We had talked with Jenifer Johnson before, but now we got to talk with her in the rHatchery.live podcast. It was mind-blowing, a term I don’t use often.
People Are Narratives
People understand stories, we are particularly attuned to them. For one, we find them entertaining. And we find them coherent because tie facts together. Iron Age religions had schools to teach kids the passages of what eventually became their books. Orthodox Jews and Muslim Madrasas do that to this day. It was actually a way to pass information as verbal stories from one generation to the next. Because stories are coherent and entertaining enough to be remembered.
From Their Perspectives
Stories, as Jennifer said, are more powerful when it speaks to the audience’s perspective, their beliefs. For example, to an audience that has been born and only knows the Fiat ways, the non-Fiat alternative has to be told from that perspective. The Fiat system nudges you to do it this way, the alternative non-Fiat system lets you do it out of love.
HIV/AIDs
Jenifer talked about the time she worked as a lobbyist, trying to get the Bush administration to pass a bill to get medicines to people with HIV, a bit that would save lives. As she was telling the story, I expected that the whole thing had failed. Instead, the Bush administration signed off on a $1 trillion bill to pay for benefits. I almost fell off my seat. I do remember how people with HIV were dying left and right and then they were not, but I didn’t know what had happened.
To Barcelona
Jenifer moved to Barcelona 35 years ago and has only moved back to the US to work that lobbyist stint. As quickly as she came, she went back to Barcelona and continued her life there. Her business, Storymind, helps people, who usually have not worked together before, work together to create narratives for a given situation. We are hoping to do a workshop with her to create our non-Fiat narrative for Fiat natives.
