who are you letting answer these three important questions
18 Apr 2019on the episode of gibrán’s podcast where he interviewed malia lazu (which is an amazing episode and you should go check it out), he mentioned an idea/thought from jonah sachs (at least i think that’s who he referenced…). the thought from sachs was this:
“it’s really important who you are letting answer these three questions:
- who are we?
- how did we get here?
- how do we get to belong here?”
i forget if these next thoughts came from g or from sachs but what i remember is this (paraphrased):
what happened when rationality came onto the scene is that we threw out the myths (religion, earth-based spirituality, etc.) that used to answer those questions for us. and in the vacuum we have let marketers who are driven by a profit motive to begin to answer those questions.
i was stunned. it feels so dead on. we have let people who are paid by corporations begin to answer our deepest questions about identity, history, and belonging. if you’ve ever taken a marketing 101 class, they waste NO time in being explicit about how to sell product: get’em at the identity level; make your target audience feel like your product is a core part of who they are or who they want to be seen by/with.
it’s quite stunning actually.
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