“Thinking outside the box” led to the solution we’re building at PeopleCount.org. How do you think outside the box of politics?
You can do it through “problem solving.” But with something as complex as politics, it’s not very reliable.
To think outside the box more reliably, first you must identify the box. Let’s start with a list of what’s true today:
- People are apathetic, uninformed and lazy.
- People disapprove of Congress
- Money controls elections
- Money influences Congress
- Congress is for sale
- Congress is corrupt
- Elections hold elected officials accountable
- The parties are fighting each other
- The political discourse is nasty and divisive
This is all “in the box”. If you look closely, none of these sentences are true. You can probably see that none of these sentences are 100% true. At times, things even happen in Congress outside the influence of money! Maybe a bill is crafted by a member who truly believes in it, or two interns discuss how to solve a problem.
But it’s more than that. Money doesn’t control or influence. Congress isn’t this way or that way. Elections don’t act in concert. The parties don’t actually fight. These are all approximations and euphemisms and metaphors. There’s really no “truth” here.
What makes all these sentences seem true? It’s the context. The box is the whole world of meaning of politics. People struggling to be right and make each other wrong. The Republicans trying to dominate Hillary Clinton at the Benghazi “hearings”, and Hillary being patiently amused. Most reporters reported that Hillary won the day, but not Fox News- the only article I found from them for the 22nd was a video they put together of their version of the events and two commentators speaking over videos of Hillary. Huff Post even reported that Fox stopped showing the hearing because Hillary looked good.
On one hand, most of us dismiss it all as drama. We even call it “political theater”. But many think it’s real and their frustrations and anger seem to be evidence of that reality.
Inside the box, there’s good and bad, winners and losers, shoulds and values and tragedies and victories. Outside the box, there’s just stuff happening.
When you look into the box from outside, you can see it’s just a machine. It’s pretty complex, but it’s just a machine. And all the people and their behaviors are just parts and relationships. So to think outside the box, you just identify all the meanings as artificial and identify the contexts that make them real until they’re not real anymore.
To figure out how to change it, just do a little thought experiment. What do you want to change? What would that change do to other parts? If you can find a way to change it that’ll still let most of it work, you have a chance. Let’s hope…
Or, do more than hope. Embrace an outside-the-box solution.