A Much Longer View
Back in 1996 Brian Eno and others started an organization devoted to rethinking the faster/cheaper mindset for something slower/better by taking and promoting a long term view of how things should operate. Check out their website http://www.longnow.org/about/.
There are times when I want the world to slow down so that I can think through things a bit, and I often find myself caught up in the everything must happen now mode (especially of work) that we all get caught up in.
Not only does that leave little time for fostering community, being with family and incorporating lifelong learning into daily life, but it seems to me that it also leads to the kinds of erratic and misguided governance that we're seeing now in this country and others, where everything is predicated on the next election cycle, the next market cycle, the next shopping season and even the next crisis to be solved at work.
What if we had actual leaders that promoted policies and ideas that spoke to the long term health of the planet, country, community, etc, and risked both their own professional careers (ie, not getting elected again) or their particular political party's fortunes by pushing for the longer term - and actually, what if these same (not yet existent) leaders actually took the time to learn about every policy they were proposing, every culture that might be impacted?
Now, one could potentially argue that this might lead to no action, ever. One might also argue that things like democracy promotion and starting wars in the Middle East are actually aimed at a long term solution.
But, my guess is that if smart and focused people talked at (enough) length about real problems and explored them honestly and realistically that things would get done and action would be taken - and that these actions might have a much better chance of actually improving the long term lives of people and the long term health of this planet.
What's interesting is that there are people, mostly outside the realm of politics, that are trying to do this. Whether they can or will have any long term effect remains a question - but if people like Al Gore, now that he is out of the electoral politics arena (at least for now) can continue to push for thinking about problems in a way that serves the longer view, then there might be a modicum of hope.
As depressing as all the news is on Iraq and the damage that the Bush presidency has done in general on just about every front, and the lack of anything like a real plan to come from the Baker-Hamilton led Iraq Study Group, it at least seems like it has woken up enough people to challenge the political structure of the country to start taking notice of the fact that patience is still a virtue and that there are solutions out there, but it may take some time to actually think them through (diplomacy anyone?), and that we're now finally reaching a place where we can start having some honest debates in this country about what the proper role of government should be, how much power any one branch of government should have and what the United States' role in the world should be (or even can be at this point given the amount of damage now done to our reputation and the corners we've painted ourselves into in the last four years of misguided and incompetent administration of government by the current administration.
For me, things like The Long Now and Slow Food continue to hold enormous appeal as a counterbalance to the world seemingly spinning out of control.
There are times when I want the world to slow down so that I can think through things a bit, and I often find myself caught up in the everything must happen now mode (especially of work) that we all get caught up in.
Not only does that leave little time for fostering community, being with family and incorporating lifelong learning into daily life, but it seems to me that it also leads to the kinds of erratic and misguided governance that we're seeing now in this country and others, where everything is predicated on the next election cycle, the next market cycle, the next shopping season and even the next crisis to be solved at work.
What if we had actual leaders that promoted policies and ideas that spoke to the long term health of the planet, country, community, etc, and risked both their own professional careers (ie, not getting elected again) or their particular political party's fortunes by pushing for the longer term - and actually, what if these same (not yet existent) leaders actually took the time to learn about every policy they were proposing, every culture that might be impacted?
Now, one could potentially argue that this might lead to no action, ever. One might also argue that things like democracy promotion and starting wars in the Middle East are actually aimed at a long term solution.
But, my guess is that if smart and focused people talked at (enough) length about real problems and explored them honestly and realistically that things would get done and action would be taken - and that these actions might have a much better chance of actually improving the long term lives of people and the long term health of this planet.
What's interesting is that there are people, mostly outside the realm of politics, that are trying to do this. Whether they can or will have any long term effect remains a question - but if people like Al Gore, now that he is out of the electoral politics arena (at least for now) can continue to push for thinking about problems in a way that serves the longer view, then there might be a modicum of hope.
As depressing as all the news is on Iraq and the damage that the Bush presidency has done in general on just about every front, and the lack of anything like a real plan to come from the Baker-Hamilton led Iraq Study Group, it at least seems like it has woken up enough people to challenge the political structure of the country to start taking notice of the fact that patience is still a virtue and that there are solutions out there, but it may take some time to actually think them through (diplomacy anyone?), and that we're now finally reaching a place where we can start having some honest debates in this country about what the proper role of government should be, how much power any one branch of government should have and what the United States' role in the world should be (or even can be at this point given the amount of damage now done to our reputation and the corners we've painted ourselves into in the last four years of misguided and incompetent administration of government by the current administration.
For me, things like The Long Now and Slow Food continue to hold enormous appeal as a counterbalance to the world seemingly spinning out of control.
posted by Paul Salinger at 9:11 AM
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