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Following up on my last post, I just read Seth Godin's blog with similar concerns. I encourage you to take a look. You can find it at...
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Our current classroom-based education system was developed to support an industrial economy. The goal was to train employees who would sit at a desk all day doing repetitive work, and not ask too many questions. There was also a daycare function - providing a safe place to park children while their parents were at work. The economy changed long ago, but how we teach new generations has remained stubbornly stuck in the old model.
What's needed now? To start with... - Creative thinking - Problem solving - Entrepreneurial skills - Global cultural competence including language fluency - Ability to critically filter information - Political awareness - Higher level math and science - Coaching and mentoring - Values education And most important, we need to link education to real world applications and challenges, so students can see the relevance of what they are learning. Care to add a few others? Just started work on the audiobook version of "Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman". Another steep learning curve. If all goes well, it will be ready by the end of the year. This has been fun, but a very different creative process. Voices that had only existed in my head need to emerge in a format others can hear.
In his new book, "The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers", Scott Carney documents a growing trade in human body parts and fluids. These are not voluntarily donated or taken from people after their deaths. They're part of a "free market" solution to the desperate need for transplant organs and other biological materials. Macabre? Yes. Surprising? Not really. Without effective government oversight in India, China and other supplier countries, and with demand and prices high, the trade in pieces of people will continue to grow. So called "free markets" value nothing other than profit. If they are not controlled, if people don't intervene and insist on valuing human life and dignity over mercantile greed, this kind of practice will spread.
100 people gathered at Island Books on Mercer Island, WA for the official launch of "Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman". It was a wonderful event and I was honored that so many busy, successful, creative people took the time out to participate. Thank you all!
The book is now available in paperback at Amazon.com and at Island Books and other fine bookstores, and in ebook format at Amazon.com, BN.com (Barnes & Noble), Smashwords.com and elsewhere. Just click on the "Buy a Book" tab above for links that will take you to the buying location of your choice! I've allowed my book to be characterized as a diatribe against the Tea Party, but that's not what I've written. "Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman" is not a book that simply champions a progressive future and opposes conservative perspectives. Politics, like life, is more complicated than that. The current inability of the US to deal with its economic future is testimony to what can result when things are reduced to simple slogans, black and white, good guys and bad guys.
"Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman" is a dystopian tale set in a future America where a corporate libertarian philosophy has led to a government that has ceased to function. This "Great Change" in American politics results when people become so turned off by political gridlock and inefficiency that they throw aside the existing political parties and embrace an unknown future that has been sold to them by powerful, multinational corporate forces with a hidden agenda. The novel explores that world through the experiences of the Newman family as they struggle with personal tragedies fed by corporate greed that is no longer restrained by public institutions able to restrict their excesses. It's a story about much more than government dysfunction. The Great Change in America is a backdrop to an exploration of what it is to be fully human. If we live in a virtual world made up of virtual experiences, are we fully alive? If our friends, employers, colleagues and customers are mostly people we've never met, how can they be so central to how we define ourselves, to who we are? If something is technologically efficient and economically productive, does that necessarily make it better? Who owns us? The current political divide in the US is not a battle between those who want an effective government and those who want no government. Yet it is true that there is a fringe of extremist ideologues who welcome the current crisis as a way to weaken government, who see federal income taxes as unconstitutional, and ultimately want to remove public protections so the country can serve as their personal ATM machine. That's not the majority of those who are fearful of excessive government spending and want to reign in what they see as an out of control bureaucracy. However, anti-excess concerns can be exploited and inflamed into anti-government passions and the results, as my novel suggests, could be disastrous. A strong democracy requires an efficient government that is fully answerable to the people. If we weaken the central government in a massive, complex, and diverse country like the US, we create a power vacuum that will be filled by those with the resources to manipulate our future for their own ends, not the common good. That is nothing new. Most of recorded history is a panorama of powerful individuals abusing their power for perceived short-term gain. Wars have been fought for decades over which family will control what territory. Whole industries have been manipulated and lives wrecked to enrich tiny elites who embrace the "greed is good" mantra, or feel entitled by birth or circumstance to a massive share of the nation's bounty. We don't have to look very far back in our history for evidence of this, though it is not a new phenomenon. "Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman" looks at all that and more, but that's not what the book is about. It's about a family, their commitment to each other, the challenges they face, their tragedies, victories, missteps and determination. I love the Newman family, and I fear the world in which they live. That's why I wrote this book. Even before we were introduced to the modern Tea Party, I wondered what life would be like in an America dominated by a corporate libertarian political philosophy. If our own government is our enemy, who are our friends? If people want the government's hands off the economy, whose hands will be on it? Who will make the important decisions that impact our daily lives in a thousand different ways, and to whom will they be accountable?
That, combined with my curiosity about the changing nature of our interpersonal and work relationships in an age of advanced and intrusive technology, led me to explore the lives of Jonathan Newman and his family. I hope you enjoy their story. As the US tiptoes toward defaulting on the national debt in a ridiculous game of chicken, I find the thinking of those who see a default as a way to pressure the government to further lower taxes eerily familiar.
In VYJN, the Freedom First Party sweeps Republicans and Democrats from power and immediately begins dismantling the federal government, starting with the IRS. The promise of no federal income tax is core to their philosophy. It isn’t difficult to see where we have come from and where we could be going. It started with “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem” in the 1980s. From there economists asserted the unproven and questionable premise that “taxes inhibit growth”, which led to “read my lips”, the no tax increase pledge, temporary tax cuts which have become more or less permanent and have significantly added to the national debt, and finally an apparent willingness to default on that debt and risk the economic stability of the country in favor of the principle of reducing taxes on the wealthiest citizens. Is it a great leap to imagine a political party running on a program of further reducing government, eliminating income taxes altogether and releasing the unfettered power of the “free market” as a solution to the country’s economic woes? Do we really want to return to the pre-depression 1920s? Have we learned nothing from history? The release date for "Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman" has been set for August 3rd, 2011. There will be a launch celebration at Island Books on Mercer Island, WA at 7 pm on the 3rd. I hope to see you there!
In today's "Saturday Essay" feature in the Wall Street Journal, authors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch anticipate the "Death of the Duopoly". They're referring to the Democrats and Republicans and their hold on the US Government.
There are 2 fascinating aspects to this article. First, the change they foretell is very similar to the "Great Change" described in Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman. In the novel, Republicans and Democrats are swept aside by a popular shift to the libertarian Freedom First Party. Second, there is a reference to how industries that were dominant for decades find it difficult to cope with change... "There is a positive correlation between an organization's former dominance and its present-day inability to cope with change. As the technology business consultant Nilofer Merchant has aptly put it, "The Web turns old industries on their head. Industries that have had monopolies or highly profitable duopolies are the ones most likely to be completely gutted when a more powerful, more efficient system comes along." Sounds like the publishing business, doesn't it? You can find the article online at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303848104576385922449922958.html?KEYWORDS=duopoly |
AuthorHave you read any of the Civitas Rising series? Please share your thoughts about the Great Change, the impact of technology on our lives, healthcare, the role of government, and anything else the books got you thinking about. Archives
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