There is nothing like experiencing

Following the Tunisian Revolution which ended Ben Ali’s dictatorship, the first Tunisian democratic elections were held on October 23th 2011. In order to encourage people to vote, the organization Engagement Citoyen (“Civic Commitment”) found a creative and smart idea; they put a giant poster of Ben Ali on a wall in La Goulette, Tunis, and waited for people’s reactions. They didn’t wait long; outraged citizens rapidly tore down the poster, unveiling the written message hidden under it; "Beware. The dictatorship can return. On October 23, VOTE!". (watch the video) 

By doing so, Engagement Citoyen put the Tunisians walking by this wall (and those watching this video) in the situation they could be faced with again if the dictatorship suddenly returned. They made them truly experience the feeling they would have in such situation and in effect, the emotion created is clearly seeable in people’s reactions! This is to me a very strong and effective call to vote because it tackles in a relevant way the main barrier to vote in democracies; the fact that voting often appears like a boring duty that we feel we personally can afford to avoid.

Though we are attached to democracy and we understand the necessity to vote in order to maintain it, we sometimes fail doing so, whether our reason is “my single vote won’t change anything anyway, so who cares if I personally don’t vote?” or “all those politicians are corrupted, they are basically the same, so what’s the point?” or simply “actually, I have something else planned this week-end so I won’t be able to vote”. Rationally, we already understand the necessity to vote, but we sometimes do not vote. How is that?

The answer provided by the Heath brothers in their book SWITCH is the following; sometimes, understanding is simply not enough to change. To make people change, one great solution is to make them feel the necessity or the opportunity to change. And to do so, there is nothing like experiencing; How do you feel when you are put in such or such situation?

Thus, this “Ben Ali is back” experience allowed the Tunisians to experience the feeling that democracy is not granted, and that if they want to preserve it, they have to vote. And hopefully they will remember this feeling and eventually vote next time they will have the duty to do so.

The South African organization POWA (People Opposing Women Abuse) also created an interesting campaign relying on this same idea. The video is an experiment carried out in a townhouse complex in Johannesburg. During the first night, a man plays drums in his house; several neighbors come to complain. Another night, the same man in the same house plays very loud a track that simulates verbal abuse and wife beating; nobody comes to complain.

I think that watching this video makes most people feel uncomfortable, because the whole point with experiments is that they allow extrapolations; this one suggests that if faced with this situation, most of us would not dare interfering and would even pretend not hearing what happens. (Though one may think such experiment is questionable because it has not been repeated enough times to prove anything, it shows that such situations do exist.) Such experiment enables us to find ourselves in the neighbors’ situation; what would/should we do? Call the security, call the police, send a group complaint, call the POWA helpline, do nothing? This video makes us experience the sad truth; sometimes there is no complaint. And with this surely comes for us the experience of feelings, such as indignation or even guilt.

As far as I am concerned, this has been a memorable and convincing experience; I watched this video several years ago and I still remember it. In effect, experiencing demonstrates things and enables us to make them ours. This is probably more memorable than “simply” understanding because experience is first of all about emotions and feelings, thus more likely to deeply affect us and stick in our memory. Therefore, these two examples make me think that many other purposes can be effectively served by the power of this “experience approach”.

Alicia Lafage, exchange student at Wake Forest University