If you have a friend who is funny, talented, and very rich there’s a good chance that you look forward to their birthday party every year. When there is a friend to everyone born on this day, the leap year, the least we can do is throw a good party every four years. Today is the 53rd birthday* of one of the great talents in music, food, storytelling, pranks, and general fun – Gioachino Rossini. Though he was born in 1792 in Pesaro, Italy, he is still a good guy to get to know even today – and a good excuse for a party.
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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.
Controversial Little Pony
As the sun rose on a Saturday morning, kids across the 1970s woke up with a purpose that charged them out of bed quicker than any school day. This was their day, the time when the teevee had nothing but cartoons on. Yet they were often crudely animated and jerky, with stupid plots and wooden dialogue. As exciting as Saturday morning was to kids, cartoons were clearly thrown on the screen without a lot of thought.
Regulations changed in 1982 and pitching of products broke the fourth wall of screen – making cartoons much more valuable. Hasbro’s “My Little Pony” was a pioneer, subsidizing a cartoon show around toys to sell. When social media became a big part of kids’ lives in 2010, they broke more new ground with the fourth generation of “My Little Pony” by integrating social media fandom into the show itself.
It was a brilliant move that made a phenom out of a 30 year old show. What could possibly go wrong? Like everything else, when things are laid bare in social media any potential controversy in life and values can intervene. And that gets us to Derpy, the little pony that messed everything up.
The Hero’s Pitch
It is the most basic of all stories, common to every culture and probably written first in our genes. The Hero’s Journey is a powerful tale of destiny, determination, usually reluctance and doubt, culminating in a victory that inspires and gives great gifts to the world. It can be told as Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, over and over again, with infinite variation.
What is less obvious is that, as a powerful archetype, it is also used to sell.
The Hero’s Journey is important to much advertising, especially when it comes to political campaigns. It is worth getting to know at the gut level it springs from not just to sell people and things, but also for its effect on the narrative that shapes our world.
Drugs
“Just say ‘No!’.” Drugs have not been discussed frankly and openly in US politics since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 was passed. The framework passed then set up five categories or “schedules” of drugs based on their medical use and potential for abuse and how they would be regulated. Over the years laws that reinforce this regulatory structure have been passed and criminal penalties raised and lowered, but the basic concept has remained solid.
Since that time, however, many changes have occurred on the fringes of “drug” use in the US. Tobacco use has been banned from most public places and drinking ages were raised to curb their use. Prescription drug abuse has become an epidemic. Caffeine consumption has roughly tripled and is now available in high purity. Even marijuana, criminalized since 1937, has become de facto legal in several states.
Treatment programs are available for anyone who wants to stop using any of these “drugs”, but some of them have to watch out for the laws that stand in their way. Is it time to completely revamp how we regulate and criminalize “drugs”?
Debt Supercycle
The challenge came in a moment of weakness born of a position of power. I was up giving a quick talk on the essence of storytelling to a group of students learning about marketing techniques, particularly focused on blog writing. It’s a hot topic lately, but my approach is, as always, that there is really nothing new about it at all. Just as the thought-out schtick was winding down, my friend and very capable professor Sara slipped the story sidewise.
“You say that storytelling can be used for anything. You write about economics. How does storytelling work in economics?”
The short answer is that there are many amazing stories to tell, but how can it be boiled down to a simple explanation? The short version escaped me at that moment, but eventually it came back – it’s essentially the same as storytelling itself. Things go along wonderfully until we somehow forget the lessons our grandparents learned the hard way and then have to call on another round of “experts” to tell us what should be obvious. And that brings us to the concept of a “Debt Supercycle” – how Depressions have come and gone since ancient times because we lost the big story about the economy.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 