The daily outrage machine
We're trying something different instead
I’m freshly back from the jungle, and I have many things I’d like to talk about. Firstly: over nearly 40 years of public policy work — in radio and TV newsrooms, in state and federal government offices, and in the Big Office at a powerful free-market think tank — I learned that anger sells.
In the newsroom, they used to say “if it bleeds, it leads.” Later, anything that had a victim, a villain, and a hero made for great stories, if not lousy public policy. And in the public policy shop, anger is what raised money and moved issues.
A budget matter — whether reduced to journalism or sent out to donors — even if it was deeply important, didn’t tend to drive news traffic or change the debate at the Statehouse. Meanwhile a thinly sourced story, an outrage that begged for lawmakers’ attention and was designed to make you furious, would be everywhere by lunch. We all knew the math. Most of us pretended not to.
So let me tell you the math on this newsletter and our project, Level Up Humanity, because you should know it.
This project would grow faster if I were willing to pick a mustache-twirling villain for you each week — give you someone to be against — and let the algorithm do the rest. That road is paved and well-lit. I’m not going to take it. Not because I’m above it, but because the moment I do, I’ve become the exact machine I started this project to point away from. I’d get a bigger email list and a bigger audience, and you’d get smaller ideas.
Here’s the bet I’m making instead. People are worn down — by being yelled at, by being scared all the time, or outraged all the time. At their core, they know that someone or something is chasing away their humanity, and they’d like it back.
That’s who Level Up Humanity is for. It’s not about Republicans. It’s not about Democrats. It’s about people who want the dignity of being allowed to chase their dreams — to pursue happiness — and who sense there’s something standing in the way of our natural pull toward compassion, connection, and community.
Level Up Humanity grows by saying what needs to be said in this moment, so that we reclaim our uniqueness, our distinctiveness, and the qualities that make life worth living. Let us choose to live peacefully. Let us do right by one another. Let us connect to whatever you call the bigger thing — God, the Universe, Source, the order underneath it all — and trust that our celebration of these things, in the words used here, travels because it’s right, not because it’s loud.
I’m learning that the reach happens, even if it’s slower, because it’s also the only kind of audience worth having: one that forwards a thing because it rang true, not because it made their blood pressure spike.
So that’s the deal between us. I’ll keep it honest and keep it short. And if a piece ever lands, the most useful thing you can do is send it to one person who’s tired of the shouting. We do this together, because we have to.
Wayne :)
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