Radical Middle

True, sustainable social transformation will never occur by one side, party, perspective defeating and dominating the others.

Sustainable social transformation will occur when people and groups with different perspectives learn to listen to each other and dialogue.

Dialogue is not about compromise that leads to the mediocre middle.

It is about constructively engaging with the “other” to come up with truly better solutions.  That is not mediocrity.  It is radical and creative.

Arriving at better solutions includes a creative process of agreeing on reasonable solutions, giving those solutions a legitimate chance, and evaluating the effects based on evidence that can be accepted by a majority of both sides.

A solution with a reasonable chance of success that will be supported by a significant majority of the population is always going to be better than a solution bitterly opposed by significant factions.  And a widely accepted solution will always be better than a situation of stalemate where no meaningful solutions can ever be given enough of a chance to succeed.

If we’re all heading for the precipice together, then we need to take action together; and that means that we have to figure out a way to agree very, very soon.

In my case, I believe especially strongly in progressive ideas and solutions.   On the other hand, there are conservative thinkers whom I respect; and I believe that conservative ideas and solutions have value and need to be seriously considered in coming up with any solution.

The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

However, I only accept ideas and solutions that I feel have been formulated to help all of us, and not just to benefit 50%, 10%, or 1%.

I am committed to do all I can to rid our society of anti-democratic rhetoric and unrestricted funding of media manipulations and outright lies.   So I look for progressives, conservatives, and any others who are equally committed to that goal.  It is definitely a goal that can be supported by all who love our whole community.

Changing the way elections and media influence are funded is critical.  Yet, even when that happens, we will still need to learn how to constructively think and make decisions together.   Making progress on one front will support progress on the other.

Collective vs. Collected Intelligence

There are two types of intelligence:  Collected and Collective.

There is no such thing as “all by yourself” intelligence.

“Collected intelligence” is when one person or group collects intelligence primarily for its own use and benefit.   It doesn’t require other people’s permission or even awareness that their data is being collected, or how it is being used.

“Collective intelligence” is intelligence collected from or contributed by many people who are aware (or have the ability to be aware) of what is being collected and how it is being used – and where those people have rights and abilities to use the intelligence for their own purposes,subject to agreed on constraints, privacy rights, etc.

Collective intelligence, according to this description, is absolutely required for reducing social fragmentation and for increasing social coherence, innovation, and prosperity for all.  Collective intelligence is also required for producing anything that could be called “collective consciousness.”

Collective intelligence can also be described as “connected intelligence” which might be a good idea, since many people still use the term “collective intelligence” when they really mean “collected intelligence.”

(For more thoughts, see  also 2008 post “When is Collective Intelligence also Collective Consciousness?“)

Connection Strength & Context in Social Networks

This post continues the theme begun in the last post about the nature of networked intelligence, and the role of connection strengths and context.  This one reveals more of the theory that has inspired the “Trusted Sharing” app now being tested by a few friends and colleagues.

Networks are nature’s best embodiments of collective intelligence.

Networks are intelligent and adaptive, which means that they grow in intelligence as they adapt to events to fulfill needs.

The networks that are most important to us are:

• Networks of living organisms, plants and animals that feed and protect us;
• Networks of cells that make up our immune systems;
• Networks of neurons that make up our brains;
• Personal and social networks that make up our friendship and support networks, and health, transportation, economic, learning, and communication networks.

Our technology is now more than ever creating, using, and maintaining networks.

All networks are basically made of nodes and connections.   The intelligence of the nodes is important, but the real intelligence of networks is in the connections.

There are two super-attributes of connections that are especially important in all types of networks:  Connection Strength and Context.  

In order for a social network application to be most intelligent and useful it has to recognize, ‘understand’ and make use of these two attributes of connections – strength and context.

Current generations of social networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and now Google+, are just now, and barely, beginning to recognize and make use of the strength and context of connections.   “Just beginning” means that there is much more valuable evolution that has yet to take place.

All people of course pay close attention to the subtle nuances of their network connections.   But it is definitely a challenge to design a computer-augmented social network application that can more fully ‘understand’ and make use of these nuances, which include the strength and context of connections.

To be successful, social network applications have to miraculously turn complexities and fine distinctions into features that are easy and intuitive to use, useful, and, most of all, that don’t get in the way.

Strength and Context of Connections

Here are some of the distinctions that exist in our ‘real-world’ understanding of social network connections and behaviors.

Context of connection is about what is shared.

Networks form within and around what people share:

• Friendship, love, family ties (and hostility, aversions, common enemies)
• Group and organization membership – based on commonalities such as shared interest, perspectives, goals, employer, profession or industry.
• Exchange-driven contexts – e.g., buyer-seller, client-consultant, teacher-student.

More abstractly what we share are:

-   Interests
-   Values
-    Goals
-    Exchanges and collaborations

Strength:  How strong is the connection?

People easily understand that their connections vary in strength.   We intuitively measure strength in terms of how much the connection is:

-   Close
-   Trusted
-   Valuable
-   High in priority (for response or action)

Reciprocity

There is another important attribute of connections that is important to understand and make use of:  Reciprocity – also known as mutuality.

In social network theory reciprocity is understood in terms of the “direction” of the connections between two nodes:  A connection can extend from A to B, or from B to A, or it can be bi-directional, i.e., reciprocal.

If two people share the same interest (or goal or set of values or group membership) but don’t know each other, then they are each connected by the same context, e.g. interest (or goal or set of values or group membership), but they are not personally connected.

Yet even if not connected personally, they have a mutual connection to the same context; and that mutual connection can be an important incentive for reciprocity:  sharing information and ideas, responding to news & requests, providing help when needed, etc.

It is also possible that even if two people share the same context and don’t know each other personally, one person can “follow” the content that the other person makes available, in a tweet, blog post, article, book, video, etc.

This type of non-reciprocal relationship is Twitter’s sweet spot.  In Twitter if you follow someone’s posts they don’t have to follow you for the system to work.  And yet, following someone is often a way that a reciprocal relationship can start – by following someone back, or even by actually reading and commenting on what the other person posts, or by starting a direct conversation.

Trusted Sharing’s Approach

Trusted Sharing’s first public release will focus on developing a core layer for automatically determining and using both strength and context of connections to sort and filter incoming feeds and to target outgoing messages and feeds.  We already have much of that core functionality completed for use of strength of connections — enough to begin testing and refining with a limited number of test users.  The public release, when complete, will also include simple but useful methods for filtering and tagging content by topic (context).   However, automatically tagging and matching user-generated content by topic isn’t our focus for this first version.   Our preference is to partner with other developers who are already well down the road with automated topic recognition in socially-shared content.

If you would like to be notified when the Trusted Sharing beta is ready, leave a comment here, or contact me at dwork-trsh@spamarrest.com.

Collective Intelligence in Neural Networks and Social Networks

Context for this post:  I’m currently working on a social network application that demonstrates the value of connection strength and context for making networks more useful and intelligent.   Connection strength and context are currently only rudimentarily and mushily implemented in social network apps. This post describes some of the underlying theory for why connection strength and context are key to next generation social network applications.

A recent study of how behavioral decisions are made in the brain makes it clear how important strengths of connections are to the intelligence of networks.

“Scientists at the University of Rochester, Washington University in St. Louis, and Baylor College of Medicine have unraveled how the brain manages to process the complex, rapidly changing, and often conflicting sensory signals to make sense of our world.

“The answer lies in a simple computation performed by single nerve cells: a weighted average. Neurons have to apply the correct weights to each sensory cue, and the authors reveal how this is done.” …

“The study demonstrates that the low-level computations performed by single neurons in the brain, when repeated by millions of neurons performing similar computations, accounts for the brain’s complex ability to know which sensory signals to weight as more important. ‘Thus, the brain essentially can break down a seemingly high-level behavioral task into a set of much simpler operations performed simultaneously by many neurons.’”

(The fact that neurons in the brain make a weighted average of thousands of inputs has long been understood in theory.  This particular study has surfaced much clearer evidence for exactly how the whole process works.)

Obviously individual humans are enormously more complex than individual neurons.

However, the way individual and collective decisions are made – i.e., decisions about what information is reliable and what actions to take – seems very similar in populations of neurons and populations of humans:

Each individual (whether neuron or human) makes a particular decision by making a weighted average of all of the inputs the individual receives that are relevant to the decision.   And likewise, the population makes its own particular decision by making a weighted average (e.g., taking a vote) of the decisions made by all the individuals in the population whose decisions matter.

In the case of individual humans, inputs relevant to particular decisions consist of opinions gathered from all types of media, including the publications and media channels they trust most, and the opinions of their trusted friends and other contacts gathered from direct interaction and social media.

However, individuals obviously don’t give equal weight to all of their sources.  Instead they give stronger or weaker weights to their different sources, including both positive and negative weights.

These weights also vary depending on context – that is, different sources are especially important for forming, reinforcing, or changing opinions, decisions, and behaviors related to politics, health, education, career and work, economic and financial choices, etc.

The implications that are most important are these:

1.  Understanding and using strength and context of connections is extremely important for enhancing the effectiveness of social network applications and other applications that are intended to improve individual and collective decision-making.

2.  If a population (community, nation, etc.) needs to make a critical decision, then it is essential to have all relevant perspectives fairly represented and fairly taken into account.  (Shooting your opponent, or censoring their ideas, or flooding the media with intentional misinformation and ridicule are not fair methods.)

3.  The perspectives and decisions of individuals are in fact extremely necessary to insure that the population as a whole makes the best possible decisions.

4.  Finding ways to reduce social fragmentation is essential for making both individuals and whole populations more intelligent.   Contributors to social fragmentation include:  Filter-bubbles, echo chambers, knee-jerk bias, narrow interests that take precedence over the good of all, and intentional manipulation by a powerful few of lower-level emotional reflexes (“knee-jerk biases”) among the many.  All of these kinds of influences tend to make both individuals and whole populations much less intelligent than they need to be for the whole group to thrive.

Social network applications that fully make use of the connection strength and context can help address each of these issues.  But of course, they also have to be easy to use, relevant, and compelling.

Self-Government at Bay

“All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man.  The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.” 
Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Mayor of Washington, 1826

In this famous quote Jefferson was speaking in favor of “the blessings and security of self-government.”   Yet he and all founders of this country would readily agree that election campaigns funded 99% by the wealthiest 1% (individuals & corporations, booted and spurred) are now sadly deteriorating the blessings and security of self-government.

True, the people vote.  But “who tells the stories of a culture governs human behavior”
(George Gerbner, media theorist, quoted by Eli Pariser in the Filter Bubble).

What to do?  Consider the ideas and proposals RootStrikers.org and the following quotes by Lawrence Lessig:

—————————————————————————————————-

“…this government is not dependent upon ‘the People alone.’ This government is dependent upon the Funders of campaigns. 1% of America funds almost 99% of the cost of political campaigns in America. Is it therefore any surprise that the government is responsive first to the needs of that 1%, and not to the 99%? …

“This government, we must chant, is corrupt. We can say that clearly and loudly from the Left. They can say that clearly and loudly from the Right. And we then must teach America that this corruption is the core problem — it is the root problem — that we as Americans must be fighting.”  …

“There is no liberal, or libertarian, or conservative who should defend this corruption. The single problem we all should be able to agree about is a political system that has lost its moral foundation: For no American went to war to defend a democracy ‘dependent upon the Funders alone.’”
(Letter to the Occupiers:  The Principal of Non-Contradiction 10/12/2011)

“We are different in a million ways, we Americans, but we are all equally Americans. And if you’re leading a movement that won’t acknowledge that difference (or more frighteningly, that believes that mere rhetoric is going to erase that difference), then you’re not looking for fundamental reform. You’re looking for a putsch.

“This Nation needs fundamental reform. For that, our constitution requires 75% of states to agree. Thus, if we want real change, we must find those ideas upon which 75% of states can actually agree.”
Something More than Polarization, 10/25/2011

Is Reducing Income Inequality Really “Class Warfare”?

An essay in last Sunday’s Washington Post carried the title “Obama Shouldn’t Be Afraid of  Little Class Warfare” by Sally Kohn.

The piece opened with these points:

“On Monday, defending his plan to raise taxes on the rich to pay for job creation, President Obama said: ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math.’”

“No, Mr. President, this is class warfare — and it’s a war you’d better win. Corporate interests and the rich started it. Right now, they’re winning. Progressives and the middle class must fight back, and the president should be clear whose side he’s on.”

The article went on to make its case with some history and some very interesting data about increasing income inequality in the U.S.  The statement that I found to be most provocative was this:

“After all, according to the CIA, income inequality in the United States is greater than in Yemen.”

The link above took me to the CIA Factbook which publishes an index that measures income equality or inequality among all families in each country.  A country with perfect equality would have a score of 0 and a country with perfect inequality would have a score of 100.   (Note – perfect equality according to this measure does not mean that everyone earns the same amount, but rather that all discrete income levels, from richest to poorest, contain about the same number of families.)

It’s good to be able to see so graphically how the U.S compares to other countries.  The U.S. is indeed much closer in terms of inequality to some of the most unstable countries in the world.

Here are some of the CIA Factbook Entries comparing the U.S. to other countries:

US:     45 (2007)   (40.8 in 1997)

Sweden:  23

Norway: 25

Germany:  27 (with one of the most robust economies in the world)

Spain:  32

Switzerland:  33.7

United Kingdom:  34

India:  36.8

Indonesia:  37

Yemen: 37.7

Israel:  39

China:  41.5

Russia:  42

Rawanda:  46.8

Mexico:  48.2

Zimbabwe 50.1

Zambia:  50.8

Columbia:  58.5

Bolivia:  58.2

Haiti:  59.2

Sierra Leone:  62.9

To illustrate the inequality in the U.S. Kohn’s article also gave these facts among others:

“Between 1979 and 2007, the income gap between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the poorest 40 percent more than tripled. Today, the richest 10 percent of Americans control two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, while, according to recently released census data, average Americans saw their real incomes decline by 2.3 percent in 2010. Though our economy grew in 2009 and 2010, 88 percent of the increase in real national income went to corporate profits, one study found. Only 1 percent went to wages and salaries for working people.”

The Web of Meaning

“Meaning” is about causes and effects, attributes and relationships.   Meaning gives rise to all ideas of good and bad, help and harm, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, smart and dumb,  and context and relevance.

All meaning comes from a web of relationships.

Relationships exist in nature: expressed in the “laws of nature” and in and between all non-living substances and objects, and in and between all living beings, including relationships in and between our bodies, our ideas and minds, our societies and cultures and sub-cultures.

The combination of all webs, known and unknown, is called the World, the Universe.

An identity is defined by a particular combination of webs of relationship, which gives rise to a particular perspective.  “I” am one such perspective.  “You” are another.   The intersection  of my perspective and yours is our perspective.  Everything else is theirs, or unknown.

Words with essentially the same meaning as these have been expressed over and over, beginning no later than three thousand years ago.  More recently, similar ideas have been expressed by at least a few million people.

The ideas have been expressed in abstractions like these, and in rich, moving detail in myth, stories and reflections, in philosophies, religious texts, poems, novels, blog posts.  To some, abstractions are dry; to others they are juicy.   Having many expressions is vital.

What are the implications of this understanding?  What can we do and achieve with it?

An answer:  The more we understand this, individually and collectively, the more likely we will be to honor other perspectives, and to want to work together to come up with better perspectives, giving rise to better solutions.  Our future depends on this happening.

Is this true?

If so, what actions and transformations are necessary to bring this about?

my ego

I am my body
I am my memories
and interests
experiences
abilities
skills
knowledge
relationships
loves
likes  dislikes
aversions  fears
aspirations
responsibilities

If I want to be, I am even
my money
my prestige
my title
my reputation
my tribe, and my position in it
my power over others
others’ power over me
the grandness or puniness of my house
and possessions
my ‘brand’
my blog

I am my boundaries
which I either choose or don’t choose
And when I experience no boundaries
I am unbounded

The Sanskrit word for ego means ‘I amness’

There is an understanding that:

When we transcend the limitations of the ego
The ego doesn’t disappear.  It expands to unboundedness
while also maintaining useful boundaries
and shedding useless limitations.

Why do tragedies happen?

Tragedies keep raising the question– why do they happen?

There is a discussion in today’s WashingtonPost.com titled, “Arizona Shootings:  Why did God allow it?”

The post is interesting; but the comments are especially interesting – and there are at least a couple of hundred.  Some people take it as an opportunity to debate whether God exists.   That debate is not so interesting.  And that debate could have been prevented by asking the question in a belief-neutral way:

“Why is life so full of suffering for so many?”

Whether you believe in God or not, the two questions are really the same.

And people’s answers to this question are what interested me the most.  There were so many different ways to answer it – and so many similar ways to answer it.  Each answer represented a personal, spiritual, or logical, or thoughtful, mystical, or philosophical, or social activist … perspective, on a question everyone has thought about, and that some keep thinking about, each time reminded of suffering — especially suffering that affects us all as a national or on a global scale.

We think about it, because even for those who don’t believe in God, the idea of so much suffering can raise doubts and despair – or anger or bewilderment at the seemingly wanton nature of being alive in a violent universe. Even people who don’t believe in God are looking for meaning in life – and since life includes suffering: Why? What is the purpose?

And yet, if intense suffering is caused by ‘accidents’ many are able to understand, or at least to accept. Whether religious or non-religious, we can accept suffering as part of life, because we are smart enough, and well developed enough to deal with suffering when it occurs, and otherwise, to enjoy what life has to offer – including most of all, being with other people.   But sometimes, even the “strongest” of us get too much of suffering, and then we are really in need of the help of others, or a long period before taking up our lives again near where we left off .

But when wanton suffering is caused by people, with apparent intention, it seems to be particularly wrenching even for those only  reading about it.

This tragedy was caused by a mentally ill person. But what about other tragedies such as terrorist killings and criminal acts? We somehow don’t think of those perpetrators as “mentally ill” – instead, we think of them as criminals, people who are immoral, or full of hatred and deeply misguided. And yet those terrorists and criminals are in fact created by mentally ill – or at least what you could call extremely stressed – cultures in which they are raised, or groups to whose messages they are vulnerable.

Our “mainstream” society in America does not intentionally nurture terrorism. We also of course oppose crime. And yet, our society does have the potential to prevent much of the mental illness that now occurs, and the potential to prevent immense rage, and depraved, stupid thinking, and all manner of suffering in our cities and neighborhoods.  It is a matter of taking better care of each other, by better funding for our care-giver institutions and professionals, and by our own efforts in our communities.  We can’t get rid of all suffering, but we can definitely do better than turn people away from needed care and sustenance.

Why aren’t we doing a lot better? Because it’s too expensive??   How much does it cost to let suffering grow?

Maybe, after all, that’s a better question to be asking than “Why is there suffering?”   (And you may have noticed, I didn’t really give an answer to that question.)

Fulfilling Human Potential

This morning I was thinking about “poverty eradication.”   I was thinking about this because right before going to bed last night I watched a TEDx video titled “What Needs to be Done in the 21^st Century?”   The presenters, Erika Ilves and Annie McQuade, listed 9 separate global imperatives, where each cause had its own tribe that feels that its cause is most important.

Here’s their list:

1.  The Economy, and Economic Growth
2.  Global Warming and the Environment
3.  Technology as what can save and fulfill us.
4.  Poverty eradication, and the Millennium Development Goals
5.  Disaster Relief
6.  Security and Defense – against destructive abilities of terrorists, criminals and enemies.
7.  Peace:  creating a global civilization based on shared values
8.  Global governance – creating effective global responses to global problems.
9.  Science – understanding ourselves and the Universe.

So, back to poverty eradication as an example of one of these tribes:

Extreme poverty is a very obvious and heartbreaking obstacle to living a fulfilling life.   So eradicating poverty is a very tangible, and addressable, goal to get behind.

But the real goal behind poverty eradication is to give all humans the opportunity to fulfill their human potential.

This is really the ultimate goal of any social improvement type goal, including all 9 of these listed above.  But the trick is in getting widespread agreement on what is human potential.

And yet, there seems to be broad agreement that human potential has three dimensions:  Physical, mental, and spiritual.

Physical potential means the potential to be healthy and strong.

Mental potential means the potential to be intelligent, creative, and adaptive.

Spiritual potential means the potential to be happy, loving, and to have a sense of purpose.

In addition, nearly all spiritual traditions and philosophies have some idea the full spiritual development includes the ability to transcend – go beyond – the limitations of individual and tribal egos.

Another common idea of spiritual fulfillment is to enhance our sense of connection to all of life.  Most humans feel more fulfilled when surrounded by the beauty of nature in balance – just as we feel a crucial sense of loss or danger when nature, and our connection to it, is not in balance.

To some people, “spiritual” is the most important dimension of fulfillment, because the spiritual dimension has the potential to transcend the other two.  However, to others, “mental” or “physical” is most important.  And yet, most people agree that the ideal is to have all three of these types of fulfillment.

OK.  If there really is broad agreement that the ultimate goal is to give all humans the opportunity to be fulfilled physically, mentally, and spiritually; then what do we do with that agreement?

Obviously:  We all focus on becoming saints!

Otherwise, admitting that this is the ultimate goal can easily threaten the narrow desires and expectations of many of us (and of our egos).    For example, if these are the ultimate goals, why would anyone want to be, or to remain, a billionaire?   Having a billion dollars at our personal disposal (or even many millions) is simply not a requirement for any single individual’s, or family’s, fulfillment.   And yet, a billion dollars can go a long way to help entire communities, and even many small and troubled countries, insure a higher level of fulfillment for its members.

There are also lots of other fascinating implications of recognizing fulfillment of human potential as the ultimate goal – for whole societies and for each of us as individuals.

Sharing Truth to Change the Game

My previous post referred to Tom Atlee’s piece on “Changing the Game” of polarized politics by giving citizens established ways to talk directly to each other.   In order to bridge gaps that now seem impossible to cross, there need to be extremely basic agreements on our shared goals, and how to know whose ideas are really on track for achieving those goals.

Ideally, more and more citizens will think about this type of question:

What do we all share?  What is most basic to all of us?

For me, it means asking:

What do I love most?

What do I love most that is not just about me and mine, but really universal?

The simple and pretty abstract answer that popped up for me:

Truth, Beauty, and Synergy

Truth and Beauty can be thought of as highly personal and relative – until we find common ideas that are so deep that most of us can agree on them, most of the time.

Synergy is living and working together, creatively and with satisfaction. It is the magic of connecting deeply to create a greater whole, where the sum is greater than the parts.

Connecting deeply means:  Transcending individual egos, and transcending group egos.

It means caring intensely about the whole, while also caring about the integrity of our individual interests.

It means unconditional love, freedom from narrow, ‘must-have’ goals, and letting go of bias.

It means suspending judgment long enough to really listen to another point of view, and to care enough about living together in the same community, and on the same planet.

Transcending our egos doesn’t mean suppressing or ignoring them.  But rather, it’s about expanding our boundaries.   If we really believe that from many we are One Nation, then acting like one nation doesn’t involve vilifying each other, nor only talking and not listening with openness.

Transcendence is mostly an ideal.  And yet it is possible to be closer, or further, from that ideal.

How can we tell who is close and who is far, from the ideal?

There are several ways that help us shake off the well-funded exhortations of narrow interests:

• Follow the money.
• Follow the fame, that brings money and influence.
• Follow the trail of encouragements for disrespect, denigration, ridicule, arrogance, and hostility.
• Follow the trail of encouragements that separate “We the People” into “Us and Them”

Look at who is funding the research, or funding the campaign, or most actively spreading the “news” and the “evidence”.   Who is actively promoting divisiveness who is also gaining the most:  Extraordinary wealth, fame and influence?

Look also more closely at the arguments and at the evidence.

Are they based on reason and objectively obtained and verified evidence?  Are independent and unbiased sources agreeing that the evidence is sound and conclusive?   Or are the arguments and evidence we’re paying attention to coming only from sources that are supporting the same point of view?

Power to the extremes

There have been times when political Power was able to find a center much closer to the middle.   It was still politics and not perfect; but it now seems a lot better than polarized paralysis.

Power in the extremes makes us collectively less and less intelligent, and unable to act effectively.   But it also creates a tremendous tension that can be harnessed for good.  Yet harnessing that which is powerful enough to destroy us is dangerous and daunting.

It requires restoring respect, a common sense of what it means to be objective, an understanding that ridicule and divisiveness benefit a tiny few to the loss of nearly all the rest of us.

Divisiveness is occurring in many areas of society where mixing differences can be explosive: Cultures, religions, politics.   Divisiveness among we the people is most easily inflamed by special interests when too many of us are listening to only one channel (special interests are very clever at targeting their messages) and when we are afraid (when life is full of threats and losses), and by our desire to be respected and rewarded by our tribe.

In the political spectrum, there are both Progressives and Conservatives who are true to their deeper human values who do not participate in or support the spread of divisiveness, denigration, and hostility.   They have different opinions, sources of information, and ideas about what is wrong and what to do.  But they do not disrespect and ridicule “the other;” and they are looking for a common way forward.  These are the ones who can help us harness the tension between perspectives to create real and lasting solutions.

Let us be always wary of those who are spreading divisiveness.   Let us be wary of getting most of our information from a single set of channels all funded by the same agenda.   Especially be wary of those who are gaining extraordinary wealth and influence by keeping “We the People” in a state of “Us and Them.”

See Tom Atlee’s post for links to ways that can help.  In the Fall of 2008, Yes! Magazine also ran several related articles on “Purple America.”

Changing the Game

Tom Atlee’s piece “Are we Ready to Change the Game Yet?” (Nov. 11) gives his explanation of both the causes of political polarization, and a potential way to change the game and bring power truly back to the people – ALL the people, regardless of current political views.

3 of his points below are a good high-level summary:

• “Special interests — especially moneyed interests — have effectively captured the two-party system — and thus the policy-making apparatus — for their own purposes.
• “Two-party polarization impedes natural alliances among those who favor the same policies and programs from different ideological perspectives.
• “If we could facilitate policy-option alliances outside of the two-party system — and those alliances could then powerfully organize either outside or inside that bipolar system — it would change the political game in the U.S.”

After this summary he describes the solutions he favors, which he calls “The Interactive Voter Choice System” and “citizen deliberative councils.”  These should be an important part of the discussion for anyone concerned with issues of polarization and transpartisanship.

My next post contains reflections on what is most fundamental for finding and achieving our shared goals.

Who Gave Organizations the Same Rights as Individual Citizens? No One.

Summary:

It is widely believed that the 14^th Amendment gives organizations the same rights as individuals.  It is also widely believed that the famous 1886 Supreme Court Case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, affirms that right.

Based on original research by Thom Hartman, the decision made in the Santa Clara court case did not make a single reference to the 14^th Amendment, nor to the equal rights of corporations, as the basis for the decision.  In addition, the 14^th amendment does not make a single reference to any form of organization having the same rights as individual citizens.  On the contrary, the language actually used makes it abundantly clear that the “persons” it refers to are individual humans.

Many believe – including me – that this is an issue that has extremely broad agreement across the entire political spectrum:  Progressive, conservative and moderate, Democrat, Republican, Libertarians, Greens, and Independents, MoveOn Activists, and Tea Party supporters.

We need to unite around what we agree on in order to make any progress.

Here are the details if you would like to see them:

In a particularly lucid interview, the historian Thom Hartman explained how the legal notion of corporate personhood evolved from a bizarre interpretation of the 14^th amendment, and now appears to give corporations the same rights as individual citizens.  (Also see his new book:  Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People — And How You Can Fight Back.)

In the interview, Hartmann says: “I think it was clear to the authors, and pretty much to everybody, that they (the authors of the 14^th Amendment) were talking about human beings — natural persons.”

He also states that the first legal precedent for giving corporations the rights of “persons” was the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case in 1886. Every attorney and law student believes this; and yet when Hartmann researched the original court case and read the Court’s decision, the Court did not make any reference to the 14^th Amendment rights of persons, even though that right was argued by the railroad.  Instead, the rights of corporations as persons was described in the “head notes” to the decision which have no legal authority and which were written by the clerk of the court, who was personally biased in favor of the railroads.

In the conclusion of the interview Hartmann says that what we need to do to reverse the ‘personhood’ of corporations is to add a new amendment that clarifies that the 14^th amendment pertains only to human persons.

However, my question is:  Why do we need a constitutional amendment when  it is now clear that Santa Clara County v. S. Pacific did not affirm the corporate personhood interpretation, and when the very language of the 14^th amendment makes it clear that it pertained only to real humans?

If you read the entire text of the 14^th amendment, you will see the word “persons” used many times, but for every use of the word, the authors were clearly talking only about human persons, as individuals, and not referring to an organization as a “person.”

Here are the uses of the word “persons” in the 14^th Amendment:

Section 1

a) Refers to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”   Corporations and other types of organizations are not “born” nor are they naturalized.

b) States that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are “citizens” of the U.S. and should thus have the same rights as any other citizens.   Corporations, labor unions, non-profits, churches, and other organizations are clearly not citizens of the U.S.  Otherwise, every organization in the country could also vote, which they can’t.

c)  States that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process.   Organizations can be closed down, but they can’t “be deprived of life” because they’re not alive.

Section 2:

a) States that apportionment of members of the House of Representatives is to be based on the “whole number of persons in each State.”  Corporations and other types of organizations are not counted when determining congressional apportionment.  (Do you really want to interpret it that way?)

b)   Refers to the number of “male citizens.”  Clearly this isn’t talking about corporations or other types of organizations.

Section 3:

a) States that “no person shall be a Senator or Representative” if that person has participated in a rebellion against the government.   This use of “person” is clearly not including corporations or other types of organizations.

So the language of the 14^th Amendment is certainly not talking about organizations; it is talking only about human individuals as persons.

If any amendment were going to take the extraordinary step of giving corporations, universities, membership organizations, etc., etc., the full rights of individual citizens the language would need to be very explicit in order for any judge with integrity to make such a  radical interpretation.   And yet, the 14^th amendment does not make a single reference to any form of organization having the same rights as individual citizens.  On the contrary, the language actually used makes it abundantly clear that the “persons” it refers to are individual humans.

The fact that organizations are not given the right to cast a vote is also evidence that no one is seriously ready to give all organizations in the country the same rights as human citizens.

The very fact that such a bizarre interpretation of the 14^th amendment has made its way into our court system is “smoking gun” evidence that over the past century a few enormously wealthy corporations have had extraordinary power in getting their way.  Thom Hartmann’s research, plus elementary logic both make it clear that this has been the case.   And this is exactly why such organizations should not have the same rights as individuals.

In order to reverse this very damaging state of affairs, we should not need to make a new amendment to state that the 14^th amendment does not say what it does not say.  And yet, what else can we do?  We can’t sue the Supreme Court; we can only ask Congress to impeach one or more members.   But, given the mess we’re now in, where wealthy corporations have undue power over elections, we can’t really expect Congress to take such a radical step.

Our only hope is to unite a majority of the natural, human persons in the country around this issue.   This is surely an issue where a majority of moderates, progressives and conservatives, ultra-liberals, tea-partiers and libertarians, all agree on.

Ask them to read the 14^th Amendment and tell you whether they think that the people who voted for that amendment somehow believed that corporations and other organizations are “persons” who are born or naturalized, or are male or female, or could possibly become Senators, or who have the right to vote.

Also ask them if they really believe that extreme wealth should play such a huge role as it does in determining which candidates can spend the most money to get its messages across and to attack their opponents.

Inequality of Wealth and the Story of the Two Bubbles

Sometimes you come across a set of ideas and a mental framework that makes things that are difficult to comprehend suddenly extremely clear.  And one thinks, “Wow, anybody should be able to understand this!”

Yesterday I listened to a downloaded 20 minute interview with Robert Reich speaking about the causes of our current “Great Recession.”  Reich is an economist, Professor of Public Policy, and former Labor Secretary.

I was interested in this interview because I saw that he was making this premise:

Too much concentration of wealth at the top is not just bad for people in the middle and bottom, but it’s also bad for the economy.

This is a message that is easily understood and that can help explain why our economic system is in such terrible shape, and that making the system more fair is also the way to fix it.

There are links to the podcast and also a complete transcript of the interview at the bottom of this post.

Here is a summary:

Reich:  “And then I looked at the research and was amazed to discover there were two years in the 20th century in which income concentrated to such an extent it actually centralized a great deal of the nation’s income right at the top.

“One year was 2007, when the richest [1% of] Americans took home, or got, I should say, about 23 and a half of total income. The other year was 1928.”

————————————-

Year % of wealth owned by the richest 1%

1928     23%

1979       9%

2007    28%

————————————–

Industrialization was the force that led to huge side-by-side bubbles of wealth and debt just before the Depression.

Globalization, automation, and information technology are what have led to the same side-by-side bubbles of huge wealth and debt that now exist.

Too much wealth in the hands of the rich and super rich means:

a) The middle and lower classes have to go deeper and deeper into debt in order to keep paying at least partially for their modest lifestyles.

b) The wealthy have so much money that they can only spend a small amount, which means that they:

i) speculate in securities, creating an expanding bubble there,

and that

ii) too much of the burden of spending to keep the economy going is financed by too-much debt taken on by the middle class, thus creating another big bubble of debt for the economy to rest on.

When these two bubbles became too large they collapse, and the market and the whole economy collapses with them.

After the Great Depression, it was by pumping money back into the hands of the middle and lower classes that the debt bubble decreased enough and the economy got restarted, but only after many years of slow recovery.   As all economists know and often tell us, the middle and lower classes spend much greater proportions of their income than the wealthy.  World War Two also helped unleash radical levels of government spending to “fight the war” and put people back to work.

Among the wealth-re-balancing changes put into place by Roosevelt:  Legalization of labor unions and collective bargaining – illegal before 1935 – Social Security, a minimum wage, and a 40 hour workweek – all of which were bitterly fought by industrialists and others who favored the status-quo.

You can download the 20 minute podcast and a complete transcript here:

Fresh Air, 9/29/2010

Old Testament Prophets and Environmental Forecasts

Over lunch, I’m snatching a few minutes to read about the terrible prophesies of Isaiah in Karen Armstrong’s History of God.  Isaiah’s prophesies – of devastation of the land and the uprooting of most of the people – were of course soundly rejected, and also of course came true.

Reading this reminded me that no one, and no nation, likes to hear prophesies that for-tell disasters that can only be prevented by the people acting as a whole, at great cost in personal wealth and comfort, and with a great deal of uncertainty.

Prophesies of Global Warming?   It feels much better to pay attention to respected elders and experts who reassuringly say that such prophesies are unreasonable and even dangerous, and that we don’t really need to make big and difficult changes, that might cause us to be more careful with our wealth and our time.

But who is to know??

It might help to look at the record of environmental disasters that were predicted well in advance, and not heeded.   For example, several years before too much of New Orleans was destroyed, all that happened was predicted as a near certainty if big steps weren’t taken to prevent them.   Why weren’t the predictions heeded?  Because taking action would cost too much, would require more taxes, or would be bad for the economy.   All now very sad reasons.

When a majority of scientists and climate experts (not all mind you) are predicting disaster, a wiser nation would at least have a serious discussion with itself (instead of derisive dismissal or stone-walling), to find and agree on creative solutions, and hedge its bets — like investing on a huge scale in non-polluting, low CO2 emitting, sustainable technologies  – because there is simply too much to lose.

Stories entrance and entrain us

Recent research from Princeton finds confirmation in the brain of what we already experience:   Stories align minds.   In the research listener’s brain patterns closely mirrored the story teller’s brain patterns, and the strength of the mirroring correlated highly with the respondent’s ability to retell the tale.

Comments:

People who tell captivating stories win more often than people who use even the best logical arguments.

But there has to be a minimum level of receptivity.  Some stories are calculated to block receptivity to stories that are considered to enhance the enemy‘s positions.

And there are also stories designed to break down barriers to receptivity.

Christine Lavin and Lisa Lindberg – twirling at Malaprops

Christine Lavin, songwriter and performer,  is in Asheville and will be performing at the Diana Wortham Theatre tonight.

Here’s a short video of Christine and Lisa Lindberg (ma femme) twirling together at Malaprops.  Christine was there for a talk and book signing for her new book,
Cold Pizza for Breakfast – A Mem Wha??

Lisa will make a brief but illuminating appearance with Christine tonight.

Expansion of choices reduces diversity???

I just read an article from The Nation, by Colin Robinson (via Alternet.com):

How Amazon Kills Books and Makes Us Stupid

In summary, Amazon’s dominance of the book market and their intense drive to reduce the costs of books are having these effects:

• Drastically reducing the number of independent book sellers.
• Reducing the income of publishers, and especially authors.
• Making it more and more difficult for authors to produce well-crafted and thoroughly researched books.
• And reducing cultural diversity by overwhelming customers with choices.

This last point is the most surprising – and sounds the most paradoxical.  How could more diversity of choice reduce cultural diversity?

Embedded in the middle of the article is this explanation:

“According to industry statisticians Bowker, just over 172,000 titles were released in 2005. Last year “traditional” output had risen to 288,000 titles, a significant enough increase by itself. But adding what Bowker describes as “self-published” and “micro-niche” books, the total inflates to a staggering 1 million new titles in just twelve months.

“Many would argue that the efflorescence of new publishing that Amazon has encouraged can only be a good thing, that it enriches cultural diversity and expands choice.

“But that picture is not so clear: a number of studies have shown that when people are offered a narrower range of options, their selections are likely to be more diverse than if they are presented with a number of choices so vast as to be overwhelming. In this situation people often respond by retreating into the security of what they already know.

“As Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, explains, ‘When the choice set is larger, people tend to make worse choices. They choose on the basis of what’s easiest to evaluate, rather than what’s important to evaluate…the safe, highly marketed option usually comes out on top.’“

Actually, this phenomenon isn’t really the fault of Amazon, but is rather part of the effect of making it easier and cheaper for individuals to create their own content, i.e., to self-publish.   It’s of course not just happening in the world of books, but in all manner of media and content, including newspapers, reporting, editorials, and reviews, film, video, and photography, music, etc..

This is an incredible expansion in creativity and expression; and at the same time, this expansion has clear effects of creating echo-chambers where we, “the masses” who are now “personalized” are clumping together like never before and having less and less thoughtful exposure to ideas beyond those that we ‘naturally’ prefer and seek out.

So these are not new reflections.

But still, what are the answers?   How can we break through this paradox of explosions of expressions and choices that somehow create an implosion of diversity and dialogue?  (Actually, it’s not an implosion of diversity, as much as an explosion into huge and small fragments that appear to have not much to do with each other.)

Somehow the “answers” will have to be the creation of common experiences that invite curiosity, openness, and simple kindness.   Curiosity mixed with kindness can bridge differences, without eliminating differences.

What kind of experiences would these be?

As a designer of social technology, I can only think that, among other things, these experiences have to include radically new ways  a) to manage attention overload without killing serendipity, and b) to discover “content” that is rewarding – even deeply fulfilling – without relying on naturally clumping algorithms like “Show me more like this one” — or “Show me – books, movies, ideas, etc – that other people like who like the same kinds of stuff I like. “

Honestly, with algorithms like that, what can you expect other than bigger and bigger clumps?

State of theFuture Report – 2010

Alerted by summary on Kurzweil.net

This extensive report is by the Millennium Project, founded in 1996 as a global think tank that connects international experts in corporations, universities, NGOs, UN agencies and governments via 35 Nodes around the world in a participatory process and that explores how to build a better future.

Summary of summary:

“The world is in a race between implementing ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity and scale of global problems.”

Accelerating advances in technology have the potential to stabilize or solve many of the greatest problems.  But changes in policies, and our collective decision-making are urgently required.

In addition, “We also need changes in human values to be discussed within and among religions, media, entertainment, and the arts. Everyone has a part to play in the great race between the increasingly complex problems and ways to improve the prospects for civilization.”

Where we are losing

Where We Are Winning

Social Networks as Platforms for Collective Consciousness

At least two things are needed for social networks to become self aware ‘platforms’ for collective intelligence:

• A much greater percentage of the connections in the network need to be accessible and usable by anyone in the network.
• The connections need to include information about connection weights.

Connection weights can help individuals and organizations better manage privacy and attention.

Weighted connections and real-time adjustments in the weights can also track reputation and collective desires and can facilitate and reveal collective decisions.

The trick is to add connection weights in a way that is actually usable.