The Good of the People

‘Our culture,’ Quentin began saying, ‘exists alongside many others.’ Harvey and Quentin were up on the 18th floor again, far away from Harvey’s regular colleagues, in a large meeting room on the west-facing side of the building. From this vantage point they had a striking view of the sinuous, twisting tail of the storm that just lumbered through West London. It was probably already at Heathrow where without a doubt it would be making an impression on the arrivals and departures boards. The sun had reappeared from behind once again, casting its golden glow upon the scene. A rainbow emerged right over Wembley Stadium to the north, perfectly and rousingly encircling the stadium’s iconic white steel one. They organised to meet for an hour this morning for a brainstorming session on how it all might work from a technology perspective. A sort of sandbox, where they could define the tools’ objectives and strategy which would help Harvey begin to draw the outlines for the technical solution. Certainly, how this project would work, technologically, isn’t something Harvey ever thought of before and equally, Quentin didn’t know the first thing about Twitter technology or any of Harvey’s existing approach to building tools. It was the first steps in transforming the vision into the device.

Quentin looked conspicuously more pleased with himself today, which Harvey took as a bad sign. He was reclined back in his chair, stroking his long, straight, greying hair back with both hands the way he was known to when orating thoughtfully towards a revelation. He had the dreamy, demented look of a man who just persuaded others to join his wicked scheme, which he’s about to get into the gory details of. Harvey braced himself for a slow-building, logic-twisting, epistemological labyrinth. The kind that begins with context so cunning it has to be dishonest, meanders through metaphors with caprine sure-footedness, and finally delivers the point, the masterful insight, the conclusion that sounds so profound and decent until you repeat it aloud.

‘You didn’t choose this culture,’ Quentin unveiled, ‘nor did I, or anyone else in their own culture, any more than the culture chose you to belong to it. Therefore, wishing you belonged to another culture is as pointless as wishing you belonged to different parents. Cultures just happen to you, like diseases, or birthdays.’
Harvey got comfortable.

‘Every culture,’ Quentin continued, ‘has a set of values which guide people’s attitudes towards new ideas, as well as any existing ones—values and attitudes which evolve over time. New ideas constantly if inadvertently provoke any culture, testing its values and challenging its attitudes; how these change and the speed with which they change is a measure—inversely—of their strength. This is known as cultural inertia. Inertia resists change. Notwithstanding cultural breakthroughs, which are very rare, this inertia is what creates space for familiarity, belonging, and security. A weak culture wobbles against new ideas. But strong culture, with high inertia, with broad belief in its values, stymies contrary attitudes and other forms of critique that test it. The cultural inertia is the essence of all cultures, of culture itself, Harvey.’

He looked pleased. Harvey looked on.

‘A culture is nothing without its people, of course, just as a church is nothing without parish. It's the individuals who bring it to life, each responding in their own way to the cultural system of beliefs, values, and attitudes they inherit. But when confronted with an idea that challenges that system—be it an ancient revelation or a trendy new nonsense—most people will fall in line with the group’s prevailing view, often without even realising it. They will support slavery, if that is culturally appropriate, and then they will support abolition, if that idea’s time has come. Not because they are cruel or kind, but because that’s what the signs told them to do. Culture, after all, isn’t a compass, it’s a weather vane. But at the fringes, or more than two standard deviations from the statistical mean of opinion on any given idea,’—Harvey enjoyed the esoteric fact drop, for he knew the meaning of this one—‘you will find people who do not buy into the prevailing attitude or narrative blowing on the vane. They don’t believe the story, and worse, won’t pretend to. They reject the message, refuse its meaning, and go their own way, while the majority finds them weird, even laughable, mocking them. It’s human nature to mock what we don’t understand. Call them lunatics, troublemakers, sometimes prophets… but never while they’re still alive. Because it’s easier to point and laugh than to admit confusion. And confusion, as everyone knows, is a crime against the state of certainty. What we need to work out is why people go to the fringes. What attracts them to the weird? What drives them to mistrust the consensus and paddle upstream, against the cultural inertia? What are they rebelling against—authority, society, reality, or just the unbearable smell of conformity? What attracts them, for example, to figures like General Peter Rawson?’

Until that moment Harvey, too, was reclined back, relaxed and actually quite enjoying Quentin’s thesis, until that mention of Rawson startled him.
He saw an opportunity to contribute. ‘That seems like a good starting point,’ Harvey said. ‘At Twitter we have tools to measure people’s attraction to all kinds of ideas. Like their interest in a football team. Whether they support it or loathe it. Their support for ideas like open borders. Slavery. Abolition. Whether they trust or mistrust public figures, the government, or other institutions, and track the way sentiments change over time. We can also tag tweets, content, or comments, and see which words or expressions influence sentiments and drive the way they evolve. We can do that for class, creed, postcode, age, zodiac sign—whatever.’

‘Good,’ said Quentin, not showing a mote of surprise. ‘Victoria told me that you already have an extensive toolkit for things like this. PULSE, I think she said it was called. Can I see it?’