Message from young Gazans and Israelis

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Paul

Dear Friends,

Happy Thanksgiving to you and all your loved ones. On this special day, may we ask you to pause and think of the other families we know and love and who, at the moment, are in harms way in the Middle East.

In the current fog of war that has descended so suddenly over Gaza and Israel in the last week, the media commentators and the politicians have appeared almost non-stop on our screens. What they say makes sense at the policy level, and thank goodness the leaders have brokered a cease fire. But the true story of war always happens at the personal level.

In 2010, NSL graduate Shay Zavarro gave a powerful speech to members of Congress and told them, never think of war as guns and tanks, think of war as the story of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters,brothers and sisters. Our brothers and sisters in NSL know that we want to hear their story, and that we are committed to getting their voices heard. Let’s listen to what they have been telling us this week.

Here is a letter from Maisam, a young woman in Gaza, one of our NSL Candidates,

“I (lost) my two cousins: Ahmad 24 years and Khaled 19, and I couldn’t say goodbye because it was too dangerous to go out. However, I am glad with the ceasefire and that things almost got back to normal. It actually rained! Something other than missiles … The kind of rain that brings life rather than death! Thank God….All the horrible scenes I’ve seen and unbelievable experiences I went through didn’t make me lose faith in peace. I still believe in peace and democracy as much as I reject violence and occupation.”

Here is Majed from Gaza, Class of 2012, before the cease fire.

“The situation is getting worse and worse, i was crying all night yesterday for this Hujazi family who lost their parents and their two sons, 2 and 4 years old. Now i am writing this post and the Israeli navy, tanks and Warplanes are attacking everywhere and the number of martyrs increasing every minute…. I wish Peace can come to the Palestinian soon, But it seems like we are going to a worse situation, Gaza is destroyed again, it’s not the city that I knew. They destroy my memories of everything in Gaza. Pray more for Gaza people and Children….”

Here is Noa Shapira, Graduate of NSL 2012 in Tel Aviv.

“When I came home, I spoke to Majed who told me about how terrible the situation is in Gaza. …and the craziest part – while I am trying to understand what side am I on (do I have to choose?), a Palestinian friend from the west bank called me. He heard that it’s not safe in Tel Aviv and invited over to Tul Karem. MY GOD!

While I was at work today, a missile missed us… so close….Having friends on both sides makes this an impossible situation. Friends and family in the south, in the military, in Gaza… and being here? Every sound of a car or a bird in the night makes my heart jump. This political game, this operation or war or whatever they want to call it will end after too many lives will be lost. But it doesn’t matter to say it now, and it won’t matter to say it later. I hope someone out there can save us from ourselves. In the mean time – I am trying not to forget all of what we said over the summer. I really do believe there is another way, and if it doesn’t exist right now – we will create it, one day.”

Here is Or in Tel Aviv, NSL Class of 2012

“2:30 PM and I am on the bus in Tel Aviv- so exhausted from the past week but can’t fall asleep. I am just where the bomb exploded two hours ago on a different bus. I’m looking constantly at the doors, checking who’s getting on and off the bus, what are they wearing and if they left anything under their seat. In my head all the plans and promises I gave today and I just wish to survive this ride and maybe to get a chance to fulfill some of them….

Since I have gotten back from NSL – the West Bank and Gaza now have names, faces, fears, hopes and dreams. Since I came back from NSL I am more certain that we don’t need to look for justice but for peace, and that they are not necessarily related. Since I came back from NSL I am more certain that there are people out there who are capable to carry their communities and strangers, from all ages, genders, ethnicity and beliefs, and to bring them to the point where they understand that peace is richer then justice.”

Happy Thanksgiving and please help us in this urgent work to let the voices of Maisam and Majed and Noa and Or  and their generations be heard, the voices for peace and sanity. Go to our web site http://www.newstoryleadership.org/the-nsl-wall-of-stories/ to hear their hopes and dreams, and help us help them make them real.

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Towards one day in November -The Walking Tour

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Paul

These are critical days, those last remaining moments before a nation finally makes up its mind. It is an uncertain and anxious period, one that many of us find difficult to live with, eager as we are to get to November 6th and the result. However, for anyone who is interested in how stories work, this is the best part, that moment in the movie when you have watched for 80 minutes and finally, we are going to get the result, the denouement, when all our questions will be answered. The suspense is building towards that one day in November.

So, to dwell in this moment is to experience or re-experience that sensation when the nation is holding its breath- and that surely is a special time, one worthy of a good walking tour, if for no other reason than to calm our nerves.  But we have more in store for you than that.

I know we are told that this election is the most momentous of our lifetime, and that heaven and hell is waiting on it,  so we want to offer you the consolations of history, to take a look at other moments in our story when you might more convincingly make that claim.

There have been some elections that have been born out of crisis or carried us straight into a crisis or had to deal with a crisis. A crisis makes or breaks a President- One remembers Bill Clinton feeling disappointed at the end of his term saying he would never be remembered as a great President because he really had no national crisis on his watch, other than say the ones he made for himself.  So, on this walk, we go back to this same time and get curious.

What was happening in early November of 1860? Or in early November  of 1864? How did Lincoln ever get elected and re-elected?

And after the tragedy of the Civil War, what was the nation thinking on November 5th in 1868?  And who did they select to be the post war leader to heal the nation??? Why pick a champion of war to lead the peace?

And if we advance it 100 years, we get to November 1932 and another national crisis crippled the nation and we elect FDR, but how does he emerge, and what were people saying in the days before he was elected?

Move ahead then to November 1960, and JFK, the President whom we remember this month as dealing with the Cuban crisis, when the world could have been lost in nuclear war.

And finally, we might visit with Ronald Reagan just before he came to power in 1980.

Whoever wins on November 6th, we hope that at the end of this tour, you might have greater sympathy for both candidates and for ourselves as electors and the dilemma our Founders put us in every four years. Imagine if we had a King or Emperor, we wouldn’t have to worry. 

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To become Storywise means first….Beware the story about stories!

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Paul

To be storywise means first of all to ditch the story we are telling or being told about stories. Stories are not the answer, the save all, fix all, buy all, of leadership, economy, innovation or anything else. That is pure marketing hype. Substitute God or America or Buddha into any of the claims we story gurus perenially make and you see at once we are prone to messianic overstatement. Beware the breathless salesman!

FIRST LESSONS

Your first exercise in the storywise lesson book is to dissect the argument that I am making to you here about becoming storywise. Why should you buy my story? Aren’t I doing exactly the same as the story competent and story-smart merchants are doing? Maybe? Maybe not? How would you know the difference?

Once you have given me the once over, apply that same trick to yourself. Why would anyone buy your story? Behind our technique lurks something more important. But what is it? How would you describe that internal tribunal of yours that gets to decide?

WISE UP

Our challenge to you is, don’t buy this or any bill of goods before you question it, to test it. When you have decided, become more conscious of what made you decide.  Overhear yourself in that most private  discernment process.

If you do want to try storywise, work out why? Or why not? Maybe it says something about what you feel to be right and moral and true? Or the opposite? Maybe you  have been conned and sold short before, seduced by some story that cost you? Then you have a good enough reason to want to wise up. But I don’t want you to pay up before you wise up. This is not another con. Wise up as to why you need to be storywise.

A NARRATIVE ETHICS

Storywise is not about telling stories better. Technique can only takes us so far. It is about telling better stories and knowing how to smell a ruse. Some stories, whether true or not, are deadly. There are ways we can teach you how to tell. You can learn how to recognize the characteristics of a con, and save yourself or your company or your nation from disaster. These principles are all embedded in a new field of practice called narrative ethics that identify the clear warning signs. They apply to electing presidents as much as to buying your refrigerator or the used car.

CLAIMING YOUR OWN EXPERTISE

One founding principle of narrative ethics is to recognize you as the expert of your own life. Often, your own unclaimed skills are contained in those life memories of when you knew something was not right, or something didn’t seem genuine. Think of that undbeatable offer that, at the time, seemed too good to be true and you turned it down, and it was too good to be true! Think of the boy or girl you didn’t marry, the job you didn’t take, the promotion you turned down, the great job you left. Most of us have a living experience of being storywise already, but  don’t know how can we can tap that latent power, how to discover what we didn’t even know we knew.

Part of surviving into adulthood involves growing an instinct, a nose, a sixth sense. Some call it intuition, but storywise believes its an awareness that can be harvested. Storywise means shaping the stories that shape us. To do that, you first have to know how you are being shaped. Storywise stands out as a prophet among the story industry to say, “We have to stop conning ourselves and our clients”-Stories may be great for children but their power is nuclear in its capacity for destruction.  Some stories need to be handled as HAZMAT, hazardous materials. No story is innocent.

THE REPUBLIC OF STORIES 2012

Watch this space at the Republic of stories to show you what a storywise point of view might look and sound like. We are going to need it for the coming elections, for the economic revival that everyone is preaching but refusing to practice, for the crisis of global climate that seems to be cooling, for the impact of new technology that some boost but more lament, for the next round of Middle East peace talks that will happen on cue in December 2012,  the rise and fall of China, and for President Obama Mk II. You think in 2008, we were sold a story. We ain’t seen nothing yet!

OUR CATCH CRY FOR A NEW REVOLUTION

Our media and our political system that feeds off it rely on us to be uncritical consumers. The story they peddle to us too often makes us sound like we don’t have brains. That is why we end up shouting at the TV set. The revolution begins when the people stop buying this crap. Its OK to occupy the squares, and to have teach-ins, but this storywise project is an inside job. You can stay warm. We don’t need tents. Change happens when we withhold our belief, when we suspend judgment. Lincoln’s words for it were “When we disenthrall ourselves.” The story-smart gurus tell us that we need a rallying cry, like “Just Do it” or “We are the other 99%”. Well, I think we have one, if we can use a uncouth term beloved of those crazy Australians. The T- shirt will say “Storywise-shaping the stories that shape us,” on the front, and on the back, “Lets boycott the Bullshit.” Let us know if you want to join the movement. We’ll send you a T-shirt.

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Story-smart, Story-competent, or Storywise? Our 2012 Manifesto

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Paul

LEARNING TO BE STORY-COMPETENT
Everyone can learn to tell a good story.  A lot of great courses and great teachers will train you how, and no wonder they are popular.  But not all of them offer the same thing.

Storytelling 101 is surely a good basic skill to have. These introductory courses  aim to make us story-competent. It will help us at our daughters wedding or our son’s bar-mitzvah when we have to give a speech.  We will deliver that staff report with more panache and even get people laughing at our jokes. Who wants to be story-incompetent anyway? One doesn’t have to be boring or collapse in  a feverish sweat every time we have to speak in public.

LEARNING TO BE STORY-SMART
Next, you can pay a lot more money and sign on to the real masters of the story-craft who not only teach you the skills, but take you across the bridge to the world of branding and marketing. These are the high powered consultants who will teach you as a leader or as a company exec to make your story stand out, to be clear, to be resonant, to be memorable, to be sticky, to have buzz, to  delight clients, to create attraction, to set up force fields of attention, to be a purple elephant, to be a springboard, to be fresh and current.

These are all what I call the add-ons that promise to make us story-smart. And who wants to be story-dumb?  Products like cars nowadays are seen as stories on wheels. That is what you are selling, stories.  Strategic plans are no longer turgid point A-F memorandums but Future Stories, Visioning, Dreams of Possibility.

We go to a seminar and get inspired to chase that budget allocation to bring your staff and executive team away on a story retreat. Getting them story-competent and story-smart promises to  transform your organization.  That’s the story at least. Right? But will it?

What if no matter how powerful these shiny new set of tools are, that you have missed what most practitioners have missed-about the real power of story that lies beyond its sheer instrumentality.

SOMETHING IS MISSING
Something essential is missing from the thriving story-expert industry right now. We give you a  user’s  manual on how to use stories, but no bible of why, when, or to what end?  What we don’t teach is the most obvious thing about stories.  Stories are dangerous!

Stories cause wars. Stories bring famines. Stories  protect dictators. Stories abuse women.  Or to put it another way. Anti-semitism is the result of a well told story.  Think Protocol of the Elders of Zion or Mein Kempf. Racism is the result of a time-tested story.  Think Birth of a Nation. Homophobia is the result of a compelling story. Think Sodom and Gomorrah.  Sexism is the result of a macho story. Think Playboy. Even the economic recession is the result of brilliant stories told to us by all those highly sophisticated story competent and story-smart people at Lehmann brothers and AIG and the Fed.  Watch the old AIG ad , for instance, about the kid who can’t get to sleep and his Dad tells him, “Buddy, we’re with AIG.” We bought this bill of goods because we thought being story competent and story smart was enough. But clearly it wasn’t.

STORIES ARE WEAPONS OF WAR
Stories are not some bright new, shiny, faddishly fascinating bundle of tricks for the board room, or the marketing team. No, they are the oldest and most lethal weapons known to man.  In ancient times, someone could put a story curse on you, and you would shrivel up and die. Today, they call it character assassination, and who needs to point a bone when you have Facebook or Youtube to expose you to the world?  It is not vodoo, its stories.  World wars start because  a leader buys a deadly story that he sells to his people, Predictably, a story will start World War Three. We live in dangerous times made even more dangerous by dangerous, out-of-control stories.  What we most need to learn is how to resist their seductions, to  discern, to decide, to become storywise.

COMPETENCE AND SMARTS ARE OVERRATED
As valuable as it is,  we don’t all have to be great tellers of tales. To fail as a fabulist is not fatal. We don’t all have to be marketing gurus, the seth godins of our tribe. Sometimes, just making a good product that speaks for itself can be a successful strategy.  We might be story-competent,  and that is good. We won’t be boring anymore. We might be story-smart, and that is great, because people will buy our product, our ideas, our bundled sub-prime mortgage packages.  But the survival of the human project demands much more than that right now. We have to become storywise.

BECOMING STORYWISE
Our planet, our species , even our culture itself is poised on the brink of enormous change.  Technology can broadcast a million stories a second.  Advocates and lobbying groups assault us with competing arguments that so contradict and confuse us that we end up overwhelmed. Climate change, vaccinations and autism, cell phone radiation,  diet supplements,  gas pipelines, Toyota cars,  Israel and Palestine, you name it, there is a compelling story on one side as compelling as the story on the other side. It is no longer an issue of knowledge, not even an issue of competence. At the end, it boils down to wisdom; making the wisest choices about what story to buy, rather than the easiest, cheapest, or the most popular.

REALIZING OUR VULNERABILITIES
If we are not storywise, we end up being storystupid. That means being totally vulnerable to all those other motivated people out there who are paying their big money to learn how to be story-smart and story-competent. All these graduates are being taught how to use their stories on us! Stories are their most effective tools for selling, to persuade us that someone is a friend, someone else an enemy, like those WMD’s in Iraq- a great story! Or to cajole us to vote for their brilliant  presidential candidate,  like John Edwards! Now wasn’t he so handsome and charismatic! Or stories told so we will believe that  women need men to decide their reproductive rights, or that God will smite us down for same-sex marriage , or that some ethnic minority from across the border is bad, mad, and stealing our jobs.

We are story consumers far more than we are story creators. Hence what we need most of all is some consumer protection, the protection that only becoming storywise can provide.  What does it mean to become storywise?

I am glad you asked. Stay tuned for the next few columns in the Republic of Stories where we will we explain our narrative philosophy, one we have been applying for the past 17 years at the Center for Narrative Studies. We want to  give you some practical examples,  tell you the results of our applications of this Storywise method to politics and peace around the world. We also want to offer you some affordable chances for training and coaching in the coming months.

 

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Don’t worry, be happy… or unhappy? Your choice!

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Paul


“Explorers did not seek for the cause of the Nile but its source. So while Science wants to find the cause, Soul wants to find the source. “

 

MAPPING THE SOUL -CAUSE OR SOURCE?

I have just come from an inspiring Storywise colloquy with long time colleagues Mary and Phil.  The conversation moved to the question of Mapping the Soul, and the difference that language invites us to consider between cause and source.

Yoga and other such practices, Mary tells us, speak about source, or core, while our public life and politics, Phil remarks, is obsessed with finding a cause, and thereby someone or something to blame. What if we made the switch from cause to source? Now there’s a thought.

What if the coming election was less about finding and fixing the cause of our recession, and more about reclaiming the source of our vitality as a nation and a people? Would that mean we would  be looking for the sources of new life, rather than haggling over our ailing body politic.

It might boil down to a simple and yet fundamental existential dilemma. Do we want to find the cause of our unhappiness? or do we want to find the source of our happiness, our life-energy? Put another way, do we want to excavate our despair or unearth the  foundations of our hope? Do we create  life energy consuming our past or creating our future?

Some would argue that this is all too simple,  that you can’t answer the second without answering the first. But what if like the indeterminacy principle, our brains were not wired to do both. What we most pay attention to inadvertently shapes our intention. The quest behind the question  reveals whether we are determined on happiness or unhappiness. As a nation, the “pursuit of happiness” is hardwired into our governance.  The founders might wonder what happened to that? We seem to have turned it into the “pursuit of unhappiness.”

On a more practical level, when floods, fire or storms hit, what is the question that fosters resilience? Is it, How are we ever going to get through all this? Or, “What is it that we have that no storm, fire or flood can destroy and that we need to connect to now? And in the aftermath, how much energy gets wasted in “finding who caused the failure of rescue or warning?” instead of tapping a different energy by asking ” We did get through it, so how do we keep doing that?”

Two questions, two paths-What is the cause? creates a very different life economy than asking What is the source?  After a Katrina, we can look back and say “Never again” or we can look forward and say,” We can even get through worse than this.”

The media and government policy seems focused more on survival and less on resilience. Why? Because stories best chronicle our unhappiness perhaps, and that patient endurance does not win many headlines. But headlines are hardly happiness. No one expects to read “New Orleans happy again.”

So, we ask ourselves, if life is that proverbial river like the Nile, what is the sense of finding the cause when what we really seek to understand is the source.  We can only fully understand the flood when we truly understand the flow.

 

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What if it all boils down to your theology???

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Paul

I had a fascinating chat with a bright student from Wesley Theological Seminary this morning, working on his thesis on the topic of the theology of peace-making. ( my description, not his) Matthew made the claim that many in the peace-making game who come from a faith tradition do not declare their theological agenda. The message being, its not the economy stupid, its the theology, and that reminded me of this post that I repost to homor Matthew and his explorations. good Luck Matt.

A natural disaster like a hurricane rolls in from the ocean and destroys a town, a city, floods a whole region. It used to be called an ‘Act of God’ because no one could prevent it-but nowadays, its called an Extreme Weather Event and Disaster Relief or FEMA are called in with the expectation that the Government can make right what God has wrought. If that fails, we blame President Obama rather than God the Father. But President Obama didn’t create the storm.

What about a man made disaster like the BP Oil Spill that spreads a murky slick across the Gulf of Mexico, and kills natural life and ruins the local bay industries? Where were the regulators, we ask? Who gave them the easy license for unprecedentedly deep drilling?

It used to be put down to Human Fallibility because humans who meddle with nature are always overstepping the limits of their knowledge or pushing natures’ tolerance. Nowadays, its called Crisis Management. The expectation is that humans are not allowed to make mistakes this catastrophic anymore. The company must do public confession and penance,  and together with the Government, we believers expect, no- we demand, that they make right what human pride and greed have made wrong.

A new President is elected on the promise of changing America. He pledged bi-partisanship and reform in energy, health and education, and sounded determined to overhaul the economy and turn it around.  Enough Americans believed in the promise then, but now, three years in, the mood is that Obama is not the Messiah after all, because even though he has reformed health, education and finances, he has not saved the country. We still wait for the miracle, for the epiphanic moment when angels will write in clouds across the northern sky for all to see, “Mission Accomplished. Hallelujah.”

The ‘Glen Beck- Come back to God’  Tea Party are raging about Government invading every aspect of our private lives, but what might surprise them is that what has gone wrong is not the economy-stupid, but the theology.

Once we believed in Providence, what George Washington called that ‘all powerful and inscrutable dispensation.” Now we expect the Government to play God, to provide, to be the final rainbow of hope after the flood, the drought, the fire and storm, the eternal  evangelist of Good News when jobs die and houses are repossessed. We don’t blame God or ourselves anymore. No.  We blame the Government. And hence, our politics has become drenched in a heresy that used to be called Pelagianism, that man is able to do it all without God.

Meanwhile, the  mainstream Churches seems to have abdicated the field of common concern-no voices are raised or if they are, none are heard that say that perhaps our crisis is less of debt and inflation, and more of greed and hubris, where like the original Babel, we thought we could build our towers  and condo’s to populate the heavens. And then, when it all seems to come crashing down, instead of Jonah convincing Niniveh to repent, we are all gearing up to vote these fakers out of office and demand they repay us what we lost. It was all their fault, we say. They did it for the banks and for the car companies, paid them our taxes to make up for their sins so that their debts could be  forgiven. So it should be  for us. It is what we pray about every day, “forgive us our debts as you forgave those who were indebted to us.”

Though we don’t want to start another witch hunt, Christine O’Donnell not withstanding, someone needs to get on a pulpit here and there and start thundering that “Judgment is near.” We are trapped in the heresy of thinking God’s emissary on earth is not the Pope but the Government, and that Providence is now a matter of  public  policy, and being full of  grace is when the GDP goes up by 4%.  When November 6th rolls around, we should all be praying: ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’, and realise that its God we are talking to, not the Government. Amen.

 

 

 

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Time for New Voices, New Stories of Peace

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Paul

A LAMENT FOR GAZA 2008

“There is a time” for old voices and old stories
“There is a time” for new voices and new stories.
“There is a time” for the past and all its glories
“There is a time” for the future and all its dreams.
“There is a time” for fighting, holding true to the past
“There is a time” for peace, for forsaking what cannot last
“There is a time” for being right, for talking straight
“There is a time” when being right comes way too late
“There is a time,” and “There is a time” until
We run out of “time”
When “There is” becomes “There was”
And History haunts our days
Accusing us,
“Too little,
Too late,
Too proud
To change our ways.”
Leaving us to tell those that inspect the ruins
“Once there was a time…”

Ariel  Phoenix  1943 Dresden

(NPR 2010 n13100820-36758)

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We have to become the new Magellans for a New World

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Paul

  As we  scan recent headlines, I am sure many of us are getting that feeling that the world is moving way too fast, that we aren’t sure what is happening anymore. Where are we now? How do we fit into this picture emerging from a worldwide communications revolution?If we feel lost,  maybe it is because our world has grown too big and our stories have grown too small.

We think of race and nation,  economy and culture, faith and place  as singularities, all  existing within clearly differentiated narratives, but somehow, the world has made scrambled eggs of all our distinct identities.  Everything seems connected to everything, everybody is connected to everyone else, and any one can potentially play a part in any one else’s  story.  The world is being desegregated.  How can this be, and how did it come about?

Facebook began in 2004 with a few thousand Harvard students. For the first few years, it grew slowly. Then in 2007, something happened and it rapidly reached a critical mass of 50 million. That was amazing then, but in the last three years,  it has  multiplied  to over 800 million, almost half of the users of the Internet.  That means a personally connected world like we have never experienced before. Add Twitter and Google, LinkedIn and Cloud computing, and whatever the next big thing is, and we are in uncharted territory.  We have no precedent for this, no story to tell us what it is all going to mean.

It’s time to stop thinking we can just keep doing what we have always done, relying on the old maps of a familiar world that once worked in 2005 but  no longer  accurately reflect the context of our lives or the future of our businesses. We are in a new world. We sorely need to find new stories and new maps, and most of all, new leaders because we are living in a new age of discovery.When explorers exploded the known world beyond the confines of a familiar Europe and the Mediterranean,  the Magellans of the world were the ones leading the way. What we need to become now are new Magellans, to revive our spirit of exploration and discovery, to  reclaim a new story of adventure.

What is going to help us more than ever is embracing our ignorance over our expertise, because what is out there is marked terra incognita. This is not just about Twitter Revolutions in far away places, this is about how we in America have reached a “hinge of history” moment.  It’s more than our politics or our economy.  It’s more than finding a new Sputnik moment or reviving our competitive edge. They are the old story still. We have as much to unlearn as to learn, and to learn above all, that new leaders can no longer lead with old maps and old  stories. Lincoln knew as much when he said in 1862

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

We need to remap the world in  order to understand why some of our most cherished stories no longer make sense, the stories about being super competitive to be successful, the privileging stories about faith and patriotism and national identity that assure us that “we are more special” than the rest, the comforting illusions about  infinite energy and  unchangeable climate.  Aldous Huxley once wrote a book called, “Brave New World” and that’s an apt title for what we are witnessing.

Our brave new world needs new maps and new stories and above all, it calls for new leaders who are adventurers and explorers. Are you  the new Magellan? If you are, come join this ship we are building at The Republic of Stories and hang on for the ride of your life.  There is much work to do.word map of Brave_New_World

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Being a little too certain about Maybe!

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Paul

Why does the Washington Post sound so certain about “maybe?”This week, it gave us a  story with the blaring  headlines “Terrorist threat may be at new high.” (February 10 2011 A-6)  By the same logic, it may not be at a new high, so take a guess. This essay may be something worth reading, or it may not, but once I use the word “MAY”, I am simply opening the portals of possibility, not much more. It may rain tomorrow, but then again, it may not. So what? It  hardly rises to the level of significance, unless my wedding is tomorrow and it’s in the back yard. But even then, I will want to look at the weather reports, not rely on hearsay.In the same Post edition, we read  “Pakistan may be building 4th plutonium reactor, nuclear experts say.” (A-8)  OK, this is at least quoting someone else’s guess. But the opening paragraph goes on…

” Pakistan has begun work on what independent experts say appears to be a fourth …reactor …a move that could signal a further escalation in Pakistan’s arms race with …India.”

When something ‘may be’ and ‘appears to be’ and ‘could be’, how on earth does that constitute news? Speculation, conjecture, hypothesizing, all have their place, but surely in the Opinion pages, not  in a Hard News Section called “THE WORLD.”

To get a sense of how irresponsible such faux journalism is,  lets unpack the narrative logic.  Someone sees someone do something, and the experts-”independent experts” mind you,  (Are there dependent experts?)   say that this could appear to be something else that could then mean something else.  We are building solid conclusions on pure speculation, which is based on a suggestion. Lets test this out. Say someone said they saw you at the pub, and independent experts said this behavior could indicate you have a drinking problem, which would then suggest that you are having marital problems.  But you could be running a Quiz Night to raise funds for the local Boy Scouts Club. If when asked, you decline to comment, you will be adding to the intrigue, because now you are hiding something, which is of course is what all good  alcoholics do!

When the topic is nuclear weapons and terrorism, we are all narratively vulnerable (Chapter 13, The Presidential Plot) the implication being DANGER, BE CAREFUL, but it’s as legitimate in this form as your Mother telling you not to talk to strangers who have red beards because they could be bad guys and they could kidnap you and hold you for ransom and demand 5 million dollars.  The story runs away with itself.  You are scared because you are already at the dreadful end of the story, when in fact, there is hardly a basis for a beginning, save for some vague hint of concern. Beware of any headline or news story that uses the subjunctive, “may, might, could, appears to be, suggests that,”  as in “New pill may cure cancer” or “Peace Talks might take a while” or “Palin may run for President.”  We are getting the certainty of a maybe,  a story that is not a story at all, but a piece of eye candy, a phantasm because translated, it simply means, “Something is possible.”  And any item that throws in “independent  experts”  together with the principals  “decline to comment”  you know this is probably an  overworked, under-resourced  journalist with a deadline to meet.

One could suspect one reason these “maybe’s”  get paraded as news is that someone is trying to scare us into action. but that is pure speculation, not news.  Life is scary enough from real threats and challenges, without loading  us down with such speculative nonsense. Journalists used to be taught-Back it up, ground it in some evidence, name the so called experts, show us the thinking behind the thinking and be clear, opinions are not facts.  Just because someone guesses at something-no matter how drastic, doesn’t mean it rises to the level of  Page A-6 news. Or  even better,  why not create a special section called Speculations and Hunches  and put it all there. One hopes The Washington Post will realize how often it makes certainties of its maybes, but it may not too. But  as I say, that is pure conjecture not worthy of a  headline, even if I am an independent expert, and even if I say so myself.

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Rumsfeld and our Morally Hazardous World

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Paul

“Known and Unknown” is the title of the long awaited Donald  Rumsfeld book coming to a book shop near you.  At 815 pages, it seems like no one goes unmentioned, no story goes  untold. President Bush’s book only went to 512 pages, and Condoleeza Rice’s 352 pages. It still lags behind President Clinton’s 1024 pages, but he was President, after all.  To be fair,  Rumsfeld has quite the career to chronicle, going back to Nixon and Ford. But the reviews are all saying the same thing-Rummy is settling scores big time, and no one escapes. Maureen Down writes in the New York Times that Rummy blames General Tommy Franks for not nailing Osama in Tora Bora,  The Geneva Convention  for the torture fiasco,  Condoleeza Rice for meddling, The National Security Council for being inept, Jerry Bremer for the post-war mess, and even President Bush for not refereeing the internal squabbles.  Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post that Rummy’s tome joins the growing library of “Everyone Else is to Blame but Me” genre  pioneered by other members of the Bush-Cheney Gang, aka Tenet, Bremer, McClellan, Rove, etc etc.Here is what confuses me and let me state it as a simple syllogism.

  1. If things went from good to bad on your watch, and
  2. you were in charge of keeping things good but they went bad, then,
  3. aren’t you to blame???? at least even in part
  4. presuming that you really had that power.

Things in the economy right now and on the war font in Iraq/Afghanistan have somehow gone horribly wrong, not achieved what we set out to achieve, even made things worse. And the economy and the military are under the control of leaders who have real power to act to change things. They used that power to take these  decisions.  It didn’t just happen by accident, as if one day Rumsfeld woke up to find stray marines invading Baghdad of all places,  or Bernanke woke to discover  Wall Street collapsing for no reason. The Fed were in charge of the economy. They determined that it did not need to regulate mortgages, nor banks trading as investment gamblers known commonly as brokers.  The Pentagon were in charge of the military. They determined not to send more troops to invade Iraq. They determined they didn’t need a plan  after the battle was won.  People in charge took charge, as we expect them to. They  made the calls. You win some and you lose some, but that’s life. You live and learn. Even the infallible Pope has to fess up to being human sometimes.

Declaring a failure is crucial to future success. But no, we don’t live and learn anymore. We live to blame.  Our own innocence must be protected at all costs.To read any of these post-Bush era biographies is to be asked to believe that a team of saints somehow conspired to create an economic and military hell. Looking back, they still don’t know how it happened. Must have been the other guys.  How could so many smart people suddenly  become so clueless? Their stories makes leadership into a nonsense.  Leaders take responsibility. That’s their job.  Perhaps that is what we are learning now-these were not leaders at all because they lacked the courage to face the consequences of their choices, then and now.  Then a better title of Rumsfeld’s book might  be “Hey, Shit Happens. Alright? Don’t blame me and Get over it.” But this “no fault” insanity is stalking the land. Even now, the new Congress is redoubling its efforts to cut through all the regulations that they say ” kill jobs.”  No one wants to admit that it was the criminally irresponsible  lapses in regulation that killed countless jobs, killed Lehman Brothers, almost killed Wall Street and the Auto Industry, almost killed New Orleans, killed  the Gulf of Mexico, polluted the air, and allows guns to be bought by crazies who kill, etc etc No rules, no mistakes. If no one has to admit to any wrongdoing, and no one is charged or fired or forced to resign, and the banks and bankers who actually gambled the economy within an inch of total collapse get rewarded with Cabinet posts and bonuses, (see the Documentary  Inside Job) then we all now live in a morally hazardous world.  Every malefactor wearing a suit and not named Madoff gets rewarded, and vice has become the new virtue.That is surely the way to make us all crazy and reduce public leadership to a farce.  But then, I may be the one at fault, and I at least am willing to admit it. Pity I feel so alone in saying that. Maybe its all your fault!

 

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