Reinventing The World, We Can Do Better

Ben Korgen

Description

The purpose of this book is to provide background information needed to start and wisely participate in a worldwide conversation that could lead to a happier and less confrontational world. It does this by defining history recycling leadership and suggesting methods of releasing ourselves from its grip. It defines history-recycling leadership as a process of social influence which maximizes the efforts of others but unintentionally spawns continuing cycles of prosperity, poverty, tranquility and violence. It recognizes that to escape from history-recycling leadership, humans will need fresh ideas. To get these ideas, they need to avoid depending on leaders who minimize the random popping of ideas into their heads to project their images as stable, solid citizens who can govern the ship of state with a steady hand on the helm. To get the ideas they need, humans also should avoid electing idea people to lead them because idea people usually do not make good leaders. Their most valuable thoughts pop into their heads at random in ways that prospective voters perceive as erratic and undesirable in leadership positions. For making progress in this direction, this book recognizes that we already have a working model to emulate. Science, engineering and technology have long histories of racing forward with little or no recycled effort. They have accomplished this driven by leaders who realize that maintaining the forward momentum of their efforts depends on accepting the inputs of idea people. This book recognizes that escaping from history-recycling leadership is not possible if leaders merely accept ideas from a limited number of idea people for at least two reasons. First, leaders depending on a random popping up of ideas in the minds of a small number of people may get ragged inputs of good, bad, relevant or irrelevant ideas on days when the best ideas in the world may be floating around somewhere in a distant country. Second, history-recycling leadership affects the lives of everyone in the world, suggesting defeating it will require the fruits of a worldwide effort. This book addresses needs for a worldwide effort by offering a sample path for testing, adopting or discarding for something better. This path includes methods of world-scale recruitment of idea people, harvesting ideas, filtering them to winnow out the most promising ones and debating their value before worldwide referendums for approval and implementation. The chapter titles of this book are Introduction, Confucius, Joan of Arc, Booker T. Washington, Fridtjof Nansen, Albert Einstein, Einstein's Letter, Adolph Hitler, Alister Hardy, Genetics, Multiple Intelligences, Gender, Personality, Temperament, Decision Chains, Leadership, Science, Thinking, Brainstorming, Energy, Population, Institutions, Politics, Atonement, Strawman Triggers, Influences and References.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 25 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622879823
• Langue: English

Extrait

Reinventing the World
We Can Do Better

BEN KORGEN
Reinventing The World, We Can Do Better
Copyright ©2015 Ben Korgen

ISBN 978-1622-879-82-3 EBOOK

July 2015

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
To Judy
1. INTRODUCTION
2. CONFUCIUS
3. JOAN OF ARC
4. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
5. FRIDTJOF NANSEN
6. ALBERT EINSTEIN
7. EINSTEIN’S LETTER
8. ADOLF HITLER
9. SIR ALISTER HARDY
10. GENETICS
11. MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
12. GENDER
13. PERSONALITY
14. TEMPERAMENT
15. DECISION CHAINS
16. LEADERSHIP
17. SCIENCE
18. THINKING
19. BRAINSTORMING
20. ENVIRONMENT
21. ENERGY
22. POPULATION
23. INSTITUTIONS
24. POLITICS
25. ATONEMENT
26. STRAWMAN TRIGGERS

INFLUENCES AND REFERENCES
1. INTRODUCTION

E very human should study a few of the best Hubble Space Telescope photographs. The portions of the universe they reveal are beautiful enough to inhibit us from harming any part of it. The same portions are big enough to make arrogance, snobbery and conceit seemed worthless.
Respect for the beauty of the universe should discourage leaders from plundering the earth for financial gain. What does this have to do with history-recycling leadership? Knowing the earth is a mere speck in the universe should discourage the same leaders from promoting destabilizing, flip-flopping adventures that jerk their followers around, make them unhappy and risk their lives.
Destabilizing adventures include oscillations between different forms of government, political parties in control, leadership styles, views on privacy and freedom, war and peace, regulation and deregulation. Some people view destabilization and ask “Is it necessary to jerk ourselves around in ways that make us miserable with anxiety?” If their finances are strong and their worries few, others might imagine that a world of stability and permanence surrounds them. Is this realistic?
Humans are dreaming if they think they live in a world of stability and permanence. This is true regardless of whether they think about their own lives, society in general or the environments that support them.
Our lives cycle through conception, birth, growth, adulthood, decline and death. The earth itself goes through cycles of creation, aging and consumption. Molten rock creates new seafloor at the midocean ridges. The deep earth consumes ancient seafloor in its deep land-boundary trenches. For hundreds of millions of years, the horizontally moving seafloor has been carrying the continents on its back while moving them over distances that define the dimensions of the ocean basins.
Floods alternate with droughts. Windstorms alternate with periods of calm. Scientists discover new species of animals and reasons others go extinct. Irrigation that makes deserts bloom can make lakes disappear. Fish populations explode and crash making fisheries alternate between prospering and failing.
Developers earn alternating praise and blame when their buildings stimulate economies or collapse during earthquakes. Humans alternate between complacency and terror when they settle on low ground near oceans unprotected by tsunami warning transmitters.
Natural disasters cause human states of mind to oscillate between extremes of calm, contentment, stress, anxiety, despair and terror. Do events like these cause human states of mind to oscillate strongly enough to cause permanent psychological damage?
Natural disasters can cause thousands or even millions of deaths. Death is the most extreme price of life. This means that many of those who die must pass through psychological damage before death. It also means that natural disasters push the stress-adaptation tools we inherit to the limits of their capacities in those who almost die but survive.
If these conclusions are valid, they suggest that humans who inherit stress-handling tools designed for dealing with the oscillating stresses of nature may not deal well with added stresses created by their own governments. Examining these government-triggered stresses shows that they are just as oscillatory as those provided by nature.
To simplify our discussion of oscillatory government-triggered stresses, let's first consider the movements of a simple pendulum. Consider a string attached to a room's ceiling screw-eye at one end and to a tennis ball at the other. The string length allows the tennis ball to swing freely an inch above the room's floor.
Let's begin with the tennis ball hanging motionless directly below the string's ceiling attachment. Persons A and B stand on opposite sides of the room and face each other with the motionless ball between them.
Person A draws the ball closer, releases it and watches it swing back and forth toward and away from persons A and B. If persons A and B avoid touching the ball, it swings back and forth, with each swing slightly smaller than the previous one until friction between the string and the screw-eye causes it to stop. Scientists call this a free oscillation.
Using a different example, if person A starts the ball oscillating as before and person B avoids interfering, person A can give the ball a perfectly timed little push every time it comes near, then starts moving away. If done carefully (using a push not too weak or too strong), this can cause the ball to continue moving in swings of equal size. Scientists call this a weakly forced oscillation. The case described mimics the oscillatory motion of a pendulum clock in which energy for a series of perfectly timed little pushes comes from a wound-up spring.
In a different type of forced oscillation with a series of perfectly timed stronger pushes, person A can cause the ball to make bigger swings. If person B joins in with a series of perfectly timed equally strong pushes, the two working together can force bigger and bigger swings until the ball goes out of control and bounces off the ceiling.
If person B holds the ball to one side while we place an extremely wide, three inch deep pan of olive oil in the center of the floor, we can observe a different kind of oscillation. In this case, person A starts the ball oscillating as before, but avoids touching it as it swings back and forth. Because the ball must pass sluggishly through the olive oil on each swing, the sizes of each swing will decrease faster than they would if they were part of a less-restricted free oscillation. Scientists call this purposely lessened type of swinging a damped oscillation.
What does this have to do with history-recycling leadership? It has a great deal to do with it. We can simplify a discussion of political oscillations by describing them as analogous to the earlier free, forced and damped tennis-ball pendulum examples.
Some of the most jarring swings in political oscillations occur when revolutions force governments from one form to a completely different form. For example, consider fictional country C in which 90 percent of the people are illiterate. Because they cannot read or write, aggressive speakers manipulate public opinion, making freedom to vote almost meaningless. When a revolution forces country C to swing wildly from dictatorship to democracy, the result is chaotic, creating new demands for strong leaders. The result is a new revolution that forces C to swing wildly from democracy to dictatorship again. Flopping back and forth between types of government leaves the people involved stressed, anxious and fearful.
Can well-educated people living in a democracy avoid the problems political flip-flopping creates? It might be possible, but the freedom that comes with democracy encourages organized groups with differing special interests to struggle with each other for political power. The destabilizing character of special-interest struggling creates undesirable political power oscillations.
For example, groups with special interests in oil prospecting, space travel or arms manufacture may offer their own candidates to voters for election to powerful positions. Some voters seem unaware that special-interest candidates like this exist. This is partly because of passive voter interest in elections. It is also because these candidates are free to hide their special-interest intentions.
One way of hiding these intentions involves advertising needs to push for projects entirely different from hidden special interests. For example, a special-interest candidate may push hard to become known as the best candidate for drastically improving public-school education.
A different way of hiding these intentions involves candidates who push for a condition or result popular with voters, then turning success away from voters toward special interests. For example, special-interest candidates interested in deregulation to create freedom for big companies to do as they please might push for less government meddling in the private lives of voters. Special-interest candidates interested in low taxes to benefit big companies also might push for low taxes on voters.
A different type of candidate will push hard for special interests without hiding anything. These are candidates who work hard to convince anyone who will listen that their pet projects are as important to voters as they are to special-interest groups. For example, candidates promoting oceanography, space travel or more sophisticated weapons might push voters to elect them in the name