Sun, 29 Jan 2006
Powerful Times
Eamonn Kelly, Powerful Times: Rising to the challenge of our
uncertain world, Wharton School Publishing
Eamon Kelly here outlines a fair list of present and looming
problems -- sacred and secular, science and non-science, rich and
poor. One of his first exhortations is to stop being digital. The
nature of the solutions are frequently not on/off or either/or, and the first
steps to wisdom include the aquisition of intelligence, and so,
unsurprisingly, solutions are not going to be found amongst people
who are, wilfully or otherwise, stupid.
Eamon Kelly doesn't actually say that. What he does say is aimed
more at the business community and consists of strategies and ways
of thinking about things that might be helpful. Of course it goes
without saying that maximizing shareholder's wealth is frequently
sub-optimal from a macro point of view, in terms of the quality of life
of society in general. The "free" market doesn't supply common goods
(parks, libraries) and doesn't, except in the extreme long term take
care of externalities (pollution for one).
So this actually a very hard place to be. If you have socially
conscious statist direction or adhere to strong moral imperatives
then companies in other parts of the world will undercut you and unless
your area has the critical mass to enable you to survive, you will
perish. This is being played out right now in Europe and China.
In the end though, our solutions depend on intelligence -- of leaders,
the people who put them there, and media. Intelligence without wisdom
or humanity, though, can be just a nasty parlour game, so it's fairly
clear what a basic education should consist of if the planet should
be saved. What would happen if shoppers used moral imperatives to
boycott, for example, China?
An aside here are the last two elections in the USA. Apparently,
some twenty percent of people vote. So, somewhere in the region of ten percent
of people in the USA gave the world George W. Bush. This is
sub-optimality at a high level, and in the book Kelly posits
various futures where the USA has lost its preeminence in moral,
military, and trade terms on a continuing basis. We'll see how it plays out.
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here