We can use Facebook to save our asses. Facebook is a powerful bulletin board we can use to focus great news coverage on the story of human excellence. Our prosperity and survival depend on educating ourselves well enough to cope with out challenges because we will go away as a species if we don’t transform the way we learn. I come to this by way of the extinction probability for humans. In short, it seems to me (and others I respect) very, very likely — nine chances in 10 or “.9” as we say in the sciences — that we will wipe ourselves out with frighteningly sophisticated microscopic weapons. If we fail to educate and nourish the young growing up in a “climate” of disgusting inequity, race and class and culture and ignorance become too combustible.
I’m thinking there’s an “unless” in the human story because we make it our business to find the best in ourselves. I’m pitching Socrates’ idea that we tell the story of the best within us — captured brilliantly and thoroughly and profitably for our and their economic benefit by the best news organizations. If we survive, this will be the story of achievement history records. It restores respect for Facebook in the education fantasy — “the story of achievement” — I tell in a work of philosophy I publish: managementality. The Facebook pages of The New York Times and top tier news organizations will make it possible for hundreds of millions of us to ask for excellent coverage of human excellence.
Excellent coverage of excellence by the best news organizations inevitably produces — in writing — “an inspiration system” from the inspiring truth of excellence reported — in writing — by The New York Times and other top tier news organizations. This exposes what I call “the thought process at work in excellence” or “managementality.” For the world’s best news organizations, managementality is money. This story is money. By telling it and acting on it, we expose the best in ourselves and grow stronger over time. I am well aware of Facebook’s problems and the well deserved criticism, yet the platform is siting there — ripe for our use in the public interest — and I, for one, think we should exploit it for all its worth because our asses are on the line here.
And you get credit. You earn yourself “producer credit” on #ourtopstory by writing to The New York Times page of Facebook. Make a pitch in a paragraph or more if you like, and then copy it and paste it here on Medium as well as on the Our Top Story page if you use Facebook. This is simple enough. And it’s a remarkably useful writing exercise. It does take time for this to work to our collective benefit, so you have to be patient and persistent and willing to disclose to your circle of friends and acquaintances your reasons for pitching #ourtopstory to The New York Times and other top tier news organizations.
I hope you’re thinking: “Why not ask them to cover #ourtopstory because we will learn something of value?” You’d be remembered in connection building an inspiration system on the inspiring truth of achievement as it is reported by The New York Times and other top tier news organizations. Think about how excellent coverage of excellence could eventually provide human beings with an extraordinary form of education. In the story I tell, we find evidence that we can get it together and flourish rather than perish as we become a species of symbol processing creatures with very powerful media in our hands.
If writers can help to build an inspiration system on the story of achievement and benefit from it as time passes and the content of our character is revealed, why would we not participate in this writing experiment? Nothing prevents us from exploring the best in ourselves thoroughly, systematically. In the fantasy we start to use #coverexcellence to pitch this story and offer examples of it to The New York Times. This is the best use of facebook. In the story, we conclude that we should exploit it. Our choice helps to explain why “we are all rich and favored in the future” as I point out at my first opportunity in the story. We buy good feelings, and I get the feeling that we’ll enjoy telling #ourtopstory.
Did I mention that we can provide a cure for poverty as we #coverexcellence?