often seems more difficult to take a moment to watch people building something that matters instead.
We’ll probably spend billions of dollars and millions of hours transfixed by media coverage of one disaster after another this year.
What would happen if we watched Bryan Stevenson, Nazanin Ash, or Jim Killoran build something instead? Not just watched, but actually helped?
What sells is drama, conflict, and emergencies. So that’s what we get.
What if we spent our attention on a different thing? What if we built something better?
It’s easy to imagine that culture is immutable and that we have no choice but to pander for attention. But in fact, the culture keeps changing, and when we shift what we make and change what we pay attention to, the culture follows.