Following up on my last post, this video, which was created for the IUCN in partnership with the communications agency Futerra and Wildscreen, really drives home the point that a new approach to selling the idea of biodiversity needs to start now. No one (nearly) is listening to the tales of destruction. Thanks to Stéphane De Greef for sharing!
For more information, Futerra has also developed this wonderful brochure worth having a look at.
About claybolt
Clay Bolt is an award-winning natural history and conservation photographer whose work and projects have been featured by National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy, Scientific American, Outdoor Photographer and Audubon Magazine among others. In 2009 Clay co-founded the "Meet Your Neighbours" project. MYN is an international nature photography project developed to connect people with the wildlife within their own communities. Currently the project has representation in over 30 locations around the world. Clay is passionate about spreading the message that an appreciation of nature begins at home and he continues to seek out new ways to promote this concept through his photography, writing and community involvement.
I really enjoyed reading this post and providing links to the video and brochure. I’m not a religious person myself though the concepts do follow in many ways those advocated by Jehova Witness’s who many denounce ……… who knows the marketing gurus might even tell us in the not to distant future that we need to stop using words like evolution and use the word adaptation.
My concern (where I agree with Rob on the Facebook comments) is the length of the initial sequence of doom and gloom on the video. It is very well done but given the way so many people reach saturation the irony might be that this puts people off the message in the video. And many people just do not ‘get’ irony.
The clarion call to all those of us who get out there and ‘preach’ is to use whatever it takes to get the message across. Doom and gloom makes people shut off and feel that there is no point. This is a gift to corporations everywhere that seek to destroy our wild heritage in their pursuit of ‘mammon’.
John MacPherson’s poem in his comment on a previous post (We’re Deaf to Doom & Gloom) is a great example of this – a change of pace to get that message over.
You can ‘play’ an audience with humour and the cut to the serious…short, sharp and pungent. It becomes a hammer blow and then back to lighter things… then repeat the tack. It works – think of physical pain, the brain produces natural pain killers (endorphins) that kick in and reduce the impact or the mental pain of grief. Fortunately, when we lose a loved one the passage of time allows us to get on with life. Humans simply cannot sustain emotion/pain at a high level without getting numbed… if we realise that aspect of the human condition then the thing is to work around it.
I was really touched by John’s poem and what is so great about an approach like that is it completely disarms you. I think this line in your comment makes a lot of sense:
“It becomes a hammer blow and then back to lighter things… then repeat the tack. It works – think of physical pain, the brain produces natural pain killers (endorphins) that kick in and reduce the impact or the mental pain of grief. ”
To take this line a little further back into the ether, do you think on some level (since we are all hard-wired to connect with nature) that we actually feel and recognize the pain of our disconnect so we block it out?
You raise an interesting point and its something I have wondered about. I think that the feeling of ‘pain’ is manifest on a subliminal level – maybe a disquiet, a sense of purposelessness or a lack of fulfillment… and many try to assuage this via materialism. The problem is that the wanting and the subsequent spending themselves become the drugs and the craving can never be satisfied. One moves on to the next purchase.
One thing I have found is that if there are elements in your life that are directly related to ‘survival’…growing food, making things and so on then the sense of satisfaction is so much greater. For so many in the western world life is six or seven steps removed from the essentials and the nature of much work is to perpetuate artificiality (shiftng paper or its electronic equivalent)… things that, in the grand scheme of it all, do not matter.
I think that many of us fail to recognise the simple connections…when you do it makes such a difference to personal satisfaction, acceptance of oneself (good and bad) and there is far less likelihood of depression… I am no doctor and my conclusions are based on an empirical analysis!
Clay
I really enjoyed reading this post and providing links to the video and brochure. I’m not a religious person myself though the concepts do follow in many ways those advocated by Jehova Witness’s who many denounce ……… who knows the marketing gurus might even tell us in the not to distant future that we need to stop using words like evolution and use the word adaptation.
Regards
Geoff
My concern (where I agree with Rob on the Facebook comments) is the length of the initial sequence of doom and gloom on the video. It is very well done but given the way so many people reach saturation the irony might be that this puts people off the message in the video. And many people just do not ‘get’ irony.
The clarion call to all those of us who get out there and ‘preach’ is to use whatever it takes to get the message across. Doom and gloom makes people shut off and feel that there is no point. This is a gift to corporations everywhere that seek to destroy our wild heritage in their pursuit of ‘mammon’.
John MacPherson’s poem in his comment on a previous post (We’re Deaf to Doom & Gloom) is a great example of this – a change of pace to get that message over.
You can ‘play’ an audience with humour and the cut to the serious…short, sharp and pungent. It becomes a hammer blow and then back to lighter things… then repeat the tack. It works – think of physical pain, the brain produces natural pain killers (endorphins) that kick in and reduce the impact or the mental pain of grief. Fortunately, when we lose a loved one the passage of time allows us to get on with life. Humans simply cannot sustain emotion/pain at a high level without getting numbed… if we realise that aspect of the human condition then the thing is to work around it.
Paul,
I was really touched by John’s poem and what is so great about an approach like that is it completely disarms you. I think this line in your comment makes a lot of sense:
“It becomes a hammer blow and then back to lighter things… then repeat the tack. It works – think of physical pain, the brain produces natural pain killers (endorphins) that kick in and reduce the impact or the mental pain of grief. ”
To take this line a little further back into the ether, do you think on some level (since we are all hard-wired to connect with nature) that we actually feel and recognize the pain of our disconnect so we block it out?
Clay
You raise an interesting point and its something I have wondered about. I think that the feeling of ‘pain’ is manifest on a subliminal level – maybe a disquiet, a sense of purposelessness or a lack of fulfillment… and many try to assuage this via materialism. The problem is that the wanting and the subsequent spending themselves become the drugs and the craving can never be satisfied. One moves on to the next purchase.
One thing I have found is that if there are elements in your life that are directly related to ‘survival’…growing food, making things and so on then the sense of satisfaction is so much greater. For so many in the western world life is six or seven steps removed from the essentials and the nature of much work is to perpetuate artificiality (shiftng paper or its electronic equivalent)… things that, in the grand scheme of it all, do not matter.
I think that many of us fail to recognise the simple connections…when you do it makes such a difference to personal satisfaction, acceptance of oneself (good and bad) and there is far less likelihood of depression… I am no doctor and my conclusions are based on an empirical analysis!