When I started this blog, I didn’t want it to focus on current events or politics. But it’s hard, in these recent days, not to focus on the issues dominating the headlines. Is anyone else like me? I dread election years. I watch the news and debates out of sense of duty, cringing through them, and finding excuses to leave to the room. I hate the feeling of my lowest instincts being appealed to, my fears, prejudice and hatred being played like a violin. I am insulted by politicians who seek to flatter me or who expect me to admire their wit and cleverness when they mock their opponent. I hate them but I hate myself more for being susceptible to it.
As the nation was riveted this past week on the financial crisis and bailout, a tiny feeling of optimism crept in. The financial crisis requires real understanding, an intellectual grasp of an arcane, highly complex and completely opaque system. While the financial outlook may be grim, one silver lining is the opportunity for learning and a real engagement with issues beyond the usual Punch and Judy show that the media would have us focus on.
Kevin Kelly, über geek who helped launched Wired magazine in 1993 (along with a lot of other things that places him out on the front of culture and technology) writes in his book New Rules for the New Economy, “Feed the Platform. Members Prosper as the Net Prospers.” Applied to more than the internet, Feed the Platform means, the more you care for the matrix, the collective platform that feeds us all, the more each of us individually prosper. Or put more simply by Jim Hightower, “Everybody does better when everybody does better.”
But feed the platform means more than just cooperate around resources. It’s an educational principle. Your single issue or product can only advance in a climate where people are informed. That’s why for instance, competition is often better for business. If you are a psychoanalyst and you want to open a practice, it might sound counter intuitive, but you’ll fare far better if you do so in New York where there is probably 1 psychotherapist per 100, than in say Boise, Idaho, where there is 1 psychotherapist per 10,000. New Yorkers are psychotherapy savvy. They know the field, are educated about therapy, and as such, are more likely to hire a therapist.
Back to politics. The current financial crisis and many issues of this election year have the potential to bring real depth and analysis of the issues to the fore. It may be a snooze to follow the intricacies of global economics and bad for ratings, but it feeds the platform. It raises the level of discussion; it educates people and allows for better policy and decision making. Feeding the platform means dealing with substance, facts, issues, not just the numbers and facts, but making the beliefs underpinning your position more transparent.
Leaders need to lead by feeding, by educating people on the issues, not playing upon their basest emotions and fears. If you want me to vote for your position, then explain it to me, explain the thinking and reasoning, not just why the other guy’s an idiot. What are the real issues at stake? What are the long term consequences? What values underpin it? And trust me to be intelligent enough to sift through it all and come to an informed decision.
Abraham Lincoln was a man with very little formal education, but he loved to learn and made it into lifelong passion, one that he shared with the population. He led by teaching. He knew the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation required a long and painstaking explanation and justification, and he did so in speeches and editorials. Yes, as President he wrote letters to the editors and editorials on the issues he felt critical to the country’s survival during the threat of disunion. He didn’t have a press secretary to pre-screen questions and reel off responses that made a 10 second sound bite on the evening news. Lincoln knew that the survival of the country depended on feeding those below with the knowledge necessary to support his vision. He led by teaching, and in doing so, fed the platform so that all could prosper.
