The Challenge Connecting with Concepts

What Freedom means to Matsutake Mushroom Hunters

Ten years ago when I began creating videos with nonprofit organizations, I started by focusing on finding common ground.

For me that meant finding out what people were feeling about a particular problem, solution or outcome.

Sometimes we could tap into this feeling, say of safety for our planetary future, by using specific words like sustainability. That term, while not perfect, symbolized doing things that would help conserve or create resources that were essential for the health of the planet long term.

I was a few years into working on a documentary about sustainable urban transportation when I realized the complexity of the concept and how using this term jumped over other issues.

For example, when developers proposed building housing around BART stations, the Bay Area Rapid Transportation rail, in the name of sustainability because fewer people would be using their cars to commute. What happened was lower income people were priced out of these neighborhoods. They moved to areas farther away from their jobs. These areas lacked reliable, affordable public transportation so they purchased older, more polluting cars.

I realized I could not talk about sustainability without talking about income inequality.

In the past several years I’ve witnessed the fracturing of previously idealized concepts including freedom, dignity, sustainability.

The author of The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, speaks about assemblages, as explained by looking at the concept of polyphonic music, in which “autonomous melodies intertwine.” In her book she looks at the multiplicity of motivations of the diverse groups of people who come together in the mountains of Oregon to pick Matsutake mushrooms for the Japanese market.

She started to understand the different ideas each group and individual had around the common concept that united them in their decision to pick join the mushroom economy, a sense of freedom.

Freedom: Common Vocabulary – Different Ideas

• American Veterans – freedom from crowds which sparked flashbacks and panic attacks

• Chinese Hmong and Mien – freedom from tiny apartments in urban centers

• Mien grandmother – freedom from family responsibilities

• Khmer teenager – freedom from growing up with the influence of urban gangs

• White field agent – freedom from labor

I appreciate the idea of assemblages of understanding.

How can you use this idea of assemblage in your own approach to storytelling?

Here is a thought experiment:

Do a mind map of the various characters of the story you want to tell. Look at your various audience members and their motivations, dreams, challenges. And look at the conflicting approaches to the problem you are trying to solve or idea you are exploring, what might be the influences that led to the various different approaches.

Fiction writers look at the backstory and motivations of every character in their story, what influences led them to their current dreams, outlook on life, personal challenges, etc.

This is the first article in a series about finding common ground in order to connect with others, to share our ideas.

Blog posts in the series on Finding Common Ground:
The Challenge Connecting with Facts
The Power of Experiences
How Our Questions Connect Us