Lord Leighton, P.R.A., Tracing for 'The Daphnephoria', by 1874-6
Every culture from Twitter to the First Vatican Council adopts a mythology. Every mythology is a mixture of repeatable patterns and mystery. Many people who live with a mythology defined culture are fully aware of the hyperbole. These are the lies that a culture agrees to agree about. Yet it begs to question the sustainability of a business, a religion or an organization animated by the acknowledged lies. Here how it works, I think:
5% Leaders: A tiny group of people in charge of the gold mine that enabled them to scale a myth and extract value and power. The leaders are fully aware of the lies but always dream of a marketing plan to rival the Marlboro Man.
60% Followers: These are people who are aware of the lies but they also recognize that no matter what group believes in, there are benefits of a social structure and since we are all social creatures, it’s only in our own interest to perpetuate the mythology, to strengthen our society, our team.
5% Fools: The only group that actually believes in a myth. Usually consist of people with some emotional imbalance or outright morons. They do an extremely important social function. For a rigged system, similar to a lottery, it’s imperative that someone occasionally wins. The “leaders” strategically elevate the “fools” into the prominent positions; just to create a doubt in the mind of the “followers”, perhaps it might make sense after all. This very doubt together with the practical benefits of belonging to a group keeps a culture going.
20% Geeks: In every culture there individuals who are in love with the process and couldn’t care less about the implications or meaning. Like people who talk about iPhone apps and other gadgetry all day long. The geeks are oblivious of the fact that iPhone is a telephone. Every culture has some geeks who do apps. Talmud is a Judaic app, the sports stats, etc.
10% Rebels: People with arrested development plus a grudge, they embarrass the rest of the good citizens by pointing to a naked king. In other words things that everyone understands but is polite enough to keep to themselves. Any culture exerts a significant amount of resources to make sure the rebels pay the price. So when a rational human being makes a list or pros and cons, he or she will inevitably choose the lies.
Further reading:
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I would argue the precise breakdown of your percentages, but that’s just nitpicking; I think you’ve captured the major groups in a new community.
At the same time, seeing a community shift over time, one or more of these groups can come to dominate the conversation. My personal example was using Digg in Beta, when the Geeks were ascendant, to why I don’t use Digg today (I would content it’s mostly Fools, but I’d guess the users would claim to be mostly Leadership).
Nicholas, I am glad you could relate this to your experience but this really works with old communities as well as it works with the new communities.
Brilliant as usual, though I would place the groups in a slightly different order, with the geeks behind the followers and ahead of the fools.
I would just want to abstract this idea a little bit further.These groups as I understand them aren’t necessarily rigidly defined in the sense that if someone belong to one, he or she can not belong to another. In the community in which I live and to which I am applying this model, I know many people who could fit very comfortably in to three or four of these categories. Maybe such divisions can be applied within given individuals.
Nice job characterizing the groups. I’d allocate less to Leaders and more to Fools.
Tole, I don’t mean just the king, it’s the ministers and the machine, etc. And you right, I might be underestimating the foolishness ;-)