Charlie Todd, the founder of ImprovEverywhere gave an entertaining, hilarious and refreshing talk about shared experience of absurdity. Be it the seventy synchronized dancers in storefront windows or the ‘ghostbusters’ running through the New York Public Library (he even staged a prank at his own wedding!), Todd shows us how he uses these public scenes to bring people together, and reminds us that sometimes, we do no need a reason to have fun. Not everything needs to have a point! Not only that it is fun, it’s also a different, innovative and brilliant way to make the world a better place, that is, cheer up those who experience this absurdity which may improve world’s productivity for that particular day!
Beyond that, what’s interesting is how ‘shared experiences’ NEVER failed to move us. When people come together for a purpose (or lack thereof), something else seems to be at work here. Collective power is synthesized, which has the potential to bring about a more consequential emergent outcome. In his talk about language being the window into human nature, Steven Pinker highlighted a point about mutual knowledge vs individual knowledge. Consider two citizens A and B living in a country ruled by a dictator called X:
Individual knowledge:
1. A hates X and B hates X
2. A does not know that B hates X too
3. B does not know that A hates X too
Mutual knowledge
1. A knows that B hates X
2. B knows that A hates X
3. A knows that B knows that A hates X
4. B knows that A knows that B hates X
5. Repeat the above recursively.
The reason why in the history of human civilization, political revolution always happens when a crowd gathers in a public square is not because A and B suddenly realize that they hate the dictator, but a change in state of knowledge, from individual knowledge to mutual knowledge, now that they both know that they both hate X, together with citizens C, D, E etc, this knowledge then gave them the collective power to challenge the dominant force.
Alas, one shall not discuss Todd’s kind of shared experience with social activism within the same premise before knowing the clear distinctions between these two. The gatherings in the videos, are formed by a weak-tie, and low risk network. But social activism is extremely high-risk, and will only succeed if the network is formed by a group of highly committed people for that particular cause.
I want to talk about that later in the next post where I’ll share my views on Occupy Wall Street, so til then, enjoy the video and have some mindless fun!
This is my Lala Land 