The good news is that "America is becoming better educated, more inclusive, and more concerned about the environment."
There's no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness.
Skill at articulation does not correlate with intelligence, and intelligence does not correlate with wisdom. The qualities that correlate with wisdom are humility and curiosity (Socrates and Einstein). This is why science works so well and politics doesn't (and also why many corporate boards and managers aren't as effective as they might be).
-Gerry Ohrstrom
The Economist imagines Socrates in modern America:
Who and what, then, was Socrates to Athens? Part of his glory derives from his incorruptibility, his brave nonconformism, his determination to think as an individual not as part of “the herd”. Nonconformism became a heroic value in the Western tradition that Socrates helped to found, especially in societies such as America’s that value individualism.
But nonconformism is not an absolute virtue and easily veers off into sedition, subversion or other actions deemed unpatriotic. Psychologists suggest that people make constant trade-offs in social settings between, on one hand, insisting on their notion of truth and, on the other, the cohesion of a group. Sometimes truth and virtue require dissent and rebellion. Other times the survival or security of the group takes precedence and requires solidarity. If Socrates the free thinker belonged to a team, a club, a firm or a country today, he would never compromise his values, but he might well compromise his group.
On lists:
The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.
On books (even better):
I have a hallway for literature that's 70 meters long. I walk through it several times a day, and I feel good when I do. Culture isn't knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes. Of course, nowadays I can find this kind of information on the Internet in no time. But, as I said, you never know with the Internet.
Kudos to Foreign Policy for including Elinor Ostrom on their list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for "for showing us that the global commons isn't such a tragic place after all."
Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, and one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers, "urges us to embrace a new world in which digital technology drives down the price of goods 'made of ideas'."
Bill Easterly also made the list, "for raising inconvenient truths about the foreign-aid business." Let's hope more people pay attention to HIS ideas now.
Echoing Easterly's ideas, is another thinker on the list, George Ayittey, who says "the presumption that Africans don't know what is good for them and that Americans or other foreigners know what is best for Africans is extremely offensive."
David Carr wrote in the New York Times the other day about "The Fall and Rise of Media":
Historically, young women and men who sought to thrive in publishing made their way to Manhattan. Once there, they were told, they would work in marginal jobs for indifferent bosses doing mundane tasks and then one day, if they did all of that without whimper or complaint, they would magically be granted access to a gilded community, the large heaving engine of books, magazines and newspapers.
...
For those of us who work in Manhattan media...a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.
...
Those of us who covered media were told for years that the sky was falling, and nothing happened. And then it did. Great big chunks of the sky gave way and magazines tumbled — Gourmet!? — that seemed as if they were as solid as the skyline itself. But to those of us who were here back in September of 2001, we learned that even the edifice of Manhattan itself is subject to perforation and endless loss.
So what do we get instead? The future, which is not a bad deal if you ignore all the collateral gore. Young men and women are still coming here to remake the world, they just won’t be stopping by the human resources department of Condé Nast to begin their ascent.
And VC in NYC adds this:
I realize that the change is gut wrenching and many have lost jobs and careers in the process. I don't celebrate that. In fact, I find it upsetting. But I have also watched many reinvent themselves and come out in a better place too. Change is inevitable and we are better off embracing it than fighting it.
"The cowboy is and always has been a common man in an uncommon profession, giving more than he receives, living by a code of conduct his detractors will never understand."
-Elmer Kelton
Cornel West on Jane Austen: "She blew my mind...she was preoccupied with freedom."
Watch the video here.
Revolution on the streets of Prague.
Watch raw footage here.
The song is in your heart
Your heart is in the song
The song is of the earth
The song is of the sky
From a piece in today's New York Times on "how changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything:"
Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic. “Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,” Gates said, “you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering.
There's a LOT more of the author in this interview than anyone interested in James Lovelock will likely want, but the father of the Gaia Theory is always fascinating.
Lovelock is first and foremost a scientist: "I love being a scientist. I don't like it when the Gaia movement is treated like a religion, as if scientists are seen as part of the problem rather than the solution.
"Some of the more recent green hysteria is plain wrong. I know what there is to be worried about and what not to. Flying is not a major problem, not compared with all the CO2 being given out all the time by us and our pets. Flying's only got this reputation because often greening mixes with the bad side of the left, which is to do with envy."
In his new book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, Lovelock discusses climate change and the environmental policies that makes politicians look good but do "nothing for the Earth." He also shares his fears and hopes for Gaia.