There are so many challenging issues that seem to engulf an individual, a society and a nation at large.
Most times, we seem to throw our hands in despair and think nothing can be done to change it because it looks so perennial and constant in our faces.
Not too long ago, the entire world was hit by a pandemic. This pandemic really affected every bit of our economic activity and our social dealings.
In fact, many nations are still suffering from the lingering quagmire of its economic impact.
All of a sudden, this very pandemic has totally receded with regard to its effect.
Life seems to be normal again. And the focus now is on the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Once the media started highlighting the war and not the pandemic, the pandemic has lost its strong presence in our daily conversations and lives in general.
I don’t know about you, but as I observed this, it really got me puzzled.
It quickly brought to my mind a book written by Malcolm Gladwell titled The Tipping Point.
My mind could vividly relate to some of the theories he espoused.
For such a quick turn to occur, as in a pandemic that seemed so daunting to fizzle out so fast after upsurge news of war, it has to go through these three agents of change; and they are the law of the few, the stickiness factor, and the power of context.
These are based on the premise that social epidemics can be reversed or can be altered, by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment.
Merely by manipulating the size of a group – people that watch or listen to news, we can dramatically improve its receptivity to new ideas.
By tinkering with the presentation of information – the news that there is now war, the pandemic not being spoken of, and what matters is the little things like masks wearing, which is no more by force – we can significantly improve its stickiness factor. The pandemic is no more as deadly as thought of initially.
Simply by finding and reaching those few special people –the newscasters and reporters – who hold so much social power, we can shape the course of social epidemics.
In the book, he brilliantly illuminates the receptivity phenomenon.
In the end, receptivity is a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you; it may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not!
Receptivity is a goal for a quick turn of a perennial event.
