The Story of Stuff

My leftist, atheist acquaintance from New England (where else?) sent out this website to me and others on his personal distro list: http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

I have to say, I had no intention of watching it. But the name really grabbed me. So I watched it. Quickly realizing that it had a philosophical end point considerably different than my own, I thought “OK, well, I’ll watch 60 seconds of this.” Seven minutes later, I finally made myself turn it off because I’m so slammed tonight (it’s 20 mins total). A few things I noticed:

- There are few things as complex as the world economy. This site takes something unbelievably complex (and horribly boring to most) and uses simple conceptualizing, effective writing, and a great visual presentation to make it very interesting to most (I’d think) audiences.
- The tank bit aside, the presentation takes topics and positions *highly* political charged and presents them in a politically neutral way. It’s as if they thought (again, tank bit aside) “How can we explain this in such a way that takes the politics out, so that we can reach people of all political persuasions?”
- A key piece of ‘taking the politics out’ is showing how the world economy, and our participation therein, affects people around the world, particularly including those worthy of our compassion. I mean, they really do this well – just right, not overdone.
- This is a very focused site. One of the reasons I’d like to watch all 20 mins is that I can tell from the site that I’m not going to be expected to wade through a bunch of stuff. I won’t have to check out all sorts of menus and links in order to get much out of the site. It’s all about the presentation.
- And yet, if I dig this, I can participate in a number of very simple and low-barrier ways (see lower left).

This really makes me think of The Wilberforce Project. It’s hardly a direct comparison, of course, but as far as being an “on-ramp” to the Wilberforce Project and/or BreakPoint, the notions of…
- catching one’s imagination via a compelling name
- taking something very complex and making it interesting and easy to understand (this is HUGE … what’s more complex to explain than what an Xian worldview looks like after all?? I can totally see something similar to this demonstrating how a lack of an Xian worldview makes the world malfunction, operating outside of Design OR how The Church in the US is so weak and ineffective because of a lack of an Xian Worldview using such a presentation method)
- taking the politics out (again, huge) AND showing positive reasons for compassion rather than negatively Bible-thumping
- focus
- easy, low-barrier participation (not just anonymous consumption)
…I find this site to be a great example of what an entry site to The Wilberforce Project / BreakPoint could look like. Either as a persistent presence or as part of a multi-month campaign.

Anyhow, just thoughts…