What's different when people are involved is that we can be consciously aware of the relationships that we have with others, and we manage these relationships by imagining ourselves and others to be filling the roles in narratives that we exchange with one another. As children, we participate in a narrative which places us in the care of adults or other caregivers. When we play, we join our playmates in other narratives that we either make up as we go, or have learned from stories we've encountered. We play at being at war, or at being a family, or at being on an adventure. As we mature, we spend all of our time in one narrative or another, being in the role of child, student, patient, worker, parent, and boss. For as long as we restrict ourselves to being in such narratives, life is largely predictable.
One very powerful narrative describes the roles of leader and follower. The strength of this narrative is partially a matter of culture, but it has been used to build empires which can use force to pen the population into the role of follower. And yet, even as powerful as this narrative may be, its strength still varies from person to person. For some, the entire universe is driven by a deity that fills the role of the ultimate leader. If such a person were to fill some less exalted leadership role, it would still be as a follower of one or more levels of higher leader. And because the world that such people experience is structured in this way, they insist that even those who do not subscribe to their views is nevertheless subject to the will of their leadership hierarchy. For others, however, the roles of leader and follower are more flexible. These people can more easily accept the idea that another person's understanding of the world is as valid that theirs, and respect this difference. And again, this is not how movements work.
All of which brings me back to my comment about that first follower. Here's the situation. Someone decides to step outside of the role of dutiful follower and do or say something different. In the video that Derek Sivers showed, it was a shirtless guy who stood up in the park and started to dance. Like the birds in that flock, everyone else was behaving as they were expected to in that environment. Some were sitting and chatting or reading, some were throwing a frisbee or playing with a pet. Metaphorically, they were all 'staying in line'. And that could have been that, except for one thing: another person chose to join him. After several others joined the frolic, he was like the bird that drew a few others into a second, smaller vee. As more people gathered in the frolic, their actions began to appear more acceptable to the others, inducing them to escape the roles they had taken as sedate visitors to the park, and become part of this new group. But none of them would have done this if the shirtless dancing man had not been joined by that second person.
In human terms, a social event cascade occurs when the 'odd bird' who steps out of line hits the jackpot, and the pent-up restlessness of the people is released. That's how a movement arises. Putting yourself up as a 'leader' does not make you one, as much as some members of the US Congress would like to think it does. Only followers can do that, and it can only happen if that restlessness is sufficient to have put the population into a critical state.
I started this essay by saying I had something to tell you, and that it was on the tip of my tongue. That feeling, the insubstantial sense that you know something but can't put your finger on it, is critically important. It signals that your mind has reached the critical state with regards to that particular idea, but the avalanche of neural activity that makes you aware of what it is has yet to happen. You can almost taste it. It's not yet real. And then something happens -- a random fluctuation in the ionic potential between two nerves, perhaps. One nerve fires, and then another. Soon, a thought emerges at high speed, and you can finally 'spit it out'. That's what it feels like when those followers create a leader in their midst. You've experienced it. You know it intimately, but you've always ignored it. But now it's out in the open, where you can examine it. What you felt inside during that moment before the thought hit is what you need to be on the lookout for in the world around you. When you find it, you'll know it, because it will feel familiar, even if you can't quite put your finger on it. But when you do, look around. Something's about to happen. But it will have to be triggered. And that small nudge could very easily be something that you do simply because you've recognized that you are in the midst of a critical situation.
Which reminds me" That insight that I needed to spit out -- that immediacy is not important? I'd like to thank Rob Kall for getting that thought unstuck. By returning to my comment after six months and suggesting that I expand on it, he showed me that it doesn't matter if the words or deeds you've decided are worth following are months or even years old, or if the person who said or did it is dead and buried. You can still follow in their footsteps. You can still transform them into the leader they never sought to be in life. Of course, that's a double edged sword, because it's just as easy to choose to follow Howard Zinn in speaking out about the value of popular movements as it is to follow someone who has been reviled in the press for revealing state secrets. What you start might even get some traction. You never really know.
P. Orin Zack
Renton, WA -- Oct 17, 2013
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