I normally don’t peruse the innards of Details.com, but I couldn’t resist this article after seeing a tweet from Daniel Pink:
Introducing the First Dropper: Critical Eye : Details: “Unlike most consumers, the First Dropper seems to be immune to peer pressure and the sway of marketing gurus; he’s propelled instead by an instinctual feel for when a trend has become overvalued. Think of him as a slyly influential arbiter of taste—one who operates as a covert counterweight to his better-known cousin, the Early Adopter.”
As my friend and co-conspirator Thomas Whitley pointed out (he also suggested I write this piece to elaborate the Jesus connection), I’ve frequently labeled myself a “chronic early adopter” over the years. That self-identification is certainly not a fabrication either. Evidently there’s a dopamine release in my brain each time I find a new service or app in my hundreds-of-subscriptions-long feed reading adventures (who says RSS is dead?). I rush off to download the app or apply for the pre-alpha/alpha/beta test like a lemming so that I can ride the dopamine wave.
However, the magic piece of self-identification that I’ve been missing is now glaringly obvious to me thanks to David Amsden’s piece linked above… I’m a chronic early dropper.
That doesn’t mean that I give up on things before they actually are uncool or whatever adjective fits there, but it does mean that I enjoy the spider sense tingle of knowing when it’s time to fold ‘em. Sometimes (often) that spider sense is due to some notion of righteous indignation or misguided idealism. However, I do know that I can spot the downward trend of a service or fad before it’s too late to realize that continuing down a path would be “a trap” (thanks to the Admiral).
Hence, my current philosophical troubles with turning over my digital existence and data to advertising companies (Google, Twitter and Facebook).
I also put a great deal of trust and admiration into those other humans that seem to have an early detection warning and know when it’s time to move on and either start something new, start something anew or bail and find a different vendor. This doesn’t only pertain to tech, however. Amsden quotes term-coiners Greg Behr and Billy Warden who nails it in his tongue-in-cheek remark…
“When the First Dropper finds that things he’s been sold don’t fully work,” adds Warden, “he has the guts to go against the tide and stand up and make a decision on his own. Jesus is the ultimate First Dropper, Ben Franklin and the founders of America were First Droppers, Martin Scorsese and all those rebels in the seventies who pushed the boundaries of film were First Droppers. These are the guys you want to emulate, not the dude who’s simply willing to wait in line for two days to be the first to own an iPad.”
Sexist pronouns aside, it’s a great point (I’d throw Steve Jobs in that group).
After four years of undergraduate and five years in seminary and graduate school studying religion, I love this perspective on the personhood of Jesus. Of course, the person of Jesus (in a historical sense) is fraught with complication and interpretation since we are limited on actual resources. The Gospels are great narratives but modern readers must realize their intent was not to give what we would consider historically accurate depictions of 1st century Jewish and non-Jewish peasants living on the outskirts of literate society.
However, the multivalent picture of Jesus we do gain from the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament inform us of a person that recognized things were going off the rails and needed a change. I won’t go into the peculiarities of whether Jesus considered himself a divine messiah or a rabbi with a purpose or a prophet, but it’s safe to say that Jesus was a First Dropper in the construction that Amsden lays out. For those of us who attempt to follow Jesus (still hoping for a DM from him one day), he’s the Dropper in Chief.
For our own purposes, there’s validity in taking the concept of Jesus (Christ, I guess) and applying that to our own community. John H. Elliott (one of my favorite theologians) lays out a similar argument that the Petrine community represented in 1 Peter was attempting to do this exact thing in the mid-to-late 1st century when these books would have been written. If you’re into religion or sociology, he’s a great read.
Perhaps the reason the Petrine books and the books from the Johannine community (those crazy “John books no one reads at the back of the Bible” to quote a college prof of mine) get so little (thoughtful) coverage in Protestant pews, pulpits and Max Lucado books is because they point to a revolutionary style of christianity (little “c” to represent the variant) that is not necessarily comforting and is quite challenging because it not only requires a walk down to the altar to hand over some abstract notion of one’s soul, but demands social and interpersonal action from followers. That’s not easy.
From out of this silly article comes a very real theological statement for those of us crazy enough to believe that Jesus was onto something. The trickier issue is whether or not Jesus would now drop the American style of flag-wrapped-Christianity (the big “C” variety) that is rife with sinful capitalism, sexual abuse, power tripping, collusion with governments and almost everything he spoke against on the side of a hill one summer afternoon.
It’s a dangerous question.
I like to think of Jesus, in his youth, being a chronic early adopter then transitioning, in his 20′s, to becoming the actualized early dropper that would set in motion the ultimate revolution. It’s an idealistic view, but makes sense to me.
