FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
June 29, 2007
Letter From the Magazine: Cultural Conflicts
A few days ago, Alan M. Webber, one of Fast Company's founders, stopped by our offices for a visit. He talked about a recent trip he'd made to Tanzania, where he toured a traditional village. The men still hunt animals for meat, he noted, and the women dig up tubers. Although the villagers know about modern conveniences like matches, they still choose to twirl sticks into stones to start a fire. The very idea of innovation and change is threatening to them, Webber observed.
As Americans, we can be just as stubborn--and conflicted--about maintaining our way of life. And that's understandable. We enjoy a degree of freedom, choice, wealth, and economic opportunity that is unparalleled in history. Who wants to change that? We know that the consumption of fossil fuels, for instance, holds risk. But no one really suggests we give up our cars or planes and go back to the old days. Does that mean that we are embracing change or that we are stubbornly holding on to the way things are?
It's a complicated question to get your mind around, which is why senior writer Charles Fishman was so drawn to the subject of his case study in this issue: our $15 billion--a--year obsession with bottled water. Fish, as we call him, was recently nominated for business journalism's most prestigious prize, the Gerald Loeb Awards, both for his book The Wal-Mart Effect and for his September 2006 article about compact fluorescent bulbs, "How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take to Save the World? One."
To understand the bottled-water phenomenon, Fish traveled from San Pellegrino in Italy to Poland Spring in Maine to the source of Fiji Water in the South Pacific. What he discovered about the water business--and you can discover yourself, beginning here--is just how complex the mix of social, environmental, and economic issues can be. We don't really need bottled water, Fish writes, but he doesn't simply brand it as evil. Instead, he offers a nuanced analysis that provides a prism for viewing all of our conflicted choices as consumers and businesses: What in our culture is waste and what is creativity?
This issue's cover story about Al Gore examines another realm of cultural conflicts. Gore was a ridiculed figure not long ago. Yet he resurfaced in part on the strength of his business acumen and financial success. He has become a more effective agent of change as a private citizen than he was as a public official. So is this development worth celebrating, as a symbol of the value of economic markets? Or is it, as Gore would argue, an indictment of our political system?
We'd love your feedback on these questions, on Fish's bottled-water article, and on any other potential conflicts you see in our culture--or in this magazine. You can email me at editor@fastcompany.com. Thanks.
Posted by Robert Safian at June 29, 2007 6:59 PM | Category: editor's letter |
5 Comments
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Robert,
The conflicts you speak of are not about objects but about experiences. Both using matches and rubbing sticks together can start a fire. They have different efficiencies, but they both start a fire. What is important is that both matches and rubbing sticks are different experiences.
We can scream all we want about matches being "better" but when it comes down to it "better" is a relative term. Better has to do with values. Yes, efficiency and environmentalism are values. When two experiences with conflicting values are presented a choice must be made.
Where does culture come into play? Cultures prefer specific experience systems. When a cultural shift occurs such as a shift toward environmentalism we find changes in experience. While those changes are occurring we find the experience conflicts.
Corey Julihn
Cultures on all scales exhibit value systems. When new ideas or innovations challenge those value systems we find minor conflict. However when the culture's values shift, such as a move toward being environmentally friendly, we find large scale conflicts.
Best,
Corey
Mr. Safian, there is an error in one of the stories that impacts the Durham NC brand. The ranking of fastest cities uses Raleigh-Durham and as has been said here many times, there simply is no such place. Raleigh-Durham is an airport between two separate and distinct cities and two different MSA's.
It appears the author may have used old 1990's census designations. Please correct online references to Durham and Raleigh NC. In the future, the editors may want to keep the comparies apples and apples by being wary of comparing polycetnric areas like this one to areas that may indeed be centered around a dominant city.
Your mention of Mr. Webber made this comment appropo because he made a similar correction during his tenure and we had the pleasure of exchanging emails at that time.
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Cultures on all scales exhibit value systems. When new ideas or innovations challenge those value systems we find minor conflict. However when the culture's values shift, such as a move toward being environmentally friendly, we find large scale conflicts too,
Best,