After reading the Harvey paper I was left with a big question. Pop culture and all of its various forms of media create a lot of division and diversification. Because of how many different groups people are able to separate themselves into, how can you be an effective leader and align them all? Even within myself, I can pick out some hyper-segmented niches that I associate with, most of which didn’t even exist a hundred years ago. While it is very easy to separate people into different interests, I think it is very difficult to bring them together. I do not think there is a blanket solution, which is what I think a lot of leaders try to come up with. If you were to think about a large group of diverse people and then put all of their interests and needs into a venn diagram, the area where every single one overlaps would likely be very small, if it even exists. The problem with catering to everyone’s individual needs, however, is that it is usually very expensive and resource-consuming. I guess that just leaves a mix of the two, trying to meet everyone’s needs and interests in the most efficient manner. But then who do you decide who gets left out? I think differences and individuality are beneficial for many reasons, but it sure does create a lot of problems when it comes to decision making.
Critical Thinking
Meeting everyone’s needs as a leader is almost certainly impossible. I think the question’s that Harvey proposes on how to find that common ground as a leader and a group are really interesting in figuring out what is most important. Perhaps it is through these questions that we find the common interest and common problems.
I never thought about pop culture in this way. Usually, I tend to think of pop culture as a way to unite groups of people under one category. I now realize, it can also separate individuals and their belief systems. Sometimes pop culture only applies to one community. How do we distinguish pop culture as creating separation and pop culture as creating identity?