Create Your Own Economy by Cowen Tyler

Author:Cowen, Tyler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group

PROBLEM #1: THE STORIES ARE TOO SIMPLE

We’ve already seen that memorable stories tend to be socially salient and thus they tend to be focal. But, going back to Thomas Schelling, what do we know about focal points and the problem of how and where to meet up in New York City? We know that chosen focal points tend to be simple and obvious. That means that some of your stories will be simple and obvious as well. Some might say too simple and too obvious.

Whenever a group has to coordinate around a common idea or plan, there is the potential for what is called a least-common-denominator effect. Have you ever tried to get a group of six or eight people to agree on a common movie to go see or rent? It’s hard. A lot of the best movies already have been seen by someone in the group. Or many excellent movies are in some way bizarre, offensive, or appeal to very specialized tastes. Not everyone loves the Godfather series (remember that horse in the bed?) and there are many reasons, whether justified or not, to object to it. Maybe one person in the group doesn’t like reading subtitles on the screen. And so on. You probably won’t end up with excellence; rather you’ll end up with a movie that no one saw fit to veto. You’ll end up with something not too offensive but probably not excellent by anyone’s standard. Hollywood blockbusters have this same problem when they try to appeal to very broad audiences. They end up drained of vitality and risk-taking in an effort to appeal to the least common denominator in a large group of people, in this case spread across a truly global film audience.

We’re less likely to see that the same logic applies not just to the Hollywood studios but also to ourselves. In this way I am pretty typical. Some of the inputs behind my deepest personal narratives suffer from the least-common-denominator effect. The logic applies to my dreams. To my fantasies. To my deepest visions of what I can be. I treasure those thoughts and feelings so much but in reality I pull a lot of them from a social context and I pull them from points that are socially salient. That means I pull them from celebrities, from ads, from popular culture, and most generally from ideas that are easy to communicate and disseminate to large numbers of people. We all dream in pop culture language to some degree.

Media coverage brings similar problems of oversimplification. The tendency is to fit all facts into the format of a story, usually with a memorable protagonist, even when the reality is more complex. Haven’t you noticed how many movies and TV shows offer an underdog struggling against the system and receiving ultimate vindication? It makes for a good tale. Yet this isn’t always the most appropriate or the most accurate way of organizing information. The media is good at portraying heroes and villains and

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