The key to riding the waves is to understand the forces that move the masses and know approximately when a society will reverse and head back the other direction.
You’ve seen the public redefine what is acceptable and what is not. But by what process do we choose the new rules? It feels as though the earth is shifting beneath our feet.
Having made my living for thirty years as an advertising consultant to small business owners nationwide, I’ve heard thousands of them practically sing in chorus, “Ads that worked well in the past aren’t working anymore. What should we do now? What happens next? Where do we go from here?”
The questions I needed to answer for them were: What are the forces that drive the decisions of the public? What makes people do the things they do?
Journey with Michael R. Drew and me as we examine the predictable, rhythmic attractions that move a society from one extreme to another. Together we’ll examine where we’ve been and how we got there. When we get back to where we started, you’ll know where society is headed and understand the forces that move us like flotsam on the tide. You’ll know exactly how to get in step with the public’s expectations.
Not only that, you’ll be able to stay a step ahead of them. The new rules of success will be clear to you.
Predictable, rhythmic attractions are what move our society. Rhythm is intrinsic to the human experience. Feet patter, hearts beat, lungs breathe, planets circle, and seasons cycle to a rhythm. Music, poetry, and dance are built upon it.
The yearnings of the heart are cyclical as well. We are rhythmically pulled toward one hunger and away from another. Back and forth we travel, forever dissatisfied, because the hardest choices in life are those that are between two good things. But we don’t move between these poles as individuals; we move collectively, as a society.
Solomon observed these endless cycles three thousand years ago and wrote,
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
As you read this book, you’ll recall those words of Solomon and think, How very right he was! If only we could learn to examine the experiences of former generations, perhaps we could learn how to avoid taking good things too far.