Free Speech, Social Resilience

So far as we follow the opposite impulses in our private interactions with each other, so far as we attempt not to argue with others but to intimidate them, so far as we indulge the toxic nonsense that there is a right not to be offended, we undermine that consensus, and so in turn weaken our defenses - intellectual, political, legal - against the government doing likewise.

Positive Psychology, as a brand, still hasn't caught on yet - it sounds too airy-fairy, to pop-science. 

Self-regulation and social-emotional literacy, however, are terms that are steadily gaining traction.

In a nutshell, the purpose of such practices is this - to develop a certain amount of self-consciousness, understanding how and why certain external stimuli, like words said in your direction impact you the way you do.

Behavioural Economics seeks to do the same thing, but from a macro level.  So does industrial psychology.  

The goal is no longer to weed out the weak through tough competition; it's to support strength and resilience through education, relationship development and space/work organization.  Which is what design thinking is all about.

Does this trend make you anxious?  Does it feel like someone's slipping something into your water, trying to wrest your individuality away from you?  

I'm sorry to hear that and understand how discomforting that feeling must be.  If it makes you feel any better, that's a problem your grandkids won't have to deal with.

:o)

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.  I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.  And then, in that very moment when I love them... I destroy them."

Canadian Politics: Storm's Getting Worse

We sadly live in an era of extreme weather and potential natural disaster.  It is a sure bet more political careers will be tested by this reality in 2014.  It has already helped hasten one political fatality.

In a disconnected realm where fear narrows one's focus and self-interest locks it in, nobody cares about their neighbour.  They want jobs, they want security, they want to know what's in it for them.  

Generally, politics feeds on fear and self-interest.  Policy pitches are based around ensuring more money stays in your pocket, more bad or discomfiting people taken out of your way, your life get's easier.

But there's this thing that happens when the system doesn't work for all, when the infrastructure is selectively maintained - when the storm hits, everyone feels it.  Rich or poor, when the power goes out and the cold sets in, you want someone to be there.  Even if that means being there for someone else in return.

This is a theme I return to again and again; it's one of those simple bits of clarity that everyone is able to see, when they polish the glass.  I'm hardly the first person to point this out.

Things always get worse the more we look to self-interest.  They get better when we remember that communities are more than the sum of their parts.

Storm's getting worse.

We'll pass through it soon enough.

Leaders and Vision: To the Moon, Canada!

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.

Love him or hate him, JFK's Rice speech remains a benchmark for leadership done right.  In stirring words, Kennedy articulated the legacy of a pioneering spirit that Americans rightly take pride in; he laid out in simple terms the course of human development and demonstrated the rapid pace of advancement the world had inherited.  

Then President Kennedy brought forward a bold, almost (but not quite) inconceivable vision of achievement and then went on to describe everything that was and had been done that generated the optimism that yes, putting a man on the moon was possible.

And you know what?  They did.

No young person in the United States or Canada has ever heard such a speech delivered by one of our leaders.  For that matter, none of the young political operatives strategizing plans, crafting narratives and writing speeches for those leaders has heard such a bold, pioneering vision, either.

There's an old quote about wood and cabinets that applies equally to vision; it's awfully tough to build on that which you haven't experienced.

Instead, they are used to bold pronouncements about economic fundamentals; job creation, deficit slaying, so on and so forth.  Hardly inspirational stuff - such expressions are designed to appease and comfort, not to empower and motivate.  Supplementing these planks of pragmatism tend to be fearful overtures - threats overseas, threats of socialists and separatists, things that only one Party or the other can protect the people from.

This makes for good partisan positioning, perhaps; reminding those voters why they need us.  It's a terribly ineffective way to catalyze innovation and to inspire action, though.  

In a way, it truly baffles me that with all the smart, well-read people directing traffic behind the political curtain, there is such resistance to bold visions and such an urge to play it safe.  They fight over slices of the demographic pie, focused with fevered zeal just on winning control over what we have already.  They can and should know better.  So why don't they?

It's because all too often they and the leaders they serve have forgotten that we are still pioneers.  When it becomes about winning, not achieving, you aim for what you see before you instead of aspiring to something greater.

A focus on economic fundamentals is inherently selfish; it's about getting what's yours, not contributing to something greater.  That's fine if you think history is over and that the goal today should be consolidation.

The same holds true for a focus on rhetoric around trust; if the emphasis is on trusting your leaders to govern as you would trust your neighbour to keep your extra front door key, the emphasis once again becomes one's ability to rely, laterally, on their representatives.  

You need economic stability.  You need trust.  But these things are only facets of leadership.

Leaders present visions of where we, collectively, could go, place that destination on a trajectory validated by history and provide the motivation, inspiration, drive to each and every one of us to get there, together.

You can implement all the tax breaks you want, cut all the regulations you want, but if there is no vision people can see and feel compelled to strive towards, then they will continue to do what people tend to do.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been in conversations with a host of community groups, start-ups and pundits pursuing one initiative or another.  Each has struggled to know where to begin, who to bring on board, what direction they should be heading in.  When I ask "what's your end state look like?" I get descriptions of business plans, grumblings about structural problems that have to be addressed, etc.

I then rephrase the question.  "If you were to achieve all you wanted to achieve, in ten years what would the world/your community look like that differs from how it looks now?"  Answering this question tends to be a bit of a process, which is fine - it's one that needs to happen.  

When that vision is more or less clear, I then ask the following:

"What needs to be done between to get from here to there?  What skills, tools, new development are we going to have to look at if we're to bridge the distance?"

And that's it; that's the ingredient that's missing, the reason why capital is frozen and innovation is stagnant.  Canadians have been pretty settled with where we've been, which has made us complacent in a way we can no longer afford to be.  We have no new destination, no challenge to rise up to, no standard we are trying to set for others.

Which is why we're falling behind.

These, then, are the question we must be posing, not just of our leaders but of ourselves as well.

Where are we headed?  What awaits us there?  How do we bridge the distance?

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more that have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun - almost as hot as it is here today - and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out - then we most be bold.

You're up, bold leaders.  Where are we going today?

Stephen Harper: The Winter Soldier

The latest Nanos Research polls show a Canadian electorate in a winter of discontent.

It's really hard not to fall into Game of Thrones references these days - they just apply so well to the current political landscape.  We have devious leaders playing selfish, destructive games; we have a society that is beyond frustrated with the failing system in place today and, of course, there's a lingering anger/fear of something bad on the horizon.

But there's something else at play here; something no less uncomfortable, something the same leaders who consider themselves Machiavellian manipulators par excellence are missing - largely because it's almost against their nature to do so.

Our society has been outgrowing the ability of our current systems - educational, healthcare, political, jurisdictional - for a while now.  Without big threats on the horizon, our leaders and their supporters have been focused on consolidating power and bending wills rather than crafting solutions and bringing people together.  Canada has been safe - that's why it's been so resistant to the adaptations other nations have embraced.

Winter has been coming for some time, yet we have sapped ourselves of the will to evolve with the times.  We are woefully unprepared systematically and culturally for what's to come.  

Which is where Stephen Harper comes in.

Harper has been escalating power consolidation, starving government agencies, starving not-for-profits and undermining the very fabric of our democracy.   He plays the divide-and-conquer game; he punishes critical thought from anyone who doesn't reside within his inner circle or otherwise think the way he does.  

Harper has also been shutting himself off from the real world, meaning he's lost touch with the pulse of the nation.  

When you think you're an empire-builder, after all, the reality of the plebes doesn't matter.  You tell them what to think; their job is to fall in line.

History tells us how well that approach works.  There certainly are enough examples to turn to.  They also provide precedents for Harper himself.

While he thinks of himself as a successful politician, a man above, Harper is actually nothing more than a functionary.  If it wasn't him in the role he now plays, it would have been someone else.  In fact, there are many out there right now who are playing the same part.

Our Prime Minister may think he is irrevocably shrinking government and remolding Canada into a permanently conservative country; he's wrong.  Harper is simply serving as political brushfire, clearing out old growth to allow for the emergence of more evolved, more progressive structures and ideas.

In this sense, Harper is the perfect non-leader for our times, a soldier clearing the decks for what's to come next.

After all, winter is invariably followed by spring.

The Naming of Things: Owning Free Speech

We can hope that, in time, a generation that has grown up online will outgrow the cowardly shadows of namelessness.  Still, faceless hatred will endure - as long as we let it.  Until then, nothing less than our own collective decency will hang in the balance.

Criticism is important; without it, poor ideas go unchecked and new opportunities are missed.  If people like Galileo and Newton had never bothered to question accepted wisdom; if inquisitive minds like Sigmund Freud or Alfred Kinsey had not thought to explore taboo topics, we'd all be lesser for it.

There is a huge chasm, however, between criticism and opposition for opposition's sake.

One seeks to move the conversation and with it, understanding forward; the other simply seeks to stop conversation dead in its tracks.  It's why in Politics, the goal of Opposition Parties is to grind government to a halt; it's why violence is the weapon of choice for those who've run out of ideas.

Goldenberg makes some excellent points; online anonymity is a refuge for cowards, though not the last one - merely the latest.  This can be a good thing and a bad thing; whistleblowers fearing for their careers and, in some cases, their life may want to do the right thing but not be prepared for martyrdom.  

At the same time, there are the trolls; these are the people who will say online under pseudonyms what they would never say in person.  These are also the folk who will break a window in a riot because they feel they won't get caught, or will join in a lynching when there's already a crowd with noose in hand.

But these people aren't an isolated demographic, one group that can be singled out - they are people, just as we are.  Therein lies the great irony and the deepest lesson.

We dehumanize people when we take away their names - by calling someone an  infidel, a Jew, a faggot, a bleeding-heart, red-neck, latte-sipping urban elitist, monster or any number of variations, we are removing their individuality to better fit a simple, emotionally satisfying narrative.

It's why, over time, we've feared and loathed the Inscrutable Oriental, the Arab menace, the 1% or the unwashed masses.  It's why the bad guys we dreaded most, be they the zombie apocalypse, the hive-minded aliens, partisans or The Other can always be understood as one homogeneous collective.

When trolls hide behind anonymity, they are equally stripping away their own individuality.  Perhaps the unaccountable attack makes them feel powerful, as does being part of a mob, but the very act of slipping into a pseudonym turns a person into a caricature, interchangeable with any other troll.   When we can and do act without consequence or attack without consideration, we dehumanize ourselves as well.  We trip away the thin veneer of civilization and revert to nothing more than animals.

It's beyond tragic that those who will raise their voices the loudest in defence of individual liberty and free speech as often as not are seeking freedom from everything that makes humanity special.

It's never been freedom and anonymity that has made us distinct, nor isolation or stagnancy; it's ownership, individuality and the ability to become more than what we are.  The flip side of I may disagree with what you say but will defend your right to say it is think before you speak.  

Thinking is not innate.

Which is why this is where I part ways with Adam Goldenberg.  After much study, thought and conversation, I've come to the conclusion that we are all-too often hung up on romantic notions of the superhuman ancestor, the idea that in simpler times we were better people.  I don't see much support for this in history.

As such I don't feel that, with the Internet, our collective decency is at risk.  I don't think there has ever been a collective decency.  In fact, I'd argue that stigma is an evolutionary development that was intended to keep small kinship groups safe from predators, competitors and illness.

The idea of collective decency isn't something we're straying from, but moving towards.  

It's a slow, tedious, painful process with almost as many steps backwards as there are forwards, but such is always the nature of progress.  

We began with the naming of things - ascribing unto them labels and identity born of our own perception.  This is language.

Where we're moving to is understanding the names others give themselves.  By understanding how others view themselves and us, we better understand who we are, as individuals.  Call it an introspective property inspection as well as an exploration of society's holdings.  It's also known as mindfulness or consciousness.

Conscience may make cowards of us all, but consciousness is all about ownership.  And light.

What the Conscious Society Looks Like

The message of the video is clear: We're Google, and the work we do is making the world a better place.

There's also a subtle but important subtext, which is that the old world was one where people were driven apart, but technology is ushering in a new world where people are brought together.

"Every single organization on the planet knows what they do, 100%. Some know how they do it... but very few people or organizations know why they do what they do."  - Simon Sinek, How Great Leaders Inspire Action

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?  How do you put into words the emerging reality that Don Tapscott calls Networked Intelligence and that I like to refer to as The Conscious Society?

You don't.  You don't have to.  Limiting communication to one medium is like insisting your movies be black-and-white and mute.  We want added value.

Corporations are beginning to practice Conscious Capitalism.  

Political Parties have lost sight of their "why", started focusing on what they stand against more than what they stand for and are suffering for it.  Governments, however, are moving in the opposite direction with open data, open government and social media/App tools that will allow people to connect to services in ways much like the video linked to at the end.

Technology and especially social media is becoming a neural network connecting people and ideas from around the world, birthing something observably greater than the sum of its parts.  A great example of what this looks like in practice is Ushahidi.

People, especially youth, are looking for more than just money - they want meaning.  We're defining our lives on what we accomplish, not on what we win.

It mattered none at all to me that the actors were of a different ethnicity, speaking a language I didn't understand - I'm fine with subtitles and besides, the message is universal.  I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.

But enough from me - all these trends will become clear to all, in time.

Just watch this, and feel inspired.  I guarantee you're gonna want to share it.

The Digital Temple

Could Muhammad move a mountain or was that just PR?

 

- Judas, Jesus Christ Superstar

 

Business, Politics, even Charity spends oodles of money every year selling brands.  The goal is to ensure their message is read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television; the PR folk want the message to resound throughout the entire Internet.

 

But what is the message?  Whatever the service, product or position, it almost invariably boils down to reminding or convincing people of why they need us.

 

Almost.  Not always. 

 

I'm pretty sure the founders of religions (like Christ or Mohamed), philosophies (like Lao-tzu or Rumi) or movements (Gandhi) didn't hold a lot of fundraisers.  As such, they weren't beholden to sponsors - just their visions.  This helped keep barriers from forming between those visions and the people who would follow them.
 

 

An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood. That sticks, right in there somewhere.

  - Cobb, Inception

 

A couple of things about ideas. 

 

The best ones tend to start free.  They inspire proactive action rather than incite reaction.  They also don't require a lot of PR.  The Golden Rule has popped up in every major religion, regardless of its origin not because of promotion, but because of its inherent power.

 

Oh - and they're bulletproof.

 

The same does not apply to manufactured coalitions of concepts slapped together with the hopes of appealing to manufactured constituencies.  Built on fabricated foundations, these policy packages are employed by Parties and rely heavily on extrinsic promotion. 

As is the case with genetics, while the packages spend time and energy selling themselves, ultimately it's the best ideas that carry on in the long-term.  This is why Political Parties, whatever their name brand, shift along the political spectrum depending on when and where they find themselves.  Their constituencies must adapt to modern contexts and therefore politics is ultimately the dog being wagged by the tail, whatever its practitioners convince themselves.

 

Inflexible brands are like flower pots; they either kill that which they attempt to contain through excessive restraint or break under the natural inclination to grow further.  This is why we eventually transplant individual flowers to collective gardens.  We don't leave gardens to grow wild - that just begs for cleansing brushfires that clean everything away, strong and weak.  Instead we ensure the health of each plant by also maintaining the well-being of the whole.

 

"Strength through unity" is a box, implying unity under one roof - something impossible with an expanding constituency.  Any variation on "us vs. them", to maintain a stable constituency of some kind, will inevitably exclude a majority to retain a minority.  The flower outgrows the pot.

 

Strength through diversity, on the other hand, isn't about borders - it's about adaptation.  The idea is to provide space and opportunity for each individual to reach their maximum potential in a collaborative setting, creating an evolving whole that is more than the sum of its constituent parts.

 

The church, after all, isn't a building - it's wherever godspeople are praying, sharing, collaborating.  That can be a patch of arable land in the Middle East or the Far East, along the Andean coast of South America or in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Increasingly, it's starting everywhere and connecting via the Internet.

 

Society has always had community hubs; these could be a home, a church, a market, a legislature.  Now we're finding these taking root online. 

 

And there's the rub; the best ideas don't sell themselves to grow their constituencies; it's growing constituencies that need adaptive ideas to make them whole.  Understanding is the place where diversity meets and innovation happens; when we all turn our individual strengthens in one direction, we can move mountains.

 

 

Apparently Martin Goldfarb Reads WAKATA, Too

 

Justin Trudeau needs to define the direction in which he wants to take us, just as his father did when he proposed the Just Society, which gave Canadians a sense of identity — justice, transparency and pride in themselves. It was about making Canada a fairer place to live, a place that respects all of its citizens.

 

Canadians aren't technocrats and political theatre (clearly) isn't a scientific exercise.  We want narratives.  We want destinations and journeys that we can see ourselves participating in.  Political visions need to be about what our country can look like - not as a fire-walled lock-box of nationalism, but as a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts.

 

A while ago, I proposed The Conscious Society as a working title for a Liberal vision for Canada.  Bob Rae one-upped me with The Successful Society.  Team Trudeau doesn't have to rely on one of these brands; they're smart people, they can craft a narrative of their own. 

 

It's the message, not the metaphor, that matters.

 

Canadian Liberalism and The Successful Society

It's not hard to see why I love this Bob Rae post (reproduced in full below).

 

The values he expresses are the same ones I believe in.  They are not the exclusive property of any one Party; they are a common expression of society shared by most Canadians and open to all.  The Liberal Party, at its best, doesn't see itself as the only legitimate voice for this shared worldview; instead it strives to be a prism for the voices of everyone.

 

Without question, the Liberal Party lost its way for a while; to paraphrase Gerry Butts, it wasn't that Canadians had lost faith in liberalism so much as the Liberal Party seemed to have.  It might just be finding its way again.

 

I tend not to get hung up branding; it's the concept, not the wording, that matters.  Having said that, I understand the need for terminology to communicate concepts; I liked the nuance of The Conscious Society, but if Bob Rae's The Successful Society sticks I'm good with that, too.  It's the shared destination that matters; no matter where we come from we all end up in the same place.  We all gain from the journey when we travel together.

 

Of the Political Parties in Canada, it's the Liberal one that is seen as the least rigid, the most inclusive and yes, the most resilient.  When liberals hold true to what they believe in, Liberals are empowered to do what they do best - listen to Canadians, communicate with our partners and create shared solutions that move everyone forward.

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Liberal Leadership Race 2013

Here are the remaining candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

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What follows in the first in a three-part series by Liberal leader Bob Rae on the resilience of liberalism.

 

I am a Liberal because I believe in the dignity and equality of every human being and I believe in a democracy where we care about what happens to each other.

I believe that the pursuit of prosperity, social justice and sustainability can best be achieved together, and that bringing them together is the job of an accountable and democratic government.

I want the policies to achieve these goals to be based on evidence, on what works, and not on ideology.

I am a Liberal because I believe that love is better than hate, because I believe in celebrating success and never resenting it, and because I do not mock failure.

I believe in enough government to help us all achieve success, but not too much government to stifle initiative and creativity. I understand that markets are the best way to create prosperity, that a progressive tax system is necessary to pay for programmes, and that all of us -- individuals, families, businesses and governments -- have to live within our means.

I want every child to have the love, support and education they need, and everyone to have a job that reinforces dignity and security. I want those who are less able, to receive the support they need, and to allow those who are older to continue to live in dignity.

I believe that access to good health care, education and housing are fundamental attributes of a good society, and well within our means as a successful society. I believe in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the independence of judges. I believe that punishment should fit the crime, that public security needs to be protected, and that a good and strong society will encourage rehabilitation and change. I would rather build a school than a prison, and believe that it is important to be as tough on the conditions that give rise to crime as we are on crime itself.

I am a Liberal in Canada because I want us to build a better world based on the rule of law, where we celebrate and share our values.

I believe that while charity and justice begin at home, their pursuit does not end there. The reduction of violence, the protection of rights, the closing of the gap between rich and poor, the greening of the planet are all best achieved with an approach that starts at home but embraces the world.

I am a Liberal and a proud Canadian. I am proud to be a member of a party that has consistently supported an ever expanding sense of citizenship based on our inherent rights as free women and men, of our two official languages, French and English, a distinct Canadian flag. This is a federalism that celebrates the unique identities and rights of Canadian provinces and territories, and understands the need for a deeper reconciliation between aboriginal Canadians and all those who have, through the centuries chosen to make Canada home. I am proud of a country that celebrates free expression, diversity and pluralism, and the right of everyone to be themselves without fear of discrimination.

We came here in many boats. We're in the same boat now.

The resilience of the liberal idea gives us hope and strength. Our task is to keep building a country and a party worthy of the idea itself.


Liberalism: A resilient idea, a resilient movement

It all starts with an idea and a feeling -- about individual conscience, freedom, and dignity. All else flows from that.

The idea of liberalism in history is connected with powerful changes -- from economies and societies based on hierarchy and conformity to those based on people demanding to be heard, insisting that authority be made accountable and transparent.

It is an idea whose power is felt today -- in societies around the world that fail to respect the rule of law, that disregard diversity, that insist that the power of the party or class or privilege is more important than the primacy of freedom.

Liberalism's journey has been about understanding the key role of economic freedom, and government's role in ensuring a strong capacity for regulation and the rule of law, to make sure that someone's freedom does not become a licence to abuse power.

Liberalism understands that for each person to achieve their freedom, society needs to help break down the barriers to human potential. Liberalism understands the dilemma that it is not enough to say that the rich and poor are equally able to sleep under bridges.

In the great movement for democracy that has marked the last 200 years, liberals have been at the forefront of expanding the franchise and expanding rights -- to go beyond a world determined by wealth and colour to a world determined by equal rights and a sense that a good country is one where people care about what happens to one another.

In the last half century we've become more aware that the great British liberal Edmund Burke was right when he talked about society being a contract with those yet unborn, or to borrow a phrase from our aboriginal tradition, that we borrow the Earth from our children and our responsibilities have to last as long as the wind blows and the rivers run.

Samuel de Champlain came to Canada in the early 17th century formed by the experiences of a Europe literally torn apart by religious and ethnic conflict. The "great and good place" he saw in Canada was to be marked by a spirit of reconciliation and a recognition of the rights and traditions of all -- Catholics, Protestants, non-believers, and the aboriginal people he encountered as he travelled eastern and central Canada.

The people and institutions he left behind did not always live up to his hopes and expectations. Violent conflict, death by disease and neglect, conflict between English and French -- our early history was not often marked by civility.

But as the refugees flowed north from the United States after the revolutionary war, and immigration continued from Europe, liberal ideas began to take hold in the provinces of British North America. While the supporters of the Family Compact wanted a government that would insist more on order than on liberty, the irresistible arguments for freedom and for responsible government began to win out. Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, followed by Baldwin and Lafontaine in "United Canada" -- we can trace the organized origins of the liberal movement in Canada (and indeed the modern Liberal Party) to elections where those fighting for responsibility, accountability, the separation of church and state and a universal right to public education won out over those who simply preferred the status quo, or worse, who rioted against policies of social progress and change. The Reform government of 1848 took office at a time of great democratic turbulence in the world.

Liberals should take great pride in these governments, and in the remarkable fact that Lafontaine sought election in York and Baldwin in Rimouski -- a symbol of partnership that would carry on through strong Liberal Cabinets that through three centuries have emphasized how liberalism transcends the ties of religion and race.

Liberals -- prominent names like Brown, Mowat and Taché -- became proud partners in the governments that led to Confederation, but except for the Alexander Mackenzie administration in the 1870s, with its important contributions including the secret ballot, did not take national office until Laurier's great win in 1896.

Laurier had won pre-eminence as a Liberal in the 1880s, when as a young parliamentarian he stirred the deepest emotions in his speeches on the crisis created at the heart of the federation by John A.Macdonald's decision to hang Louis Riel for his role in the Red River rebellion and the death of Thomas Scott, "executed" by the Riel government. Laurier eloquently eviscerated the Macdonald government for its mishandling of affairs in the Northwest and the national ramifications it had wrought saying of his fellow French Canadians, "We do not want any more privileges, we are strong enough, but what we want is justice for all."

It became clear that Laurier would in fact be the man to replace Macdonald when as Opposition Leader he eulogized Sir John A. in the House of Commons with greater eloquence than any of his fellow Conservatives, saying that the old chieftain was "endowed with those inner, subtle indefinable graces of the soul which win and keep the hearts of men."

 

Laurier would become one of Canada's greatest Prime Ministers. Possessed of great charm, wit, and eloquence, his "sunny ways" endeared him to Canadians. The first French speaking Quebecker to take office as Prime Minister, he will long be remembered for building strong bridges between French and English, his determination to give Canada its place on the world stage, and opening up the country to widespread immigration to Western Canada from many parts of Europe. He resisted calls for imperial union, and was a determined proponent of a "new nationality" that would allow Canada to stand stronger on its own.

Laurier's belief in more open markets, and a strong desire among Western farmers to be able to get cheaper manufactured goods from the United States led to the free trade election of 1911, which Laurier lost to Borden, the Conservative.

Sir Wilfrid stayed on as Opposition leader until his death in 1919. The First World War produced a crisis for Canada and for the Liberal Party, as, following the British example, Borden offered Laurier and his fellow Liberals seats in a coalition government. Laurier resisted the appeal, arguing that Quebeckers needed to be understood and listened to in their resistance to conscription. But many other Liberals felt it was their patriotic duty to join the government in a moment of non-partisanship.

Laurier's decision, born of deep conviction, left him alone and isolated, and the Party was devastated in the election of 1917. Many then predicted the demise of Liberalism, as a new mood of radicalism took hold in the West and a nascent labour movement seemed ready to join with farmers to take the country in a different direction. Even Laurier himself in an uncharacteristic moment of despair, bemoaned the growing political polarization saying, "I have lived too long. I have outlived Liberalism."

 

Laurier's death in 1919 could have marked the end of the Liberal party, but the party's choice of Mackenzie King as its leader proved wiser than many pundits realised at the time. Certainly there was none of the charisma, the charm, or the deep good humour of Laurier. But King was astute, savvy, and a masterful politician. He formed a minority government in 1921 with the support of the Progressives, and outmanoeuvred Arthur Meighen in the "King-Byng" crisis of 1925-26. He brought in Old Age Pensions with the support of the Ginger Group led by J.S. Woodsworth in 1927, and after being defeated by R.B. Bennett in 1930 came back to lead the Liberals with a majority in 1935, a position the Liberals held until 1957.

 

TOMORROW:From Mackenzie King to Chrétien

Deepak Chopra Delves into the Conscious Society

 

I've taken on the brand "conscious society" because I thought it best represented the end goal - communities of people aware of what informs their choices, meaning they have more control over their choices.  That, and it's a play off of "The Just Society" (I do love my word play).  It doesn't really matter to me whether this term or some other becomes the one that sticks - so long as it isn't Aquarian Conspiracy.

 

I do enjoy the fact that Deepak Chopra is thinking the same thing, though...

 

 

 

The Conscious Lifestyle: A Leader's True Responsibility (It Doesn't Have to Be a Burden)

(In this series of posts we're discussing the qualities of leadership using the acronym L-E-A-D-E-R-S. The sixth letter, "R," stands for responsibility.)

Being responsible is the mark of a mature, conscious person - no one disputes this. But success also requires risk-taking, intuitive leaps, innovation, and thinking outside the box. Those values will be quashed if leadership is totally conservative and cautious. You don't have to view "responsible" as synonymous with caution and a policy of no risks. Being responsible, seen in the wider context, means showing initiative, taking mature risks rather than reckless ones, walking the talk, having integrity, and living up to your inner values. Seen from the level of the soul, a leader’s greatest responsibility is to lead the group on the path of higher consciousness.

 

In practice, there is a hierarchy of steps that you can climb, beginning with a lack of recklessness and rising to the top, where you are responsible for imparting the highest values of your vision. All of us fall somewhere on this path.

 

You earn your credentials for being a responsible leader through the following behaviors, which are noted and imitated by the rest of the group:

 

1. You show that actions have consequences.

2. You don't say one thing and do another.

3. You don't shirk the hard choices or delegate them to others so that you are covered no matter what happens.

4. You don't have henchmen who do the dirty work so that your hands look clean.

5. If you back someone up, you establish a bond that they can depend on.

6. You treat people decently, putting everyone on an equal plane.

7. You are cautious with other people's money, taking seriously your fiduciary responsibility.

 

If you follow these principles, you will succeed on many levels, engendering an atmosphere of trust and loyalty. Working in such an atmosphere, the group will feel secure at a basic level that is very necessary. Insecurity creates massive stress and all the problems that attend it.

But we have to be realistic, too. Today more than ever, it takes consciousness to keep on the responsible track. For many in business, responsibility has become an old-fashioned value to be shrugged off in favor of profitability. The financial crash of 2008 was engineered through a flagrant lack of responsibility, combined with risk-taking far out of bounds with sensible practice. Yet the lesson that the financial sector took away was the opposite of responsible. With record profits and huge bonuses in the offing, they went back to a slightly modified version of their worst practices.

 

All of this took place within a larger trend of income inequality, the deterioration of worker's benefits, lost pensions, and pressure to show a rising profit to shareholders. If you expect to be a leader, you must decide personally if you are going to follow the trend or hold on to your own values. The ultimate responsibility is the one you owe to yourself.

 

When I teach executives about the soul of leadership, there's an overall vision I hold out:

Leading from the soul means that you take responsibility for more than the group’s needs. You have a concern for everyone’s person growth. This responsibility begins with your own evolution. In eight areas of your life you have the power to be guided by your soul: thoughts, emotions, perception, personal relationships, social role, environment, speech, and the body. In all of these areas your behavior affects the people you lead. If you evolve, so will they.

To lead from the soul means that evolution is your top priority. You never act in such a way that you lower the self-esteem of others. You examine your underlying beliefs and modify them as new opportunities for growth reveal themselves. Because evolution is an unstoppable force in the universe, you draw upon invisible powers. Therefore, being responsible is no longer a burden. It rests lightly on you as long as you continue to grow.

 

In my experience, this vision is embraced enthusiastically by top executives. They all know the burden of responsibility and carry it. They are relieved to hear about a path where responsibility isn't a burden. We'll talk more about it in the next post.

Leadership: Do You Have What It Takes?

Courtesy of Youtube/Choprawell

(To be cont.)

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 70 books with twenty-one New York Times bestsellers. FINS - Wall Street Journal, stated that “The Soul of Leadership”, as one of five best business books to read for your career. Co-author with Rudolph E. Tanzi, their latest New York Times bestseller, Super Brain: Unleashing The Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-being (Harmony, November 6, 2012) is a new PBS special.

Here's a Crazy Idea: Mania, Innovation and Enterpreneurs

 

I came across this article, oddly enough, because it showed up as a search term that lead somebody out there to my blog.

 

Of course, I know that I'm hypomanic - pick any post on this blog for proof.  I've come to terms with this and instead of trying not to be something that I am, I've learned to harness my cognitive potential for application.  With time and a lot of discipline, I've done a pretty good job teaching myself to tell the difference between wild flights of fancy and legitimate connections that spark ideas for innovation and collaboration.  This allows me to manage-down the negatives and focus on productive links and creativity.

 

The connection between mental illness, mental health and innovation, for instance.  Or the notion that workplaces can be designed to foster, not impede, cognitive labour.  How about using video game presentation as a format for government service delivery?  You get the idea.

 

To ensure all my creativity, networking and product/service/policy design are pointed in the same direction, I made sure I knew where I wanted to go - why I'm passionately motivated to do the things I do.

 

It takes some effort and frequently, bursts of caffeine, but I can direct my powers of generation down a given path, too.  This allows me to maximize my potential contribution and maybe even having a bit of influence along the way.

 

The rest falls into place with relative ease:

 

- how a start-up designed for personal security can transform justice, empowering everyone involved

 

- how to create a whole new, value-added field of business that provides cognitive kinesiology

 

- how to score a long-term win when you have to let go of employees

 

Not quite a service, not quite a product, the purpose is to create a culture.  Useful products and services are developed almost by default.  By design or alignment, there just happens to be an emerging public conversation that reflects that kind of thinking.

 

Call me crazy, but I see value in that.   

'The Hypomanic Edge'

By JOHN D. GARTNER
Published: April 10, 2005

 

The Hypomanic American

The Hypomanic Entrepreneur

The 1990s will be remembered as the age of Internet mania, a time when entrepreneurs making grandiose claims for their high-tech companies swept up millions of Americans with their irrational exuberance, inflating the biggest speculative bubble in history. The idea that some entrepreneurs may be a little manic is hardly new. A Google search for "manic" and "businessman" yields more than a million hits. Entrepreneurs, as well as the markets they energized, were commonly described in the media as "manic." Yet, until now, there has never been a serious suggestion that the talent for being an entrepreneur and mania, the genetically based psychiatric disorder, are actually linked. Perhaps because I am a clinical psychologist, it was clear to me that "manic" was more than a figure of speech in this case.

I called several reporters who had written profiles of these "manic" entrepreneurs and asked them, "Do you think he really was manic?" None said yes. "Not really manic; not clinically," was a typical response. They resisted applying the psychiatric diagnosis because the entrepreneurs they had interviewed were boastful, hyperenergized, and zany, but they "weren't crazy." And the journalists were right. Their subjects were not manic. They were hypomanic. Hypomania is a mild form of mania, often found in the relatives of manic depressives. Hypomanics are brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas. They think, talk, move, and make decisions quickly. Anyone who slows them down with questions "just doesn't get it." Hypomanics are not crazy, but "normal" is not the first word that comes to mind when describing them. Hypomanics live on the edge, betweeen normal and abnormal.

For example, Jim Clark, cofounder of Netscape, was described in Business Week by Netscape's other cofounder, Jim Barksdale, as "a maniac who has his mania only partly under control." In The New New Thing, Michael Lewis profiled Clark as a perpetual motion machine with a short attention span, forever hurtling at unsafe speeds in helicopters, planes, boats, and cars. When his forward motion is impeded, Clark becomes irritable and bored. In his search for the stimulation of the "new new thing," he quickly loses interest in the companies he founds and tosses them into the laps of his bewildered employees. His Netscape IPO is credited with starting the Internet gold rush. After that it seemed he could do no wrong. When he pitched a new company, Healtheon, a medical Web site, his only business plan was a diagram with five words. His "magic diamond" put Healtheon at the center of four vertices labeled "doctors, consumers, providers, and payers." That was it. His magic diamond, he claimed, was going to "fix the U.S. health care system." It was going to be "bigger than Microsoft, AOL, Netscape and Yahoo!" As Lewis wrote, "Any other human being would have been thrown into an asylum for thinking such grandiose thoughts." Those who followed Clark had faith in his messianic mission. "There was a feeling that we were about to change the world," said one of Healtheon's chief engineers.

Successful entrepreneurs are not just braggarts. They are highly creative people who quickly generate a tremendous number of ideas - some clever, others ridiculous. Their "flight of ideas," jumping from topic to topic in a rapid energized way, is a sign of hypomania. Consider Bill Gross, CEO of Idealab. Bill Gross's job was not to build or run companies, but just to think of ideas for them. Idealab was an "Internet incubator." On Fortune's cover, next to a picture of a cheerful Bill Gross, was the caption "I Lost $800 Million in Eight Months. Why Am I Still Smiling?" The author, Joseph Nocera, Fortune's managing editor, begins his article with an unusual mea culpa. He apologizes to his readers for his previous Fortune article that hyped Gross and Idealab just before the Nasdaq crash. He confesses that Gross converted him into a believer:

I believed him because I was dazzled by him. A small, wiry man, Gross had an infectious boyish enthusiasm that was charming and irresistible. He spoke so rapidly - jumping from topic to topic as if he were hyperlinking - that it was hard to keep up with him, and had so much energy he seemed constantly on the verge of jumping out of his skin. He bubbled over with irrepressible optimism.

 

And his brain! That's what really set him apart. You could practically see the ideas bursting out of it, one after another, each more offbeat, more original, more promising than the last. The sheer profusion of ideas - and the way he got excited as he described them - was a large part of his charisma.

The reason Bill Gross was still smiling was that his newest new idea was "going to be unbelievably huge" and "revolutionize the Internet." Eight hundred million. Eight hundred shmillion. Nothing could dim Gross's enthusiastic confidence.

During the 1990s, I was paying attention to such behavior because I was planning to write a book about religious movements started by manic prophets. But I began to be distracted by messianic movements happening around me in real time, particularly because, as an avid technology investor, I was a member of one - the believers in the new economy. I was even a millionaire on paper for one exhilarating day in March 2000 at the peak of the market, before my portfolio lost 90 percent of its value. I began to suspect I was writing the wrong book.

My new hypothesis became that American entrepreneurs are largely hypomanic. I decided to undertake what social scientists call a pilot study: a small-scale, inexpensive, informal investigation meant to test the waters. I placed announcements on several Web sites devoted to the technology business, expressing my interest in studying entrepreneurs and requesting volunteers. I interviewed a small sample of ten Internet CEOs. After I read them each a list of hypomanic traits that I had synthesized from the psychiatric literature, I asked them if they agreed that these traits are typical of an entrepreneur:

He is filled with energy.

He is flooded with ideas.

He is driven, restless, and unable to keep still.

He channels his energy into the achievement of wildly grand ambitions.

He often works on little sleep.

He feels brilliant, special, chosen, perhaps even destined to change the world.

He can be euphoric.

He becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles.

He is a risk taker.

He overspends in both his business and personal life.

He acts out sexually.

He sometimes acts impulsively, with poor judgment, in ways that can have painful consequences.

He is fast-talking.

He is witty and gregarious.

His confidence can make him charismatic and persuasive.

He is also prone to making enemies and feels he is persecuted by those who do not accept his vision and mission. 

 

I feared they might find the questions insulting. I needn't have worried. All of the entrepreneurs agreed that the overall description was accurate, and they endorsed all the hypomanic traits, with the exceptions of "paranoia" and "sexual acting out" (these traits in particular are viewed as very negative and thus may be more difficult to admit to). Most expressed their agreement with excitement: "Wow, that's right on target!" When I asked them to rate their level of agreement for each trait on a standard 5-point scale, many gave ratings that were literally off the chart: 5+s, 6s. One subject repeatedly begged me to let him give a 7. I was startled by the respondents' enthusiasm, though perhaps I shouldn't have been. As a psychotherapist, I am familiar with the way people become energized when they feel understood, especially when it helps them understand themselves better.

Having learned in our conversation that they were hypomanic, the CEOs wanted to talk about it. One now understood better why he regularly rented palatial office space he could not afford and why his wife hid the checkbook. Another could finally explain what drove him to impulsively send broadcast e-mails at 3 A.M. to all his employees, radically revising the company's mission. It was as if merely by asking these questions I had held up a mirror in which these men could see themselves. After talking to them for just fifteen minutes, it seemed as if I was the first person to truly understand them.

One respondent seemed to be in an intense hypomanic state when I interviewed him. He responded to my Web site solicitation by e-mailing me in huge blue block letters: "CALL ME IMMEDIATELY." When I did, he talked rapidly and loudly and laughed quite often. At the same time he was charming, witty, and engaging. The interview was a bit chaotic because he was driving and carrying on another phone call at the same time. He was a serial entrepreneur. After founding one successful company, he had felt he needed to quit his own corporation because he couldn't "make things happen fast enough," leaving him frustrated and bored. Now he was on to a new venture. He was very enthusiastic about my research and volunteered to send me the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of half a dozen well-known high-tech entrepreneurs (which I never received), who he claimed were his "very close friends."

This was a small pilot study, but nonetheless, I was overwhelmed. I had never seen data like this. Because humans are so complex, most effects in psychology are modest and nearly drowned out by the great variability that exists naturally between people. Not in this case. One hundred percent of the entrepreneurs I interviewed were hypomanic! This couldn't be chance. The odds of flipping a coin ten times and getting ten heads in a row is less than one in a thousand. It felt as if I had tested the waters with my little pilot study and been hit with a tidal wave. It was then that I knew I had stumbled onto something big that had been hiding in plain sight.

Mania and Hypomania

A colleague of mine once told me about a manic inpatient he had treated for many years at an Ivy League-affiliated psychiatric teaching hospital. The patient's father was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Each time he visited his son on the unit, he would behave in a dramatically hypomanic fashion. For example, he would make numerous business phone calls around the world on the patients' pay phone, while frantically yelling "Back off!" at patients or staff who tried to interrupt him. Clearly, Dad was not normal, but he had made his hypomania work for him. He was a very rich man.

 

This family's story illustrates the concrete relationship between mania and hypomania. Manics and hypomanics are often blood relatives. Both conditions run together in families at much higher rates than we would predict by chance. We know that their genes overlap, though we don't know how.

This family's story also illustrates the most radical difference between mania and hypomania. Mania is a severe illness. The son was disabled - a long-term inpatient at a psychiatric hospital. Manic episodes almost always end in hospitalization. People who are highly energized, and also in most cases psychotic, do bizarre things that are dangerous, frightening, and disruptive. They urgently require external control for everyone's safety, especially their own. Most people who have experienced a manic episode remember it as a nightmare.

By contrast, hypomania is not, in and of itself, an illness. It is a temperament characterized by an elevated mood state that feels "highly intoxicating, powerful, productive and desirable" to the hypomanic, according to Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison, authors of the definitive nine-hundred-page Manic-Depressive Illness. Most hypomanics describe it as their happiest and healthiest state; they feel creative, energetic, and alive. A hypomanic only has a bipolar disorder if hypomania alternates, at some point in life, with major depression. This pattern, first identified only in 1976, is called bipolar disorder type II to distinguish it from bipolar disorder type I, the classic manic-depressive illness, which has been well known since the time of the ancient Greeks. If a hypomanic seeks outpatient treatment it is usually for depression, and he will define recovery as a return to his old energetic self. Not all hypomanics cycle down into depression. What goes up can stay up. Thus, we cannot conclude that someone has a psychiatric disorder just because he may be hypomanic. The most we can say is that hypomanics are at much greater risk for depression than the average population. The things most likely to make them depressed are failure, loss, or anything that prevents them from continuing at their preferred breakneck pace.

Given how radically different mania and hypomania are, it is perhaps surprising that the diagnostic criteria for these two conditions are identical according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (usually referred to simply as DSM-IV):

A. A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least one week.

B. And at least three of the following:

1. Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity

2. Decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only three hours of sleep)

3. More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking

4. Flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing

5. Distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli)

6. Increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation

7. Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments)

The only guideline offered to mental health professionals in distinguishing between mania and hypomania is "degree of severity." Hypomania is "not sufficiently severe to cause marked impairment in social or occupational functioning or to require hospitalization." But DSM-IV tells us little else, when there is so much more that could be said.

This relative neglect of hypomania by psychiatry is striking when we consider that it affects many more people than does mania. We know from numerous large-scale studies, replicated both nationally and internationally, that classic manic depression exists in slightly less than 1 percent of the general population. . . .

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Excerpted from The Hypomanic Edge by John D. Gartner Copyright © 2005 by John D. Gartner. Excerpted by permission.
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