Signs of the Times – 1/19/12
Filed under: dual nature, emergent, signs of the times | Tags: bottom up, failing institutions, government, individualism
Leave a Comment I often come across items that I believe reflect the changes I’m describing on this blog. To me they are “signs of the times.” Here are a couple.
“The Rise of the New Groupthink”
The New York Times recently ran an article about a paradox in the way we work today. For many organizations, there is an emphasis on the idea of collaboration. As author Susan Cain notes:
Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
However, she notes that there is a problem with this approach:
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
Later in the article she says:
…I’m not suggesting that we abolish teamwork. Indeed, recent studies suggest that influential academic work is increasingly conducted by teams rather than by individuals. (Although teams whose members collaborate remotely, from separate universities, appear to be the most influential of all.) The problems we face in science, economics and many other fields are more complex than ever before, and we’ll need to stand on one another’s shoulders if we can possibly hope to solve them.
But even if the problems are different, human nature remains the same. And most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy.
To me this is an example of a basic principle of the Quantum Age: contrary to the popular myth that we must choose between individualism and collectivism, we are inherently both individualistic and collective by nature. We often have a hard time grasping this because it’s impossible to see both qualities simultaneously. You can see a group or you can see a person in that group; you can’t see both at the same time. But just as subatomic particles have an intrinsic dual particle/wave nature, we humans have a dual individual/collective nature. We will only resolve many of our current problems when we recognize this fact and proceed accordingly, disposing of the prevalent mythology regarding individualism versus collectivism.
Country in Crisis: Looking to America’s Mayors to Rise to the Challenge
Arianna Huffington recently wrote an article regarding how America’s mayors are working to develop solutions to problems that seem to be stumping the politicians in Washington. As she notes:
We’re now in the midst of a battle to see who will sit atop the pyramid in official Washington. This battle will dominate the media in the year ahead, but what the last year showed is that the more important story is what’s happening outside Washington. It was a year in which Time declared “The Protester” its Person of the Year and “Occupy” was named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. It was a year of solutions and energy and activism from the bottom up. And given that top-down thinking not only brought us a Depression-level crisis, but also shows no signs of getting us out of it, it’s bottom-up innovation that will be more relevant.
The rest of her article offers examples of such bottom-up innovation.
These examples demonstrate the power of emergence, the principle that living, self-organizing systems develop from the bottom up, within the context of their environment. As I’ve written here and here, many heads of institutions believe things are best run from the top down; that is a major reason why many of those institutions are in trouble. The solution will not be to accord more power and wealth to the heads of those institutions. The solution will be to recognize the power of emergence, and to learn how to rebuild our institutions in a way that harnesses that power.
All Together Now
Filed under: interconnected, uncertainty | Tags: conservative, decoherence, Democrats, Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, opposites, progressive, Republicans, Tea Party
Leave a Comment We’re all in this together.
That’s not a popular thought these days.
These days we prefer to think of how we’re different: conservative, progressive, young, old, white, black, Republican, Democrat, Tea Partier, Occupier, Christian, Moslem, Jew, vegan, meat eater, Yankee fan, Red Sox fan, soccer mom, NASCAR dad, beer drinker, wine swiller, etc., etc.
We’re eager to proclaim our differences whenever we can – on the radio, TV, the web, email, and Facebook. For support, we gather together with those who share our values. After all, there’s strength in numbers. We feel embattled and oppressed by those who are different than us. To buck up our spirits for the fight we must fight against our enemies we tell ourselves:
We’re all in this together.
Against THEM.
You’ve got to watch out for THEM. You can’t trust THEM. THEY want to destroy the country. THEY want to destroy our way of life. You can’t believe the crap THEY pour out on the radio, TV, the web, email, and Facebook. THEY are wrong. THEY are liars. THEY don’t know what THEY are talking about. Or maybe THEY know exactly what THEY are doing, spreading lies, half-truths and propaganda to have THEIR way against US.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell what their tactics are. But one thing is clear: THEY are responsible for what’s wrong with today’s world.
WE had better watch out, WE had better be on our guard against THEM. WE had better use all the tools WE have available these days to fight back against THEM: radio, TV, the web, email, Facebook. WE have to be strong and stand together as one against THEM. And remember:
We’re all in this together.
In the fight against THEM.
WE are ready for this fight. THEY deserve whatever WE can do to them: THEY have it coming. The world would be a wonderful place, WE would have peace and happiness, if it wasn’t for THEM. Because THEY fight US, WE must fight THEM. WE have no choice. The world is a jungle because of THEM.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine a better world, a world free of fear and hatred and conflict. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that THEY have enough power to ruin the world for US. Is that really possible? Can THEY really do that all on their own?
Or do they need US to help THEM create this jungle world? Is this a Fight to the Death? Or is it a Dance? We react to what they do; they react to our reaction; we react to their reaction; they react to our reaction; we react to their reaction… And so forth.
This raises a question: if their actions are in response to our actions, to what degree are we responsible for their actions? Conversely, to what degree do their actions determine our reactions? Do THEY have some influence over OUR actions?
This raises another question: what would THEY do if WE didn’t react? What if we just did our thing, followed our beliefs, went on our way, and ignored THEM? Would the Dance end, the music stop?
What would THEY do if WE weren’t there?
What would WE do if THEY weren’t there?
And what would the world be like if the music stopped and the Dance ended?
Another question: to what degree are WE defined by our opposition to THEM? To what degree are THEY defined by their opposition to US? Who would WE be without THEM? Who would THEY be without US?
In quantum physics, all things exist in a state of potentiality until they encounter something that forces them to be defined as THIS rather than THAT. Physicists have a term for this: decoherence.
Maybe that’s what is happening here: our beliefs exist in a state of potentiality until we encounter the beliefs of others. Confronted by those beliefs, we are forced to choose: do we agree or disagree? It is only in encountering the beliefs of others that we come to know more clearly what we believe.
Just as we can only know light when we’ve encountered darkness, we can only know who we are when we encounter others who are not us. We are inextricably linked to our opposite, as black is to white.
If that’s the case, then there’s only one possible conclusion:
We’re all in this together.
Where Are The “Deciders”?
Filed under: emergent, interconnected | Tags: change, deciders, failing institutions, leaders, leadership, Penn State, Thomas Friedman
Leave a Comment In yesterday’s New York Times Thomas Friedman asked “Who’s The Decider?” He observes:
No leaders want to take hard decisions anymore, except when forced to. Everyone — even China’s leaders — seems more afraid of their own people than ever. One wonders whether the Internet, blogging, Twitter, texting and micro-blogging, as in China’s case, has made participatory democracy and autocracy so participatory, and leaders so finely attuned to every nuance of public opinion, that they find it hard to make any big decision that requires sacrifice. They have too many voices in their heads other than their own.
Friedman apparently believes that today’s leaders’ reluctance to make hard decisions is due to their “fear of their own people” – that they’re listening more to the opinions of others than to their own inner voices. The implication is that if these folks just mustered the courage to take a stand then everything would be better. He concludes:
Yes, it’s true that in the hyperconnected world, in the age of Facebook and Twitter, the people are more empowered and a lot more innovation and ideas will come from the bottom up, not just the top down. That’s a good thing — in theory. But at the end of the day — whether you are a president, senator, mayor or on the steering committee of your local Occupy Wall Street — someone needs to meld those ideas into a vision of how to move forward, sculpt them into policies that can make a difference in peoples’ lives and then build a majority to deliver on them. Those are called leaders. Leaders shape polls. They don’t just read polls. And, today, across the globe and across all political systems, leaders are in dangerously short supply.
That all sounds great, and in a way kind of easy. “C’mon folks, just suck it up and decide!”
The only problem with Friedman’s argument is that it totally ignores another angle on today’s leaders: they actually are making lots of decisions – frequently with disastrous results. These decisions have resulted in the omnipresent stench of institutional failure that has permeated our world today – something I’ve already written about here and here. As Jeff Jarvis wrote recently:
We don’t trust institutions anymore. Name a bank or financial institution you can trust today. That industry was built entirely on trust — we entrusted our money to their cloud — and they failed us. Government? The other day, I heard a cabinet member from a prior administration call Washington “paralyzed and poisonous” — and he’s an insider. Media? Pew released a study last week saying that three-quarters of Americans don’t believe journalists get their facts straight (which is their only job). Education? Built for a prior, institutional era. Religion? Various of its outlets are abusing children or espousing bigotry or encouraging violence. The #OccupyWallStreet troops are demonizing practically all of corporate America and with it, capitalism. What institutions are left? I can’t name one.
While the leaders of these failing institutions may be concerned about what the common folk think, it’s not a matter of waiting to see what people want and then doing it. After all, most Americans want the rich to pay more taxes. So why are so many politicians resisting raising taxes on the rich?
Rather than tailoring their behaviors to accomplish what “their people” want, today’s leaders all too often focus on their own agendas and try to shield their decisions and objectives from the prying eyes of the public. When I first wrote about this, I mentioned the problems confronting institutions like Toyota and the Catholic Church. But we regularly get news of new cases of institutional cover-up of embarrassing and inexcusable behaviors. Right now the focus is on Penn State. Does anyone doubt we will soon learn of others?
Unlike Mr. Friedman, I don’t think today’s problems are stymied by leaders’ fear of making decisions. Rather, I think the problem today is that our world has changed profoundly; as a result, the rules for how things work have changed. However, most of our leaders are products of an earlier time, with different rules.
While we live in an interconnected world, our leaders are largely products of a culture rooted in individualism. As a result, while they may be aware of what the public thinks and wants, many of these leaders value their own interests and beliefs over the greater good. Meanwhile, those who are focused on the greater good are still stymied by the fact that they don’t know what the new rules are.
So what are we to do? We might start by recognizing that while we live in a brave new world, it’s not the first time humans have been confronted with profound change. Much of what we’re seeing today – some desperately clinging to the past while others flounder around looking for different options – is probably standard fare in such situations. Change is hard, and it takes time.
At first, nobody has the answers. But as time goes on and people become more familiar with their changed world, they begin asking the right questions and finding answers in sometimes unexpected places. They learn to adapt to change, and show others the way.
Some of those who most benefited from the way things were before would be the most resistant to change; this would include many leaders who find themselves confronted with today’s strange new world. In such a world, they would have the most to lose. But sooner or later they will be confronted with a choice: adapt or fail. That choice will be pressed upon them by others who have little to lose and much to gain under the new rules.
Contrary to what Friedman might think, leaders willing to confront today’s world are not in short supply. We just don’t know who many of them are right now; the world is still being run in many cases by members of the old guard. But they’re out there.
The growing impatience expressed with today’s leaders could be a sign that we will soon have a changing of the guard. Time will tell.
Bottom-up in Rio
Filed under: emergent, quanta | Tags: Brazil, change, empowerment, poverty, Rio, technology
Leave a Comment With events like the Arab Spring and OccupyWallStreet, it has almost become a cliche to talk about the empowering potential of technology. Such events have emerged largely thanks to our interconnected technology – most notably things like Facebook and Twitter.
The PBS NewsHour recently offered a segment about technology’s potential in Rio de Janeiro. There social entrepreneur Rodrigo Baggio has created the Center for the Democratization of Information Technology (CDI), which is focused on developing computer literacy and infrastructure in the slums of Rio. As Baggio says (through a translator):
Technology and technological inclusion allows for an impact that’s greater than just learning how to use a computer and being able to have access to the Internet. The big impact is that it empowers low-income communities because it teaches them to utilize technology to understand their reality in a better way and identify the challenges that they face.
He then discusses an example:
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Baggio’s favorite example is this video posted on YouTube by a group of young people.
RODRIGO BAGGIO (through translator): These kids went out with cell phones and digital cameras and they were interviewing community members and taking pictures in order to better understand their reality, the challenges that they face in the community. They chose an example of a photo of rats. One of the kids had taken a photo of rats.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: They traced the rat problem to garbage not properly disposed of or collected. Then they spread word through handmade and computer-generated fliers. They sent this video to the mayor, posted it on YouTube, and Baggio says all the publicity got a response from city hall that resulted in better trash services.
RODRIGO BAGGIO (through translator): I mean, this is a story, you know, 10 kids from a class that used technology, use the Internet to discover a problem, and find a solution for it and change their reality as a result.
This is a great example of the empowering potential of today’s technology; it shows how a social action can emerge using only computers, cell phones, the internet…and a little creativity.
There are those who view power as a top-down phenomena; they argue that the way to improve things is to cater to the rich and powerful and then count on the benefits to “trickle down.” As this case illustrates, those familiar with the power of technology and social media are likely to respond that such views are increasingly out of date in today’s world.
Self-reliance
Filed under: dual nature, interconnected, quanta | Tags: failure, Herman Cain, individualism, internet, linked world, reality, self-reliance, success, the rich, Wall St
Leave a Comment There’s a lot of talk these days about self-reliance. According to some, our lot in life – our success or failure – is all up to us. As GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain recently said:
“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.”
According to psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner, Cain’s perception of self-reliance is common among the rich. As MSNBC’s Brian Alexander reports:
…rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.
This focus on self-reliance can be found among the non-rich as well:
…a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.
As behavioral economist Mark Wilhelm of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis pointed out, most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.
However, focusing solely on individual self-reliance ignores the reality of our dual particle/wave nature. None of us exists in a vacuum; we are all dependent on people and forces outside of us. As Albert Einstein once said:
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others.
Our focus on self-reliance can even blind us about our selves. Ernest Becker, in his Pulitzer-winning book The Denial of Death, noted:
We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center.
This preoccupation with self-reliance flies in the face of today’s interconnected world. It also limits our potential. To understand this, think for a moment about computers. A computer by itself can make you productive in doing things like managing a business’s finances or writing a book. But a computer connected to the internet can do so much more.
The same applies to people. To succeed in life it’s not enough to simply be self-reliant; we need to be connected to the world around us as well.
OccupyWallStreet and Failing Institutions
Filed under: emergent, interconnected | Tags: change, failing institutions, future, linked world, Occupy Wall Street, Wall St
Leave a Comment Jeff Jarvis has written about the OccupyWallStreet movement:
#OccupyWallStreet, to me, is about institutional failure. And so it is appropriate that #OccupyWallStreet itself is not run as an institution.
We don’t trust institutions anymore. Name a bank or financial institution you can trust today. That industry was built entirely on trust — we entrusted our money to their cloud — and they failed us. Government? The other day, I heard a cabinet member from a prior administration call Washington “paralyzed and poisonous” — and he’s an insider. Media? Pew released a study last week saying that three-quarters of Americans don’t believe journalists get their facts straight (which is their only job). Education? Built for a prior, institutional era. Religion? Various of its outlets are abusing children or espousing bigotry or encouraging violence. The #OccupyWallStreet troops are demonizing practically all of corporate America and with it, capitalism. What institutions are left? I can’t name one.
He goes on to say:
What’s happening is an attempt to define a new public, now that we can. Iceland, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are all countries being reimagined and remade: start-up nations. Hear Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir talk about building a new constitution, using Facebook, on the principles of “equality, transparency, accountability, and honesty” — liberté, égalité, fraternité, updated for the networked age.
In the end, this is why I wrote Public Parts, because we have the tools and thus the opportunity to rethink and reorganize our publics and decide what they stand for. The power and freedom that Gutenberg’s press brought to the early modern era, our networked tools now bring everyone in this, the early digital age. “They empower us. They grant us the ability to create, to connect, to organize, and to aggregate our knowledge…. They lower borders, even challenging our notion of nations.” That’s what the youth of these countries are doing.
I agree with the observation that many of our institutions are failing in important ways. However, I think this failure is symptomatic of larger changes happening in our world. It’s not a matter of intent – the leaders of these institutions aren’t trying to be evil. Rather it’s a reflection of the fact that those in charge are products of a different era and mindset, which is incapable of understanding and adapting to our changed world. As I have written before:
…many institutions are failing because they haven’t adapted to the ways our world has changed. One thing that’s striking about many of the big institutions finding themselves in hot water these days is that a big part of their problem appears rooted in a mistaken belief that they are able to tightly manage/control the information about problematic issues. Toyota had problems with car defects; it tried to hide them. The Church had problems with perverted priests; it tried to hide them. Goldman Sachs had problems with very risky investments and very shady dealings to get rid of them; it tried to hide them. Tiger Woods had a thing for cocktail waitresses; he tried to hide it.
In an earlier, less connected time, perhaps these things wouldn’t have become such big deals. Probably past experience in hiding problems had led the leaders of these institutions to try a similar approach in these cases.
However, they apparently didn’t realize that in today’s hyper-connected world it’s almost inevitable that bad things will come to light – whether it’s vehicle flaws, priests behaving badly, devious investment strategies, or adulterous affairs. And now when the news DOES come out, the impact is likely to be much greater than it might have been before the Internet and global communications – especially if it’s apparent there was a cover-up involved.
As I noted last year, the end result for all of these failing institutions will depend on their ability to adapt to our changed world:
I think this time is like any other in which great change has taken place. Some people and institutions will adapt to change and thrive; others will fail to adapt and fall by the wayside, deserted by their former supporters and clients.
Some may loudly protest the change and uncertainty of today’s world. They may even gain enough influence to hamper some institutions’ ability to adapt to these changes. But they can’t stop the change itself. In attempting to turn back the clock and to resurrect an illusory past they will be much like a bunch of Americans in the Panama Canal Zone back in 1964: all they are likely to accomplish is a quicker demise of the institutions they had hoped to preserve.
I’ve never been a believer in the so-called “Wisdom of the Market” as the term applied to Wall Street. But I do believe in the idea as it applies to transformational times and ideas. When the times are changing, the ones who understand and adapt to those changes will be the ones who thrive in what comes.
In the end we will be left with a combination of old institutions that adapted and new institutions that saw a better way and followed it. Everything else will just be history.
Failing Tests
Filed under: complexity, uncertainty | Tags: audit, education, Enron, internal controls, No Child Left Behind
Leave a Comment There’s been much talk lately about problems with the No Child Left Behind law. So many states are falling behind on meeting some of its provisions that the Obama administration has announced it will issue waivers to free them from its shortcomings. But maybe the problem isn’t with the specifics of certain provisions of the law. Maybe the problem is with its whole approach: evaluating the quality of a student’s education by giving them a standardized test.
Cathy N. Davidson, who teaches at Duke University, believes that approach is out of place in today’s world. In a Washington Post opinion piece she notes that “When Frederick J. Kelly invented the multiple-choice test in 1914, he was addressing a national crisis.” That crisis was caused by an explosion in the number of secondary school students:
The ranks of students attending secondary school had swollen from 200,000 in 1890 to more than 1.5 millionas immigrants streamed onto American shores, and as new laws made two years of high school compulsory for everyone and not simply a desirable option for the college bound. World War I added to the problem, creating a teacher shortage with men fighting abroad and women working in factories at home.
According to Davidson, Kelly drew on the mechanical mindset of the time to propose a solution:
The country needed to process students quickly and efficiently. If Henry Ford could turn out Model Ts “for the great multitude,” surely there was an equivalent way, Kelly wrote in his dissertation at Kansas State Teachers College, to streamline schooling. What he came up with was the Kansas Silent Reading Test, sometimes called the “item-response” or “bubble” test.
Such tests have been with us ever since, from high school aptitude tests (like SATs) to end-of-course and/or exit exams used by many states to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind. Unfortunately, as Davidson points out, these tests are ineffective:
In a decade of researching digital education, I have never heard an educator, parent or student say that the tests work well as teaching tools. Beyond the flaws of these rigid exams — which do not measure complex, connected, interactive skills — there is little room in the current curriculum or even in the current division of disciplines (reading, writing, math, natural sciences and social studies) for lessons about key questions that affect students’ daily lives.
Interestingly (to me anyway), there’s been a similar conundrum in the audit field. Auditing has traditionally focused on hard controls (things like procedures, segregation of duties, supervisory oversight, etc.). However many of the biggest business failures – like Enron, Tyco and the recent debacle on Wall St. – were rooted in soft controls (things like employee morale, ethics, philosophy, values, integrity, etc.).
What we’ve learned is that having great hard controls won’t matter if a company’s leaders and/or staff are not inclined to follow them. Author James Roth described a situation he encountered during the Savings & Loan crisis:
During the S&L crisis, I was working for a banking organization in Minneapolis, where a $3.5 billion S&L failure occurred. After the S&L was dissolved, our bank acquired six of the S&L’S branches. When we began the first audit of those branches, we expected to find their internal control systems riddled with holes.
We were surprised to find instead that those branches were beautifully controlled according to our audit tests. They had every policy, procedure, and checklist imaginable. A teller could not swipe $10 from her drawer without getting caught. In spite of the control activities, the president and founder was able to play games; and he, his daughter, and several members of the upper management team went to jail.
After that, I asked myself if I had been an internal auditor working at that organization and using our control activity-based audit program, would I have had the foggiest notion of what was happening? Not from my audit work. The only way you would ever find out something like that is if someone tipped you off. That sort of realization makes you feel really uncomfortable about your status as a professional evaluator of control.
As Roth noted seven years ago in talking about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was passed after the failures of major companies like Enron and Tyco:
Companies are spending enormous time, energy, and consulting fees documenting and testing detailed financial control activities to comply with Section 404 of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. But if all this resource-intensive work had been performed at Enron, WorldCom, or Parmalat, would it have prevented what happened? For that matter, would it have prevented any of the recent financial reporting disasters? Such frauds are not caused by noncompliance with low-level accounting procedures. The root cause is always a breakdown in the control environment, usually the ethical climate and the behavior of executives. Testing of accounting procedures to the extent it is done today is not only expensive, but also–for the most part–misses the point.
Why have auditors traditionally focused on hard controls rather than soft when examining businesses? In large part because they’re much easier to measure and evaluate. Why do politicians and administrators favor standardized tests when evaluating schools? Most likely for the same reason.
It reminds me of an old joke:
A cop saw a blonde down on her knees under a streetlight. “Can I help you?” he asked.
Replied the blonde, “I dropped my diamond ring and I’m looking for it.”
Asked the cop “did you drop it right here?”
“No,” she responded, “I dropped it about a block away, but the light’s better here.”
Just being able to test for something doesn’t mean the results will be relevant.
If we really want to ensure that America’s children are being properly educated, it’s not enough to simply make them take standardized tests. As with auditing, we must make sure those tests aren’t missing the point.
Ten Years After
Filed under: interconnected | Tags: 9/11, America, individualism, linked world, reality
Leave a Comment There’s been a lot of talk this week about how 9/11 has changed things. For example, the Huffington Post has introduced a section titled “9/11: A Decade After” in which, according to Arianna Huffington, they will explore “all the ways in which we’re different since that day.” Also, PBS recently had a piece in which some of their reporters reflected on “the day that changed everything” and MSNBC had an article about how 9/11 had changed individual lives.
In many ways 9/11 has changed things on a personal level. Clearly, those who lost friends or loved ones on that day have experienced a profound change in their lives. In addition, members of the military and their families have made many sacrifices for our country since that day. For the rest of us, we’ve experienced changes like stricter security in many public gathering places and when traveling by air.
But in a fundamental way, 9/11 didn’t really change our country. As NPR quotes from a New Yorker article written by George Packer:
The attacks were supposed to have signaled one of the great transformations in the country’s history. But the decade that followed did not live up to expectations. In most of the ways that mattered, 9/11 changed nothing.
One change we have experienced as Americans has been a new, acute awareness of a change to the world that had been going on for some time.
Globalization and the inter-weaving of different parts of the world had been happening for years. Many of these changes had been creating stress and upheaval in other parts of the world, like countries in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. But we Americans tended to feel removed from that turmoil, protected by oceans the way some communities feel safe behind gates.
We generally hadn’t noticed that change because it happened gradually over time. It’s like the change from summer to fall: the weather changes gradually for weeks, but we don’t really notice it until one day we realize summer’s hot days have “suddenly” been replaced by the crisp days of fall.
In a similar way, 9/11 suddenly made us aware of how the world had changed and had become much more tightly interconnected. As Joel Achenbach noted in the Washington Post:
Blessed by geographic isolation from the rest of the world, Americans did not feel vulnerable on their home soil. Most terrorism events had happened in distant places such as Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen.
What 9/11 did was remove the illusion of American invulnerability; of safety provided by great distances.
So what are we to do with this hard-earned loss of illusion? Perhaps we should start by recognizing and coming to terms with the realities of our interconnected and interdependent world.
This is not a new idea; it was proposed by Robert Wright in a Slate article in November 2001. In writing about the post-9/11 world, Wright pointed to a “big idea” that would help us understand this world: interdependence.
The idea that modern history makes the peoples of the world increasingly interdependent goes back at least as far as Kant and includes such contemporary writers as Joseph Nye, Robert Keohane, and, lately, me.
He went on to suggest that Bin Laden was a reflection rather than a source of this change:
Is “interdependent” really the best way to describe our relationship with a cave-dwelling man who is bent on destroying our civilization? No, but Osama Bin Laden is just the foam on the ocean. He is the guy that history happened to cough up as a surface manifestation of underlying forces of growing interdependence. He is also a handy reminder that interdependence isn’t all sweetness and light.
Today, awareness of our global interdependence should be widely acknowledged. A rational analysis of today’s global economy, in which trouble in one place can upset the apple cart halfway around the world, makes clear how interconnected we all are.
Still, some people seem consumed with the notion that we can regain our old illusions. They devoutly pursue a faith in “Individualism” for both our country and its people. To them, any problems we face today are purely the fault of liberals and the government. All that’s needed is to let everyone do whatever they want to do – at least economically – and everything will be just fine.
But in the long run, any world view that passionately denies the reality of our interconnected, interdependent world is doomed to failure. Such passion can create a great deal of suffering for individuals, and it can cause our country to be passed by as other nations not subject to that passion successfully adapt to today’s world. But the world as it is – interconnected and interdependent, is here to stay.
Ten years after 9/11, it’s high time we accepted that fact and started dealing with it.
Is It Moral to Cheer Bin Laden’s Death?
Filed under: complexity, relativity | Tags: death, morality, Osama Bin Laden
Leave a Comment I’ve noticed some discussion on the web and in the media about the reaction to Bin Laden’s death, specifically whether it’s morally appropriate to cheer such an event. I think this is a very complex issue that evades a simple response of right or wrong.
Part of this has to do with people’s experiences; a young woman on the News Hour tonight mentioned a friend who said “He (OBL) was the man who stole my childhood.” Noting that most kids in college today were 9-12 years old on 9/11/2001, that event must have had a profound effect on how they experienced their childhood. Perhaps that was a factor in why so many young people cheered the news of his death.
Another issue concerns the perception of Bin Laden. I’ve seen comments about the morality of cheering a human being’s death, even if he’s a Really Bad Guy. But we must recognize that Bin Laden was more than just a human being.
In many ways we relate to the world and things in it symbolically; we don’t see a rose as just a rose, we see it as a symbol of other things that may be less concrete but are still very real for human experience: love, romance, beauty, etc. Our relationship to roses is influenced by our knowledge of this symbolic quality.
In this way, Bin Laden wasn’t just a human being; by his own actions and intentions he had come to be a potent symbol of evil, of the horrors that some humans willfully and perhaps joyfully commit against other human beings. I think it’s possible that some of the cheering we saw Sunday night may not have been a reflection of hatred against Bin Laden as a person, but rather reflected a sense of release – that sometimes evil CAN be fought and defeated. Would it be illogical to cheer such an occurrence? (While the term “evil” can be fraught with misuse and abuse, I think it’s appropriate in cases like 9/11.)
Finally there is the question of our own natures. While we may strive to be good and moral, the fact is we are much more complex than that. Our beliefs, our faith, are more complex than that. I think an interview of Monsignor Albacete, conducted as part of the Frontline episode “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” does a great job in exploring that issue. As Monsignor Albacete says:
From the first moment I looked into that horror on Sept. 11, into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it. I knew it before anything was said about those who did it or why. I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion. Look, I am a priest for over 30 years. Religion is my life, it’s my vocation, it’s my existence. I’d give my life for it; I hope to have the courage. Therefore, I know it.
And I know, and recognized that day, that the same force, energy, sense, instinct, whatever, passion — because religion can be a passion — the same passion that motivates religious people to do great things is the same one that that day brought all that destruction. When they said that the people who did it did it in the name of God, I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised. It only confirmed what I knew. I recognized it.
I recognized this thirst, this demand for the absolute. Because if you don’t hang on to the unchanging, to the absolute, to that which cannot disappear, you might disappear. I recognized that this thirst for the never-ending, the permanent, the wonders of all things, this intolerance or fear of diversity, that which is different — these are characteristics of religion. And I knew that that force could take you to do great things. But I knew that there was no greater and more destructive force on the surface of this earth than the religious passion.
Dreams Can Come True
Filed under: interconnected | Tags: America, change, Martin Luther King, the 60's
Leave a Comment With yesterday’s events and discussions related to Martin Luther King Day, I took the opportunity to once again watch Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Beyond his wonderful oratory, I was struck by how similar in some ways that time was to our own. Like now, the country at the time was deeply and bitterly divided. Like now, many expressed a fervent resistance to change. And like now, that resistance was occasionally laced with threats of violence.
But from the perspective provided by over 47 years, it’s clear that the change Dr. King dreamed of in 1963 has in many ways come to pass. As pundit Mark Shields related on the PBS NEWs Hour in discussing the tragic events in Tuscon:
MARK SHIELDS: There was one observation that was made this week I just have to pass on to you by a friend of mine, Allen Ginsberg, who is an historian up in Maine. And he said, this week, we saw a white, Catholic, Republican federal judge murdered on his way to greet a Democratic woman, member of Congress, who was his friend and was Jewish. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year-old Mexican-American college student, who saved her, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon.
JIM LEHRER: Dr. Rhee.
MARK SHIELDS: Dr. Rhee, that’s right.
And then it was all eulogized and explained by our African-American president. And, in a tragic event, that’s a remarkable statement about the country.
Something like that could never have happened – or perhaps even been dreamed of – back in the mid-1960s.
Another event that might not have been dreamed of back in 1963 took place yesterday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where a group of fourth-graders from Washington, D.C.’s Watkins Elementary School gathered to read Dr. King’s famous speech. Seeing boys and girls of different races gathered together to read snippets of the speech brought to mind something Dr. King said in his speech:
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
The way yesterday’s event was presented – with many different children reading parts of it, rather than one person reading the whole thing – seemed to reflect a sensibility that we are all a part of a larger whole, united in our diversity. This is a viewpoint that is much more common today than it was back in 1963.
Ironically, yesterday’s event also reminded me of a recent event in the new (Republican) House of Representatives, in which different members took turns reading parts of the U.S. Constitution. While the people who came up with that event may not have intended it, the methodology of the event reflected an inclusiveness not unlike yesterday’s children’s event.
It’s always hard to say what the future holds. But in reflecting on how far we’ve come from Dr. King’s speech in 1963, it seems at least possible today to dream of a united America that will someday move beyond the fears and vitriol raised by our current era of change.
