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The Global Systems Review Issue 19 October 2010
The Global Systems Review is a periodic e-newsletter that explores critical world issues through the lens of whole systems thinking.
In this Issue:
The Power of Positive Urgency
By Louise Diamond
I’ve recently been thinking about the WWII period in the U.S. It was a time when, as a nation, we took seriously the threat we were facing and organized ourselves to tackle it. Individually, locally, and nationally, we all participated somehow. Everyone did their part, whether it was collecting string, going without sugar, or landing at Normandy. We sacrificed because the priorities were clear, and we accepted them.
During that time we focused all our resources into doing what was needed, not what was pleasant or familiar. We were highly creative, inventing new tools, processes, and systems for getting the job done. We agreed on the larger purpose, and supported one another in pursuing it.
I don’t mean to romanticize those years; they were hard, painful, and in some cases quite ugly. Yet I find myself wishing our political leadership would guide us in that same direction today, a direction I call Positive Urgency. ‘Positive’ because it was generative: we all contributed, we made up new ways to accomplish necessary tasks and meet critical goals; ‘Urgency’ because we recognized the importance of fast action to meet a grave danger.
I suggest that we face another grave danger today; the breakdown of many of our life support systems simultaneously. Consider: One in seven in the United States now live in poverty. The Stuxnet worm has invaded nuclear and industrial facilities all over the world, and our best computer experts don’t know where it came from. The more we fight the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the stronger they get. We are already above the level of atmospheric CO2 that is considered safe for life on the planet.
We barely escaped a near-total global economic meltdown, and are facing a life of debt-without-end at individual and national levels. Multiple millions of our citizens have lost their jobs, health care, and homes. We are fast approaching global peak oil and peak water, if we haven’t gotten there already. Weapons of mass destruction are actively sought by numerous rogue actors. Our political process is paralyzed by extreme partisanship, unable to address the problems that desperately need our best creative solutions. And more, and more, and more.
In every direction we see massive challenges and systems breakdowns. These times we live in are not ordinary; this is not a period of more of the same…just a little bit worse. Nor is it a moment when we can apply quick fixes to separate problems and expect the overall situation to improve, because these challenges are largely interconnected. This is a period of tipping point, of exponential change, where conditions set in motion earlier are now burgeoning into consequences that threaten to overwhelm us.
So far, our response to this scenario has been ineffective at best; damaging at worst. We have put our energy into expressing our fear and our anger; into blaming one another; into proposing old strategies that we know from experience will fail; into pretending we have simple answers; or that the problem isn’t real. We are flailing and contentious when we need to be focused and united. With elections looming we can expect even worse.
Much of the call to leadership these days is all too familiar in an election season: fire up the base! For some this means consciously playing on fears and stereotypes. For others it means pretending that one tweak here, more money there, will do the job. The reality is in the totality. Our economy, our security, and our environment all hover uncomfortably close to major catastrophe. I don’t wish to be a doom-sayer here, just a realist. Take any one of the challenges listed above and play out its logical or potential consequences in your mind. Now imagine them all unfolding together, because that’s what’s happening.
We don’t have time to think too much about how we got here, although that would be instructive. What we need to do now is instill in the American people and its leadership a 21st Century version of Positive Urgency.
Positive Urgency says, ‘Wake up! Things are going downhill really, really fast. The situation is urgent, but it doesn’t have to be scary. In fact, it can be positively exciting. We have what we need to create our way out of this if we pull together instead of apart.’
Positive Urgency is not the same as fear. It acknowledges and addresses the big picture. It envisions the ideal outcome and invites individual and collective action toward that shared goal. It empowers innovation, inquiry, and discovery at every level. It chooses engagement over escapism or scape-goating.
Positive Urgency seeks the opportunities in the crises. It looks to the future by starting now. It recognizes the direness of the threats, and chooses to respond creatively. It takes courage, brutal honesty, persistence, patience, and a willingness to learn, to trust, and to experiment, because there are no easy answers or guaranteed results.
Positive Urgency transcends conventional lines of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and zero-sum politics by affirming that we are all truly in this together; that the best solutions will come from the synthesis of ideas and joint action from all sides, all sectors.
It may be too much to ask our political leaders to stop the ideological and adversarial frenzy and adopt a message of Positive Urgency, but I’m asking anyway. It may be too late to ask our people to stop mourning what isn’t and start building what could be, but I’m asking anyway. It may be too naive to ask our corporate and financial and media moguls to stop pursuing personal gain and power and start supporting breakthrough opportunities, but I’m asking anyway.
I’m asking because I believe we’re teetering on the precarious edge of a deep chasm. Going over that edge by default is not a pretty picture. Going backward is not useful. Going sideways, pushing others off the edge to save ourselves, or pretending there is no edge is folly.
Only by shedding ourselves of old baggage, picturing what’s possible, gathering all our gifts and resources, holding hands and leaping off, together, toward the next peak can we hope to gain victory in these challenging times.
I’m asking because the situation is truly urgent, and I’m positively fired up about the opportunities. The outcome is not assured, but the journey will be one incredible ride, and it’s a whole lot better than the alternative!
To explore Positive Urgency on environmental issues, go to www.Earth-Dashboard.org. To take positive, pro-active steps, go to www.350.org and learn about 10-10-10.
Election Patterns
By Louise Diamond
With weeks to go, political attention is riveted on the mid-term elections and who will win control of Congress. Recently our monthly Systems Salon discussed the subject of elections from a systems perspective, exploring patterns across time, place, and scale.
I’d like to share reflections on two of the issues that came up in our dialogue: Purpose and Inclusion.
Purpose
In a wide-ranging discussion of democracy and its roots, from the Federalist Papers to de Tocqueville to the present, we somehow landed on the Preamble to the Constitution. I reprint it here:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Anyone who has ever managed an organization, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, knows the necessity of a good Mission Statement, or statement of purpose. This Preamble struck some of us as the perfect Mission Statement for the United States. It’s simply stated, memorable, and clear.
Though obviously open to interpretation as to what constitutes these envisioned goals and how to accomplish them, nonetheless the statement lays down specific parameters. We are here for union, justice, tranquility, defense, welfare, and liberty – for ourselves and for those who come after us.
Also important are the verbs: to form, establish, insure, provide, promote, and secure. These words speak to process. The statement doesn’t say we ‘have’ these things; it says we’re about the business of creating them. We are, in short, a continuous work in progress.
We also know about organizations that when they get off-purpose they get into trouble. Systems that check back to their Mission Statement to determine how closely they’re on-purpose and how well they’re accomplishing their mission tend to be healthier than those who drift off. Elections are a good time for that check-in.
How are we doing on generating liberty, justice, defense, welfare, tranquility, and union in our nation today? How well are the various candidates’ promises and platforms likely to move us toward these ends – or not?
We can say that the Mission Statement is a higher order, or larger scale, of the system, while the elections are a smaller scale picture of the system at a particular moment in time. I find it helpful to step back and look at the bigger picture, especially in this case, and use it as an evaluative tool for thinking about where my vote and my political action will go this election season.
Inclusion
The pattern here is around enfranchisement/disenfranchisement; who gets to vote and who doesn’t, and why. When we look at our democracy over time we see that a progression of enfranchisement movements and concerns have led to no less than five amendments to the Constitution regarding people’s right to vote:
- 1870, 15th Amendment, insuring that race, color, or previous condition of servitude cannot be used to bar people from voting;
- 1920, 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote;
- 1961, 23rd Amendment, giving Washington DC residents the right to vote for president;
- 1964, 24th Amendment, abolishing the poll tax;
- 1971, 26th Amendment, setting the voting age at 18.
Clearly, the right to vote is such a cornerstone of our system that it’s engaged us in over 100 years of national conversation and legal refinement till now. What’s going on here? One way of understanding this is to see the pattern of tension and struggle between elites and non-elites.
The original Constitution was drafted by propertied white men, the elite of their day. Groups left out of that sector have needed to struggle mightily – against laws but also against public opinion, cultural animosities, and often violence – to gain equal rights. Those with power want to hold on to it exclusively, and usually have the resources and means to do so, often insuring that they indeed grow wealthier and more powerful. Those without power want to gain it, and frequently lack the means and resources to do so, often insuring that they remain in a less powerful role in society.
This is a common pattern all over the world, and our democracy does not prevent it; it just shows up differently here. We can say that our system does not allow for the most corrupt effects we see in other countries, where outright vote-buying, fraudulent rigging of the outcome, imprisoning of opposition leaders, communal and political violence, and other nasty means of winning elections are common. But we also cannot say that the archetypal dance between elites and non-elites is eliminated in our democracy.
Indeed, this struggle continues even now, despite the victories these amendments depict. There are still attempts to disenfranchise certain voters, often led by the political and financial elite to benefit themselves:
- The manipulation of registration lists and polling stations;
- The political gerrymandering of congressional districts;
- Pressure and intimidation of potential voters.
At the same time, the last election cycle of 2008 saw an upsurge in voting and political participation, especially by African-Americans, women, and young people, the very groups that required enfranchisement by Constitutional amendments.
Now we’re seeing new and more indirect methods of influencing voting outcomes and securing or protecting power and privilege:
- Intensely partisan, negative, and deliberately false or misleading advertising;
- Resistance against any and all attempts to reform campaign financing practices;
- The uncertain reliability of different voting methods, including the potential for manipulating computerized voting machines;
- Multi-millionaires or billionaires financing their own campaigns;
- The rising costs of campaigns in general.
Currently we are witnessing a new pattern developing: unlimited and undisclosed spending on elections, following the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate campaign funding. This allows big-pocket entities to vastly affect elections, and in secret.
These efforts all disenfranchise people through external methods, yet there are also ways we as individuals disenfranchise ourselves. As one Salon member stated, ‘There is a difference between residents and citizens.’ Not only do we have a pattern of low turn-out rates for voting (far lower than most other countries); we also have a pattern of not participating in other ways in the political process – whether from apathy, disgust, the belief that one person cannot make a difference, skepticism, or general disinterest.
Finally, the structure of the two-party system – a system not prescribed in the Constitution but one that we have self-organized around over time – can be seen as a mechanism of sorts for disenfranchisement, by channeling voters into narrow and rigid avenues for expressing their political wishes.
I found a consideration of these patterns enlightening and empowering. For myself, I choose to be a citizen, not a resident. Ideally this election cycle will see more of us making that choice as well.
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