Overton Window

‘History is the story of conditions that long seem reasonable until they begin to seem ridiculous.’

The 1960s, set in the midst of the Civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Voting rights act - a tumultuous decade in history. Back then, it would have been inconceivable that a coloured individual would run for any office in the government, let alone the position of the President of the United States of America.

Five decades later.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - Barack Obama, the US Senator from Illinois, won the quadrennial presidential election, thus goes on to serve as the 44th president.

The rest is history.

How did we as a society progress from turning a blind eye on racial discrimination, police brutality, segregation and suppressing voting rights in minority groups to electing the first African American president five decades later?

What causes the shift in attitude and how do we explain the phenomena?

I came across this concept - Overton Window in Billions, the TV show couple months ago.

Overton Window

Overton window is the range of policies that is politically accepted by the society and population at a given time. It was described by Joseph P. Overton, an executive in a free market, government think tank in Michigan, Mackinac Centre for Public Policy. He died in a plane crash at 43 years old and have his work was continued by his colleague Joseph Lehman.

The concept proposes that politician’s job is to navigate within the window and identify whether a specific policy is viable for the climate of public opinion at the time; whereas the think tank’s job is to propose policies that exists just outside the window, in hope of shifting the window and making the previously unthinkable achievable.

The degree of acceptance of public ideas are classified as such - unthinkable, radical, acceptable, sensible, popular, policy.

According to Lehman, ‘The most common misconception is that lawmakers themselves are in the business of shifting the Overton window. That is absolutely false. Lawmakers are actually in the business of detecting where the window is, and then moving to be in accordance with it.’

The concept is an explanation on why ideas work, how public opinions sway, how ideas come in and out of fashion, and not an advocacy of extreme policy proposals.

‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.’ - Noam Chomsky.

Spoiler alert

In the show, Chuck Rhoades, the ex-attorney general of New York attempts a run for governor of New York. Towards the end of the campaign, he was blackmailed by his adversary on his private life - being a sado-masochist, a person who derives sexual gratification from receiving pain or humiliation. Chuck was threatened with having his fetish go public, risking his personal and family reputation, unless he drops out.

Under those circumstances, be it in the show, or most likely in reality, if caught with such colourful persona, any individuals would have wilted under public pressure and dropped out. Chuck, however decided to roll the dice and try to shift the Overton Window - to make acceptable his private life to the status quo.

I won’t go on and reveal what happens next.

The Overton Window moves!

This can be seen happening in cyclical patterns throughout history- legalisation of gay marriage, decriminalization of all drugs in Oregon, I don’t know how we went from the feminist movement to having Trump won the election despite being caught with Access Hollywood tape. Impressive nonetheless if you put aside all political inclinations. Perhaps he was more politically savvy in gauging public opinion than we give him credit for.

Overton Window is also driven by Culture.

Culture

The difficulty with the Overton window is the span - identifying the borders and the freedom that exists in it.

Culture is internalized based on the environment. Culture is also outside the window - yet to be mainstreamed. To shift the culture is to understand the limits and navigate on the periphery.

Dipping in outside the periphery intermittently is recognised as creative or genius;

Lingering too long on the outside falls trap of being deemed radical.

No one wants to be ridiculed for their actions, behaviours and so most of us exercise our creativity within the confinements - thus the status quo; the culture of today.

Shifting the window

The difficulty was never the lack of creativity, it is the fear of being put on a pedestal as an example gone right/wrong (Kanye West comes to mind on flirting the boundary between a genius and a madmen). Ultimately, we want to be accepted and understood - our desperate longing for sense of community as Homo sapiens.

Shifting the window requires more than creativity, it requires work, perseverance, vision.

Product that exist just outside the boundaries.

Product that is incrementally better.

Product that exceeds peoples’ expectations.

Product that stands the test of time.

A creative piece of work developed by enterprising professionals that is ahead of its time but recognised to be of a superior quality to the status quo;

A piece of work that is marginally better than the status quo;

A piece of work that exists on the fringes, and just outside, which have a large enough impact to create a movement.

That is what is required to shift the Overton window - at heart, the Culture.

(I wrote a piece on Culture a while back, have a read if you’re interested.)