Stand for Something

I just returned from a week-long retreat with 22 other Americans from a cross-section of society. The group included a career diplomat, a large business owner, two software engineers, a young entrepreneur with a Master’s degree in Philosophy, a very successful real estate agent, a petroleum geologist, a scientific lab manager, a dentist, a restaurant owner, a professional photographer, an LA city fireman, and several others ranging in age from 24 to 60. First of all, spending a week with 22 strangers in unguarded conversation is a thoroughly encouraging experience. I am constantly amazed at the thoughtful concerns and original ideas found in everyday people who care about our future. What I learned will not surprise you.

To the degree our wonderful tossed salad group of humanity is a representative of America there is much agreement about our desperate need for moral leadership of our nation and our global businesses. There is a strong sense that the chance for a “systems collapse” of our economic system, environment, energy supply and political peace is not only possible but also getting much more likely. What our group agreed on was that although solutions to all of our problems exist, our political and business leaders simply don’t have the vision or the will to do what it will take to lead us out of our desolate wilderness. We agreed that most of our leaders seem to hope muddling through will somehow produce a magic “soft landing” from our current free fall. Leaders present their fantasy world where we win the Iraq war, gasoline returns to $2.00/gallon, medical care becomes affordable and our mortgages get refinanced at payments we can all afford. Since no one at the retreat believes in magic, we saw this as a failure of leadership in terms of both competence and character. It’s a failure of leadership character because we view our national political leaders and the new candidates who wish to run things as either self-interested or controlled by special interests.

For instance, none of us are naive enough to believe that Bill Clinton’s rock-star income “earned” from speaking in the Middle East to dictators and big global corporations will have no effect on policies coming from a Clinton White House. Most of the group worried that a continuation of Republican leadership would lead to even more special interest corruption, corporate welfare and tax subsidies to oil companies, the synthetic food industry, and predatory drug companies. And while Obama is certainly inspiring to listen to, his actual policies seem like failed refried liberal programs of increasing taxes and more social “programs” that sound good but accomplish little.

People are universally outraged at government waste and out-of-sync priorities. As one person said, “We don’t need more taxes. We need smarter spending.” Turns out our own government accounting office agrees. They recently estimated one-third of our $3 trillion budget is wasted. Just think of what we could do to solve our education crises, rebuild our roads, bridges, sewer and water supplies, find solutions to clean-renewable energy and increase the number of doctors and nurses trained if we spent the trillion dollars we were wasting on priorities that mattered!

But no one believes much will change unless we change it. Most of the group views our present Congress as completely ineffectual, even incompetent, to lead. They spoke with outrage that American oil companies could make $123 billion in profit in 2007 while oil soars to $117 a barrel and yet our spineless, bought-and-paid-for-Congress couldn’t even attempt to cut the $18 billion tax subsidy they give these bad boys every year.

We still have no realistic energy policy, no trade policy, no plan to save our children from the abject collapse of our education system, no sensible foreign policy, no plan for universal health care that we can honestly afford, no plan to rethink social security, except to raise taxes. In short, it seems from our national leaders we have nothing, zip, nada. It’s like watching your house burn down with the fire department standing in the street with their hands in their pockets chatting about who’s to blame.

So what did we decide to do about it? Basically—all we can. We decided to stand for something. As Paul Hawken writes in his brilliant book Blessed Unrest, we are society’s immune system. Our beliefs and behavior can be an immune response to life threatening toxins like political corruption, environmental destruction, economic greed and plain incompetent leadership. Increasingly, concerned citizens are speaking out to identify cancerous thinking and promote robust healing. As Hawkin points out, there are millions of people worldwide increasingly linked into a growing network of activists and supporters fighting for the future of humanity. These are moms and dads fighting for their children’s education, employees confronting bad behavior and wasteful policies and community groups planting trees and cleaning the beaches. It all matters.

So, where to start? One of the members of the group, a realtor, wowed me with his business card. It of course had his company name and contact information and under his own name, in unmistakable type, were the words, “Peace Activist and Environmental Advocate.” Surprised I Said, “Doesn’t this put off some of your potential clients? Doesn’t it create risk for you?” He replied with a shrug, “If you don’t take risks, you’ll never stand for anything.” It got me thinking. What if we all put what we stand for on our business cards? What would you put on yours?

Will Marre

Founder, American Dream Project

To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.

8 comments.

We Are Better Than This

Hope is emotional oxygen. Goodwill toward others is protein for our souls. But it seems so often we are either gasping for breath or suffering from spiritual malnutrition. For the last five years our economy seemed to be booming (now we learn it was really only bubbling), and it looked like everyone was rich. And some really were. The list of billionaires skyrocketed. And the media’s obsession with putting the “cribs” and lifestyles of the increasing number of rich and famous in our living rooms every night baited our inner tendency for social comparison like cheese seduces rats. Repeated studies show that social comparison is a leading cause of stress and even depression. If we are driving a brand new Toyota in a Lexus neighborhood, we mostly feel “So what’s wrong with me?” We wonder, “Am I not as smart or as lucky as our neighbors? Does God just not love me as much?” We ask all kinds of questions that get us chasing our own negative thoughts like a dog gnawing on his own tail. Then some of us, evidently lots of us, decide we’re not going to take it anymore. So we borrow to pay for stuff we think is going to make us feel better. A bigger house (Yah…now you’re talkin’!”), a flashier car, a sexy vacation, a private college education for my angel girl or awesome son. But it turns out that for far too many of us it’s all an illusion. Yes there are 8 million real honest-to-assets millionaires in the U.S., but there are also 292 million of us who aren’t. In fact, half of Americans have a true net worth of less than $10,000. The savings rate of people making between $100,000 and $250,000 is nearly zero. That’s sad. It means that we’ve become so addicted to consumption that even if we have a financially secure life our aspirations to live richer than should makes us stupid.

But social comparison works both ways. Recently American Idol Gives Back was on television (Yes, I know. What am I doing watching American Idol?). This is a modern version of a telethon to raise tens of millions for charities like Save the Children who help suffering children in the U.S. and around the world. Watching the stories of children in rural or gang-infested American neighborhoods and the millions of orphan children in Africa you can’t help but feel like we’re the most fortunate people ever. In fact, I sometimes tell audiences that. Of the billions of people that have lived on our planet, we are the luckiest. It wasn’t that long ago that a typical mother lost half her children to diseases we no longer hear about. Throughout most of human history it was common for people over 60 to die of toothache infections! But it’s hard to stay focused on all the good things of life when we’re constantly tempted to lust after someone’s private jet or even their more secure job.

As a country it is likely we are in for far worse than a rough patch. Our economy needs more than a fresh coat of spending. It’s rusted out. Our budget deficit is much larger than our leaders will admit. And the same people who are crushing Tibetian monks are buying our broken banks. It seems a consumer-based economy (largely driven by social comparison) doesn’t work when we all run out of spending money. So suffering is likely to increase. Our nation is not so much in need of repair as it is in need of a resurrection. We need a wholesale change of thinking. We need new ideas and self-discipline to implement them.

But what do we do now? The best way is to quit feeling sorry for ourselves and take a deep breath of hope. It’s to offer hope to others. It’s to have a steady diet of love protein. No, we don’t have to go to Africa. We can just change our focus to look around us right where we stand and ask who needs encouragement. Who needs a sandwich? Volunteer at school. If you’re a student, offer yourself as a tutor. No matter how bad you think your situation is there are people all around you who are suffering, and the best way to help yourself is to help others.

Now is also an opportunity for us to take a deep breath and ask ourselves what kind of life we really want. What kind of society do we really want? We are a nation of resilient, creative, generous people. We are more than we have become. We are better than this. It’s time to come together to restore a commitment to community, mutuality and goodwill. It’s a time of all of us to offer our unique gifts and abilities to serve higher purposes. We need to multiply the things that are working and starve old ideas and shout down the voices of fear. Damn it—we’re better than this.

Will Marre

Founder, American Dream Project

To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.

6 comments.

Citizen Voice

In my early twenties I spent several winters on Hawaii’s North Shore. Many days I’d wake up to see 20-foot waves rise up battering the reefs with thousands of tons of energy. These waves are so powerful that every year unsuspecting tourists wading in the shallows in ankle deep water are knocked over, sucked into the sea and drowned. They think they are safe where they stand, but they’re not.

There are others who see the situation differently. Instead of standing on the shore, they paddle out. Positioning themselves correctly, they ride the face of a monster wave, close to 40 mph. They are having the thrill of their life just by being in the right place at that right time. When they are riding the wave, they are not exerting the energy; they are simply flowing with it.

That’s where we are today. We can stand on the beach and hope we don’t get knocked down, or we can paddle out and ride the waves of change.

In my recent blog, America’s Big Idea, I introduced the New American Agenda. Today I’m very pleased to announce the launch of a new page dedicated to this project that focuses on our civic social responsibility, engagement and participation. It is a platform dedicated to giving voice to each of us. Every single one. It’s a place where we can galvanize our ideas and demand better from our government. Out voices do matter, and together we can make a difference. We’re tired of business as usual that produces substandard education, catastrophic foreclosures, unequal access to healthcare, etc. We’ve waited long enough. It’s time for all of us to not only fight for ourselves, but to fight for our collective voices. It’s our duty to our common good. Our duty to each other. If we don’t speak out to form our own agenda, then we’re likely to get a recycled version of the same old thing. Broken promises. Poor leadership.

The first imperative on America’s New Agenda is Citizen Voice. Our constitution guarantees citizens the right to petition the government. And when the will of the public is galvanized our legislations listen. Our most effective presidents have been able to amplify our voices to overwhelm the petty voices of special interest or powerful fringe groups so that we could unite for the common good. When our voices are heard, citizens feel their engagement matters. When our voices are ignored, we feel frustrated and powerless. The most important element of citizen voice in a free democracy is open and equal access to our elected leaders. We should not have to make a political contribution or stand in line behind lobbyists who have. Lobbyists should not be able to get the prolonged attention of legislators in “educational” junkets or golf tournaments or private plane rides. Our leaders should not participate in secret meetings or allow lobbyists to draft legislation. We need an ethical system that creates a level playing field for every citizen. We need to speak out with emails, letters and group gatherings to make our voices heard. We need to make our agenda the national agenda.

Come to our site, America’s New Agenda. Let your voice be heard. We’ll never get more from our leaders than we demand. Don’t get depressed at the direction of the storm. Big waves are catastrophic only if you don’t see them coming. If you see them clearly, you can ride them. Surf’s up!

Will Marre
The American Dream Project

To visit American Dream Project’s homepage, click here.

1 comment.