Our McFuture

The China Olympics are thrilling to watch.  Our whole family gathers nightly around the sacred tube and cheer our brains out.  It’s a lot of fun.  Viewing China in all its new material glory is also interesting even as Russia invades independent democracies in an apparent attempt to bring back Soviet Union 2.0.  What makes this more remarkable to me is how quickly we as a nation have squandered our power and influence, so today we can do little more than contrast our declining real estate values, growing underemployment and exhausted military with the newly muscular Russia and the wildly successful Chinese.  What irritates me is not so much the rise of others as the ridiculously bad leadership we’ve had for decades that have pushed policies that have led us to a time where for the first time in our history, most Americans don’t believe their children will have as high quality of life as they do.  Yuk.

Our decline simply is due to many insanely bad choices, some of which are intentional.  Our trade policies with China allowed them to keep their currency low making their labor and their imports unrealistically cheaper than anyone can compete with.  We also allowed them to pirate, rip-off, and steal decades of technology and research we paid for to automate their factories for free.  Meanwhile we refused to seriously reeducate our manufacturing workforce in the engineering and technical skills they needed to operate 21st century factories.  We could have chosen a different path.  Germany has lost only 2% of its manufacturing jobs in the past 20 years.  They are the largest exporter of advanced technology products in the world.  And they have the world’s best paid manufacturing workforce.  It’s pretty simple.  Businesses can afford to pay employees well if those employees are producing high economic value.  This takes education and a culture committed to excellence.  A few American companies still have that.  When labor is educated and united with high technology it becomes extremely productive.  Nucor Steel comes to mind.

Perhaps our core problem is that our leaders value money more than people.  Ever since the 1960’s when inflation was blamed on high, unproductive labor costs the drive to find the cheapest labor in the world has been relentless.  In fact, real labor rates in the U.S. have not increased in the U.S. since 1979.  Yet nearly all inflation since 1980 has been due to financial manipulations flooding our economy with cheap credit that makes prices rise or our “benefit the big boys” energy policy.

My point is that China’s rocket-like growth and our continuing stagnation was not inevitable.  It was all a choice based on a worldview that there is money to be made from strip mining the core strength of our nation’s future by creating a consumer economy instead of a productive one.

So what now?  First, we have to quit looking at labor as the source of cost and view it as a source of value creation.  Second, we have to create a much more efficient educational infrastructure of life-long learning emphasizing the skills of science, technology, engineering and math.  This doesn’t require full college degrees; it requires hand-on applied skills of these four emerging sources of value creation.  Third, we must stop countries from stealing our secrets.  Fourth, we need leaders who have a vision of re-enthroning a productive economy based on invention, innovation and excellence rather than a future economy based on Wal-Mart and McDonald’s employees selling junk to each other.  None of this will happen on its own.  It’s all a choice.  It’s all a choice we should demand.

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

8 comments.

Responsibility For All

Thank you all for your outpouring of support as well as kind and thoughtful comments about my daughter’s horrible experience with a sexual assault.  When reading your comments or receiving emails about the issues of the day I am constantly encouraged by your deep, reflective thinking focused only on making our world a better place.  The overwhelming message is that we are not alone.  There are millions of us that are asking the question, “Is this the best we can do?  Is this the best society we can create?”  The first step in moving forward always begins with questioning where we are.

Well my daughter went to court a few days ago to testify at a pretrial hearing against her attacker.  She told me it was the second worst experience of her life.  She had to relive and recount every detail of the assault.  She had to look square in the eye at Mr. Pin-Cushion face who tried to force himself on her.  She had to endure the hissing and insults from his troubled girlfriend who held his baby.  Another young woman also testified that this same disturbed man had lewdly chased her in the same parking lot.  Now it goes to a plea bargain conference. (He has a prior conviction.)  One strong impression my daughter had of the courtroom that day was the smothering presence of dark energy.  I know first hand what she means.

Two and a half decades ago I spent two years of Sundays and Thursday nights visiting and teaching inmates at a maximum security prison.  I was a volunteer for my church who was trying to bring hope to the hopeless.  The first inmate I personally met was Tex Watson, the main killer in Charles Manson’s band of murderers.  It was literally chilling.  Every time I went inside the prison and had those iron bars close behind me I felt a cold dark energy.  Inside several of the people I counseled were sex offenders.  Child molesters.  They were always the best educated, most articulate and most pleasant inmates.  Many had been sentenced to long stretches because they were repeat offenders.  I also taught and counseled drug dealers, a mass murderer and scores of chronic criminals.  When some of the more mild criminals were released it always hit me in two ways.  I was glad to see hope in a man’s eyes, but my practical sense told me how unprepared they were to succeed at every day life in a free society.  I nearly always assumed they would be back.

Today America has more people imprisoned than any country in history.  We have 2.5 million in iron bar hotels, more than all of Europe combined.  Most of these criminals are under-educated with few resources and a poor social support system.  We have another nearly 20 million people reporting to probation officers.  All of this is an expensive waste.  A waste of money and a waste of humanity.  Nearly every person I worked with in prison never learned self-control.  Never learned how to set goals and achieve them.  Never learned personal responsibility.  Some were truly nuts.  All were without self-respect.  Most without real hope.  Nearly everyone I met in prison needed to be locked up because they simply never learned how to function as a responsible human being.  But is this the best we can do?  As our population grows, our families disintegrate, our schools fail.  Is our answer only to build more warehouses for humans?

Maybe the biggest problem we have with prisons is how we currently view them.  Little productivity happens there.  They’re very expensive human storage units with Lord of the Flies cultures.  We actually have examples of different approaches.  We already know that there are subgroups of prisoners who will respond to training, mentoring, education and responsibility.  We know that hard-core felons that are released on probation to places like Delancey House in San Francisco can learn economically valued skills, stay off drugs and build productive lives.  Delancey runs a tight ship.  There are serious consequences for the slightest slip-up.  Everyone is expected to help everyone else in line.  It’s a culture of mutual responsibility.  In other prisons small groups are graduating from high school and even college.  Standards are high.  Bad behaviors get you expelled back to the weight room.  But some respond.  Of course there are many in prison who refuse to face responsibility.  They are committed to being bullies or victims; nevertheless, they should be expected to do productive work.  And for those that earn it, it should be work that contributes to a better world.  Without opportunity to learn, grow, and work, life is hopeless.  Without dignity.  And having millions of people living without learning self-discipline is costing us far more than requiring them to be productive.

Of course there will always be criminals who refuse responsibility.  There are many who cannot live in a free society. But those in prison should be expected to be more than they have become.  As long as we aspire to be a noble society, shouldn’t we explore ways to give the willing a way to contribute no matter where they are?  To require people to be responsible is to give them the gift of personal dignity.

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

11 comments.

Why Do We Suffer? Part 1

It’s been a rough few days. When I returned home from teaching a class on Corporate Social Responsibility I had a message waiting from my 24 year-old daughter. When I called her she told me that she had been sitting in her car reading in the busy parking lot of a major mall waiting to start work. Suddenly her door was opened and this fierce young man grabbed her hair and pulled her head toward his unzipped pants. She somehow twisted around and pumped her left leg into his stomach. Then like a powerful piston she re-cocked her leg and kicked it with all her power into his lower chest. He gasped and fell back against the car parked next to her. She started screaming the moment he grabbed her hair, but no one in the busy parking garage came to help. As her assailant ran off she called 911. The police arrested him the next day as he lurked in the same mall. My daughter is a sweetheart doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. She didn’t deserve this. She’s also resilient. She’s okay.

So yesterday I read an editorial by author Michael Novak on his ideas about why a good God would allow so much human suffering. This one question is the core “disconnect” for most people with the Divine. The idea is if God is all-powerful and all loving this world makes no sense. The choice our minds and many agnostic writers give us is that either God is mean or disinterested, in which case we don’t want to know him let alone live with him in an afterlife. OR God just doesn’t exist and spiritual belief is a delusion. But are these our only choices?

Last night I finished a book titled The Scalpel and the Soul by Dr. Allan J. Hamilton. It’s the memoir of a Harvard trained brain surgeon documenting the experiences he’s had that led him to conclude that humans are primarily spiritual beings rather than biological ones. His most unusual chapter documents the case of a woman whose blood flow to her brain was cut off in order to repair an artery. In this delicate operation the patient was clinically dead. No brain waves for 20 minutes. When she was revived she had a clear recollection of the surgeons and nurses and their conversations while she was brain dead. All of this was captured real-time on video, so it’s not just a story. What happened was simply biologically impossible if we believe our brain is what creates consciousness. So, are we more than our biology?…Indeed.

As someone who’s had a heavy dose of years of prolonged suffering I have thought (and read) a lot about this problem of evil and misfortune. And here’s my current thinking. First of all, projecting my motives and worldview on all-powerful God is pretty weak. It’s what psychologists call “projection.” It means to judge another’s behavior by what our motives might be if we did whatever they are doing. This is painfully immature. Without direct discussion and deep insight we can’t know the motives of another person, let alone God. So to accuse him of being mean or even thoughtless because bad things happen to good people is, at a minimum, irrationally presumptuous. We’re just feebly guessing. Concluding that God can’t exist because a good God wouldn’t allow evil is a lot like a 3 year-old concluding that his mother hates him because he can’t eat candy whenever he wants. The 3 year-old doesn’t view the world in the same way his mother does, and one thing we can be sure of is that if God does exist we don’t see reality, purpose, time or suffering in the same way he does. So my conclusion is, I don’t know what God is thinking, but I am pretty sure it is wiser than what I would be thinking if I were in charge of the universe.

This leads me to a bunch of interesting questions…

Check back tomorrow for the interesting questions, and the six conclusions to life’s hard questions that have become self-evident over the years.

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

13 comments.

Crisis Creates Opportunity

The 4th of July weekend was amazing. The surf and weather were virtually perfect in San Diego. My brother-in-law, wife, six children, and a couple arriving on a Harley came and went over four days. It was a circus. It made me grateful that my time being daily responsible for young children is long over. The energy requirements are relentless. Mostly we laughed. It helps that my brother-in-law is as mature as a 14-year-old. He has a heart of gold and is a heat-seeking missile locked on fun. Mr. Harley man is from Texas. He recently finished a country CD titled It’s Rough Being Me. He has a voice like warm honey and tells stories like only a motorcycle riding Texan can.

But in times like these our conversation on the porch eventually turned to the price of gas, oil drilling and the economy. Every one of us has our own window on reality. Bits and pieces of things we’ve read or heard woven into our theory of how life should work. It turns out that Mr. Texas works from a pick-up truck, building oil-pipe lines. Yes, his job is secure and his pay is rising. Interestingly, my brother-in-law, Captain Fun, is also in the oil business. Cooking oil turned into Bio-Diesel that is. For 20 years he’s made and sold chemicals used in the restaurant business. It’s a small family business, only a few employees and teenage sons who work in the evening. As gas prices went crazy, he started collecting used cooking oil, refining it in his tilt-up warehouse and using it to run his trucks. Soon his neighborhood small business owners were asking him to brew up some french-fry juice for their trucks. Captain Fun named his new venture Pirate Oil. He’s expanding as fast as he can pour his profits back into more equipment. Amazing.

When the circus left town I reflected on two things. First, it’s true. Crisis is opportunity. Life-as-usual is going through some fundamental economic changes. And we can all shake our fists at the greed and stupidity that has brought us our rising tide of economic swamp water. But a reading of human history is largely the recounting of how human greed and stupidity causes needless suffering. If we are waiting for a messianic politician or a new technology to bail us out of our personal struggles with what decades of poor leadership has created, we will wait forever. Second, human imgenuity is an act of will. We can choose decisively to do something to better our lives, bless others and use this train wreck of our economy to stimulate us to a better life.

My brother-in-law, Pirate Oil—Captain Fun—Circus Ring Master, only has a high school diploma. But he has expert knowledge. He’s spent 20 years becoming an expert at safely mixing chemicals and selling them to small business people. He is also unafraid to try new things. But that’s about it. He has no stash of cash (six kids will do that to you), no safety net. What he does have is what we all need to survive in our new rock ‘n roll world—expert knowledge, developed skills, and the courage to act.

He is a living example of something I constantly teach younger audiences. That the world honors experts. What do you know or what are you willing to deeply learn that can make your ability uniquely valuable? How can you use that today to propel you through this swirling tornado of change? Make your expert ability of value to others and you will always carry your economic security with you. And don’t delay. Waiting for the world to change for the better is never a good personal strategy. After all, it’s better to burn the french-fry oil as fuel than it is to eat the french-fries.

Imagine that.

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

3 comments.

The 4th American Revolution

Today we seem almost numb to the steady stream of leadership failures, scandals, and lies. National polls tell us we are losing faith in our primary institutions of government, education, religion, and business to provide leadership. According to social research from DYG, over 85% of the American Public feel uncertain about our future quality of life, of having a robust, growing economy, adequate personal or national security, or maintaining the quality of our environment.

The time of change is indeed upon us. It seems that every 70 years or so, roughly the time of an average person’s life, our system needs to face a moment of truth, a revolution, a re-thinking about what matters most. This has already happened three times in American history. In each case, the revolution was first led by a thoughtful and passionate group of extraordinary citizens.

The first American Revolution started as a result of England’s corrupt “special interests” turning Americans into second-class citizens. The greed of King George and his cronies made taxes, tariffs, and the treatment of colonists unbearable. Men of great courage and intellect decided it was time to stand for something. American Revolutionaries were driven to create a world that was fairer and filled with more opportunity, more dignity, and more compassion. A world where people’s character was more important than their class. Where merit meant more than pedigree.

The second American Revolution extended the ideals of the Declaration to all Americans. It took a Civil War. The Great Depression ignited the third American Revolution creating public policy to promote honesty in our financial markets and access to opportunity that spawned the greatest middle-class in world history.

Today, we are in a full-blown historical crisis. All of us. If we were a basketball team, we’d be starting the fourth quarter losing by 30 points. And yes, I have great hope that we can still pull out a victory. But we must first be realistic. Our game plan is not working. In fact, it’s a disaster. What we are witnessing is a fundamental change in the viability of our economy. Still, politicians, business leaders, and economic experts insist that our current bleeding of foreclosures, tight credit, raging inflation and our disappearing dollar is only a flesh wound. But it’s not. And most of us have a knot in our stomach because we sense something big and bad may be happening. And well we should. For 50 years we’ve frittered away our greatest achievements and most wonderful advantages. Imagine this. In the 1960’s we rebuilt our schools and rose up a generation of engineers and scientists that first got us to the moon and then gave us the computer age. Then we forgot education was a priority. So today 30% of Americans in high school won’t graduate. We have so few engineers we have to rent them b y the planeload. Among developed nations we’ve gone from first to worst in K-12 education in 30 years.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and America proved to the world that our system was the winner. We won the World War. Unthinkable. Amazing. So today, Russia is reasserting its ominous power financed by its massive oil and gas reserves. The western world is held hostage by over-rich oil lords, mad terrorists and raging ambitions of nobody-is-going-to-tell-me-what-to-do communist China. So much for America’s Golden Age of world peace. Meanwhile failed leadership has bankrupted us. We have $13 trillion economy with over $10 trillion of that coming from our own consumption. The only thing we make that the world wants is our weapon systems and big budget action movies. Basically our biggest export is violence.

In five years the percent of our national debt owed to foreign interests has more than doubled from 20% to over 50%. More than ever foreign governments influence our economic policy. We are so financially overdrawn our infrastructure is collapsing. We’ve spent over $700 billion on a war that will not end while our road, bridges, airports, dams, sewer systems and water supplies decay form decades of neglect. But the biggest failure of leadership is promoting a consumer economy driven by easy money and universal debt. The American consumer has no more assets to borrow against and doesn’t earn enough to pay off what’s owed.

All that must change. For decades they’ve promoted the false idea that rising wages is the core cause of inflation. Now we see inflation is primarily caused by economic and social policy that jacks up housing bubbles, medical costs, food prices, and gasoline. I could go on but that’s not really the point. The real point is, are going to do something about it?

It’s time for a new model of leadership. A model that embraces our joint responsibility for the general welfare of all citizens. This leadership is not yet clearly offered in substance by either presidential candidate. We don’t need refried Democratic liberalism because government bureaucracy is a poor and wasteful provider of actual services. We also cannot endure Republican policies that only concentrates more wealth and power that makes corruption inevitable. What’s needed is a revolutionary view of leadership that is consistent with our nation’s first aspirations. It seeks to neither provide handouts and freebies to the poor or subsidies and tax breaks and favor for the rich. What we need are government and business leaders that have the moral vision to pursue policies that elevate and radically improve education for all from preschool through the many phases of adult life. We need to re-enthrone honest competition and end corporate welfare. We must criminalize what has become brazen, if-legal, corruption of our national government by special interests.

Today our government’s own accounting office estimates one third of our $3 trillion national budget is wasted. We don’t need higher taxes. We need smarter spending. We need ethics and honesty. We all know this. Now we must demand it. All we are asking is for a government of leaders seeking the public interest instead of their self-interest. And what’s in the public interest is universal quality education and an uncorrupt playing field. Americans have the ingenuity to create a new future. We just need a government who will provide the conditions for our talent to bloom. This is called Civic Social Responsibility. It’s nothing new. It’s what our country was founded on. Government by the people, for the people.

YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN OUR ATTEMPT TO GIVE AMERICANS A VOICE:
AMERICA’S NEW AGENDA

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

5 comments.

My Father Was John Wayne

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My father was John Wayne. Not the actor. He was better than the actor. He was the ideal. He was a real cowboy. A rancher who road the range, mended fences, and drove cattle. He also graduated from Cal-Berkeley in 1940. He never wanted to be a cowboy, but we had a family ranch and he was the only son in an Italian family so ranching chose him. Dad was a naturally spiritual man. My first 4-year-old memories of him were kneeling at my bedside just as I pulled my covers up and praying his guts out for me and my brothers, sister and mom. Then he prayed for rain and finally to know what to do if it didn’t rain. Then he would smother me with kisses. His day-long bristly beard would rough my little boy skin, but it didn’t matter; I felt so safe being loved by such a strong man. My dad was a cowboy and nothing could be better.

Being a cattle rancher was a financial high-wire act. When I got older I realized that every year Dad borrowed the money to buy cattle so he could fatten them on the grass we needed the rain for. If the market price was right at the beginning of the summer he could sell the cattle, pay the bank, our taxes, and I would get back-to-school clothes in late August. If we didn’t get rain or the cattle market was down, we would keep the cattle another year, mom would sew patches on the inside of my pants and we would all pray a little harder. Dad never worked for anyone. He’d rather wrestle with the unpredictability of nature than conform to the “man”. He was a cowboy.

My mother was Katherine Hepburn. At least my dad thought so. Every afternoon at about 3 o’clock she’d take a bath and put on a dress and make-up and start dinner. Just before dinner he’d open the kitchen door wide and flash a big smile at all of us. Then he’d make a beeline to Mom and sweep her up in his arms and kiss her on the lips like a sailor home after a year at sea. This happened all the time. It was their love ritual. My brothers, sister, and I all looked away and made throw-up sounds but out of the corner of our eyes we saw genuine, passionate, loyal love expressed. Dad always told Mom how beautiful she was and how great her food tasted. He was wildly enthusiastic and mostly uncensored. One Thanksgiving during my first year of college he proclaimed to my mother at dinner, “If you weren’t such a great cook, I’d chain you to the bed!” My roommate spit his food out. But this was genuine dad. He always referred to sex as being healthy. Dad was completely unrehearsed, passionate, opinionated, and most of all an advocate for all of us. He knew who he was, what he believed, what he must do.

When I was 14, a down-on-his-luck drifter drove his beat-up station wagon up the ranch road. It was dusk and Dad went outside to meet him. I snuck out and watched through a shed door. The stranger was a rough looking character, and he threatened Dad. He said he would kill him and take what he wanted. Dad calmly asked him if he had any skills. The man said he sharpened knives. My heart was pumping faster than a squirrel dodging cars. Dad said we had lots of things that needed sharpening. He paid him $50 to sharpen our lawn mower and every kitchen knife we owned. He spent an hour talking to the man while he worked. Dad never said anything about it except that the man was “just doing the best he could.”

Well that’s the kind of man who raised me. I have no excuse. Dad really mattered to me. Throughout my life there have been so many times I asked myself, “What would Dad have done?” But today being a father, a real one, not just a biological one, is increasingly rare. According to the Center for Health Statistics, nearly 30% of white children, 50% of Hispanics, and 71% of black children are born out of wedlock. And today more than a quarter of our children have no male in their homes, father or not. This has all happened in one generation. And it’s not fair. 40% of single moms live in poverty. And being a child without an everyday father makes life much riskier. Risk of not finishing high school or college, becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol, becoming obese, suffering from chronic illness, going to prison, getting divorced, or even going bankrupt are all much more likely to happen to children who grow up without in-the-home fathers.

Is this the best society we can create? Being a father is a choice. It’s a sacred life long commitment. I have no excuse. I had a truly great father whose memory I strive to live up to. Being a male is a matter of chromosomes; being a man requires courage; being a father is an act of life-long integrity.

Our world needs fathers.

Will Marre
American Dream Project

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

7 comments.

What Movie Are You Watching?

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The challenge is always the same. How do we survive and thrive under circumstances we do not control? Gas prices, debt, job insecurity and personal challenges such as illness, divorce or loneliness all can trigger prolonged, intense stress. And yes, stress makes us stupid. Stupider than an eight-year-old with a butane lighter. Brain research reveals that stress shuts down access to our creative problem solving and critical thinking centers of our brains. The result is that we can exaggerate feelings of helplessness, despair and rage. Stress triggers strong emotions that focus our attention on the regrets of the past, fear of the future or blame on others. But it’s all we see on TV or hear on the radio. All these emotions are self-destructive. Stress slays us in the face and gets our attention so what’s the solution?

Well, it begins with suspending our fears and frustrations. There are two movie theaters in our minds. One is showing the latest horror film of our lives and the other is a film festival of heroic tales (like Lord of the Rings) and romantic comedies (like Sleepless in Seattle). In our inner movies we are either the victim, getting slashed, squashed or shot, or we’re the hero whereby staying with our values and vision we transcend our challenges and pursue a life we both value and enjoy. We choose which movie to watch every waking minute. Our horror flick makes us stress crazy. Our epic journey inspires personal wisdom. But all of us must choose. But just willing ourselves to be positive and heroic is exhausting. A positive internal reaction to threatening external reality can seem insane. So how do we get the right movie of our life playing?

It requires more than will power. It happens when we change how we think, how we feel, and what we do. It requires one huge commitment. Are you ready? You must commit to really enjoy life as you are living it. Minute to minute enjoyment happens when you show up for every moment. You know your life has become an endless breathless sprint when your mind is constantly preoccupied and obsessed with personal fears or anger at things you do not control. When you’re sitting at dinner pretending to listen to your spouse but you’re actually having a second conversation in your mind, you are in attention deficit. When you’re home checking emails and your young child is telling you a story and you’re saying, “Uh, huh…I’m listening…Go on,” you’re only pretending. There is no such thing as true multi-tasking. Instead it’s called ping-pong focus. It is exhausting to play and never satisfying to any of the players. When your life is in your rhythm, you will be emotionally present for those whom you love. You will see your own feelings. You will savor beauty, taste your food, and laugh easily. You will even be alert in meetings. You will have new options and have more energy. And that will only happen when you pursue your authentic dream, using your most natural talents to contribute to a better future. Yours and others. Most of all it will only happen when you’re driven by love instead of fear.

None of this is unrealistic. In fact, it’s the most realistic way to live. When virtually all of your efforts are being invested in your real dreams, when you are using the gifts that create the most value, and when your prime motive is love, your anxiety for success, your mad panic for relief from stress begin to fade in an integrated life that offers long stretches of active contentment and deep emotional refuge to deal with the inevitable storms of disappointment and setback. It all happens when what really matters in life matters most to you. As soon as we focus our highest energy on creating a long-term life we both value and enjoy the challenges of making whatever changes we must will gradually melt in the light of our sustained vision.

I have seen many people make seemingly unbelievable changes to successfully live their dream life. I’ve seen a single mother, high school drop-out get a Master’s degree and become a high school principal. I’ve seen a multi-billion dollar company CEO leave his stock options and start a local community-based firm so he could spend more time with his family. I’ve seen an executive needing a heart bypass cut his weekly job time by 40% and be more successful. I’ve seen a young family go bankrupt and then have their own business living exactly where they want to within five years. They all did the same things. First they quit being mad or scared. Second, they got clear on what they did want. Third, they pursued a long-term plan (multi-year) to get there. This isn’t self-help drivel from the Love Guru. These are the finding of multi-decade studies of behavioral economists. Life success and personal happiness come to those who resist overreacting to immediate circumstances and consistently invest in themselves for the long run. Believe in your future. Write your screenplay. Be the hero of your own life. It’s a great movie.

7 comments.

Free At Last

I just got off the phone with a physicist from Silicon Valley.  He’s not just any scientist.  He’s been the CEO of a super computer company and now is hired by venture capitalists to determine the potential of emerging hydrogen energy companies.  What he told me was eye opening.  Hydrogen has long been viewed as the ultimate solution to the energy crisis.  It’s the most common substance in the universe and can be converted to hot energy without any CO2 or other pollutants.  The problem is it currently takes more energy to convert hydrogen than the energy it produces.  (This is a common problem for new energy sources.)  Second, currently we have no hydrogen energy grid to deliver hydrogen fuel across the country.  Well both those problems are within our grasp of being solved.  All we need is the political will to make it happen.  My scientist friend said if we had the guts to invest $25 billion a year for five years, we would solve the last remaining barriers to economically creating almost infinite energy.  Second, for an equal amount we could create a Hydrogen Distribution Network to fill everyone’s fuel cells in our neighborhoods.  That’s a lot of money you say.  $50 billion for 5 years is $250 billion bucks.  But wait, that’s just two years of financing the known direct cost of the Iraq War.  It’s less than one half of one percent of Gross Domestic Product.  It’s less than one half the annual profits of the big oil companies.  And for what?  The end of our dependence and entanglements of Middle Eastern oil despots.  And the beginning of a new era of sustainable abundance.  So what are we doing about it?

Well the CEO’s of the bloated oil companies who collectively made $123 billion last year and came to Washington, got nicked with a few sarcastic remarks which don’t amount to more than throwing spit balls at an oil tanker, got on their jet fuel-guzzling private jets and flew back to their mansions. Why doesn’t anything happen?  Could it be the oil lobby has more influence than we do?

A lot is being written about the price of oil now because what’s happening is so serious.  This is how I see it:
•    Oil is a strategic resource.  It impacts the cost of everything.  The oil companies don’t make it.  They just pump it.  Oil companies don’t add much unique value.  Gasoline is as low-tech fuel; most of the energy released by burning it is wasted.  Oil companies have done little invention or innovation except in finding ways to extract it.
•    Oil is a natural resource.  Nature created it.  Since the use of oil impacts the quality of all our lives, those who control it have a special social responsibility to all of us.  This isn’t socialism; it’s common sense.
•    In the 1980’s we decided that competition wasn’t an important pillar of free market capitalism so we cancelled our anti-trust laws and the oil companies merged into a powerful club.
•    In spite of record profits, oil companies are investing little in new oil field development or refineries.
•    As percent of profits oil companies are not seriously investing in clean renewable energy resources; indeed the CEO of Exxon said that Exxon is an oil company not an energy company.  The biggest use of oil profits has been to buy their own stock and issue dividends to shareholders.
•    Demand for oil worldwide (including China and India) has risen 10-15% while prices have doubled.
•    Speculators have created an oil-commodities bubble similar to our internet-housing bubbles.
•    Turning food (corn) into fuel is boondoggle forced upon us by big agriculture.  It’s causing food riots and is a lousy fuel.
•    Our energy policy now represents the greatest transfer of wealth from working Americans to foreign despots in the history of the world.  Our children spend a day’s wage to fill up a tank of gas and money ends up building luxury hotels in Dubai or providing night-vision goggles to the Taliban.
•    The people who control our energy policy don’t care.  They are part of a new class of super-wealthy who have their own jets, their own schools, their own security forces, their own banks and fortresses and private islands to survive whatever happens.
•    There are many myths that all of this is the inevitable working of global capitalism and everything is playing out according to divinely inspired markets.  It’s not.  The economy as been rigged by years of corruption and concentration of power accompanied by a relentless P.R. machine telling us this is the best we can hope for.

One of the healthiest responses to injustice and avoidable suffering is to focus our anger into a loud voice aimed at leaders and allow our cultural megaphone to turn up our volume.  I suggest we grab our Congressmen by their lapels and insist that oil companies invest 25% of profits in a new, private Institute for Energy Independence which funds honest science in scalable clean renewable technologies especially hydrogen.  Insist big oil companies must have independent board chairs and at least 30% of the board be non-stock holders.  And take $25 billion a year out of private, no bid “defense” contracts (we evidently pay KBR $75 to do a load of wash for our troops in Iraq because of a no-bid contract) and build a Hydrogen Energy Web for energy delivery.  If we do this, car companies will build the cars.

None of this will happen overnight, but it will happen if we don’t give up or give in.  We must not listen to stories about how this won’t work by those who prosper from the status quo.  We are not helpless. Go to Write Your Representative or Congress.org and write your Congressperson today.  Demand a focused, funded plan to free us from oil slavery.

Imagine a future  free of oil.  In 5 years.  Just imagine.

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

13 comments.

An evil way to make money?

Grand Theft Auto IV is a new videogame. It sold $500 million in its first week of release. It is the most financially successful piece of entertainment ever released in terms of first week sales. More than any Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Lord of the Rings movies. And it’s just starting. Grand Theft Auto IV is an amazing example of evil-genius. It is a visual banquet of hauntingly realistic animation that is as visually arousing as it is morally repulsive. The game asks you to identify with a sympathetic anti-hero who achieves goals by stealing cars, hiring prostitutes, killing pedestrians, getting drunk and driving wild. Of course the makers of this technically brilliant glorification of self-destructive insanity say it’s all harmless fun. After all, what we watch and think about doesn’t really impact what we really do. And, me, sounding like some very un-cool grandpa only makes it more desirable to my cool-seeking grandchildren to play it. Yea, yea. I get it. But I can’t help it. My blood is boiling.

I speak to business leaders frequently about Corporate Social Responsibility. I sum things up with the proposition that we are responsible for the future we are co-creating. That all of us are responsible for fostering a “healthy planet with healthy people.” All of us. It’s an important message. Today we are constantly tempted to make a buck through “negative innovation.” This occurs when we willfully promote ideas that undermine people’s ability or motives to meet their own genuine needs. It is a high-tech form of toxic pollution. When we separate our economic life from our human responsibility to each other, we descend into predators. When we develop products that destroy our planet, exploit people, and degrade the dignity of our own children, we erode our own spiritual worth. Is it ethical to spend millions of dollars and use the magnificent talents of artists and computer programmers to seduce teenagers to immerse themselves in a world of human misery made to look desirable? Is that the best thing we can do with capital and talent? I’ve talked to people who create or promote predatory entertainment and they all say the same thing. “I am not responsible.” They always claim that entertainment reflects cultural norms rather than changes them. “It’s what people want.” But is this just superficial justification of selling the glorification of suffering?

Media’s biggest cultural impact comes from what it decides to broadcast, post, print, or sell. And very often that’s driven by what sells to the lowest common denominator. At the lowest level of human consciousness we simply seek stimulation. We are attracted to novelty like a bug to a porch light. That’s why the media makers are always pushing the envelope. You see, vulgarity is shocking only if it crosses the line of established limits. And shock is what’s needed to stimulate a young audience. Brain research confirms what all seasoned parents have known. Teenagers are constantly searching for high emotional stimulation for low effort. There is probably no one more susceptible to a jolt from the outrageous, then a 14 year-old. For instance, over the past 25 years MTV has become the monster of the global Grid. It is beamed to over 100 countries and is the icon of American pop culture. It’s owned by a huge media conglomerate. It’s our message to the world of what makes us happy. Silly, isn’t it. Relatively harmless, right?

Maybe not. MTV recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. One media analyst observed that MTV’s primary legacy has been to popularize a culture that celebrates violence, glorifies materialism and exploits women. In fact, MTV may have done more to degrade women than any other single force in recent history. That’s not all. MTV is a steady diet of self-absorption, angst about trivia and a celebration of the paraphernalia of image. It drives conformity and isolation simultaneously. MTV has been very busy creating the new normal for our culture, claiming it’s only what their audience wants. It doesn’t mention that its audience is our stimulus seeking, highly vulnerable children.

While there are still some psychologists who claim watching anti-social, criminal or degrading behavior doesn’t change people’s attitudes or choices, the preponderance of evidence is that it does. New research confirms our thinking actually alters our brain chemistry and our habitual emotional responses. Just like junk food, junk thinking eventually poisons us.

Never in history have humans created a society where vivid emotionally engaging depictions of violence and sexual exploitation surrounded us daily. And frankly no one knows for sure what the result will be. But common sense tells us it does not promote the values of civilization or the behavior of a species serious about their responsibilities to their own children. Isn’t it rather simply an evil way to make money?

Free speech is great and an essential right of every person. It also comes with a responsibility. Shouldn’t we be motivated to use our position, our talent and our technology to create messages that inspire rather than exploit? I guess it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. At the end of our lives will we be able to look in the mirror and say, “I did the most to create the greatest good I could?” Maybe it’s a question we should ask ourselves every day.

If you want to send Take 2, the makers of Grand Theft Auto IV, some feedback, email pr@rockstargames.com.

Will Marre
Founder, American Dream Project
Expert on Corporate Social Responsibility

9 comments.

The Rule of Love

Many of you have responded to my blogs wondering what you or we can do about the issues presented. The answer is more than you may think. The people who most benefit from the status quo want you to feel that you can’t make a difference. It’s called learned helplessness. It’s a lie. No matter what you choose to do, how big or small, each of us matters. We are part of the tipping point for a better future. For instance, I donate a great amount of time teaching and speaking to students, non-profits and community groups about our individual leadership opportunities to help change our world right where we are. This is just one way I try to make my difference.

Last Monday I taught a class in Corporate Social Responsibility to a group of young executives at the University of California San Diego. On the subject of ethics I mentioned that 20th century U.S. culture descended into embracing the lowest level of classical ethics. The result is that our government now routinely enables large companies to sell us poisonous products. You see the bottom of the ethical barrel is the “Rule of Law.” It basically confirms that if something is legal, it’s ethical, even moral. But it’s often not. In fact when a country enshrines the “Rule of Law” as their standard of morality it unleashes a tidal wave of lobbyists corrupting lawmakers to make their special interest desires become legal. For instance, many of our antipollution laws are written so that it’s legal to pay a relatively inexpensive fine rather than clean up the brown field and stop polluting. As a citizen, this pygmy view of ethics puts us at increasing risk of being poisoned by the Frankenstein chemicals in common products and food. When our nation was founded we agreed that life, that is, its reasonable protection, was an “inalienable right,” a fundamental right. But lately our government has increasingly decided to sell its responsibility to provide for our safety to the highest bidder. The result is we still have cigarette companies figuring out how to make their death weed more addictive while they kill 400,000 Americans a year even as the FDA becomes a barrier to our children’s safety.

The latest ethical failure recently came to light when it was revealed that the FDA has ignored over 100 studies showing that BPA, a common chemical in plastic bottles and the lining of canned goods, pose a significant health risk to babies. Babies! Turns out sterilizing plastic bottles causes BPA molecules to get in milk that later stimulates breast.and prostate cancer. Canada has banned BPA plastic, and Japan banned its use in canned food 10 years ago. But in the land of the brave we’re on our own. Yes the chemical companies produced two studies showing the health risks were minimal and since we now have the best FDA money can buy, our safety regulators let it slide. It seems it’s not their responsibility to protect American babies. I wish I were making this up, but the Government Accounting Office just released a report stating that our Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency have been systematically compromised by government contractors and special (business) interests. Turns out over the past eight years these agencies, established to protect our health from the unrestrained gravity of greed, have been taken over by the industries they are supposed to regulate. So the cancer screening reviews of ten common chemicals that you and I are frequently exposed to in our households and consumer products have not been conducted due to internal restrictions on the scientists that you and I pay to protect our children (EPA Undermined on Health Dangers, Investigators Say).

Since the dawn of history merchants have railed against regulation. They always claim individuals right to choose is more sacred than health and safety rules. They always claim that regulation will cause economic collapse. English business tycoons in the 19th century claimed that capitalism would fail without child labor. Slavery was justified for 150 years as an economic necessity. And American carmakers in the 1960’s and 70’s said that government regulations mandating seatbelts and pollution control technology was completely unnecessary. “If the people choose, the market will dictate what is best for us” is always the cry. Using human choice and the marketplace as the mechanism for what is safe to sell is nothing more than a weak attempt to morally justify unrestrained self-interest.

I told the class that there is more to ethics than what’s “legal.” A higher level is the “Rule of Justice.” It’s based on the Golden Rule. It asks chemical company executives and scientists to ask themselves, “What kind of bottle do I want my children drinking from?” If we could just achieve that standard as our ideal we could restore integrity to our entire society. But the highest level of ethics is even more inspiring. It is call the “Rule of Love.” It challenges us to ask, “How much good can I do?” Imagine a world where that was the common question in a business meeting. It’s the concept of Greatest Total Value. What is the Greatest Total Value we can provide to our customers, employees, society? I have found the exciting result of asking this question is it unleashes people to think of previously unimagined value innovations. Innovations that lead to higher quality, less waste, and unique products and services.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with capitalism. It’s morally neutral. The problem is with us. Only humans can make our businesses and government moral. Are we really willing to poison our own babies rather than demand genuine moral leadership? We are better than this.

(Effective Regulation is one criterion of American Dream Project’s America’s New Agenda. To found out more and add your ideas, click here.)

Your single voice matters. It matters because you’re not alone. Your voice can be a part of a chorus, inaudible to you but very noisy to the world. Speak up. Most especially, go to Write Your Representative or Congress.org to get your Congressperson’s email address and write him or her in reasoned but passionate tones (For Congressional letter writing tips, click here). When enough of us do, they will listen. We are changing the world either by staying silent or by speaking out. I send emails to the Presidential candidates. Of course they respond with requests for donations, but no matter, I still express myself. Write someone today. It matters. If you agree with what I am saying, pass it on. This is not my day job. I am doing this for my grandchildren. We all need to do something because we can.
Will Marre, founder American Dream Project

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

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