Archive for the ‘interconnected’ Category
100 Seconds on Why Everything Is Connected to Everything Else
Filed under: holism, interconnected, quanta | Tags: Brian Cox, entanglement, Pauli Exclusion Principle, quantum physics, spooky action at a distance
Leave a Comment Brain Pickings has an intriguing post with a video titled “Why Everything is Connected to Everything Else, Explained in 100 Seconds.” The speaker is “rockstar physicist” Brian Cox.
While the clip was intriguing, I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical at first. You can hear some pretty bizarre claims related to quantum physics; I feel some people can get carried away with the quantum mystical stuff. I wondered at first if this was one of those cases. (How seriously should we take a “rockstar physicist”?) But apparently Cox has some serious credentials.
As for what he’s talking about with the Pauli Exclusion Principle, I guess I’ll have to take his word for it. Reading about it here it sounds like the rule is “no two electrons in an atom can be identical.” I didn’t see anything saying that no two atoms in the universe could be identical. Then again, it’s all pretty technical – and I’m no physicist.
His talk reminded me a little of entanglement – which even Einstein thought was so weird that he called it “spooky action at a distance.” I don’t know if there’s a tie-in, but entanglement really does demonstrate a mysterious form of non-local connectedness.
Interesting stuff, this quantum physics…
Beyond Fortress America
Filed under: complexity, interconnected | Tags: America, defense, government, non-zero, security
Leave a Comment As we go through this year’s American election cycle, we hear politicians talk about American power in ways that don’t reflect an understanding of today’s interconnected world. The talk is about how America must be strong on its own – with no consideration of the implications of this connectedness. Consider these statements by current Republican candidates:
Mitt Romney – “As President, I will reverse the Obama-era defense cuts. I believe a strong America must–and will–lead the future. I will insist on a military so powerful that no one would ever think of challenging it.”
Newt Gingrich – “We live in a world where if we gamble wrong, and the current proposed defense budget is much too small, if we gamble wrong whether it is a major power like China or Russia, a medium sized power like North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran, and North Korea is a medium sized power by possession of nuclear weapons. Or it is a fanatic group willing to die in the process of killing us. We live in a world where there are weapons capable of ending civilization as we know it. And we need to be prepared in a very militant and aggressive way to defend America from having a catastrophic disaster of the first order.”
Rick Santorum – “I would absolutely not cut one penny out of military spending. The only thing the federal government can do that no other level of government can do is protect us. It is the first duty of the president. And we should have all the resources in place to make sure that we can defend our borders, that we can make sure that when we engage in foreign countries, we do so to succeed.”
These statements might make sense if you view the United States like a fortress in enemy territory. In such a case, having impregnable defenses and overwhelming firepower could be useful in defeating the enemy. (Though military history has many cases of smaller forces overwhelming larger ones.)
But today such views can come across as overly simplistic, not recognizing the much more complex world in which we now live. Countries like Russia and China are not just simply “the enemy.” If they were, why would we be doing so much business with them? Even with countries like Pakistan and Iran, things are complex; at one point or another we have worked with both countries – most notably in the current war in Afghanistan and in the Iran-Contra affair.
Of course this raises the question: what are the implications for America’s security in an interconnected world? Some relevant insights into this question can be found in a couple of TED talks.
Many people have an at least a vague knowledge of the concept of entropy, by which it is said things tend to go from order to disorder. This concept has been used by some to claim that the world as we know it is dying, and that this process is inevitable. However there is another way of viewing things, which Robert Wright addressed in one of his TED talks. He started by talking about evolution:
Because what happened in the beginning, this stuff encases itself in a cell, then cells start hanging out together in societies. Eventually they get so close, they form multicellular organisms, then you get complex multicellular organisms; they form societies.
But then at some point, one of these multicellular organisms does something completely amazing with this stuff, which is it launches a whole second kind of evolution: cultural evolution. And amazingly, that evolution sustains the trajectory that biological evolution had established toward greater complexity. By cultural evolution we mean the evolution of ideas.
What he is describing is the phenomena of complexity: open, dynamic systems have a natural tendency to grow more complex. This is true whether you’re talking about biology, economics, societies, cultures, etc.
Within this context, Wright addresses the implications of complexity for the world as we know it.
Now, I explained this growth of complexity by reference to something called “non-zero sumness.” …the key idea is the distinction between zero-sum games, in which correlations are inverse: always a winner and a loser. Non-zero-sum games in which correlations can be positive, OK. So like in tennis, usually it’s win-lose; it always adds up to zero-zero-sum. But if you’re playing doubles, the person on your side of the net, they’re in the same boat as you, so you’re playing a non-zero-sum game with them. It’s either for the better or for the worse, OK. A lot of forms of non-zero-sum behavior in the realm of economics and so on in everyday life often leads to cooperation.
The rest of his talk is devoted to the implications of this “non-zero” phenomena, which can be either good (win-win) or bad (lose-lose). The point is that as our world has become more complex and interconnected, our relationships with others around the world fall increasingly within this realm. While we often tend to view things in a zero-sum context (e.g., “the more power and wealth China has, the worse off the United States is” or “it’s perfectly OK to get rich by laying off or cutting the pay of workers”), the reality is different.
In today’s world, China’s economic well-being is inextricably linked to that of the US: if Americans don’t have money to buy Chinese goods, China will suffer. By the same token, the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, the less economic and financial stability we will all have.
This theme of interconnectedness and “non-zero sumness” is also evident in a TED talk by Paddy Ashdown, a former member of the British Parliament and a long-time diplomat. In his talk he noted:
Today in our modern world, because of the Internet, because of the kinds of things people have been talking about here, everything is connected to everything. We are now interdependent. We are now interlocked, as nations, as individuals, in a way which has never been the case before, never been the case before. The interrelationship of nations, well it’s always existed. Diplomacy is about managing the interrelationship of nations. But now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico, it’s a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours later. Lehman Brothers goes down, the whole lot collapses. There are fires in the steppes of Russia, food riots in Africa.
One implication of this is that many of our current governmental institutions have the wrong kind of structure for the world we live in:
And this tells you something very important. It tells you that, in fact, our governments, vertically constructed, constructed on the economic model of the Industrial Revolution — vertical hierarchy, specialization of tasks, command structures — have got the wrong structures completely. You in business know that the paradigm structure of our time, ladies and gentlemen, is the network. It’s your capacity to network that matters, both within your governments and externally.
This, in turn, leads to a conclusion that is very similar to Wright’s “non-zero” concept:
If it is the case, ladies and gentlemen — and it is — that we are now locked together in a way that has never been quite the same before, then it’s also the case that we share a destiny with each other. Suddenly and for the very first time, collective defense, the thing that has dominated us as the concept of securing our nations, is no longer enough. It used to be the case that if my tribe was more powerful than their tribe, I was safe; if my country was more powerful than their country, I was safe; my alliance, like NATO, was more powerful than their alliance, I was safe. It is no longer the case. The advent of the interconnectedness and of the weapons of mass destruction means that, increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
It’s not yet clear how exactly we should enhance American security in this changing world. That’s part of the price we pay for living in a period of great change.
But what is clear is that the rules have changed – that simply having the biggest and baddest military around is no longer enough. This should have become clear to everyone over ten years ago, when a bunch of fanatics in one of the most isolated countries in the world managed to stage a devastating attack on American soil.
In his talk, Ashdown noted the many security threats a country faces today, from pandemic to food safety to cyber security to immigration of possible terrorists. He observed: “It’s no longer the case that the security of a country is simply a matter for its soldiers and its ministry of defense. It’s its capacity to lock together its institutions.”
What Wright and Ashdown appear to be saying is that building bigger and better walls to protect us is no longer adequate; it’s time we focused on strengthening our networks.
Keep the Change
Filed under: energy/flow, interconnected, uncertainty | Tags: change, conservatives, future, Newt Gingrich, presidential primaries, Republicans, Tea Party
Leave a Comment “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
“So how’s that hopey, changey thing workin’ out for ya?” – Sarah Palin
It’s hard to believe that only four years ago the winning campaign for the American Presidency offered hope and the slogan “change you can believe in.” These days there is a sizable group whose attitude appears to be “keep the change to yourself – we want things the way they were.”
The Republican primary campaign currently seems to be most focused on who can best express the anger and resentment felt by the party faithful. After the South Carolina primary, the winner appears to be Newt Gingrich. As Howard Schweber observed in the Huffington Post:
…only Newt has captured the key emotive element that drives the Republican core this year: resentment. The hard right core of the Republican Party is filled with resentment, and they have found just the man to let us all know about it.
This raises questions. Why are these people so angry? What do they resent?
For much of the 2000′s, Republicans controlled the White House, Congress and (arguably) the Supreme Court. During that time they did all they could to give free reign to large corporations and the wealthy through tax cuts and deregulation. They worked to shift the balance of power firmly in favor of corporate management over the rights of workers, both in terms of work safety regulations and in terms of union power. They worked to discredit legitimate concerns about environmental degradation and climate change. They even distorted political debate to the point that even being called a liberal is a bad thing.
And yet the Republican base is still angry and resentful, saying things like “it’s time to take our country back.” From whom, exactly?
All this anger and resentment can be puzzling – if not infuriating – to those who disagree with conservative Republican ideas. And some of the results of Republican primaries can seem crazy for those out of that loop. I mean really, Newt Gingrich is the champion of family values and is a Washington outsider? Really???
But beneath all of the current drama, it’s important to realize that such behavior may be both natural and logical – once you look at the big picture.
The root of the problem is that our world has changed in fundamental ways. For the first time in human history, technology has brought all humans into close and immediate contact. It has also disrupted traditional channels of power and information.
This change has altered societies around the world in myriad ways. But such change has not been welcomed by many – especially those whose identity and values were firmly rooted in the previously established cultures.This reflects a basic but rarely considered fact: change happens differently for a culture than it does for the society of which that culture is a part.
Ideally, cultures by their nature offer enduring, lasting values. In this way they satisfy the human need for meaning and stability. In the chaos and confusion of life, we need to have a dependable framework that gives meaning to what is happening around us.
By the same token, healthy societies are continually changing. This is a reflection of changes in demographics, as well as the growth of knowledge and awareness that are a part of a dynamic society. In this way, societies satisfy the human need for freedom and creativity.
However, there is a basic conflict inherent in this dichotomy: cultural values cannot long endure unchanged within an evolving and changing society. Just as pressures build over time along fault lines until there’s an earthquake, over time pressures build up between culture and society until conflict erupts.
That is where we are now. The world has changed profoundly over the past 40+ years. We humans are much more interconnected, empowered and diverse than we used to be. This change has opened up vast arrays of opportunity for many people – especially those who were marginalized by the prevailing culture’s institutions and power structures. But it has also shaken to the foundations those institutions and structures. And such change is hard for some people to handle.
David E. Stannard discussed this issue in his book The Puritan Way of Death – A Study in Religion, Culture and Social Change. He observed:
Whereas certain individuals and certain cultures find adapting to change relatively easy, many others, for various reasons, do not. Their resistance, which may seem revolutionary because it tends so often to focus on overthrowing the new social orthodoxy, is in fact no more than an effort to forestall or at least postpone dealing with the changes taking place around them.
William O. Beeman, a professor of Anthropology at Brown University and author of “Fighting the Good Fight: Fundamentalism and Religious Revival,” also notes this varying response to change and talks about the responses of those who resist change:
In essence, all such movements are a natural consequence of human processes of cultural change. In every society on earth change proceeds at an uneven pace. Some society members embrace change with relish. Others find it oppressive and troubling. When people feel that change is being imposed on them, some will find it necessary to resist–sometimes violently. The dynamics of revitalization thus are tied to inter-group dynamics. When a group in society perceives itself as having its power and authority usurped in the course of social change, the group comes to blame both internal and external causes for its fall from power.
As far as internal issues are concerned, Beeman notes that decline is often associated with individual failings. “They accuse members of society of becoming weak and irresolute to the point where they let others oppress them.” Regarding external issues, Beeman says “…the group objectifies an Other, and identifies it as an oppressor. Usually the movement advocates resistance– sometimes violent–to that oppressor.”
Beeman also talks about the historical perspective of these movements:
All of these movements invariably create a dual myth. This myth links a supposed Golden Age in the past with a Utopian future. The past Golden Age is seen as a time when the members of the movement or those they identify with were strong, vital, and in control of the world. The Utopian future presages a time when movement members will return to that sense of group strength and wholeness.
This may sound a bit familiar to those who follow the news. Take Islamic extremism. Back in September 2001, David Plotz posted an article in Slate titled “What Does bin Laden Want?”
These extreme “Islamists,” as Bin Laden biographer Yossef Bodansky dubs them, hope to re-establish the Caliphate, the golden age of Muslim domination that followed the death of Muhammad. They regard the Taliban’s Afghanistan as a model for such Islamic rule.
Elsewhere, while we haven’t heard much about it in the United States, Israel is having problems with members of its ultra-Orthodox Haredi population. Among other things, this group has been pressuring other members of Israeli society regarding the segregation of women from men. In writing about this issue in Jewish Ideas Daily, Yehudah Mirsky refers to “…an imagined Haredi idyll in the shtetl that never was. “
Meanwhile, back here in the USA we have Newt Gingrich expounding on an “historic America.” This prompted one of his acolytes at the American Spectator – former Reagan aid Peter Ferrara – to invoke a “Golden Age” and to “objectify an Other” in claiming:
Gingrich is the only candidate remotely capable of carrying the flag for the true, original, historic America in this fundamental, existential battle for national survival. He so rightly identified the public mood in his South Carolina speech, saying, “The American people feel that they have elites who have been trying for a half-century to force us to quit being American and become some kind of other system.” He further identified the pending danger, “If Barack Obama can get re-elected after this disaster, just think how radical he would be in a second term.”
Obviously, there are many differences between Islamic extremists and conservative Republicans. But one thing they appear to share is a certain myopia about the source of today’s social change. This change isn’t the result of an invasion by infidels or a conspiracy by shadowy elites. Instead it’s a product of modern technology, with its concomitant interlinking of humanity. As Walter Truett Anderson observed in his book “Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be”:
The collapse of belief we have been witnessing throughout the twentieth century comes with globalism. The postmodern condition is not an artistic movement or a cultural fad or an intellectual theory — although it produces all of those and is in some ways defined by them. It is what inevitably happens as people everywhere begin to see that there are many beliefs, many kinds of belief, many ways of believing. Postmodernism is globalism; it is the half-discovered shape of the one unity that transcends all our differences.
There is an absurdity inherent in much of the resistance we see to modernity and its attendant social change: the resisters are frequently using the tools of modern technology to advocate resistance to its effects on society.
If resisters truly object to how the world has changed, they should live their lives in accordance with their supposed Golden Age – whether it’s the 12th century or the 1920s. They should at least have the integrity of groups like the Amish and do without televisions, telephones, computers, the internet and the like.
But as soon as they begin using modern technology they are co-opted by it. There is no logically consistent way you can protest modernity with a videotaped message, or claim to be an anti-government individualist while using communications technology that was developed by the government and that was created to link people together.
It is this inherent conflict between past values and present facts that inevitably dooms the aspirations of those who resist the social changes we are confronting today. As Stannard says regarding those resisting social change:
…such movements rarely enjoy long-range success. They result from an opposition of the needs of the emerging social structure with those of the existing group culture…and when such incongruity is not resolved by effective integration of the two competing elements, it has historically been the almost inevitable fate of the traditional culture to give way to the needs of the ongoing social structure.
Today’s changing world is unsettling to most of us; an unfortunate fact of life is that when you’re in the middle of an era of great change you’re unlikely to have much confidence in how things will turn out. We humans are not comfortable with such uncertainty.
In times like these, perhaps we can seek counsel and solace in the wise words of others who were confronted with similar times in the past. Consider, for example, the words of Thomas Carlyle:
Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful; and if Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Government By The People
Filed under: emergent, interconnected | Tags: Amazon.com, government, internet, linked world
Leave a Comment Modern technology has empowered us in many ways.
With a computer or smart phone I can (among other things) keep in touch with friends, share photos, check the weather, compare prices on just about anything, find out which products or vendors are good or bad, contribute to websites like Wikipedia, create and give or sell items, and express my thoughts on a blog.
Smart businesses have recognized this trend and tapped into it. Amazon.com lets you comment on any product they sell and even get a commission when you refer people to their site. eBay lets you set up your own virtual store. TV news and sportscasts create polls to gauge your opinion and offer opportunities to show off your photo of the latest news or weather event. Apple invites you to share playlists of your favorite tunes for their iTunes store. Everyone seems interested in what you want and what you think, and looks for ways to put you in the driver’s seat.
Everyone, that is, except for politicians.
When it comes to our government, politicians all too often seem more interested in doing what they want to do, in spite of what we voters think. And what politicians seem most interested in doing is catering to the wealthy and powerful who will reciprocate by helping them stay in office.
This is starting to piss people off.
We heard a lot in the last election about how angry Americans have become these days. The Tea Party got a lot of press about their anti-Democratic Party focus, but the anger really goes deeper. Frank Rich recently suggested that the cause of Americans’ anger today is:
“…the realization that both parties are bought off by special interests who game the system and stack it against the rest of us.”
This is true. But I think that anger and frustration is deepened further by the context of our times. When many other parts of our personal lives have become more responsive to our thoughts and needs, why does our government still seem so unresponsive? And how can we make government as responsive as a successful online store like Amazon.com?
This isn’t just a matter of Washington politics and big issues like bailing out Wall Street or health care reform. It also applies to minor local things like getting a pot hole fixed. If I have problems with an order on Amazon.com, I can usually get it fixed in short order. Why does it take government so much longer?
There are a number of reasons for this, including a lack of imagination and accountability by many of the people in charge and a lack of resources to create new technology-based systems that would increase efficiency. Sadly, another key reason is that the current system actually IS responsive to those who really matter: the politicians and their financial masters. If the head of Goldman-Sachs is bothered by a pothole on his street, what do you think the odds are that it’ll get fixed in a hurry? For the rich and powerful, what’s the problem?
In spite of all this, we actually are seeing some tentative signs of technology being used to make government more responsive to the average citizen, including:
- SeeClickFix offers citizens a way to notify their local government about an issue of concern (often something like a pothole). If you have an iPhone, there’s even an app for that;
- Give a Minute offers Chicago residents the chance to tell the Powers That Be what would encourage them to walk, bike, or take public transportation more often; and
- The US Initiative invites ideas for how we live together in cities.
While it’s promising to come across such initiatives, reviewing their websites has left me with doubts.
When I checked SeeClickFix for my neighborhood, I found a rather ragtag group of 9 items that citizens felt needed attention – some of which were reported 10 months ago and were still open. While some were general and less likely to be fully resolved (e.g., speeding cars on a heavily traveled road), some were seemingly simple items like potholes or sidewalk hazards. In addition, only two items were listed as “Fixed,” and those solutions were reported by other members of the public. I saw nothing that indicated our local government actually looked at and responded to the issues reported. So much for government responsiveness…
Meanwhile, the other two items listed above are projects supported by CEOs for Cities, an organization that appears to be focused on making cities more responsive to their residents. According to its website, CEOs for Cities was created in 2001 and:
“CEOs for Cities is a civic lab of today’s urban leaders catalyzing a movement to advance the next generation of great American cities. CEOs for Cities works with its network partners to develop great cities that excel in the areas most critical to urban success: talent, connections, innovation and distinctiveness.”
I don’t know about you, but my eyes glazed over just reading that paragraph. The rest of the CEOs for Cities website reads the same way: lots of $10 words strung together in an academic way that is almost guaranteed to put you to sleep. Meanwhile, the Give a Minute and US Initiative websites seemed very spritely graphics-wise, but they weren’t very user-friendly. The Give a Minute site seemed particularly hard to navigate. Maybe that’s why neither site seemed to be overflowing with citizen input.
So how do we make governments as responsive as Amazon.com? Well…
- Local governments could start using things like SeeClickFix and actually fixing (or at least responding to) the items their citizens report. Establishing a good track record would benefit both the local governments and their citizens.
- The people behind CEOs for Cities and its projects could read “Made to Stick – Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” to learn how to make their points without sounding like a bunch of ivory tower eggheads. Being clear about what they’re doing and making citizens care about it might get more people involved.
- As for the rest of us? We should start demanding that government get with the program and become part of the 21st century. With today’s technology, we expect free access to information and the opportunity to use it to improve our lives and our worlds. And we’ll become angry with those who try to restrict and control both the information and us.
It’s time we revived the principle of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. To the barricades!…er, keyboards!!!
