introspection, or explaining yourself
Two things I read in the Sunday NY Times Book Review:
"One of the things I've learned from writing profiles of larger-than-life people... is that they're not especially introspective. Maybe introspection bogs them down; it's just a neurotic, pointless use of their creative energy."
and
"The only thing universal in communication is our inability to say exactly what we mean."
So then, what drives us? For me, as a writer and as a strategist who tries to help brands make stuff, I think I have some desire to explain: to explain the world around me, to explain other people to still other people. I like the art of telling that story, the way people appear to feel more enlightened, and the occasional triumph of making a client or a reader like my characters, even if they don't quite relate to them.
[And yet, personally, there is nothing I hate more than explaining myself.]
An always fun blog, You Are Not So Smart, addresses some of this in a post entitled The Perils of Introspection. Introspection, explaining yourself, is a lot like cultural criticism - you can make up anything you want that makes you seem smart, and makes sense to the reader. And this is where we get into trouble - we ask people why they did something, and then we're not satisfied with the answers. Then the realization begins to dawn that we're not satisfied with the answer because we know it is a post hoc rationalization, not a candid snapshot of the fleeting urge that inspired the action. That a 'true' answer is impossible to give becomes the questioner's problem - it's your fault for asking.
I came across this post through a Twitter RT that observed:
Fair enough - I prefer observed behavior, too. I suppose it's why I'd rather explore ideas and actions and even fictions and see if there are places where I begin to apprehend pieces of myself through those ideas/actions/fictions (but am totally happy even if I do not), than explore myself, which more and more I feel is unknowable. But I also suspect I prefer observed behavior, and then games, narratives, fictions, because... well because they're fun. A lot more fun than figuring out what my personal brand is and trying to project that consistently. I'm not consistent. I'm a person. You want consistency? Good luck with that.
Nevertheless, we can't help but ask the questions why? and how? We are not satisfied with what happened, we need to understand how what happened came to pass. And, no matter how fun it may be, observed behavior won't tell you that. Planners and anthropologists who prefer observed behavior over self-reported behavior or opinions or rationalizations don't stop at the observation; they have a narrative to construct. In the end, they are simply imposing their own rationalizations on the narrative of behavior, rather than letting the person enacting the behavior take a crack at it.
What's an example? I sat in a kitchen one morning and watched a woman do her usual rounds on the internet. She checked her email - and by that I mean she opened up a window with her email in it, scrolled through the inbox and only opened things that interested her. She didn't open anything else, but she didn't really delete anything either. Then she moved on to her browser, which opens up in something fairly generic - MSN or AOL or something - and she clicked on a few articles. The articles were either celebrity gossip (and only A-list celebs, she skipped anything about Jersey Shore or Real Housewives, preferring something about Brangelina) or recipes (only clicking on food-related posts that had pretty pictures next to them). Then she typed facebook into the URL (she pronounced it "earl") bar and checked out the newsfeed. A friend had posted new pictures; she looked at them. She commented on one, "You look HOTT in that dress!" and liked another one, a picture of her friend's toddler with a puppy.
That's what she did. Now, why did she do it? Her answers would include things like, "I have to figure out what to make for dinner so I'm looking for recipes" or "I like to get a good deal; I'm a savvy shopper" or "I think Brad Pitt is hot" or "I like to keep up with my friends; this helps us stay in touch". Her answers don't strike me as untrue, they're just ... pedestrian.
My best answer: she looked at things that appealed to her. She commented on things that she wanted to comment on. She ignored the rest. "But what made something appealing or worth commenting on?" a client or planner might ask. The absolute, bare bones truth: I don't know, and beyond "liking" things, she doesn't either - based entirely on observation I would say she likes likable stuff: sales on shoes, cute things, food porn, incredibly attractive people, and her friends. And so the client will go off and brief a creative agency to make more things that stimulate that part of our brains that is attracted to attractive stuff.
But wait a minute. Let's get down to brass tacks: the client or planner doesn't really care about any of that.
What they really want to know is: How much of what she responded to is idiosyncratic to her and how much of it is universal? That's the hidden question - because if it's universal, then we can mass produce it, and if we can mass produce it, we can monetize, and if we can monetize it we can all get rich and go sailing.
My constant worry, both as a brand strategist and as a complex human being ("I am large, I contain multitudes"), is that by nailing something down with a what AND a why, we are missing the 'that' of it. We are forcing people to be as limited as the brands we peddle - to lack dimension and dynamism. We want people to be predictable so we can feel reassured, in command. But we take no time to appreciate the fact of the behavior, the nature of a choice, the quality of a response. We want to flip it over and look at its underbelly or cut it open and sift through its guts, and well, that's just rude.
Personal Interlude:
I once lived with a man; after two years together we broke up, and I took myself on holiday to New York. My things were still in the apartment in Los Angeles, packed in boxes, waiting for me to drive them away. He called me while I was gone, asked me to account for everything I'd done and who I was with. "I need you to reassure me," he said, plaintively, into the phone. My temper flashed. How dare he demand reassurance from me! I no longer owed him consistency or commitment or congruence. I could fairly run amok if the spirit moved me. I spent the night with an old boyfriend. I did not do it to spite my freshly minted ex. I did not do it because I wanted to be with someone, or because I was promiscuous, or because I was drunk, or because of anything, really. I slept with that old boyfriend, because I liked sleeping with him. It felt good, and it was right there in front of me. All my ex ever wanted from me in that relationship was reassurance: reassurance that I wouldn't leave him, that I wouldn't change, that I wouldn't turn out to be something else. But he'd constructed a very small box, a box so small that I would have no choice but to escape. And so I did. A fine pair: a man who wants to nail someone down, and a woman who refuses to be confined.
Back to my real point:
To quote someone who hates me: "Nothing happens for a reason." I wonder what would happen if planners and brands and movie studios and fashion designers and journalists and whoever all just embraced the notion that 97% of what we do can be chalked up to "It seemed like a good idea at the time." How would this influence the way we construct ideas and things?
