The 2020 TJEd Online Convention is getting Rave Reviews!
April 6th, 2020 // 1:13 pm @ Oliver DeMille
Here’s what people are saying!
I want to thank you for the 2020 Online Freedom Convention. Oliver’s optimistic view of the crisis and what we can do now is such a balm for my panic-ridden, anxious soul. Knowing that these things have happened before, that they happen cyclically, and knowing not only what to expect, but what we can do about it brings such peace and a feeling of empowerment.
Many thanks to your whole family for all you do!
~ Jennifer Halverson
Watch the video trailer!
Listened to these talks in the convention today…I am speechless! I had chills the whole time I was listening! I’m excited to go back and do the planning section. Amazing how my perspective has changed so quickly. Going to have my husband listen, too. Thank you so much for this amazing resource!!!
UPDATE: I just now worked through part of the matrix exercise. Wow, how powerful!
~ Rachael Breneman
I just want to say thank you to you both. You have sacrificed so much for your mission and so many of us and our children have been blessed because of your sacrifice! I listened to The Crisis is Here part 2 from the 2020 Freedom convention today. On top of the wonderful exercise Oliver led and the incredible insight, I was also struck with how grateful I am that I have been so prepared for this moment.
It is thanks in a large part to being mentored through TJEd that I have the family culture, understanding of turnings and history, life centered at home, classics on our shelves that teach us human nature, an appreciation for seasons and cycles and the confidence and ability to teach my family. While these times are uncertain, I don’t feel afraid or overly anxious. I’m actually looking forward to the next few decades and what “spring” will bring. I’m excited for my children and I to be a part of it!
~ Amy Updike
Before any of us realized what happened, the world changed, and it is very likely that for better or worse, nothing will be the same again.
Now what?
I have learned a great deal from Oliver DeMille. The talks he has given already in this convention have really changed the way I am looking at what is happening right now, and he is just getting started.
If you want to know what to do to adapt to our new reality, I’d recommend signing up for this convention!
~ Colby Lyons
Oliver and Rachel, THANK YOU so much for this year’s convention! We just listened to the 2nd workshop and are so excited for this time in history!
We’ve handled the crisis well because of our faith but this really got us pumped for our future!
My daughter, who is a senior, has struggled a little because she felt so uncertain of her immediate future.
Now, she’s happy and at peace that she is already on the right path to get through this crisis well. She loved the workshops so far! Can’t wait for the rest!
~ Kellee Clark
Watch the video trailer!
Join us for the 2020 Freedom Convention Here!
Special thanks to Lyle Mast of OR Sports for his contribution of 100 family scholarships!
And TJEd is matching that sponsorship to cover an additional 100 families!
If you need this assistance in order to participate in the convention, PLEASE don’t hesitate to request it; that’s exactly what it’s for, and we don’t want you to miss out!
Just click here to inquire and we’ll get you taken care of.
Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Business &Citizenship &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &event &Family &Featured &Generations &Government &History &Independents &Information Age &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Politics &Producers &Prosperity &Statesmanship &Tribes
News of the Day: The Biggest Problem with Our Modern Politics
October 29th, 2019 // 2:20 pm @ Oliver DeMille
(and How to Fix It)
I just finished studying a fascinating book that really made me think: Passions & Politics by two European scholars, Paul Ginsborg and Sergio Labate. I found this a difficult book to read (dry and meandering), but it shares five very important ideas that deeply apply to all of us right now:
1. In modern politics, we are taught the importance of our political party winning elections, but not the duties and responsibilities we each have as citizens.
Concerning our duties, we are typically only taught the bare minimum: voting and jury duty. The rest is usually unspoken, and mostly ignored. Specifically, the great duties the American Founders gave to the citizens were twofold: (A) To keep a close eye on government, make sure it doesn’t step out of line (violate the constitution in any way, or exert any power not directly given by the constitution), and (B) think about what kind of nation and society we want to be, and spread this vision to everyone else. These are the two great duties of every citizen in a free nation. Yet today they are both largely forgotten.
2. The political debate today is mostly about the choice between two candidates, or two parties. It is hardly ever about what kind of society or nation we want to have. As a result, most political discussion now is dogma, not wisdom.
We seldom even think about wisdom when politics comes up. Almost everyone is a dogmatic partisan now, not a wise citizen. Passions & Politics points out that our partisan emotions usually push us toward angry utopian daydreams or blunt, angry “isms”, and both tend to be a bit shallow.
3. “…for decades the political parties were ‘modern princes’, today they are no longer up to the task.”*
If our political parties run our nation (and they do), but they aren’t “up to the task” anymore, we are in a bad situation. Something has to change. Either the parties need to come together, get their act together, and create a whole new way of working with each other, or we need a new system not mired in party hatred and party conflicts. Both of these alternatives seem unlikely, unless something drastic occurs.
4. Our politics are now stuck in, “Resentment, competition, a blind conviction that the only way to build a community is to build up some enemy to serve as the target of hate.”
This is true for both sides, the left and the right. Parties now typically spend more effort and time trying to tear down the other side than working toward any great and important goals for our nation and society. Like a very bad divorce, the full focus is on bringing each other down, not helping anyone or improving the nation in any serious way. This can only lead us in one direction—down. No matter who the voters elect, this war between the parties keeps hurting our nation, distracting our leaders and officials from their real work for the people.
5. What our politics need right now is mostly calm, useful wisdom, but we seldom listen to this voice in the modern environment of fearful, angry politics.
Our politics have become almost entirely about “our side winning”, in order to avoid the terrible results of losing to the despised “other side”. The biggest problem is that this fear is quite real. The “other” side will do things that drastically hurt us. For example, whatever side you take, the other side wants to use power to aggressively attack your wishes concerning abortion, family values and family rights, taxes, the environment, religious beliefs, guns, what our children are taught in the schools, immigration, health care, crime, jobs, and many other divided issues. It’s hard to be calm, or focus on wisdom, when the next election could mean a major loss of the freedoms you care about most. Both sides feel this way. And in the current system, both sides need to feel this way—because it’s generally true.
While Passions & Politics doesn’t outline any clear solutions, it does a good job of summarizing these serious problems of our time. To get real solutions, we’re going to have to think outside of the partisan box.
Solution: To begin with, at least a few citizens are going to have to step beyond the partisan wars and think wisely. Yes, the dangers of “the other side” will be screaming loudly in our ears every step of the way. But we need to do this anyway. We need to push partisanship aside a bit and focus on wisdom.
Both are necessary (winning the next election, and doing some serious thinking from a place of wisdom), but right now there are plenty of people engaged in the party battles. Hardly anyone is working on truly wise solutions to the current system.
Specifically, we’re never going to actually fix this overarching problem with our politics as long as we live under a system dominated by political partisanship. History is clear: party conflicts slowly get worse and worse over time, until they eventually escalate the infighting and destroy freedom. The American Founders didn’t like parties for this very reason; in Federalist 10, for example, Madison called parties the major roadblock to a free society. The Framers specifically didn’t write parties into the Constitution, and hoped this choice would get rid of them. It didn’t quite work, as we all know. Political parties are extremely tenacious.
But there is a solution. A real one. It’s not fast, but it works. The one proven way to reduce the power of parties is education—not the kind found in most schools (because political parties find too many ways to influence public education), but rather the kind of learning found in the home. Parents can drastically decrease the power of partisan influence on future voters, if they know this is needed.
Guess what?
It. Is. Needed.
Right now more than ever before in American history.
Parents have the power to solve this problem.
That’s the long-term solution.
We also need some more immediate solutions, things that will at least slow down the national decline caused by party extremism until the long-term solutions can make a difference. But whatever short-term solutions we come up with, they will all fail unless parents take on this vital project.
Please take action.
And please share this message far and wide.
To subscribe to News of the Day, click here >>
*All quotes in this review, and the 5 items listed and enumerated, are from Passions & Politics
Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Book Reviews &Citizenship &Community &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Education &Family &Featured &Generations &Government &History &Independents &Information Age &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Politics
THE JEFFERSON-MADISON DEBATES: A New Cold War is Coming PART II
June 11th, 2019 // 7:41 am @ Oliver DeMille
What Americans Can Do To Effectively Protect American Freedoms in the Decades Just Ahead
(Book Review of American, by Shanon Brooks)
Note to reader: read Part I of this report here >>
I. The Challenge
The 21st Century is shaping up as an era of major conflict, between (1) the three superpowers (the U.S., Russia, and China) and their allies and proxies (the European Union, Israel, North Korea, Iran, etc.), and also between (2) the Red- and Blue-state cultures that are further dividing America. If the U.S. doesn’t fix the problem (2) above, it will almost certainly lose the first battle (1) to China and/or Russia.
But what can regular Americans actually do? What will really work?
The three most effective things Americans can do to maintain our freedoms, families, and leadership in an increasingly dangerous world are:
- Spread great, classics- and freedom-based, leadership education
- Engage entrepreneurialism, the key to free enterprise, and encourage/help others to do the same
- Vote correctly and influence other voters to do the same (to protect and increase freedoms), and effectively influence government between elections
The battle for world leadership will come down to how well Americans do these three things. If we don’t win this battle, the world by 2040 will likely be run by two superpowers: China and Russia. Freedom values will be at odds with the rest of the world, and greatly reduced in the United States. Socialism will be the norm from the California redwoods to the beaches of Florida, from the Midwest to the Plains, and from the Rockies to Maine, in the cities and farms, and across all fifty states. Many of our most cherished freedoms will be reduced, or stolen.
How can we ensure that this doesn’t happen? A new book addresses this very question. This may be one of the most important books of our time; if we read and understand it, and take the right action, the future of America, our freedoms, our economy and our families, will be bright. If we don’t take the needed action…freedoms will be lost, socialism will spread, and families will suffer.
The book is titled simply, and sagely, American.
II. The Journey
Indeed, the title says it all. Written by Shanon Brooks, American gets to the heart of the problem, and the solutions. As Brooks puts it: “…we are killing the American Dream. Out of the top 30 countries in the world, the U.S. ranks 16th in literacy…and 14th in problem solving.”
Does that sound like a superpower? Or more like a past leader currently in decline? If we’re only 14th in problem solving, how can we truly expect to lead in the decades ahead, to tackle and solve our greatest problems, to help lead the world as it faces and overcomes the challenges ahead?
But the problem is even more daunting. Brooks wrote:
“National unfunded obligations are more than $100 trillion while U.S. household debt is at an all-time high of $13.2 trillion. We have one of the most litigious societies in the world, our incarceration rate is among the highest globally, and our state and federal legislatures are convinced that they are our cradle-to-grave caretakers.”
Unless something changes soon, and in major ways, we are not on the path to increased freedoms or economic opportunities for our children or grandchildren. In fact, we are quickly headed in the opposite direction.
As Brooks notes:
“How can we claim that America is the greatest nation in the world when 60% of our population can’t even pass the U.S. citizenship test? What have we done with the legacy of liberty that the founders so carefully crafted for us? And what are we creating to pass down to our children and grandchildren?”
The problem is real. The divide between those who even care about freedom and those who don’t is quickly expanding. And the root of the problem is at the very core of our daily lives: how we are educated, how we make a living, and how we participate (and don’t participate) as citizens overseeing and governing our own nation. As Travis Slade notes in the preface to American: “Pretty much everything about how we live today is killing the American Dream.” He’s right. And this book, American, is much more than a handbook on the principles of freedom—it’s all about how to apply those principles in the world today, in this economy, given the reality of the world we actually live in. Along the way, it addresses real issues across the board, including:
- Our Decaying Education System
- Our Work Life—Pros and Cons
- The Way People Vote and Otherwise Participate (or don’t) in Overseeing Our Government
- Commercial and Residential Construction
- The Health Care Industry
- The Transportation Industry
- The Food and Grocery Industry
- Local Law Enforcement
- The Issues of Immigration
- The Regulation State versus Free Enterprise
- Socialism versus Investment
- Employee versus Owner Mindsets
- Federal Government Overreach
- …Etc.
American asks us to seriously consider a number of poignant questions, questions that our national school/education system has patently taught us not to ask—or even think about in any meaningful way.
For example: “How can the American Dream be alive when each new American baby…inherits $300,000 of national debt…?”
And “…bureaucracy so deep and stifling that most just give up and give in.”
This book describes an America the Framers wouldn’t even recognize, a nation deeply entrenched in a bureaucratic quagmire the likes of ancient Byzantium, with a few celebrities, wealthy super elites, and top government officials (and their families) enjoying benefits akin to a medieval Venetian aristocracy.
And we call this “American?” It isn’t. It was supposed to be different. It was designed to be different. But only the people are capable of keeping our freedoms, as the Framers warned. No elites will save us. It is up to regular Americans.
III. Solutions
The best part of American is the solutions. I won’t spoil the book by listing them all here, or going into detailed applications and strategies, but they cut right to the heart of the matter, skipping symptoms and focusing on what we really need to do in order to steer things in the right direction. If we want real freedom, and effective results, we’re going to have to act. Brooks outlines what we need to do, and how to get started.
Specifically, as mentioned above, this book emphasizes the three major things we need to influence, change, and improve if America is going to survive as an effective beacon of freedom—in the world, and at home to the rising generations.
First, the right kind of education. Second, the right choices in the way we as a people make a living. And third, the way we vote—what goes into our voting decisions and the way we train up young people to be wise voters—and the ways we actively participate in governing our nation between elections.
Ultimately, these three things boil down to the quality of our learning, the kind of education we share, support, and pass on to our children and especially our young adults. If we get this right, the rest will follow. If not, our freedoms are very much in danger. America simply cannot survive three more generations of education like what we currently have.
We actually have two education systems in modern America, one for elites and those who work as the elites’ advisors, professionals, and managers, and another for the masses. Most Americans attend the second type of schools; the result is that America now educates mostly followers. This hard-to-hear reality is, nonetheless, true. It is time to face it openly, and change it. American is not just a great book on freedom and leadership, but an excellent book on higher education, right up there with Henry Newman’s great classic The Idea of a University, The Higher Learning in America by Robert Hutchins, An Education for Our Time by Josiah Bunting, and The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. Brooks benefitted from the ideas in all of these, and many others, and as a result American is the best book on higher education that I have ever read.
Every American who cares about freedom and our future should read it. And every American should care about freedom and our future.
Perhaps most importantly, Brooks’ book will introduce the reader to a number of very important ideas and principles that are seldom discussed anymore—in schools, homes, churches, or places of business, and certainly not by the media—but were once understood, cherished, and debated by every free American. The early Americans taught these things to their children, and were ashamed if any of their children couldn’t articulate these principles of freedom and life fluently and in detail. Such principles constitute the bulk of chapters 1 through 10 in American. Knowing them fully, and understanding how to apply them in society, was once considered crucial to being an American. They have now been almost entirely lost, and with them many of our freedoms. To reboot our freedoms, we must understand these vital principles and ideas.
It is time for us to know them. To pour over them, and to master them. To share them, teach them, talk about them, debate them, and apply them. It is past time. We cannot wait any longer. We must act. Again, our freedoms and the future of our posterity are at stake. If we get the freedom principles right, if we understand and effectively implement them, we will be another generation of American heroes. If not, the candle of American freedom will be snuffed out.
This is true. This is real. This is happening.
Not every person will apply the things learned in American the same way. Or even agree on every specific. This is the way it should be—free people applying principles differently, based on personal mission. But all of us should learn them. Know them. Ponder, discuss, and apply them as inspired.
It is time.
To act…
Recommended Reading
- American (Shanon Brooks) 2019—Available on the Monticello College website >>
Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Book Reviews &Business &Citizenship &Community &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Family &Featured &Foreign Affairs &Generations &Government &History &Independents &Information Age &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Politics &Prosperity &Statesmanship
The Jefferson-Madison Debates: The Third Layer
July 17th, 2018 // 7:08 am @ Oliver DeMille
“When technology advances too quickly for education to keep up,
inequality generally rises.”
—Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee
“Your true greatness comes when you focus not
on building a career but on finding your quest.”
—Vishen Lakhiani
“Engaged students are 16 times more likely to report being academically motivated than students who are not engaged. Finding ways to engage the 40% of students who are not engaged would have a significant impact on their academic motivation.”
—Quaglia Institute
Foundations
Education is like a map. Or, more precisely, it mirrors the entire field of maps and map-making.
Understanding the massive change now occurring in how we make and learn from maps is in many ways directly applicable to the coming changes in education. And like in education, many people in the older generations (born before 1980, or even 2001), don’t understand that a major revolution is ahead—one so big that what we call a “map” today won’t even qualify as a map in twenty years. (And much of what we call an “education” today won’t even count as education two or three decades from now.)
The pre-modern map (Layer One) emphasized the physical traits of the earth: continents, oceans, seas, rivers, mountain ranges, islands, etc. More advanced pre-modern maps included things like ocean currents, the altitudes of mountain peaks, and the trade routes most effectively used by overland and shipping merchants.
During the modern era, we added governments to our maps (Layer Two): national borders, towns, cities, capital cities, provinces, states, counties, etc. This was part of the great shift from pre-modern to modern. Governments and their jurisdictions became as prominent in world affairs as the natural physical features of the earth. People using maps needed to know what government they’d be dealing with in a given spot as much as where the ocean currents would take them and what mountains or rivers they’d need to traverse.
Further Up and Further In
The current shift from modernism to post-modernism is equally momentous. Our maps now require another set of symbols, colors, and words—to tell us what we need to know about our world. The physical features on the maps (continents, oceans, rivers, mountains, lakes, etc.) are still there, as are the political borders that tell us what government controls each area on the illustration.
But now a third layer of understanding is superimposed on top of the physical and political levels of each map. Most people haven’t even seen such maps yet, so they think of a “map” as something made up of Layer One (mountains, rivers, oceans, etc.) and Layer Two (borders, cities, etc.). They barely fathom what else could be needed.
The post-modern Layer Three is based on what Parag Khanna calls “Connectography.” For example, look at a traditional map of Africa. The Nile is there, and the Cape. The Horn of Africa is obvious, along with the Sahara. There are regions of jungle, and large swaths of savannah. Then there are the many nations and their borders—most of them originally established by European plantation owners. Capital cities are listed in bold letters, the names of nations in larger type.
But where is Layer Three? At its most basic, Layer Three shows highways, airports, and hospitals. In a more detailed Layer Three map, you might find illustrations showing the route of pipelines, Internet cables, or even power lines. These were the simple beginnings of Layer Three maps. A little more advanced Layer Three maps don’t just tell you what road to take, they tell you how long it will take to arrive in current traffic—or redirect you if an accident occurs and is now blocking traffic. They are cast in real-time and they are always changing—truly interactive. Layer Three is a major upgrade.
But more is coming. For example, narrow the map of Africa to Kenya or Ghana. Where are the hotspots of Internet usage? Where are the Internet deserts? What about smartphone usage rates? What food is shipped to a place, and can you get the kind of banana and cereal you want while you are visiting? If you want salmon for dinner, will what you are served be farm raised or wild? – Come from the Atlantic or the Pacific? What nation’s laws governed the fishermen who caught your dinner? Such information tells you a great deal about the probable quality and freshness of what you’ll be eating, and whether or not to even order it.
Put these on the map, and you’ll begin to see how Kenya, Ghana, or any other nation in Africa, or anywhere else in the world, is actually connected. Not understanding such connectivity—or its absence in a certain area—is akin to not knowing what the political lines denoting borders signify on the map. Such ignorance basically renders the user of the map illiterate.
Consider an almost-absurd example, to illustrate:
“Are these lines just very straight rivers?” a total map novice might ask. The laughter that follows is kindly, but surprised. “How can anyone not know about government borders on a map?”
In the future, however, this will apply to much more than national borders.
A Missing Piece
Another Layer Three example is very important: For example, on the map of Kenya, what natural resources are owned by or contractually promised to Chinese companies or the Chinese government? Versus what resources are owned by or contracted to U.S. firms? Or Canadian?, Dutch?, Japanese?, Italian?, British?, French?, German?, Korean?, Indian?, etc. What multi-national companies have their own security forces at work in these places—governing, citing, controlling? Where have they blocked mobile phone and Internet service—and why? If you know the Layer Three map of Africa this way, you’ll understand the world in ways other people simply cannot grasp. As Khanna put it: “China’s relentless pursuit of [natural resource contracts around the world] has elevated…to the status of a global good on par with America’s provision of security.”[i]
In other words, if anything happens militarily in the world, the U.S. is sure to get involved (or at least consider getting involved); and if anything happens concerning natural resources—oil, minerals, food, wood, precious metals and gems, water, etc.—China is sure to jump in. It likely already has contracts signed and sealed. In fact, put alliances and treaty requirements on the map, and something stands out: China owns numerous economic resources around the globe that the U.S. does not. Moreover, as of 2015 the United States was bound by treaty to defend 67 nations in the world; China was only bound to protect 1.[ii]
In short, a lot of global resources and money are slated to flow to China in the decades ahead (it has already begun), while huge assets and cash are scheduled to flow away from the United States. One has an economy that is programmed to head up, the other down. If you don’t consult a Layer Three map, this information is unknown.
Look at the map with the Layer Three approach, however, and the future becomes immediately clear: It belongs to China. The U.S. and Europe[iii] are falling further and further behind. This is obvious on a Layer Three superimposition.
But remove Layer Three and all you have are the continents, oceans, lakes, mountains, political borders, cities and towns. Nothing about Levels One or Two tell you that China is on the rise—with contracts across the globe, and a growth rate in ownership of natural resources and supply chains for these resources that all but assure them monopoly status in the decades ahead. And this example, China, is only one of the many hugely important things missing from Layer Two maps—which are the only ones most of us ever engage.
To reiterate: the pre-modern and modern maps fail us. They don’t even tell us what we need maps to communicate (rather than merely travel) in order to help us make the best local decisions. As a result, the old maps are almost worthless. They are historical relics, but not the most effective tools of decision-making or strategy.
For that, we need Level Three maps superimposed on the older models. As Joshua Cooper Ramo put it: “Ball up your right hand into a fist. Take your left hand and open the fingers wide. Hold the hands a few inches apart. You can think of your left hand as the vibrating, living network of connection and your balled-up fist as concentrated power. Right hand, Google Maps; left hand, millions of Android phones. This is the picture of our age.”[iv] But it is only an early picture. By the time you read this, will Google Maps and Android phones be replaced by something more advanced? Not unlikely.
What is Not Seen
Again, most people today have no idea this is happening. At least not at this scope, or pace. Many feel a general sense of a rising challenge, even a threat, from China, for example. But they don’t know what it means, why it is real, or how it is developing. They have no clue how to prepare for or address it.
The same is true of education. To wit: geography is still taught in two layers—much like it was in the 1960s. Technology makes it easier to teach and learn, but Layer Three tools and Layer Three thinking are absent in all but a very few out-of-the-box classrooms or learning environments. As Toffler put it, too many of today’s young are being raised to show up on time, do repetitive tasks without complaining, follow instructions, and memorize a great deal of knowledge without deeply understanding it. This is the focus of most schools.
These three lessons—punctuality, repetitive work, and rote memorization—routinely pass for what we call “education.” They are, in fact, the key lessons of schools in modernism. The pre-modern era emphasized “the 3 R’s: readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic,” and these prepared the young for success in the agrarian economy. Likewise, the three lessons above were often effective training for landing and keeping a job during the industrial age.
But today’s emerging information economy demands something different. Success now demands the Third Layer of education. It includes the kind of knowledge learned from the 3 R’s and also post-World War II schooling in history, literature, math, science, and social studies, but it also superimposes a Third Layer of education as well, which is more attitudinal and skills based: initiative, innovation, creativity, resilience, ingenuity, tenacity, recognizing opportunities, go-getter-ness, and entrepreneurial risk-taking.
The Third Layer is as different from most modern public and private schooling as the typical 1960s, 1980s, or 2000s high school or elementary was from the one-room schoolhouse. If the pre-modern age gave us Mary and Laura in the Little House series, studying at home or the local school (which was also the town hall, town theater, and community church), the modern age gave us the high school of Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, High School Musical, Dead Poet’s Society, One Tree Hill, 90210, or even 22 Jump Street.
All are outdated now. All fail to prepare our nation’s youth for the actual economy of the 21st century. We are still training the young to succeed in a world they can only study about in history books. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to note that the more time they spend in the modern school system, including the increasingly outdated university campus, the less prepared they’ll likely be to compete effectively in the rough-and-tumble emerging global marketplace with its worldwide competition and demands.
For example, a university degree isn’t what it used to be: The average graduate from the class of 2016 had $37,000 in student debt and couldn’t get a decent job in his or her field—or in any other equivalent field. There are of course exceptions, but the numbers of those leveraging college degrees into effective careers significantly decreases each decade (Note: in North America, Europe, and Latin America, but not in China). In short, today’s young adults are too often receiving a Layer Two education in a world that demands Layer Three knowledge, choices, and skills.
Past, Present, and Future
Few current students are being taught the skills of success that are needed in the new economy. The real economy. Layer Two schools simply do not teach initiative, ingenuity, or innovation. They don’t purposely teach chutzpah, audacity, grit, wise risk-taking, entrepreneurialism, or nerve.
Note that these are precisely the character traits that made America the world’s superpower. And Britain before her, and earlier, Spain and Portugal. These are the very traits that put Egypt at the top, then the Greek city states, and later Rome. These are the characteristics that gave the Gauls, Franks, Anglos and Saxons their edge.
They didn’t have Layer Three maps, to be sure, but they engaged in their era’s “Layer Three” education of the youth, teaching them the skills of resourcefulness, inventiveness, and daring in the face of difficulties. Some of these societies emphasized good purposes (such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, etc.), while others embraced less noble goals (aristocratic rule of an elite class over the rest of the people, dominance over neighboring nations, a pursuit of wealth through violence, etc.).
But whatever their dreams—good or bad—it was Layer Three skills (initiative, boldness, pluck, enterprise) that lifted every great-power nation in history to the top. As the society that now holds this spot, we (North America, and to a lesser extent Europe) are stunningly lax about teaching these traits. We increasingly downplay them as unimportant and even unattractive. Even “against the rules”. As a result, we have lost our edge. We have largely lost our drive. Too many modern Americans have lost our shared vision and purpose. Unity is a thing of the past.
Indeed, Americans were once unified in the goal to spread freedom, opportunity, and prosperity to the world. Now, the best we seem to be able to muster is a hope to afford college for our kids, and that they’ll get a safe, secure career with good benefits—and as little fuss or struggle as possible. Most colleges themselves seem committed to shielding our young adults from challenges, difficulties, thinking, and any diverse or challenging ideas. This is not the behavior of a nation on the rise. It is the opposite. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, we are castrating the stallions of the younger generations, then hoping they’ll be fruitful.
But apply Layer Three to the map. Where in the world do we find whole populations burning passionately with drive, initiative, innovation, nerve, entrepreneurial risk-taking, resilience, a hunger to achieve, audacity, ingenuity, resolve, and tenacity? Where do we find the largest concentrations of people who thrive in the face of uncertainty and embrace whatever is hard, and flourish even in an environment of impermanence and difficulty?
When you find a lot of people who have these traits, note where they live. Not in North American or Europe (at least not in large concentrations). In our modern American schooling/career system, for example, our major focus seems to be avoiding uncertainty, impermanence, and difficulty—yet these are the unavoidable realities of the global economy.
Through the Magnifying Glass
Look even closer. Enter this data electronically on a map and you’ll find these traits in China. Indeed, the heartbeat of China is a new “eye of the tiger.” A similar fire burns in India, and a less populated but angrier flame blazes across the Middle East. Layer Three also shows us the rise of such passion in parts of Latin America, Africa, and Russia. These are trigger-points of the decades just ahead.
Where such passion does show up in North America—from California to British Columbia, from Texas to New Hampshire to Newfoundland to Florida, it is usually personal, career-oriented, and commercial. A better job. A marketable education. A promotion.
These hardly match the resolve or intensity of China and its new economic allies across the developing world. They want to lead the world, change the world, and do great things. They want victory, and they see their lives as part of a battle.
In Europe the irony is even more pronounced. The Layer Three map shows numerous pockets of extreme passion in the nations of the E.U.—but zoom in, and you’ll note that most of the people with this kind of fire in the belly are usually recent immigrants from the Southern half of the globe.
The one great exception in North America and Europe is the entrepreneurial class, those who Steve Jobs called the dreamers, the rebels, and the risk-takers. They graduate from college and reject job offers from the Fortune 500 to pursue risky start-ups or launch non-profit charities. Or, increasingly, they skip college altogether, or drop out, and get started on their business or charitable ventures even younger, with an edgier, more idealistic and relevant education.
Their Layer Two parents and grandparents try to talk them out of such endeavors, but these young people have a hunger that typical education and careers won’t fill. They are a Remnant, throwbacks to the earlier Americans who got on the Mayflower, worked and died in Jamestown, went West by horseback or wagon to explore, start, create, and change things. They are the New American Founders, enlightened and ennobled by hindsight of the mistakes of the past, and impassioned by their view of the future – and we desperately need them.
We need a generation of them.
Now.
In the Now
If you are one of their parents or grandparents—worried that your youth are making such choices, decisions that make no sense to you—you can relax. Yes, the kind of risky leadership they are engaging is scary to the older generations who were raised to seek security. But the Third Layer maps clearly show that we no longer live in an era of security.
Even young people who follow the traditional path of college and career suggested by their elders will find that for most people it doesn’t endure in the new economy. We are in an era of tumult, change, and uncertainty—and this is only going to increase for the next few decades.
Those who try to live by Second Layer rules will fall further behind. College degrees won’t bring most of them secure jobs, and seemingly secure careers will suddenly be lost to recessions, new technologies, outsourcing, mergers, regulatory changes, companies sold to foreign investors, and competition, along with a host of other unforeseen realities.
Indeed, those who will do the best in the new economy—whose contributions and livelihoods will end up being the most secure—will be the new entrepreneurial class. The innovators. The roll-with-the-punches change agents. Those who can think, lead, initiate, and wisely assess risk. We are indeed entering the Age of Risk, and this massive shift in the world economy is here to stay. Business has already caught on and is changing things to meet the new reality. But education is still in denial, along with most in government.
Sadly for those who allow themselves to be swayed by the current denial of many in the educational sector and Washington, people caught in Second Layer thinking will be the losers of the next thirty years. The winners will be Third Layer risk takers who tenaciously create ways to succeed in the new environment. Who make a way.
Many of them are already looking at the world through the lenses of Third Layer maps and mindsets, and they understand something very real: The future is theirs. Moreover, our future is in their hands.
The more we can do to help and support them, the better things will turn out for all of us. The successes and failures of our entrepreneurs will determine the future. Just as it has determined the past.
Fall or Rise
This reality causes serious concerns. Anyone who takes a good look at the current university campus model of learning finds a number of problems. Not the kind of challenges that demand reform, mind you, but rather a systemic, structural network of problems that will require a true educational revolution. The need for change is, to put it lightly, drastic.
Just consider the following commentaries by some of today’s top thinkers on the topic of the emerging economy and its ties to the type of education we now need. For example, MIT’s Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee wrote, in a section of their book labeled “Failing College”:
“Richard Arum and Josipa Roska…and their colleagues tracked more than 2,300 students enrolled full-time in four-year degree programs at a range of American colleges and universities. Their findings are alarming: 45 percent of students demonstrate no significant improvement on the CLA [Collegiate Learning Assessment, which tests ‘critical thinking, written communication, problem solving, and analytic reasoning’] after two years of college, and 36 percent did not improve at all even after four years.
“The average improvement on the test after four years was quite small…. What accounts for these disappointing results? Arum, Roska, and their colleagues document that college students today spend only 9 percent of their time studying (compared to 51 percent on ‘socializing, recreating, and other’), much less than in previous decades, and that only 42 percent reported having taken a class the previous semester that required them to read at least forty pages a week and write at least twenty pages total.
“They write that, ‘The portrayal of higher education emerging from [this research] is one of an institution focused more on social than academic experiences. Students spend very little time studying, and professors rarely demand much from them in terms of reading and writing.’
“They also find, however, that at every college studied some students show great improvement on the CLA. In general, these are students who spent more time studying (especially studying alone)…”[v]
The authors also wrote: “The good news, though, is that technology is now providing more…opportunities than ever before. Motivated students and modern technology are a formidable combination. The best educational resources online allow users to create self-organized and self-paced learning environments—ones that allow them to spend as much time as they need with the material, and also to take tests that tell them if they mastered it.”[vi]
Futures Past
The quality of learning in such online venues is very often extremely high. For example, when a graduate level AI course at Stanford was opened to participants on the Internet for free, over “160,000 students singed up for the course. Tens of thousands of them completed all exercises, exams, and other requirements, and some of them did quite well. The top performer in the course at Stanford, in fact, was only 411th best among all the online students. As Thrun [the instructor] put it, ‘We just found over 400 people in the world who outperformed the top Stanford student.’”[vii]
Likewise, “…Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations, notes that college degrees aren’t as important as they once were. Bock states that ‘When you look at people that didn’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people.’ He noted in a 2013 New York Times article that the ‘proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time’—on certain teams comprising as much as 14 percent.”[viii]
Mindvalley founder and CEO Vishen Lakhiani wrote: “I’ve personally interviewed and hired more than 1,000 people for my companies over the years, and I’ve simply stopped looking at college grades or even the college an applicant graduated from. I’ve simply found them to have no correlation with an employee’s success.”[ix] Sadly, too many people still hold on to old educational models that no longer deliver what they once did, or what they now promise.
Lakhiani put it this way: “But here’s the problem. Most of us are using systems that have long [since] become obsolete. As Bill Jensen said in his book Future Strong: ‘Even as we enter one of the most disruptive eras in human history, one of the biggest challenges we face is that today’s systems and structures still live on, past their expiration dates. We are locked into twentieth-century approaches that are holding back the next big fundamental shifts in human capacity.’”[x]
Bestselling author Neil Pasricha told the following story: “A senior partner at a prestigious global consulting firm once said to me after a boozy dinner: ‘We find Type A superachievers from Ivy League schools who need lots of reward and praise…and then dangle carrots just over the next deadline, project, and promotion, so they keep pushing themselves. Over every hill is an even bigger reward…and an even bigger hill.’”[xi] This is enlightening. It’s not the actual education the big corporations are looking for as much as a sense of over-achievement and needing lots of rewards and praise.
Look at this same scenario from the student’s viewpoint. Is this really the career environment we want our young people to pursue? Is this the life we want for them, or the use of their talents that will best benefit the world—or bring them the most fulfillment and happiness? Sometimes, the answer may be yes. But very often, it isn’t.
Billionaire Paypal co-founder and educational innovator Peter Thiel said it even more bluntly: “Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?”[xii] After happily reminiscing that he eventually took the entrepreneurial path of founding tech companies instead of following his major in graduate school, Thiel said[xiii],
“All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.”
The Next Normal
The modern college/career system, which is increasingly Level Two education in the new economy, is more and more outdated. In the book Platform Revolution, technology experts Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary argue that the old-style university model is surviving largely because government regulations keep true innovators from competing on anything close to a level playing field.[xiv] If this were to change, no doubt online educational platforms would do for education what Amazon has done for bookstores (and other retailers), Uber has done for taxi services, Wikipedia has done to the encyclopedia publishing industry, and online news sources have done to many newspapers.[xv] Again, over 400 online students tested better than the top Stanford student in the exact same class.
Parker, Alstyne, and Choudary wrote: “The long-term implications of the coming explosion in educational experimentation are difficult to predict with certainty. But it wouldn’t be surprising if many of the 3,000 colleges and universities that currently dominate the U.S. higher education market were to fail, their economic rationale fatally undercut by the vastly better economics of platforms.”[xvi]
Just imagine much cheaper and higher quality higher educational offerings for all. Consider the work by Khan Academy,[xvii] Minerva,[xviii] Peter Thiel, and other educational innovators. If the government ever ends the current educational monopoly supporting the old-style conveyor-belt approach to higher education, the results will likely dwarf the kind of change we witnessed with the advent of cable television programs, or when Ma Bell was deregulated and replaced by an entirely different kind of telecommunications.
Parker and his colleagues also noted:
“In the years to come, the spread and increasing popularity of teaching and learning ecosystems will have an enormous impact on public school systems, private schools, and traditional universities. Barriers to entry that have long made a first-class education an exclusive, expensive and highly prestigious luxury good are already beginning to fall.
“Platform technologies are making it possible for hundreds of thousands of students to simultaneously attend lectures by the world’s most skilled instructors, at minimal cost, and available anywhere in the world that the Internet is accessible. It seems to be only a matter of time before the equivalent of a degree from MIT in chemical engineering will be available at minimal cost in a village in sub-Saharan Africa.
“The migration of teaching to the world of platforms is likely to change education in ways that go beyond expanded access—important and powerful as that is. One change that is already beginning to happen is the separation of various goods and services formerly sold as a unit by colleges and universities. Millions of potential students have no interest in or need for the traditional college campus complete with an impressive library, a gleaming science lab, raucous fraternity houses, and a football stadium.”[xix]
They’d rather pay a lot less and get a better learning experience.
Focusing In
“Education platforms are also beginning to unbundle the process of learning from the paper credentials traditionally associated with it.”[xx] The authors note that many students now “…appear to be more interested in the real-world abilities they are honing than in such traditional symbols of achievement as class transcripts or a diploma.”[xxi] They want to learn knowledge and skills that help them achieve their life and financial goals, not traditional symbols that no longer really work in the 21st century economy.[xxii] Results-Based Learning is increasingly in demand.
For example, “A high ranking on TopCoder, a platform that hosts programming contests, will earn a developer a job at Facebook or Google just as fast as a computer science degree from Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, or MIT. Platform-based students for whom a traditional credential is important can often make special arrangements to receive one—for example, at Coursera, college credit is a ‘premium service’ you pay extra for.”[xxiii] Another example is Duolingo, a crowdsourcing foreign language platform that is teaching more people a foreign language than all the students studying foreign language “in high school in the U.S. combined.”[xxiv]
“Once there is an alternative certification [to college degrees] that employers are willing to accept,” Parker and his colleagues affirm, “universities will find it increasingly difficult…. Unsurprisingly, developing such an alternative certification is among the primary goals of platform education firms such as Coursera.”[xxv] Other organizations are trying to build such educational platforms as well, including Udacity, Skillshare, edX, and others.[xxvi] Even top specialty schools, like MIT and Julliard, are offering open enrollment online courses. (Their selling point is often focused on “Learn from the MIT faculty,” or “Learn from the Julliard faculty,” a nod to the new reality that mentoring is becoming even more important than institutionalism.)
No doubt more innovative higher educational options will thrive (and at the high school level as well), until some of them restructure modern education like eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, the Internet, or Google have done for other fields. As far as student learning is concerned, numerous self-produced online tutorials, on platforms like YouTube and others, provide excellent educational opportunities—both to learn and teach.
All of these developments and trends are part of Third Layer education, and they are almost universally moving away from outdated traditions, methods, and beliefs of conveyor-belt-style education and schools. A new economic era is already here, and for those who know what to look for, new educational models are rising to support what is now needed. Third Layer, Results-Based learning is the future of effective education. The focus is on individualized learning, thinking, and applying rather than conveyor-belt schooling.
The new maps are here, if we’re willing to look.
(This topic is addressed in more detail in Hero Education by Oliver DeMille, available here>>)
[i] Parag Khanna, 2016, Connectography, xvii.
[ii] Harper’s Index, Harper’s Magazine, September 2015.
[iii] The Brexit and election of Donald Trump didn’t seem to make much difference in this trend. See, for example, Geoffrey Smith, “The Brexit Crisis That Wasn’t,” Fortune, October 1, 2016; See also, Jeff Immelt, “After Brexit, Global is Local,” Fortune, August 1, 2016, 71-72.
[iv] Joshua Cooper Ramo, 2016, The Seventh Sense, 122.
[v] Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, 2014, The Second Machine Age, 197-198.
[viii] Cited in Vishen Lakhiani, 2016, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, 24.
[xi] Neil Pasricha, 2016, The Happiness Equation, 150.
[xii] Peter Thiel, 2014, Zero to One, 36.
[xiv] See Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary, 2016, Platform Revolution, 263-268.
[xvii] For example, see commentary in Brynjolfsson, 199.
[xviii] For example, see commentary in Parker, 268.
[xxvi] See, for example, ibid., 265.
Category : Blog &Business &Citizenship &Community &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Generations &Government &History &Independents &Information Age &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Politics &Producers &Prosperity
One Great Challenge Facing America Today
August 26th, 2017 // 4:51 am @ Oliver DeMille
The Coming Fall
Only 15 percent of Americans are on target to fund 1 year or more of their retirement. One single year. Yet many will live twenty to thirty years after retiring. This one fact alone is a major blow against conservatism.
It may in fact kill conservative principles and ideals in the next two decades, and it could deeply hurt the American economy and our freedoms in the process. This is not an exaggeration. Put simply:
How can conservatives expect to win elections or, even if they are victorious at the ballot box, actually pass conservative laws and policies when more than 85 percent of the American people are going to be fully dependent on someone else’s money for housing, food and clothing, health care, and other expenses during retirement?
With the massive Baby Boom generation moving into retirement, many analysts ask: how can the United States implement anything short of collectivist socialism in the next thirty years?
To cut away the safety net, or to default on the promised Social Security and healthcare benefits workers paid into for decades, would be immoral and create widespread poverty for many of our most vulnerable. To buck up and pay for these obligations, and supplement them with what will be needed for millions of retirees to just get by, will require levels of taxation and regulation that will truly be nothing short of…well, socialism.
Bottom Dollar
Few people want to admit this reality—Republican politicians least of all. But over sixty years of government promises, spending money that should have been saved, inflating the currency, and putting numerous regulatory hurdles in the path of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and economic growth have taken their toll. A national debt north of $20 trillion dollars (more than $100 trillion when all the obligations and liabilities are met, and a lot more as these obligations and interest on the debt increase every month) leave us little wiggle room.
There are two realistic responses. First, we can go after major economic growth. This will require a systemic change in our economy—meaning mass deregulation and getting the government almost entirely out of the marketplace. Tax rates must come down drastically, and foreign-held corporate money must be encouraged to repatriate without penalty. Foreign direct investment must also be recruited (another reason tax rates must be significantly reduced).
The second option is to keep on the current path until we default, then allow an IMF bailout of the U.S. and the replacement of the dollar as the world reserve currency with International Monetary Fund SDR currency or some other (probably electronic) legal tender. This will result in a major reduction of the standard of living for most Americans and an explosion of additional government handouts. Most retirement and other savings that do exist will be wiped out, and nearly all Americans will go on the dole, with a few elites at the top, and both socialism and globalism will dominate.
The amazing thing, to me at least, is that many of our nation’s leaders right now—in both parties—actually prefer the second option. Moreover, a lot of them believe that this is the best course for our future. They deeply believe in globalism, collectivist economics, and the end of America’s attachment to free enterprise, gun rights, family values, and religion. They believe that government is the greatest power on earth, and deserves our universal allegiance and support. Even, ultimately, reverence. Anyone who disagrees, they believe, is small-minded or caught in the past—or both.
New or Old
Not only do many Democratic leaders hold this view, but a surprising number of Republican officials believe it as well, or at least they vote like they believe it (which brings the same results). This is a real battle, and the globalist elites are winning. The media, most of academia, and a majority of politicians are on their side. In their view, the future of the world is at stake—either a bright future of globalism (with elites in charge) or a return to dark-age tribalism, as they see it (where the regular people rule through small-minded, unenlightened democratic influence), will ensue. They are determined to ensure the globalist outcome.
They literally consider it a war–and one that is worth winning, whatever the cost. If academia, media, Hollywood and the lobbyist/D.C. bureaucracy/political party-apparatus can force the Trump administration to back down from anti-globalist policies and behaviors, so be it. That’s what the hubbub is about on the nightly news, investigations, etc.
But if not, they’ll take more drastic measures. A currency default might do it, causing bank holidays and massive layoffs. Or a serious shakeup in the White House—brought on by the Special Counsel, indictment of the President, or something else that circumvents the will of the voters and instead chases the goals of the elite. Something unexpected, of the same magnitude, could trigger a return of White House alignment to globalist goals. Today’s elites in government, media, finance, etc. can hardly remember a time when globalism wasn’t the clear agenda. Most of them are outraged at the very thought.
The rest of America has a serious problem. Remember the 85 percent of Americans who don’t (or won’t) have enough retirement savings to last more than a year? How are conservatives going to effectively promote smaller government and a return to genuine free enterprise in a nation strapped with the $20 trillion-plus national debt, $13 trillion in consumer debt, over $100 trillion owed in debt plus unfunded liabilities, and many millions (and growing) of retirees who will desperately need financial support?
The Next Step
I’m an optimist, because I believe the best days of America and the world are yet to come. Usually I infuse my writings with optimistic ideas on how we can really improve things in the days ahead. But right now I have to admit that I’m concerned. I’m not sure how we get past the economic hole we’ve dug for ourselves—not just politicians, but the regular people as well. We are culturally, if not actually, dependent on government spending and government growth.
Yes, a lot of people want the government to cut back, but they can’t agree on what to cut. Almost all Americans want the government to keep spending for things that benefit them directly. The ones that support cuts mostly only support cutting other people’s government benefits. Thus Congress doesn’t actually fix much.
Unless this changes, Democrats will continue to be the party of bigger government and increased socialism while Republicans will talk about smaller government, limits, and Constitutional boundaries—but when the votes come to the Senate, truly conservative changes won’t have enough Republican support to pass, and when cases make their way to the Supreme Court, free enterprising systemic changes to the government-corporate-K Street nexus won’t have enough Justices behind them. Too many officials simply aren’t willing to do what needs to be done. It’s too hard, and too unpopular.
I’m not sure what can change this.
Of one thing I am certain, however. History is absolutely clear on this point. As goes entrepreneurship, so goes our nation. Ultimately, a major increase in effective entrepreneurship, innovation, and business ownership is going to make or break us. It will create growth if it happens, and that changes everything. Also, the future of entrepreneurship is something each of us can influence. Our next three decades will either bring massive economic growth or the rise of rampant socialism to America. To choose the path of growth, our government can help (by deregulation and choosing to be smaller)—but a lot more people engaging effective entrepreneurship is the indispensible. Period.
Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Citizenship &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Foreign Affairs &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Politics &Postmodernism &Producers &Prosperity
