August, I read your article, Goosebump Leadership and the Death of the Big Idea on Forbes.com. I have responded to your article below. I included quotes from your post, followed by my comments for each quoted selection. I welcome any further correspondence on these points. Regards, Georg Buehler, Solutions Architect at Relevant Automation
“The real problem is that the war, tyranny, and disastrous social experiments of the 20th century destroyed our faith in Big Ideas.”
That’s a juicy statement, but I’m not quite sure what you mean. The collapse of Communist Russia certainly made people lose faith in a certain political ideology, but the Great Recession of 2008 has got people questioning the value of Western economic principles as well.
“People may cite myriad reasons for not having children, but at heart it symbolizes a crisis of faith in the future.”
To be honest, I don’t buy this argument. There may be some people who “don’t want to bring children into this messed-up world,” but for the majority I think it’s for exactly the opposite reason: industrialized society removed most of the economic motivators for having kids, and most people would rather enjoy their wealth and leisure-time on themselves instead of kids.
But peace is not a mission. Peace (like environmentalism) is a means, a set of conditions that should provide a jumping off point for some new and wonderful mission for mankind.
At this point I’m thinking: Ok, hit me with your best shot. What is your best guess as to what this new and wonderful mission is going to be? Either you have to put forward some suggestions, or admit that you don’t know, but you can’t just leave it hanging.
A mission that reminds us why we are together, what it means to be human, and what kind of future we are collectively called to build. A mission that gives us goose bumps.
For what it’s worth: I see a lot of young people full of aspiration and excitement and hope, and they didn’t have to wait for some politician to tell them what to get excited about. Computers and communication keep getting more and more phenomenal. Lots of people are dreaming of artificial intelligence. We’re cloning creatures right and left, opening a whole new realm of the biological sciences. The Arab Spring has once again affirmed that people everywhere want freedom. For the moment, our politicians are talking about the real issues of fiscal responsibility, and building an education system that really works. We’ve grown up in a world in which twenty-something’s become billionaires because they had one good idea.
I agree that there is no UNIFYING vision of something we are all working towards. . . other than the “usual” American vision of freedom and prosperity for all. Maybe we just need to keep focused on that . . . it’s an old hat for us, but still a profoundly new thing for much of the world.
Georg, Thanks for your comments on my recent Forbes.com article, Goosebump Leadership and the Death of the Big Idea. You are correct. We have not just lost faith in Communism but in all “isms” including our own except perhaps cynicism. And you can’t run a culture on cynicism.
However, I was dismayed by your comment that I failed to “hit you” with my best shot. I was hoping my introductory stuff about space exploration covered that.
I also was fully aware that I was suggesting that we need a top down solution and to some extent we need a politician even though I hauled in Martin Luther King as an example of a non-political Big Idea person. I do see the possibility for bottom up Big Ideas, but I still think a vibrant society needs an exciting overarching mission that knits it together in the face of all the forces of atomization.
I recognize the changes in the Arab Spring, but the question still remains as to what mankind is going to do with itself once all earth has achieved what the West has. To date history shows that people don’t know what to do with peace and prosperity besides self-indulgence and the decline it engenders.
Finally I think you make my point when you point out that one reason for not having more kids is to enjoy life in the here and now. This represents faith in the present over faith in the future. Instant gratification over deferred gratification. Spending millions on the Louisiana Purchase that the early US didn’t have as Jefferson did, represented a vision for the future that Jefferson and taxpayers would never live to see. But it “captured the imagination” so much that they were willing to make the down payment. Kinda like that Cathedral in Europe that took three generations to build. Net net, your comments are very provocative. I’d love to interact and correspond with more of my audience in this way. August
