Culture Is Upstream

Journalist Andrew Breitbart is attributed to having said, “Politics is downstream of culture.” I say, “Culture is upstream of politics.” Same difference.

Culture, at its deepest and most expansive, is the total environment of meaning that human beings are born into and shaped by — everything that tells us what is real, what is good (and bad), and what is possible. It’s everything that tells us who we are.

Culture is way more than Beyoncé causing online searches for cowboy hats to spike by over 200% during her Cowboy Carter era (although she counts). Culture is about what feels true to people. As University of Michigan business school professor Dr. Marcus Collins says, it “is a system of values, symbols and norms that demarcate who people are and what the expectations of people like them are.”

Take the deep-seated culture of rugged individualism and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narratives that permeate the United States. This shows up all the time in what we consume and translates into how people work, view success and think about accountability. 

This cultural norm keeps focus on individual blame rather than how broken systems could work better for more people. We’re seeing it come to life now with H.R. 1’s punitive work requirements for Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, despite research that shows these kinds of policies only push people further into poverty.

This is why culture is so hard to change through logical arguments alone. You can convince someone intellectually and still not change their gut responses, their comfort zones, their automatic assumptions about what’s normal or how they see the world. 

Culture is made up of compelling and contagious narratives that answer: Who are we? How did we get here? What do we owe each other?

This summer, we witnessed culture in its most potent form in the World Cup, where people across the globe cheered on their national teams through wins and losses. In that process, some visitors to the U.S. saw a different view of America and the American people than the ones they see in the news. This helped to shift their opinions of the country (Everything is big here) and the citizens (Everyone is so nice).

Experts note that before you can win elections or pass laws, you must win people’s imagination — the stories, values and assumptions that people absorb before they ever think about policy. This shapes how they think about policies and solutions.

In 2018, Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind” brought psychedelics into accepted mainstream culture. Veterans spoke up about their experiences with psychedelics to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Silicon Valley techies and podcasters talked about psychedelics, normalizing them to anyone who would listen. 

In a relatively short time, these cultural shifts have laid the groundwork for new policies. Some cities and states across the country have decriminalized psychedelics and enacted therapeutic programs. This year, a new executive order fast-tracked psychedelic research and development for mental health treatment.

Political outcomes emerge from a culture that has already preloaded certain ideas as obvious, natural or moral. By the time something becomes a political fight, the cultural battle has often already been won or lost.

Too often we are trying to wrestle with people downstream about what to think when a lot of this is already baked. We need to move upstream through culture, where the baking is happening.

The Overton Window theory captures this — the window of acceptable political ideas shifts based on what culture has normalized. This leads to three important questions:

I hope you’ll join me in thinking upstream. By using cultural strategies to shape norms, worldviews and identities, we can shape action.