Are You Ready for the Future?

CONTACT US
Edited by John L. Petersen
johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org
www.arlingtoninstitute.org

PUNCTUATIONS
by John L. Petersen

I've been thinking about our president lately and his efforts to get his
administration back on the track. My assessment of Barack Obama is
fundamentally colored by having read his book, The Audacity of
Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream back during the
election campaign.

In one of my earlier incarnations I spent a significant amount of time

around some presidential candidates and I have a sense about how
some of them look at the world and how the inside of the American
political system works. This experience and then reading Obama's
book convinced me that at his core, this is a good man who is very
bright and had some deep, fundamental ideas about what needed to
be done set this country off in a desirable, new direction. He was
different from most politicians. Not since Gary Hart had there been as
thoughtful a candidate in the race.

Regardless of the criticisms of the brevity of his campaign mantra

pitching "just" change, a majority of the American electorate saw in
Obama these very basic, good qualities and even if they hadn't read
the book, sensed that he perceived himself, the country, and the
world in quite a different way than his predecessor. There really was
a chance for a new world this time.

That's what gave many of us hope. That's what radically changed the
perspective of the U.S. around the world. Most Americans don't
understand how poorly we were thought of outside of our borders
during the previous administration - how that what we were doing in
the war on terror, etc., was seen as fundamentally at odds with what
everyone had come to believe we really stood for. They were quite
saddened by the torture and other stuff. The turn to the dark side sent
shivers around the world, raising ominous questions in the minds of
our friends about the future for our country and by extension, the
world.

It's no wonder why the Nobel Foundation gave him the Peace Prize.
His campaign and victory radically changed feelings about America
and the future of the world across the planet.

It's not nationalistic to suggest that in the big picture, the U.S., unlike
any other country provides extraordinary hope for the future of
humanity. Look around the world. Certainly there are many other
wonderful, perhaps even more enlightened nations, but none has the
size and ingenuity coupled with a basic sense of goodness that
America has. At least, that's what I am told when I travel out of the
country by many thoughtful folks who hail from all over the globe.

Obama very clearly connected with that sense of goodness that many
of us have. He gave us hope. But, delivering on that hope has been
quite a different issue.

The problem is our government. James Fallows, in a very provocative

piece in the latest issue of The Atlantic asks, "Is America going to
hell?" In the end, he argues that the pieces for getting back on track
are there . . . except for our government (the senate, in particular). He
doesn't see a way out without changing an integral piece of our form
of government.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations cannot be
limited in their ability to influence our elective process with
contributions, the issues with legislators has been exacerbated. In
ways like they were unable to do before, senators can now say that
representing the interests of corporations is equivalent to (and
important as) representing individual citizens. I'll be quick to say that I
don't have any ideas about what to do about that.

But, there's another piece that is also a problem - especially for

Obama. Our government is extraordinary complex and arcane. Lots
of moving parts and many places where someone inside of the
system can effectively hijack it for their own interests if one doesn't
know what is going on. You need people in senior places who have
experience in being in government or they won't know how to
manage this complexity, or so the argument goes. The result is
managers, not visionaries, in places of high responsibility and
influence. Their objective is not to change the world or the country,
their job is to manage their parts of the government.

Because they were in government before, these senior people have

often earlier been associated with producing the structures,
processes - and problems - that now exist. One could reasonably
suggest that it would be hard for a person to come up with the
motivation to dramatically change an organization that he or she had
helped to build. Vision, and the significant change that necessarily
accompanies it, is not part of that equation.

Obama, on the other hand, was elected to be a visionary. The people

wanted change, and it would be hard to read his book and not believe
that this man had a vision to produce that change. (This all presumes
he wrote the book, of course.)

Here's the rub: in a sense, the president doesn't know much. He

hasn't been the president before. It's the biggest job in the world. He's
responsible for more dynamic pieces than any global corporation that
exists and thousands of highly paid lobbyists are working every angle
possible to see that they get a chunk of the proceeds. He has to
make decisions about things in which he clearly doesn't have a
background (and perhaps an interest). In this case, he's operating in
significantly uncharted financial, energy, and climate territory. So, he
is very highly dependent upon his staff and advisors.

My experience is that most advisors and managers that come out of

the government are risk-adverse. They're much better at telling you
why something could fail and what you can't do (legally, politically,
because of the stock market, geopolitically, etc.), than trying to be
creative in defining the world in new ways. The natural inclination of
the system is not to push too hard; there will always be more voices
against significant change than for it. This is particularly the case if
there is not a sense of urgency and clear personal incentives in place
to encourage those who must lead the change down into the
organization.
This is a problem in these unprecedented times. We're at a hinge
point in history where big pieces of the global system that supports
human activity are in serious flux. Whether it's climate change, a
transition to a new era in energy, or dealing with the likely next dip in
the financial system, we're talking here about the need to change.

I believe the American people intuitively resonate with this need to

evolve - to move on to the next level of development. They know that
every week the present system is working less well and that the
problems are systemic - they cannot be fixed at the margins. Sure,
there are some who are change-adverse and will oppose anything,
but the great upwelling of support for Obama was not just related to
him as an individual; it was contextual -a resonance with the
underlying need.

This is a special time of immense opportunity that calls for leadership

- bold leadership - that captures the evolutionary need for progress,
realizes that the past cannot be sustained, and begins to rapidly
move humanity to a new way of living. That's easy to say and much
harder to do. But you can't do it without doing it. You must engage.

Obama is the visionary and he needs to get into the space where he
trusts the larger process, hard as that might be. He has to believe
that if his vision, motives and objectives are right, the rest of the world
will necessarily reconfigure itself to meet them . . . if he always does
what's right. He has to trust his intuition and not his staff. He must
motivate those around him to see and embrace the vision but not
make decisions based on the possibility of failure. Focusing on how
things might go south encourages the likelihood of that happening.
He's got more help than he knows and it will all show up if he really
changes direction.

This can only be done by transcending - by operating at a different

level than that of the present system. If the president believes that he
is operating within the constraints of the political system, (which of
course his experience and staff will tell him), then that will be the
reality. But, if he decides that what he is here to accomplish is greater
than politics and bigger than the past, he will engage the citizenry and
world at a higher level of idealism . He will play a different game by
different rules. If he does that, the country and the rest of the world
will jump to their feet in support . . . and those playing by the old rules
won't know what hit them. Nothing will make sense to them.

That's the change that Americans voted for, whether they knew it
explicitly or not. That's what they'll support.

There's an extraordinary opportunity here Mr. President. I hope that

you reach up and help us all to manifest it.

An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy - (Electronic Frontier Foundation - December 21, 2009)
E-readers are starting to transform how we buy and read books in the same way mp3s changed how we buy
and listen to music. Unfortunately, e-reader technology also presents significant new threats to reader
privacy. E-readers possess the ability to report back substantial information about their users' reading habits
and locations to the corporations that sell them. And yet none of the major e-reader manufacturers have
explained to consumers in clear unequivocal language what data is being collected about them and why. For
example, Google's new Google Book Search Project has the ability to track reading habits at an
unprecedented level of granularity. In particular, according to the proposed Google Books Privacy Policy,
web servers will automatically "log" each book and page you searched for and read, how long you viewed it
for, and what book or page you continued onto next.

Aerobic Exercise Grows Brain Cells - (Phys Org - January 20, 2010)
Neuroscientists working on mice showed that even a few days of running stimulates the brain to grow new
cells in a part of the brain involved in memory and recall. The scientists divided the mice into two groups:
one of which had a running wheel they could use at any time, and the other of which did not. In subsequent
memory tests the scores of mice with access to the running wheel were almost double those of the non-
running group.

Kurzweil Unveils e-reader with Full-color Multimedia Across Various Platforms - (Kurzweil AI - January 6,
2010)
The free Blio eReader is the first to preserve the image-rich format of books and magazines, including their
layout, typesetting, images, color and graphics, while also supporting full media functionality, including
video, graphics, and web links. The Blio software application will be available for desktop and tablet PCs,
netbooks, and mobile devices (including iPhones and iPods); users can download Blio at blioreader.com in
late January 2010. A read-aloud feature provides further distinction from other eReaders. A synthesized
voice synchronizes with follow-along word highlighting, so the consumer can look and listen in tandem, an
attractive feature for travelers, language learners, young children and the vision impaired.

Commentary: Global Fatigue and Trust Deficit - (UPI - January 21, 2010)
This op-ed piece notes: There is a growing chorus of geopolitical deep thinkers and intellectuals who favor a
strategic retreat from the imperial posture of the Cold War, where we are now fighting terrorist cells on a
planetary scale, and a reassessment of priorities. One of the Democratic Party's champion fundraisers,
speaking privately, said, "At times I feel that we're exhausted, sitting on the sidewalk, applauding the
inevitable as Team China marches by." We are now saddled with a dysfunctional system of government that
raises the key question for the 21st century: Have we allowed ourselves to become ungovernable with a
Congress that seems prone to micromanage everything into unworkable policies, courtesy of a system that
has moved from no child left behind to no lobbyist left behind.
One Day We'll All Be Terrorists - (TruthDig - December 28, 2009)
Our First Amendment rights have become a joke; habeas corpus no longer exists and we torture, not only in
black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal
Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Radical activists in the environmental,
globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements are already being placed by the
state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism.

Time For An Audit...Or Some Competition - (Chris Martenson - January 13, 2010)
The Fed will return about $45 billion to the U.S. Treasury for 2009, according to calculations by The
Washington Post based on public documents. That reflects the highest earnings in the 96-year history of the
central bank. The Fed, unlike most government agencies, funds itself from its own operations and returns its
profits to the Treasury. For those who understand the very simple idea that the Federal Reserve prints
Federal Reserve Notes (or their electronic equivalent) out of thin air, the concept of 'earnings' on those same
thin-air money units is intellectually challenging. And since we have no idea to what extent the Fed is sitting
on massive losses, or even what they are sitting on in many cases, the concept of P&L 'earnings' are as
completely irrelevant as anything can possibly be. Thus, promotion of the idea of Fed 'earnings' is not just
erroneous, it's misleading.

IMF & World Bank Warnings of a Double Dip Recession in 2010 - (Smart Money - January 20, 2010)
The managing director and chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in this past week,
warned that the world economy could soon be heading back into a double dip recession. This is largely due
to the 100 or so asset or debt bubbles around the globe that could burst in 2010 sending the world into a
double dip recession. The World Bank's chief economist Justin Lin echoed similar concerns: "The foundation
for the recovery is very fragile… We may have a double dip," he said, citing excess global capacity that
could linger until 2014. In an environment of low interest rates and excess capacity, most of the liquidity
could go into speculative investments, he said