The New Global Aristocratic Class & the Decline of Free Enterprise
October 14th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
While regulation increases and economic freedom decreases in America, other nations are going the opposite direction.
In order to remain prosperous and strong, America must revive the principles of free enterprise that made her great.
Three New Hotspots
In a two-day span, the New York Times ran two articles — “The Tel Aviv Cluster” and “Is China the Next Enron?” — on the strengths and weaknesses of China and Israel.
Written by Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, respectively, the articles arrived at surprisingly similar conclusions.
First, at the time of the articles, both nations were economic hotspots, primarily because of the high numbers of entrepreneurs within each.
Where America has become a capitol of employeeship, in Israel and China the American Dream of “making it” through business initiative and entrepreneurial enterprise is alive and well.
India could certainly be included in this.
Second, both are zones of technological growth. Of course, this stems from entrepreneurial innovation.
Where the U.S. trains most of the world’s attorneys, Chinese, Israeli and Indian students dominate many engineering and technology enrollments in many of the world’s leading schools.
Entrepreneurship, Technology & Progress
China has low interest rates, easy credit for private and business capital, and lots of investment money flowing.
Israel, as Brooks puts it,
“…has weathered the global recession reasonably well. The government did not have to bail out its banks or set off an explosion in short-term spending. Instead, it used the crisis to solidify the economy’s long-term future by investing in research and development and infrastructure, raising some consumption taxes, promising to cut other taxes in the medium to long term.”
Friedman wrote that China has:
“…a mountain of savings…China also now has 400 million Internet users [in context, the entire population of the U.S. is just over 300 million people], and 200 million of them have broadband…Now take all this infrastructure and mix it together with 27 million students in technical colleges and universities⎯the most in the world…Equally important, more and more Chinese students educated abroad are returning home to work and start new businesses.”
Brooks wrote that:
“Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed in the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.”
Challenges Coming
Third, both China and Israel appear to be on the verge of major shifts.
The Chinese challenge ahead is to bring its political institutions up to speed with the rapid spread of economic liberties.
The Soviet Union collapsed because it tried to reform by expanding political liberty while maintaining a command economy.
Traditional Chinese communism also rejected freedom at all levels, and the attempt now is to offer economic freedom while keeping a totalitarian government.
The huge amount of savings, including “$2 trillion in foreign currency revenues” available to the Chinese government gives it a lot of power into the future.
What kind of volatility is ahead for a nation with an authoritarian and oppressive government which also has the world’s largest entrepreneurial class?
As for Israel, the challenge is that increased economic and technological success further widens the gap between Israel and its already estranged neighbors. This is a huge destabilizing factor.
As Brooks says, “Israel is an ‘astonishing success story, but also a highly mobile one.’” He suggests that if the region destabilizes, the entrepreneurial class already has connections and homes in Palo Alto, for example.
American Decline
Perhaps the most telling message of these articles is the contrast with the U.S.
We’re cutting technology programs and increasing the regulatory, tax and red-tape obstacles for entrepreneurs.
Positive gains in U.S. social justice since 1964 have unfortunately and unnecessarily coincided with the dismantling of American incentives for entrepreneurial free enterprise.
Current levels of U.S. business regulations don’t allow many American entrepreneurs to compete with their international counterparts.
Trends in China, India and Israel provide more evidence for one of the most important developments in our world: The rise of a new global aristocratic class.
Interestingly, Friedman and Brooks have both written books about the new elite (see The Lexus & the Olive Tree, On Paradise Drive, Bobos in Paradise, and others).
For example, Friedman introduced the concept of the “Electronic Herd,” a new, highly mobile elite class that manages the world’s capital from their laptops and lives in places like Mediterranean beach towns on the Spanish or French Riviera, Ashland (Oregon), Austin (Texas), the Bahamas, Buenos Aires, London and so on.
This group parties in Manhattan and Switzerland, reads the great classics of humanity and today’s latest financials, and has little connection with or allegiance to any government.
Rediscovering The American Dream
America became known around the world for two great ideals: 1) freedom, and 2) a classless society where anybody could become whatever they were willing to earn and achieve.
Together, we often called these ideals “The American Dream.”
As the U.S. regulated away our free enterprise strategic advantage — especially since 1989 — its cities become more and more like the class-based European models that many American cultural elites idealize.
Today, America’s “aristocrats” are likely to be less loyal to the United States than to their corporate connections, and Americans who consider themselves patriots are likely to be dependent on job wages and living paycheck to paycheck.
Canada and various other nations are in the same situation.
The irony here is thick.
Those who care about freedom (many of whom are Independents) may have more to learn from examples like Israel, China and India than from contemporary Washington D.C. and its increasingly Europeanized institutions, dreams and objectives.
The Effectiveness of Liberty
Just like during the American founding era, freedom in our day will flourish again in any place emphasizing entrepreneurship, free enterprise initiative and major deregulation of small business and class-oriented structures.
While many nations can learn from America’s current example of religious and racial freedoms and freedom of the press, the U.S. needs a healthy renaissance of economic and political freedom.
Until our leaders, institutions and laws once again lead the world in allowing and incentivizing entrepreneurial initiative, our freedoms and prosperity will decrease.
It is time for America to import its most valuable resource: A widespread belief in free enterprise.
The world needs less of a growing elite class and more nations where freedom is adopted and applied.
Learn More:
To learn more about the current state of geo-politics and economics, and how to revive freedom, read The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom and listen to The Four Lost American Ideals by Oliver DeMille.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Aristocracy &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Foreign Affairs &Liberty &Technology
The Marriage Plot, New Feminism, & the End of Men
October 13th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
AT THE CENTER OF ALL SOCIETIES sits the family, and when family culture drastically and irreversibly changes, the whole civilization is impacted.
Our politics, economy, relationships and character are going to be different based on the major family shift now occurring.
What could cause such an all-encompassing change? What exactly is happening right now that is altering our societal future?
The answer is: The shift to a matriarchal society.
And whether this actually happens in full or we are simply witnessing a slight move in this direction, the consequences are momentous.
In short, this boils down to four major trends that are remaking our society:
- The rise of matriarchal society
- The decreasing popularity of marriage
- The growing confusion about manhood
- The opportunity for masculine nurture
The Rise of Matriarchal Society
The Great Recession is touted by many as having brought the end of male dominance in our culture, and of ushering in a new era of matriarchal supremacy.
As Don Peck writes in The Atlantic:
“The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults….It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities….Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture and the character of our society for years come…
“[J]oblessness corrodes marriages, and makes divorce much more likely down the road. According to W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the gender imbalance of the job losses in this recession is particularly noteworthy, and—combined with the depth and duration of the job crisis—poses ‘a profound challenge to marriage’…
“‘We could be headed in a direction where, among elites, marriage and family are conventional, but for substantial portions of society, life is more matriarchal,’ says Wilcox. The marginalization of working-class men in family life has far-reaching consequences.
“Marriage plays an important role in civilizing men. They work harder, longer, more strategically. They spend less time in bars and more time in church, less with friends and more with kin. And they’re happier and healthier.”
Women are now the majority of the paid workforce for the first time in history, the majority of managers are now women, and significantly more women than men now get degrees.
“For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?”
As Hanna Rosin outlined in a an article on “the unprecedented role reversal now under way—and its vast cultural consequences,” couples at fertility clinics are now requesting more girls than boys, three quarters of the jobs lost in the Great Recession were lost by men, many college women now assume that they will earn the paycheck while their husbands stay home and mind the kids, and women now earn 60 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Ask Rosin:
“What if the economics of the new era are better suited to women? Once you open your eyes to this possibility, the evidence is all around you….Indeed, the U.S. economy is in some ways becoming a kind of traveling sisterhood: upper-class women leave home and enter the workforce, creating domestic jobs for other women to fill.
“The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominately male….
“The economic and cultural power shift from men to women would be hugely significant even if it never extended beyond working-class America. But women are also starting to dominate middle management, and a surprising number of professional careers as well.”
Of the top 15 careers projected to grow in the decade ahead, says Rosin, only two—janitor and computer engineer—are filled by a male majority. And the trend is not limited to the United States: both China and India boast similar indicators.
College statistics show “with absolute clarity that in the coming decades the middle class will be dominated by women.”
The Decreasing Popularity of Marriage
At the same time, and certainly not unrelated, many women are finding marriage less attractive.
Sandra Tsing Loh writes that:
“for women, obsession with real estate is replacing obsession with love and marriage….Whatever the emotional need, we women can engineer the solution. But such continual resculpting may be irksome if the vessel of our current and future happiness is an actual male….
“So what if, in comparison with Jane Austen’s time, when the heroine’s journey was necessarily Girl Meets Boy, Girl Marries Boy, Girl Gets Pemberley, 200 years later our plots are Woman Buys Pemberley, Pemberley Needs Remodeling, Woman Hires Handsome, Soulful, Single Architect to Find Perfect Farmhouse Sink but After Whirlwind Affair Boots Him Out Anyway Because She Hates His Choice of Carpeting…?
“Whether you wish to chant ‘Our houses, our selves’ or ‘We have houses, hear us roar,’ for us women, home is where the heart is.”
Loh suggests that “middle-aged female readers’ tastes,” at least, “are shifting away from the marriage plot.”
She cites such current female classics as Committed by woman’s icon Elizabeth Gilbert, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House by Meghan Daum, and Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture by Shannon Hayes.
About The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine (which the New York Times Book Review called “an update of Sense and Sensibility”), Loh said that it is
“less about who ends up with the men than who ends up with the real estate….
“As the years grind on, Sheldon [‘bald and in bow ties’] will only continue to physically collapse, as opposed to a house, whose luster just improves with age. A 100-year-old farm house? Make it 200! Even 300! Original hardware! Wide-plank floors! And what’s more fun than falling madly in love with a piece of real estate?”
Quoting Meghan Daum:
“Moving, like chocolate and sunshine, stirs up many of the same chemicals you ostensibly produce when you’re in love. At least it does for me. Like a new lover, a new house opens a floodgate of anticipation and trepidation and terrifying expectations fused with dreamy distractions. It’s all encompassing and crazy making. You can’t concentrate at work…”
And about Hayes’s book:
“I am raptly studying the New York Times piece on lefty stay-at-home mothers in Berkeley who raise their own chickens. In a house with no cable…the only entertainment we have is reading….Evenings go by so slowly, I’m already halfway through my every-four-years read of Anna Karenina…
“I’m intrigued by the stay-at-home-mom chicken-slaughtering because on my rickety nightstand (flea market—$8!) is my new bible, Shanon Hayes’s Radical Homemakers. Sure, it has some of the usual tropes one would expect from a crunchy-granola rebel seeking to live off the land: Hayes’s daughters have lyrically daunting names like Saoirse and Ula; there is copious homeschooling; there are hushed-voice, enigmatic, and unironic biographical descriptions like ‘She raises and forages most of her food in the heart of the city’ (Chicago). More timid souls might balk at maybe limiting their diet to venison, figs, and prickly pear cactus; melting beef tallow for soap….And yet, I find myself dog-earing page after page, exclaiming ‘Aha!’ and circling passages….
“What a heady brand of feminism—self reliance in the home is a path to more authentic macro-freedom; freedom from government, freedom from corporations, freedom from a soul-diminishing economy! Like early American rebels who freed themselves from dependence on the British by pairing turkey not with imported jam but with locally grown cranberry sauce, we, too, can start a revolution in the kitchen!”
A much more direct new feminism, according to Rosin, comes from leaders like Iceland’s female Prime Minister who campaigned by promising to put an end to “the age of testosterone.”
And many women are simply foregoing marriage. Says Rosin:
“In 1970, 84 percent of women ages 33 to 44 were married; now 60 percent are….[T]he most compelling theory is that marriage has disappeared because women are setting the terms—and setting them too high for the men around them to reach.”
In all of this, men are often seen as dull, stulted, unimaginative and unable to cope with change, while women are seen as naturally innovative, able, creative, adaptive and ready to deal with and overcome anything.
When challenges come, men are expected to mope, but the women assess the situation, develop solutions, and then muster resources and support to turn challenges into triumphs.
In this new worldview, the stereotypes are significant: men are naturally needy and dependent while women are bright, engaged and full of initiative.
Why would women even want to marry in such an environment? Many college women, according to Rosin, see men as “the new ball and chain.”
Growing Confusion about Manhood
President Obama said in his 2008 Father’s Day Speech that fathers are critical to the foundations of the family:
“They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and men who constantly push us toward it.”
Kids who are raised without fathers are five times more likely to commit crime or live in poverty and nine times as likely to drop out of school. But these statistics are all in debate, and no clear conclusions are accepted by the researchers.
In fact, as the author of Parenting, Inc., Pamela Paul, put it,
“The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution. The good news is, we’ve gotten used to him.”
Such tepid support for the role of fathers is becoming the norm. As Don Peck wrote:
“In Identity Economics, the economists George Akerloff and Rachel Kranton find that among married couples, men who aren’t working at all, despite their free time, do only 37 percent of the housework, on average. And some men, apparently in an effort to guard their masculinity, actually do less housework after becoming unemployed.
“Many working women struggle with the idea of partners who aren’t breadwinners. ‘We’ve got this image of Archie Bunker sitting at home, grumbling and acting out,’ says Kathryn Edin, a professor of public policy at Harvard, and an expert on family life….It may sound harsh, but in general, [Wilcox] says, ‘if men can’t make a contribution financially, they don’t have much to offer.’
“Two-thirds of all divorces are legally initiated by women. Wilcox believes that over the next few years, we may see a long wave of divorces, washing no small number of discarded and dispirited men back into single adulthood.
“Among couples without college degrees, says Edin, marriage has become an ‘increasingly fragile’ institution. In many low-income communities, she fears it is being supplanted as a social norm by single motherhood and revolving-door relationships. As a rule, fewer people marry during recession, and this one has been no exception.”
More people are putting off marriage and just deciding not to marry.
One result of all this is that more communities are filled with unmarried, unemployed, underemployed, increasingly less educated, frustrated and unproductive males.
Even among educated men who are married and employed, there is increasing confusion about the ideal and proper role of men.
Few men are willing to voice a strong opinion about the roles of men and women any more, though it is a frequent topic among women.
Even those men who do share an opinion most often begin or end, or both, with a disclaimer along the lines of, “but what do I know? I’m just a man, after all.”
We are at an interesting place in gender relations in America. Hanna Rosin wrote:
“Throughout the ‘90s, various authors and researchers agonized over why boys seemed to be failing at every level of education, from elementary school on up, and identified various culprits: a misguided feminism that treated normal boys as incipient harassers (Christina Hoff Sommers); different brain chemistry (Michael Gurian); a demanding, verbally focused curriculum that ignored boy’s interests (Richard Whitmire).
“But again, it’s not all that clear that boys have become more dysfunctional—or have changed in any way. What’s clear is that schools, like the economy, now value the self-control, focus, and verbal aptitude that seem to come more easily to young girls.”
I have suggested for many years that girls are a couple of years ahead of boys and that we do much harm by pushing boys into academics too early.
In fact, until they have a love of learning (which comes early) and then a love of studying (which usually comes to boys shortly after puberty), requiring them to do a lot of typical school work is often very destructive to their long-term education.
By establishing grade levels by age, rather than as phases that come to different children at their own pace, society often labels boys as “dumb,” “not smart,” “less gifted,” and “behind,” when in fact they just aren’t yet ready to meet some arbitrary standard called a grade level.
Some boys, and some girls, may develop more slowly than the “established norm,” but they are still fully capable of superb performance when they are allowed to move at their own pace.
Unfortunately, this flies in the face of the “expert” wisdom and is largely discounted by most.
One suggested solution by those currently dealing with this trend of “underperforming” boys is to create gender-oriented tests instead of standard exams. This strikes me as sad and frustrating, since I have been promoting personalized, oral exams instead of standardized tests for years.
Another proposal is to allow boys to walk around during class in order to get out their nervous attention and allow them to concentrate like girls or older students.
Again, I have taught for nearly two decades that younger children aren’t quite ready for the academic environment we have forced them to endure.
Some experts want to establish all-boys classrooms and even all-boys school, and to focus on the needs of boys instead of requiring them to fit into standard classrooms.
I agree with Rosin:
“It is fabulous to see girls and young women poised for success in the years ahead. But allowing generations of boys to grow up feeling rootless and obsolete is not a recipe for a peaceful future.”
Unfortunately, the pro-men and pro-boy movements that are now happening are either discounted by many as too religious, too extreme, or too angry and anti-women.
In short, the only thing which really seems to work in raising boys toward ideal manhood, regardless of what the experts are saying, is the intimate and ongoing example of fathers, grandfathers, uncles and other key male role models.
Solutions
This reality, in fact, is one of those amazing coincidences that can only be called either inspiration or serendipity.
The current crisis is offering an opportunity for men to develop their nurturing side.
Before you discount this, consider that men are as naturally prone to nurture as they are to provide.
Thousands of years of the Nomadic, Agrarian and Industrial Ages have conditioned hundreds of generations of men to find success through work.
And the long era of comparative peace and prosperity since 1945 have tended to make them feel entitled to plentiful jobs, extra cash, vacations, and leisure time, and numerous other opportunities—often with minimal effort.
The Great Recession has challenged these assumptions, requiring a new type of individual with two sets of character traits and skills:
- First, extremely high levels of initiative, resiliency, ingenuity, and tenacity.
- Second, much higher than traditional levels of cooperation, communication, unselfishness about who gets rewards and credit, and teamwork.
Today’s generation of men and women are capable of the first list of needed traits and changes, but many men struggle to compete with women on the second list.
Indeed, for much of history it was man’s lack of these very “weaknesses” that made him independent, self-assured, bold, assertive, ambitious, and what has been called simply, “manly,” “Roman,” and “tough.”
When boys are taught, “be a man,” “don’t cry like a sissy,” and men are told to “cowboy up,” it often means precisely not to be the cooperative, communicative, depend-on-others types.
“Stop talking and just do it.” “Who cares what others say or do, just do what you want.”
Men still laugh at Tim Allen’s grunts as the essence of male communication, and even in team athletics boys are taught to stand out and rise above the crowd.
What used to be the unwritten rules of “male dominance” are now actually seen as inability to excel in the vital second list of characteristics (communication, cooperation, unselfishness).
While of course this generalization is overcome by a number of individuals, it remains a reality for many.
Wise fathers, grandfathers and role models will help teach boys and men that there is much more to manhood than the wartime and gang-related values.
Indeed, the lessons taught from fathers to sons by generations of hunters, farmers and entrepreneurs differ greatly from those idealized by warriors, politicians and corporate raiders.
The first group idealizes cooperation, communication, and progress whereas the second prefers competition, dominance and victory.
In the Industrial Age, the “Organization Man” became the ideal for males—detached, admired, cash-carrying, benefitting from a lot of leisure time, and considered in charge of his family and its members.
The Industrial Man was the provider and the boss. At work he was an employee, a servant, but at home he was the center of the universe. He too often tended to treat his wife and children like employees and act like the boss he resented at work.
With a life experience built on succeeding as an employee, he didn’t know another way of acting.
His wife was either an employee, the boss, or perhaps a fellow worker in competition for advancement, attention and rewards.
His marriage was most often seen as a contract, where both sides were expected to perform their agreed upon roles, rather than a covenant where he would give his all in sacrifice and longsuffering regardless of what the other side did.
His relationships with neighbors and his nation took on this same contractual perspective.
He voted like an employee, for what he wanted—rather than for what the nation truly needed like a farmer or owner protecting the land or the organization he raised from scratch.
Today some men are lamenting (often quietly) the loss of this concept, while at the same time the need for a new male ideal is vital.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the masculine ideal was often the best nurturer. It takes nurturing, not detached management, to grow a farm, build a business from the ground up, and raise children into adults.
The necessary attention to detail is legendary. Indeed, in the Agrarian Age the iconic man’s occupation and business was Husbandry.
Providing was part of their role, but it was a secondary natural outgrowth of nurturing children like a small business in its infancy, encouraging and husbanding plants and coaxing them to grow and flourish into a farm in full bloom.
As Wendell Berry put it:
“…a man who is in the traditional sense a good farmer is husbandman and husband, the begetter and conserver of the earth’s bounty, but he is also midwife and motherer. He is a nurturer of life. His work is domestic. He is bound to the household.
“But let ‘progress’ take such a man and transform him…sever him from the household, make…‘uneconomical’ his impulse to conserve and to nurture…’ and not only will much of his incentive to be a good husband end, but his attachment to the land, to his nation, and to his wife and children, who are, after all, not particularly economical.
“Then, send his children away to school during the day, thus severing the wife from both husband and children, and she will naturally follow him to work looking for connection and meaning.
“Our homes are left abandoned and barren across the nation—father, mother and children are all elsewhere, seeking love and acceptance and nurturing.”
New Opportunities
Then the economy tanks, the era of the male provider-warrior ends, and man stands wondering if he has any importance.
As women take more than half of the new jobs in the market, they too begin to wonder if man is needed.
Here comes the miracle.
Like a wildfire burning a forest and opening the seeds for the growth of new trees and vast swaths of new woodlands, men look around, try to see any value in their lives, and find, hopefully, inevitably, their inner nurturer.
If this sounds effeminate, you still don’t realize how much the world has changed.
This transition is not simple, and we fight it with the zeal of the government battling the most threatening forest fires.
The experts and activists may call it “A New Era of Matriarchy,” “The End of Men,” “The Failed Marriage Plot,” “The Victory of Feminism,” or “a Matriarchal Society,” but all of these miss the most central point.
After generations of an economy driving men further and further away from their nurturing selves, of making them more and more the provider-manager-disconnected-careerist or confused-noncommittal-freewheeler-playboy, something drastic is required to reawaken a generation of husbandmen.
A generation of husbandmen could improve the world like perhaps nothing else. Indeed this is the highest ideal of manhood promoted by feminism and its opponents alike.
And if unemployment and economic struggles are what it takes to bring about this change, it is certainly worth it.
Of course, making this change will be neither immediate, easy nor sure. There will be ups and downs, and individuals may reject the whole thing.
But the change is here, women and men are empowered, and our society is poised to take a great step toward an ideal world.
Speaking as a man, I am both overwhelmed and intrigued by the prospects.
This is about much more than just seeing the proverbial silver lining in economic struggles. We literally have the chance to become better as men, women, and people.
The debate about gender that has raged my entire life can finally be answered. We don’t need to worry so much about what men or women should be or who is ahead.
We have reached a point where all the incentive is simply for men to be better men. If each of us, male and female, see things this way and simply set out to be better, just imagine the potential.
I am so glad my daughters live in a world of such opportunity—both in and out of the home. And I am equally thrilled that my sons will build their lives in a world where the whole man—nurturer as well as provider—is emerging as the ideal.
I am more enthused than ever about the potential for all our children to be equally yoked and fully happy in their marriages.
I don’t believe that the era of marriage, family happiness, or the high point for men or women is over. In contrast, I have never been more optimistic about the future of family.
If we are entering an era where both women and men more broadly improve themselves, the future of the home is indeed bright—and the impact on the rest of the world is inevitable.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Culture &Current Events &Economics &Family &Featured &History &Mini-Factories
How Information Grows
October 12th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
Information grows differently than industry or agriculture.
Thus hundreds of years of understanding about how to grow Industrial-Age businesses doesn’t really apply to many Information Age endeavors.
Indeed, some of the lessons of how to grow a farm in the Agricultural Age didn’t necessarily translate to Industrial Age corporate growth, although some did.
The key is to think in a new context and apply lessons within the contemporary environment.
Information, and by extension Information-Age organizations and ideas, grow in a certain way.
Instead of the Industrial model of building a foundation, then adding walls, buttresses and finally a roof, informational models grow like waves.
Imagine the ripples caused when a pebble falls into a lake. The waves repeat many times, spreading out and impacting the world around them. Eventually they dissipate and disappear, leaving the world altered, if only a little. Additional pebbles are needed to repeat the process.
And unlike the Industrial Age penchant for building institutions that last forever, information impacts the world and then moves on to something else when enough ripples have accomplished the goal.
The Industrial modus operandi was to build an institution to achieve a goal, and then to focus on the survival and growth of the institution — even if this required abandoning the original purpose for which the institution was established.
In contrast, information sets out to inform, keeps going until this is accomplished, and then moves on to other agendas.
Likewise, where Industrial institutions attempt to control how their work is perceived and utilized, information shares, informs, and leaves (and trusts) those who receive the information to use it as needed and to pass it on.
Good information is naturally improved by various applications, and it is perpetuated by those who receive and utilize it.
There are eight levels of informational waves:
1: At first, information simply is. It exists.
It is in the state and process of being. This is the most important level of informational ideas, institutions and thinkers.
The quality, breadth, depth and wisdom of information matters. Getting it right (right from the beginning) is vital.
Even more important is sharing information for the right reason. If information is shared for the wrong reasons, for example, the information itself is tainted and changed by this fact.
In the Industrial Age, things were considered good information if they were true, but information has a higher standard. Unless informational ideas are shared for the right reasons, the information isn’t reliable.
In short, the first level of information is purity.
Any item of information is a thing, and it has a purpose. In sharing information or building informational institutions or relationships, pure reasons are essential. Without them, the information itself is unreliable.
Note that pure information is one of the most powerful things in the world. It has been called “the power of the word,” “the power of an idea whose time has come,” “resonance,” and a number of other things.
When information is shared by the right person at the right time for the right reasons, it has great and lasting power.
2: Good information that is promoted and shared for the right reasons becomes an interactive wave.
This greatly increases the impact and influence of the information, spreading it to those who need it.
Of course, bad information passed on for the wrong reasons is also interactive and therefore very destructive. Anybody who has ever started a rumor, for example, has probably witnessed how quickly it spreads and how much pain and hurt it can cause.
In the long term, however, tainted information has no lasting power. Information promoters do best when they send out ideas far and wide, openly sharing and personally applying the “new” information they have learned.
3: Next comes the communicative wave.
This occurs where people purposely set out to communicate information to set groups or to everyone.
This wave can be marketed, spun, or twisted for the benefit of various groups and people, but the pure information will shine through and those seeking wisdom will see through the shades of spin and opinion and resonate with what they need to learn.
They will then naturally pass on their contributions and lessons learned and the value of the information will increase.
Synergy kicks in at this point and the value of the information spirals out to many who are seeking it.
4: A linear wave captures much of the information at this level and translates it to specific uses, fields, disciplines, written or spoken or digitized venues and delivers its essence in numerous formats.
Information institutions or thinkers frequently introduce their views to the world in this format. Of course, it existed before they composed, organized or created their specific work, but their creation adds value, quality and even wisdom to the information.
By its nature, information spreads, and those who add to its value without trying to enslave its essence help it spread and increase its ability to serve.
Those who try to control it, in contrast, find that their creation is devalued, their creativity stifled, and their flow of additional information violated.
Unlike land or capital in the Agrarian and Industrial eras, respectively, information is not meant to be owned. The wave of open source programs and wiki media applications harnesses this abundant and cooperative mentality.
Note that I am not arguing here for uncompensated use of copyrighted software, technology, artistic or other proprietary creations.
I believe that original inventions, innovations and creations should benefit those who risked, invested, worked and created. And organizations and governments have every right to keep certain things secret or proprietary.
But pure information in ideas, principles and the flow of wisdom is not the same as one’s proprietary creation–nobody can (or should) lock up or control the flow of pure information.
As long as individuals and institutions own their creation, but without trying to control thought and inspiration, it can benefit them and many others.
5: Eventually information is captured in numerous linear waves which together form a multimedia wave.
In other words, at a certain point pure information is simultaneously delivered in many forms and from numerous sources which reinforce the messages, lessons and value of the original information.
Leaders can help spread this wave by delivering the information multiple times and in manifold ways.
6: The next step occurs when information comes alive.
This happens were the essence of the information is felt.
When I hear a story and it spurs an emotional response, for example, all the earlier waves combine and impact how I receive the information.
In a similar way, waves far from where the pebble dropped are bigger and carry a lot more water than those right where the pebble fell.
A similar level in Industrial institutions was branding–where a given brand, name or logo carried a repeating emotional charge. In the informational world, however, each additional interaction communicates new information value.
7: Psychological waves come next, and are produced by the transfer of information from one mind to another.
Since all such transfers partake of all the earlier levels of waves (e.g. the person shares his feelings, pure or tainted reasons, multimedia use of voice along with facial expressions and nonverbal cues, etc.), learning from others is an advanced way to receive information.
Because of this, the level of advancement of the person delivering the message has some impact on how the information is delivered.
Still, the condition of the receiver is the most important factor in determining the quality of the reception when the information or signal is pure.
In Industrial marketing this was often dominated by testimonials or infomonials, but informational leaders simply open up and share.
The most powerful of this information often comes from word of mouth, personal stories, and genuine interest in helping others.
Any who truly care about others and share ideas, thoughts or anything else as attempts to help others are partners with information in this process.
The true language of this wave is love, which is why true change most often comes when we feel love or loved.
8: At the highest level, the symbolic wave conveys a packet of information that is amazingly multi-layered and teeming with depth, breadth, context, connections and possibilities.
Shakespeare spoke of being bounded in a nutshell of infinite space and science teaches that the DNA code of an entire organism is found in each cell.
The symbolic wave could be called a mustard seed, a small token carrying the potential and key to so much more.
Also, at this highest level, the receiver can often break the information into smaller pieces, analyze each of the waves alone or together, and consider each facet of the idea–from its essence to all its potential consequences.
The possibilities are exponential. The information at this level is only limited by the abilities of the user to consider, discover or imagine.
Those seeking such information are on a quest for inspiration–be it limited to one question, or as broad as a life of searching.
Because the symbolic wave of information is so powerful, those who ask shall receive; the universe is friendly, and when the student is ready the teacher will appear.
(That last paragraph makes me want to be sure everyone knows how important it is to read Free the Beagle by Roy Williams. It’s a fun read, not homework.)
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Current Events &Economics &Education &Information Age &Leadership
How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America
October 11th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
Every once in a while a truly great article comes along that needs to be read by everyone who cares about freedom.
Past examples include “The Clash of Civilizations” by Samuel Huntington and “A Separate Peace” by Peggy Noonan. Both of these are still incredibly valuable reading.
Today, when many politicians are trying to convince the American people that the recession is really over, there are still very few people who believe an economic boom is just ahead.
A significant number of people feel that things may well get much worse, and most Americans seem to expect the economy to sputter for the foreseeable future.
Even if growth does increase, it appears that major economic challenges are far from over.
More importantly even than financial impact of hard economic times is the significantly negative impact on the family.
Because of this, today I want to recommend that everyone read a truly important article written by Don Peck in The Atlantic: “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America.”.
I have read and re-read this article a number of times since I first saw it in March, and I am learning something more each time. I urge you to take time to read it thoroughly.
While you read it, consider at least four themes:
- The challenges of fixing the economy, and the great need to re-incentivize innovation and entrepreneurs.
- Why are we choosing to increase taxes and regulations on small business instead of opening the economy and giving them a chance to put American initiative to work?
- The impact of high unemployment on the family, including the restriction of the roles of husbands, fathers, wives and mothers.
- The impact on youth.
Finally, I am still trying to figure out the ramifications of one major point in the article, that the economic downturn is altering our culture into a “matriarchal society.”
I’m all for equality, but is a matriarchal society a good thing or a bad thing? What exactly is it, and what will it look like? I think this is a vital trend that we all need to think about and discuss.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Culture &Current Events &Economics &Family
Great Education in the Internet Age
October 8th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
As the old saying goes, “Leaders are Readers.” This has proven true generation after generation, and is still the reality today.
But there is a significant difference in the leadership value in different types of reading.
For example, few would doubt that there is a difference in benefits between reading the following items:
- a technical manual
- your friends’ Facebook entries
- a work by Plato or Shakespeare
- a historical, western, science fiction or fantasy novel
- the prospectus for a financial investment
- a romance novel
- The Wall Street Journal
- a tabloid magazine
- a business self-help book
The list could go on. One could argue that all of these have some benefits, but the value would depend on what the reader was trying to gain from the reading.
In short, all reading is not the same.
As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times:
“Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year….They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students….In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school. This study, along with many others, illustrates the tremendous power of books….
“Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.”
He concludes his analysis with this:
“Already, more ‘old-fashioned’ outposts are opening up across the web. It could be that the real debate will not be books versus the Internet but how to build an Internet counterculture that will better attract people to serious learning.”
Perhaps the key is to resurrect the word “great.” This word is often used (perhaps overused), in our society, but it is seldom used to mean what it originally meant.
“Great” has several meanings:
- huge, immense, grand
- distinguished, remarkable, impressive
- noble, heroic, majestic
- wonderful, fantastic, excellent
- complete, profound, utter
- unlimited, boundless, abundant
- major, momentous, weighty
“Great” can mean any one of these things, or a combination of a few or all of them.
Antonyms of the word “great” include: unimportant, small, minor, lowly, slight, awful, tiny, and ordinary. In academia, business and athletics, the word “mediocre” is also used as an antonym of “great.”
Now, consider some of the ramifications of applying more greatness to education, reading and learning.
What if children and youth were strongly encouraged to read a few of the greats in everything they read. For example:
- 2 of the greatest technical manuals ever written, things like The Wizard of Ads by Roy H. Williams
- 2 of the greatest works each by Plato and Shakespeare
- 2 years of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report
- 2 each of the greatest historical, western, science fiction and fantasy novels, titles like The Bridge at Andau, The Virginian, Lord of the Rings, etc.
- 2 of the greatest romance novels ever, such as Gone With the Wind, Sense and Sensibility, etc.
- 2 of the best tabloid magazine articles ever written, which have weathered the test of time and proven to be excellent and accurate (just the process of researching this would be a great educational project that would teach many lessons about good versus bad journalism)
- 2 of the top business self-help books, such as works by Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles, Paulo Coelho or Jim Collins
- Some of the top Wall Street Journal articles ever published, things like “A Separate Peace” by Peggy Noonan
- 3 of the greatest Facebook entries ever (examples anyone?)
Such readings, be they from books or newspapers or the Internet, are by their nature grand, remarkable, impressive, excellent, profound, momentous and weighty. Some are even abundant, noble, majestic and/or heroic.
In a word, they are great.
None of these would be unimportant, small, minor, lowly, slight, awful, tiny, ordinary or mediocre. Readers may agree or disagree with what they read, but they would at least be reading some of the greats.
This would help them judge the quality of other things they read by simple comparison.
Great readings greatly impact learning. What is an education without Tocqueville, Austen, Newton, Einstein, Aristotle, Virgil, Twain or Mother Teresa?
Unless we read the greats, our education simply cannot be accurately called great.
Beyond this, however, there are a number of great works being produced each year and in many mediums—from books to music, art to theater, cinema to mathematics, accounting to marketing, family relations to philosophy and religion, and from the Internet to all the latest social networking sites.
Great works are more easily found in some of these mediums than others, but all of them offer at least a few greats!
We just need to look for and share them—especially with the youth. Cultivating our taste for greatness, and our ability to detect it, is an important aspect of becoming “educated.”
On a related topic, the only free peoples in history were societies of readers! If we want to be free, we must read. Books matter, and great books matter greatly.
Other kinds of readings also produce some great work, and all of us can do better by simply adding more “great” readings into our lives. As we do this, our children and students will be more likely to follow our example.
Finally, in what ways can each of us help establish and support Internet content that is deeper, more excellent and truly greater reading material? This is a vital mission for many of us.
In one way, the Internet may be more effective at promoting great education than even books: Nearly all Internet content is interactive, meaning that youth naturally want to write about it as well as read it.
Where reading of books and writing of essays are usually separate processes in traditional education, the Internet can bridge the gap by naturally combining great reading with important writing.
If they are reading great works and ideas, learners will be more likely to write about great thoughts.
The problem is that without reading great things, great writing seldom occurs.
When children learn texting (entertainment) before they actively fall in love with and engage great books (learning), their writing won’t usually emphasize great thinking.
The greatly educated naturally use e-media to share and improve their education, while those with shallow education naturally take their shallowness to the keyboard.
In short, we can all benefit from bringing more great readings into our lives—wherever they are found.
But among children and youth, it is much more effective to learn from books first and later take up social networking only when they have something important to say.
When this order is reversed, many youth struggle to do the work of great education when life is dominated by e-entertainment.
In the Internet Age, great education is more available than ever—but only if children fall in love with books. And this is a lot more likely if their parents and teachers set the example.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Education &Information Age
