What do a 20-something college student, a 30-something software engineer, and a 40-something mother of a special needs teenager have in common? For one thing, they all agreed to be interviewed by John Baird at CS for a new series, “By the People.”
As John explains in the series’ first installment:
Polls dominate our lives: Right track. Wrong track. The economy is great or calamitous. No one is getting married, but everyone is getting divorced. They tell us how we think, even when they strike us as removed from reality. With this in mind, I’m starting an experiment designed to give voice to the thoughts of (what I hope will eventually be) random individuals. Hence, By The People.
I’ll primarily stick to a standard set of questions gauging how we’re doing as Americans. Most will be serious, but we’ll have some fun, too. While these may evolve, including questions about timely issues, the goal is to gain insight into how we view our shared experience. I’m hopeful we’re a lot more similar than polls suggest. I’m also hopeful we’ll get past politics (which I believe tend to be an acrimonious distraction) to find unexpected solutions.
I don’t know how much success John will have with this exercise, but so far, I’ve found the interviews to be addictive reading … for two reasons:
1) They’re a cold-bucket-of-water reminder that, as much as some of us focus on and worry about politics and related issues, many people don’t … either because they don’t care, don’t have time to care, or are simply otherwise occupied with far more immediate, pressing needs in their lives.
2) Within each of the interviewee’s comments, there is at least one self-contradiction, proof yet again that some people co-exist quite well with cognitive dissonance and that the world, from their vantage point, will never be as cut-and-dried, black-and-white, as the soundbite simplifications hoisted on us by certain members of both the old and (yes) new media.
If you care to check out the series, you can find the installments to date (in order) here, here, and here. (Also, if you know of someone who might be willing to be interviewed for the series, drop me an email and I’ll pass the suggestion on to John.)