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This section of John's website contains some of his periodic op-ed pieces. They are listed below in the order of their postings to this site, starting with the most recent posting.
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offered to FutureShapers Monthly subscribers to forward and use as they wish, August 1, 2007: subsequently published in Changing the World, One Broadcast at a Time, New Dimensions August 2007 newsletter;
Outsourcing Citizenship:
Sure Formula for a Has-Been Nation
An op-ed by futurist John Renesch, author of Getting to the Better Future
630 words
Americans have been outsourcing jobs for years, a matter of great debate among those concerned about the reliance of our nation on the output of other countries, many of whom we owe great deals of money. Our national dependence upon China, India and other countries who could hold our economic fate in their hands is really scary to many Americans.
But there has been an outsourcing of a more personal nature going on for much longer here in the U.S. Our culture has included outsourcing many of our responsibilities long before the verb became popular in contemporary lexicon. For many generations we have outsourced the education of our children and the responsibility of our health. We outsource some of our domestic responsibilities hiring nannies and housekeepers, dog walkers and personal trainers. This allows us to focus on earning more money to buy more things, pay off debt, give us enough free time to watch American idol, play some poker and keep up with the exploits of Paris Hilton.
We have become an outsourcing culture. When people are wealthy enough this is their right and privilege. But, I would contend, there are two areas of responsibility that cannot and should never be outsourced: parenting and citizenship. The former puts our children at risk and the latter does the same for our country.
We outsource some of our responsibilities as citizens when we give our power to elected officials at the voting polls and wash our hands of the consequences of our votes. We outsource more of our responsibilities when we forego service to our country and rely on a paid militia to perform that role for us, whether an all volunteer military or paid mercenaries like we have in Iraq.
Our founders were true citizens. They responded to the call when they were needed to serve in the military, rallying to the needs of the country. They recruited the best and the brightest and asked them to serve as their elected officials; rarely did anyone announce themselves as a candidate for that was consider in poor taste in those days. In today’s jargon, they were all “drafted” by an informed citizenry. They regularly attended town hall meetings, even if it meant a three hour horse ride into town and an overnight stay. They picked their candidates and the candidates were willing to serve when they were drafted. This was all part of being a proactive citizen in this new democracy. They didn’t take their citizenship for granted. They cherished it!
Today, the vast majority of us sit back in our TV chair and vote with our remotes, form an opinion after listening to a few sound bytes and consider ourselves “informed.” If we vote we consider ourselves good citizens. But have we been willing to be inconvenienced at all? How much have our lives changed since our nation went to war? Have we endured a fraction of the inconvenience of our WWII era parents and grandparents?
What price have you paid for these wars? Did you vote in the last election? Have you been in touch with those you elected? Do they know how you feel about the job they are doing? Have you talked with or written your senator or representative lately. Do you know what is going on in the rest of the world in your name as a citizen of these United States?
A nation with such passive citizenry has frequently fallen of its own weight….imploded through complacency. Could this happen to America? Will we even know it is happening if it was?
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John Renesch is a businessman-turned-futurist, author of several books and international keynote speaker. His website is www.Renesch.com
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Index
Beyond Iraq, Beyond Bush: One Man’s Soul Searching (April 16, 2007)
What Kind of World Do We Really Want? (February 2007)
If America Were Run Like a Business (January 2007)
The Beginning of the End of Empire: How Our National Hubris Is Destroying Us (May 2006)
Where Did The Compassion Go? (February 2006)
Has America Stopped Becoming? UPI (January 2005)
Outside View (UPI): We are all Americans (November 2004)
American Hubris: A Case for National Arrogance (August 2004)
Shouting at Our Choirs: Political Frenzies Going Nowhere Fast (June 30, 2004)
Outside View (UPI): An American introspection (June 16, 2004)
Outside View (UPI): Assent or oblivion? (June 2, 2004)
Is National Outrage About to Finally Occur? (March, 2004)
Waking Up America: A Return to What Made Us Great (February, 2003)
A Return to Freedom: Changing the Regime of Our Own Thinking (Fall 2002)
What Have We Learned Since 9-11? (Summer 2002)
A Letter to My Fellow Citizens: Seeing Opportunity in the Tragedy (September 2001)
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Archived commentaries listed with most recent first
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April 16, 2007, sent to The New York Times: sent to Washington Post, June 26, 2007:
One Man’s Soul Searching
An op-ed by John Renesch
Since 9/11, like many Americans, I have become more aware of my country’s foreign policy and, more importantly, the impact that policy has had on the rest of the world, mostly less developed countries. I wondered how people could hate us so much and what had driven them to be so radicalized and extreme.
While the media is filled with opinions and news of Iraq, I could not help but wonder where we got off the track, where America got to be the world’s most dreaded “bad guy.” I was raised thinking we were the good guys, the global heroes. We helped win World War II and were riding high as an economic power. Not bad for a relatively new breakaway nation!
In the decades since those childhood memories, the good guy image has become tarnished, bolstered by Hollywood movies but not in real life. Korea and Vietnam were hardly theatres for us to repeat our victory celebrations. Even after the Cold War, I heard of our interfering in the politics of other sovereign nations, covert operations and so forth, but they never gave me sufficient pause. Then there were the more public incidents such as invading Panama and “capturing” Manuel Noriega, our questionable military activity in Colombia and other high profile events which made me wonder some. But I chose to rely on the media to get it straight.
I could say I trusted my government to be doing the honorable thing. But that would be a cop-out. It would be more accurate to say while I was somewhat aware of the malevolent activities of my country’s political, economic and military aims in other parts of the world, I didn’t want to learn the truth. My rationale: it would take lots of time to get to the real truth, I might never discover it since covert activity is usually well disguised and, even if I discovered major wrong-doing by my government, I wouldn’t be able to do anything.
Since one-time American ally Osama bin Laden was identified as the man behind 9/11, I found myself compelled to wonder how could we befriend such people, how could we engage in alliances with people so opposed to our own ideals, how could we be so committed to imposing our will on others that we used any and all means to get our way? This seemed to be the ultimate in unscrupulous behavior! How could my country do this? I wondered. Was I so naïve I still thought we were supposed to be the world’s “good guys”?
Then I read the document that serves as the basis for our current foreign policy and I got really scared! I began reading more about this less-than-candid side of my government, the policies being carried out in my name around the world. I can see now that our nation’s policies cannot be pinned exclusively on the Bush II White House although their actions and rhetoric drew more attention to them. Near as I can tell, our foreign policy started going haywire shortly after WW II and both Democrats and Republicans were equally at fault in establishing and systematically expanding a two-faced foreign policy that pits us against the entire world.
Where did we get off track? When did we start promoting self-determination while covertly sabotaging it whenever we didn’t agree with what people and other nations chose? When did we start being the champions of liberty by trouncing it whenever other people’s free choices didn’t conform to our agenda? When did we start playing God, using our military, economic and political muscle to strong arm others into playing our game, conforming to our wishes, exploiting their own people to serve our whims?
I only recently realized that the U.S. has always had an adversary, an identified “enemy,” whether it was Great Britain during our founding, Native Americans as we expanded across the continent, Mexico, Spain or any others we deemed opposed to us. Nazi Germany and Japan served that role in the 1940s, followed by the USSR and the “communist evil empire” following WW II. Various dictators and regimes have been assigned the enemy role since then, leading us to our present enemy, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, Iran, Syria, North Korea and God knows who else are listed now as our enemies. I am now convinced many of our past adversaries were far more benign than we the people were led to believe. It suited “our national interest,” however, to have them as threats so that’s how they were identified.
Does this seem misleading, dishonest and incongruent with the principles of a democratic republic? You bet it does!
With a slight amount of research I got some historical perspective. The once Top Secret “National Security Council Document #68,” delivered to President Harry Truman in April 1950, set the stage for current U.S. foreign policy. “NSC-68” represented the thinking of Paul Nitze, former Wall Street investment banker who later became an arms negotiator. According to a 2004 obituary titled “Paul Nitze: The Man Who Brought Us the Cold War,” by Fred Kaplan, “Nitze's first task: Scare the daylights out of Truman.” This document laid the foundation for the Cold War with the USSR which kept Americans and the rest of the world constantly on edge about nuclear winters and anything that could spark the use of nuclear weapons.
Perhaps this was the birth of the present culture of fear that pervades life today - why we feel we need monstrous SUVs, numb ourselves with various palliatives, cling desperately to our cell phones, and worry about so many things? Could this have been the seedling of the “War on Terror?” What a perfect metaphor!
In 2000, a group of neoconservatives created a ninety page “A Report of The Project for a New American Century,” a strategy that could serve as a replacement of “NSC-68.” Similarly fueled by fear, it calls for U.S. world dominance, but more blatantly. In addition to military and economic dominance, this updated policy document explicitly includes cyberspace and outer space as “colonies” of the American Empire.
Reading the Project’s “Key Findings” one can see that it has been driving U.S. foreign policy since the 2000 election, soon after it was written. The authors write, "the United States has an unprecedented strategic opportunity ... to transform U.S. forces to exploit the 'revolution in military affairs'." It goes on to cite nine key sub-imperatives, two of which bother me considerably: One calls for "controlling the new 'international commons of space and 'cyberspace' and the creation of 'U.S. Space Forces'." Another is to “reposition U.S. forces to respond to 21st century strategic realities by shifting permanently-based forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia, and by changing naval deployment patterns to reflect growing U.S. strategic concerns in East Asia."
This new imperative is based on three assumptions which are highly questionable seven years later: 1. the United States is "blessed with wealthy, powerful and democratic allies in every part of the world; 2. the United States "is in the midst of the longest economic expansion in its history;" and, 3. U.S. political and economic principles are almost universally embraced.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have squandered the first one, have had a severe setback in the second, and, in my opinion, the Report's authors were seriously in error about the third.
This doctrine to have America rule the world may offend the sensibilities of U.S. citizens who were raised believing that all people are created equal, free to pursue happiness as they define it, not as it might be prescribed by those in power. And how offended might you be if you lived somewhere else in the world?
I'm old enough to remember some bitter lessons learned about people in the world who had their own ideas about what was good for the many, who insisted on foisting their values on the rest of society. The United States used to fight those movements not lead them. The United States used to be the world's "good guy," not the biggest bully on the planet.
Defending the "American Way" is one thing. Prescribing it to the rest of the world, willing or not, and enforcing it through coercion or muscle is quite another. The latter smells of totalitarianism or autocracy, hardly the founding ideals for the "world's most successful democracy."
Somewhere during these fifty seven years of evolving U.S. policy of domination, the phrase “our national interests” became a buzz word for politicians to use in their public statements. It was assumed that the public would identify with this phrase and assume if their leaders told them this or that policy was in their best interests then they had better go along with it. Under this rubric the American public has been manipulated into passive acceptance of a whole range of failed policies, misinformation, worldwide atrocities including genocide, vast sums of wasted tax-payer monies, corruption and crimes against humanity.
Thanks to some courageous people who have been close to the implementation of U.S. foreign policy and seen the nasty impact we are having on much of the world, the harsh realities are coming into the public spotlight. John Perkins’ 2006 bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was an example of one man “coming clean” in his role after some deep soul-searching. The new book A Game As Old As Empire written by more than a dozen people – some economic hit men and women, others who’ve been close to the action - reveals even more horror stories wrought on the rest of the world in order to support our lifestyles, our cherished “American Way” of life.
The question now is will the American people be willing to look at this aspect of our way of life and demand a change in the way we are represented in the world.
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John Renesch is a businessman-turned-futurist, author of several books and international keynote speaker. His website is www.Renesch.com
Notes:
“Paul Nitze: The Man Who Brought Us the Cold War,” by Fred Kaplan, October 21, 2004, www.Slate.com
“A Report of Project for a New American Century,” September 2000
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
Published in Op-Ed News, February 15, 2007:
What Kind of World Do We Really Want?
An op-ed by futurist John Renesch, author, Getting to the Better Future
2007 © John Renesch
Don’t look at what we claim to value to get to the truth; look at how we live and work, what everyday choices we make, and you will see what we really value – what we think is important.
Sages through the ages have stated versions of this for centuries. It isn’t particularly new. But it warrants another look as we Americans seem to be making everyday choices that don’t match the values we claim to hold so dear.
Do we really want a world at peace or do we want to dominate the rest of the world as stated in the philosophy driving our present foreign policy? [1]
Do we really care about all human life or are we only concerned about Americans, as appears evident from the news we subscribe to and the conversations in which we engage? [2]
Do we really care about children when we allow so many to die from malnutrition and suffer from a lack of medical aid? [3]
Do we truly believe all people are created equal or do we mean only people like us?
Do we honestly believe in the “invisible hand” of the free market when we find ourselves working ourselves to death to pay the debt incurred by our obsessive consumption? [4]
Do we really envision “joy to the world” while remaining content to live in a world filled with fear and hatred, mostly aimed at us?
Do we believe in a multi-nation approach to the world’s problems or do we prefer to be “king of the hill”? [5]
Do we mean what we say when we decry war crimes and crimes against humanity yet we avoid persecution for these acts by standing above the laws we agreed to uphold? [6]
Do we want a united world federation that respects all nations or do we want to everything done our way? [7]
These are but a few questions we can ask ourselves as individuals, communities and as a country. Once we own these discrepancies between what we claim to value and what we do, once we own our hypocrisy, we can choose which values to honestly live by, which values to put into action and either align our walk with our talk or stop bullshitting ourselves and each other. Then at least truth will be told.
[2] U.S. news media and citizen awareness of Americans killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorist bombings, airplane crashes and other disasters with little to no attention on other nationalities killed
[3] “More than six million children under the age of five needlessly die around the world each year, according to experts.” – BBC News
[4] Lobbying by special interests, subsidies and manipulative advertising stacks the deck against free choices
[5] Pattern of constant U.S. disrespect for U.N. policies, blocking global initiatives that don’t suit “our national interests”
[6] See Note 5
[7] See Note 5
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submitted to The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2007
If America Were Run Like a Business
an op-ed by futurist John Renesch
Imagine a company where the board of directors stood by passively while the management team completely squandered the company's brand over a period of five years, reducing the firm's goodwill from "best practice" to "least trusted" by the public and "worst offender" of environmental standards. Imagine the company's shareholders screaming in protest while the board simply rung their hangs with worry but failed to intervene in any way because they were bound by their employment contract with the CEO and his team.
Even when the CEO announced he was planning things that would further destroy public goodwill and share value, increasing debt to unimaginable new highs, the board's best remedy was to hope things would improve and talk among themselves about how bad things were. Even when it appeared the management team had become infested with “groupthink” and disallowed any feedback that ran counter to its strategy, the board did nothing. Board members seemed to forget that the management team worked for them!
Board members had plenty of opinions but they failed to do anything to stop the massive hemorrhaging of debt, loss of goodwill and brand deterioration. Those who sat on the board's media committee sent emails to each other expressing their opinions but still no action was taken to correct the policies and behavior that was causing so much damage.
Imagine the U.S.A. as such a company where the administration is the management team under contract, the board of directors are the electorate and the rest of the world are the shareholders.
If a company were to be run the way I described above, it would be out of business very quickly. The most likely scenario: the board would go into emergency session at the first indication of destructive behavior and demand accountability for the team's actions. Any actions or plans deemed harmful to the brand or the corporation's major assets would be countered or the management team would be replaced immediately, contracts or not. Decline in shareholder value and the restoration of the public's confidence in the firm would become the highest priorities.
American citizens have been ineffective in doing anything to reverse the rapid decline of it's "brand" value, allowing it to be systematically eroded for over five or six years, seemingly resigned to allowing it to continue for another two years. Will the U.S.A. have any value remaining at that time? Are we so resigned and feeling like such victims of the circumstances we are content to wait until 2008 to begin cleaning up the mess? Does this sound like the same America where our forefathers and mothers left their jobs and took up muskets to fight for individual empowerment and liberty? They fought for what they believed in, they put their lives on the line and risked death, imprisonment and losing everything they owned. What are we willing to risk to merely gain back what we’ve lost in the past few years?
What has happened to us? Why have we become a nation of wimps, allowing the an over-arrogant management team to continue reeking havoc and trashing our country and bullying the world. Our country is at risk of imploding while causing unforeseen horror in the world and "we the people" have the opportunity to stand up and be counted – to make things right. This is not a time for mere rhetoric or opinion but a time to take corrective action - NOW, without waiting two more years when another perhaps slightly less incompetent management team will be retained.
As members of America’s board of directors, let us fire those who are failing their fiduciary responsibility with which we entrusted them and hire a new team which has both the competence and promise of restoring what has been destroyed these past five years. Then we can get on with moving ourselves closer to the true potential we have as a nation. Let us do whatever it takes and not be constrained by convention or existing precedent. After all, nothing less than our country is at stake!
John Renesch is a businessman-turned-futurist and the author of numerous books.
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Published by OpEdNews.com, May 24, 2006
The Beginning of the End of Empire:
How Our National Hubris Is Destroying Us
An op-ed by John Renesch
The
unpublished written work included in this website is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial 2.5 License.
As the news continues to feature stories of frustration with our country’s ability to do anything right, I’m reminded of a time when the U.S. was indeed the “can do nation.” After WWII we were feeling our oats, having kicked the bad guys’ butts and being hailed as heroes by most of the world. We stood tall and proud of having saved much of the world from fascism. We congratulated ourselves for a job well done. That was three generations ago.
More recently we have failed to demonstrate any great degree of consistency in fixing things, at home or around the world. As British economist John Gray queried in The Economist a couple of years ago: Is America on its way to being “just another country”?
In a recent commencement talk, a Princeton professor wondered how much time the U.S. has remaining in its turn as “top nation.” He noted that throughout history a succession of countries have taken turns at being top nation. But if we follow the pattern, he contended, our turn should be up within fifty years.
Hard to swallow as an American.? Perhaps. But let us take a brief look at history.
Through the ages empires have crumbled under their own weight. Their failure has usually been the result of their own arrogance and complacency; i.e., they destroy themselves! They start thinking they are infallible and become filled with national hubris, or ego. Economic historian Arnold Toynbee observed, “An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.”
What are the signs that this might be happening here in the U.S.?
Take our mighty military: despite the most sophisticated weaponry money can buy, we aren’t nearly as dominating in armed conflicts as you would think we should be. Our disproportionate reliance on technology to carry out our killing on the battlefield continues to result in the death of non-strategic innocents. We blame it on mis-information, dismiss it as “collateral damage” and continue doing it! From Asia to Iraq, we seem to have messed things up more than fixed things. Yet we continue. And what about Americans torturing prisoners and avoiding international prosecution for war crimes? Weren’t we supposed to be the world’s good guys? It used to be the other guys who invaded countries. It used to be the other guys who committed war crimes and killed innocent people and tortured prisoners. Have we become “the other guys” for much of the world? .
On the domestic front, our lack of responsiveness and inability to aid the people of New Orleans has been downright shameful. And the Twin Towers memorial? Going on five years and we still can’t agree on what to do with the Manhattan site of the 9-11 terrorists attacks. Our education system has become so eroded our kids graduate without the ability to spell. Remember when Americans were the best educated students in the world? And what about our rapidly accelerating national indebtedness? We’re in hock up to our bottoms; other countries own us!
In discussions with American friends I hear how we “won” the Cold War. Are they nuts? We didn’t “win” anything. The Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight. Many factors and people contributed to it, some visible and some not so visible. So what did we do? We took victory laps and claimed we did it, all by ourselves! Green Cross founder and former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, a major player in ending the half century long nightmare, has urged the West to “get over your ‘winner’s complex’ and attend to challenges of our time.” Nationalism in any form, he states, “is an evil from which humanity has already suffered enough…”
Since 2000, our nation has steadfastly enforced a foreign policy based upon world domination. Drafted prior to the 2000 presidential elections, Project for a New American Century calls for the U.S. domination of cyberspace and outer space as well as maintaining our military “superiority” as the lone Super Power.
FDR’s first inaugural speech
This plan is quite a reversal from what FDR said in his pre-WW II inaugural address: "I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor: The neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others; the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors." That was the philosophy of America that helped defeat the bad guys in WW II.
This inability to see our own warts, this unwillingness to admit our faults, this denial about our not-so-good-guy-ness and this confusion between fact and spin suggest that we may have fewer years as top nation than the professor estimated. Our hubris may be igniting the fuse for our own implosion as a great nation, just as it was for the Greeks, Romans, Spanish, British and others before us.
Economist Gray’s question is still nagging at me. We are on our way to becoming “just another country,” but there is still time to take corrective measures and restore
our country as a beacon for hope for a better future for the whole world. We are, after all, a nation founded on some pretty lofty principles. The heart of our “can do nation” is still beating and there is still time to restore a sense of neighborliness and win back the respect of the rest of the world. We can begin by taking a close look at ourselves as a nation, admitting our failings and building on our strengths. We can start paying more attention to the facts than our own press releases. We can reclaim the integrity of our heritage. Let’s stop the rhetoric, get over the “winner’s complex” and restore alignment between our walk and our talk, as a country and as a people.
I am not bothered by my country losing its status as “top nation.” I’m a bit uncomfortable with that label anyway. What bothers me is the possibility of our squandering the opportunity which our nation’s founders offered “the world of neighbors” and the loss of hope such a squandered opportunity will mean to so many people around the globe.
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About the author
John Renesch is a San Francisco businessman-turned-futurist. His background includes over thirty years experience as a business owner, CEO and Managing Director. He edited a series of forward-thinking business anthologies that included the original writings of over 300 visionaries from industry, business academia, and the professional communities. His latest book is Getting to the Better Future: A Matter of Conscious Choosing. He’s received praise as a business/social seer. Warren Bennis, best-selling author of leadership books for nearly twenty years, calls John "a wise elder who shines with wisdom." Stanford School of Business' Michael Ray calls him "a beacon lighting the way to a new paradigm." The Futurist magazine calls him a "business visionary." For more information about his work visit his website – www.Renesch.com . To contact him by email: John@Renesch.com; or call 415-437-6974.
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Published by www.opednews.com, February 26, 2006
Where Did The Compassion Go?
John Renesch
2006 © John Renesch
I’m not sure when we lost it but it was during my watch as a U.S. citizen. I’m in my late 60s and I remember World War II, the advent of credit cards, television and touch-tone phones, long before the co-called Technology Age. Being a fourth generation Californian, I was “Americanized by my family, school and the movies.
I remember when Americans were one of the most compassionate people in the world, willing to go to the far corners of the globe to help, send money, Care Packages, food and even military help if we thought it was having a humanitarian benefit. We felt so fortunate to be citizens of this great nation and so compassionate for those who were hurting in some way. Maybe it was because of our immigrant roots. But we cared about the rest of the world.
But it got off track someplace. And it happened on my watch. It happened sometime between my growing up and becoming a senior citizen. And it seems to be getting much worse, much faster!
We have become far less generous that we were only a generation or so back. We are nowhere close to being the most generous country when it comes to foreign aid. But we’re the richest country! We have the strongest military but we only commit troops now “to protect our interests.” Committing troops nowadays is largely to impose our own ideals on others. We’ve become ardent crusaders for The American Way instead of caring helpers and we all know what horrible consequences occur when ardent crusaders are fervently fighting for their cause.
Our commitment to help fight genocide withered immediately in the Sudan when a few of our soldiers was killed. We earned a reputation with the evil doers in the world as the country that has little stomach for fatalities from our own ranks. But this sensitivity has become reserved for Americans, not citizens of other countries. We do not seem to care about casualties from other countries. In recent years, we seem incredibly insensitive to the people who we kill, even accidentally, as long as they are not “Americans.”
The latest ghastly mistake resulting in the slaughter of 17 Iraqis has been a mere news item in recent days but I don’t detect any compassion, regret or even ownership for this tragedy. I can only presume that it is because there wasn’t an American killed in the attack.
One of the 2000 candidates for U.S. presidency ran his campaign on a platform of “compassionate conservativism” – an acknowledgement as to just how uncompassionate we had become. The compassionate thing worked. He ended up in the White House. While we haven’t seen much true compassion from the Washington since that election, it is a diversion for us to point the finger. “We the people” are the ones who’ve lost our ability to feel compassion for others. We the people are allowing our media and our leadership to take such a self-centered, unfeeling attitude toward the rest of the world. Instead of blaming our leaders or our media we need to exam our own hearts and see just how self-centered and callous we may be becoming in our rush for material wealth, technology fixes and our obsession with our own busy lives.
When people stop feeling in one area the deadening progresses. Once the heart starts shutting down or numbing out it spreads contagiously. In war we learn how to numb out the horrid impact our actions are having on others. The “enemy” becomes a demon animal or an object. Objectifying those we kill is a common way that soldiers numb themselves so they can continue functioning in battle. One way Americans do this is by “remote killing” – causing death and destruction with minimum risk to our military personnel. This kind of “clean killing” allows the killers to maintain that insulating distance and remain emotionally aloof from recognizing the full impact of what they’ve done.
The downside of this clinical approach to killing people is that there’s no feedback. Remember the B-29 airmen of World War II who firebombed Tokyo and were shocked when they actually had feedback of the impact, something they were unused to because they were well above the ground? The conflagration over Tokyo was so fierce they could actually smell the human flesh burning, even at their high altitudes!
If we continue to kill as if the enemy is an image in a video game, we will forget what taking a life is like. We will forget what compassion feels like. Then we’ll forget what sorrow feels like. Then we will have forgotten what its like to be human.
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http://www.renesch.com
John Renesch is a San Francisco businessman-turned-futurist. His background includes over thirty years experience as a business owner, CEO and Managing Director. He edited a series of forward-thinking business anthologies that included the original writings of over 300 visionaries from industry, business academia, and the professional communities. His latest book is Getting to the Better Future: A Matter of Conscious Choosing. He’s received praise as a business/social seer. Warren Bennis, best-selling author of leadership books for nearly twenty years, calls John "a wise elder who shines with wisdom." Stanford School of Business' Michael Ray calls him "a beacon lighting the way to a new paradigm." The Futurist magazine calls him a "business visionary." For more information about his work visit his website – www.Renesch.com . To contact him by email: John@Renesch.com; or call 415-437-6974. |
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op-ed for January 2005, sent to UPI Outside View
Has America Stopped Becoming?
by John Renesch
2005 © John Renesch
For a good part of our nation’s life, we were a society of dreamers. We were growing, maturing and learning how to bring forth the vision of our founders over 200 years ago. We were a work in progress, still developing. We earned our share of bloody noses and bruises to our pride through a number of mistakes as we continued to learn and grow and mature as a young country. We grew from being a small band of revolutionaries to a sovereign nation and then to the most powerful country on Earth in a very brief time relative to human history.
Somewhere during the last several decades, we stopped trying to become better. We stopped growing, except in population and economic terms. We stopped learning, developing and maturing. We stopped dreaming and we started protecting.
You see this happen with some teenagers who get a few things right and then start thinking they know it all. Pride turns to hubris and they become stubbornly entrenched in their arrogance. They think they are invincible, know-it-all and they project those images.
It seems to me we Americans have become stubbornly entrenched in our arrogance. We certainly haven’t shown much interest in acquiring whatever wisdom might be offered by any other culture.
One of the great things about these United States is that our greatness came out of our constant reinventing ourselves, the “can do” society which emulated the curious youngster who is constantly inquiring. Like a sponge soaking up all the wisdom life had to offer, humility allowed us to learn from the mistakes we made as well as from the mistakes made by other cultures throughout history.
Our innate greatness has become part of our egoic self-image and we have slipped into a mode of protecting ourselves. Instead of inspiring the rest of the world we are now trying to dominate them, flaunting our power over others, rubbing our material success in their faces. Self-confidence has morphed into self-righteousness and most of the world is more afraid of us than they are of terrorists.
As John O’Neil points out is his book The Shadow of Success, hubris was the hero’s “fatal flaw” in classical Greek drama. Successful leaders who fail to witness their shadow side are doomed to experience the “fatal flaw” at some point in their careers. This shadow side applies to nations as well as people and corporations. Historians claim nearly all great empires eventually failed because of this. You might say they committed national suicide!
Will America become “just another country” as some Europeans have been predicting? Will history report us as a once great society which eventually succumbed to the same “fatal flaw” that caused the Roman and British empires to implode?
I hope we can look deeply into our national arrogance, our know-it-all attitude, and begin dreaming, learning and growing again so we can return to becoming as great as we can be. I hope we once again become an inspiration to the world instead of a dominator. If we do not, we are risking our destiny and possibly even our survival.
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John Renesch is a futurist, social commentator and international keynote speaker. His website is www.Renesch.com
November 24, 2004 United Press International
Outside View: We are all Americans (as
published in The Washington Times)
Outside View Commentator
San Francisco, CA, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- Before you start making plans to move to another country or resume the pre-election pattern of furthering the divide between red and blue, left and right, conservative and liberal, let's take a deep breath and reflect a moment. Let us reflect on this great country we live in, these United States of America, a nation founded on dissent with a track record of weathering many ideological battles in our history.
I cannot recall when the United States has been this sharply divided. I wasn't around in the Civil War days, so that might have been somewhat comparable. Vietnam certainly caused many wounds, some of which evidently have not yet healed -- witness the debate during the just-concluded presidential election. But I also know we can seek out what divides us and come to some common reconciliation. After all, if the South Africans could do it after several generations of apartheid, Americans can certainly do it after one political campaign.
I am now refusing to look at e-mails -- even from friends -- that contain material that furthers the divide between us. I'm sick and tired of one side or the other insisting on being right and making the other side wrong. I got caught up in it several times myself. It is alluring and seductive to be sure.
Obviously, people have strong opinions concerning certain issues, and it looks unlikely that there's going to be any effective convincing through righteousness and sheer repetition. So we can either remain almost equally divided or seek a balance and come together.
What has proven to bring about reconciliation is talking to one another, seeking out the people with opposite views and engaging in dialogue with them. Clearly, we are all afraid. We may be afraid of different things, but we are nonetheless acting out of fear.
If nothing else, we were all afraid of what would happen if the other side won the election. We may have been afraid of terrorists, radical ideologies, losing our morality, war, long-term implications of our foreign policy or the economy, but we are all afraid of something.
By talking to one another we could discover what the other side is afraid of. We could share with them what we are afraid of. This requires vulnerability, not righteousness, on both sides of the conversation. We all love our country. Neither side is any less patriotic than the other, despite all the barbs that were exchanged during the campaign.
I had an insight while talking with some friends and colleagues on this subject and decided that when I am engaged with someone with another point of view, I will remain aware of whether what I am saying and how I am saying it furthers relationship and connection with the person or group or whether it serves to make me right. Does it bring us closer, or is my righteousness attempting to dominate? True dialogue bridges divides and allows for reconciliation, like the South Africans did in 1994 with their Truth and Reconciliation Project.
So I'm betting the commonality of all Americans can rise above individual personalities, loyalties and egos and stand tall for America to transcend this contemporary divide. My money is on our united-ness prevailing as our still young nation matures.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., once wrote, "We are an unfinished nation." We certainly are not finished, so there's more work to be done if we are to fully realize the great vision our founders articulated.
The United States is certainly still in its adolescence, showing all the traits of a pesky but accomplished teenager, a teenager with more stuff than any of the other teenagers, but still a teenager. All of this is part of our growing up and, as we know from our own experiences, growing up is hard to do.
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(John Renesch is a futurist, social commentator and international keynote speaker. His Web site is www.Renesch.com )
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American Hubris: A Case for National Arrogance
An op-ed piece for UPI by John Renesch
2004 © John Renesch
Psychologist Carl Jung coined the term “shadow” to describe an aspect of the human psyche that grows darker as it is left unexamined. Usually, it is something the person doesn’t want to “own” so they try to bury it where it festers until it erupts in some not-so-subtle ways. Really successful people, leaders and those used to achieving excellence and great success, often have higher profile “eruptions.” The media is filled with smart successful people turning into aberrations of their “normal” selves.
Looking at the “shadow side” of excellence is applicable not only to people but to groups, including whole nations. The fall of the Roman and British empires can attest to a sort of national or cultural hubris, a quality in the culture or national personality that remained unexamined in a dynamic similar to what has been called “group polarization” or “groupthink” on a very large scale.
This may be happening to the United States of America which has achieved great material success so quickly for such a young nation. Could our “national hubris” be raising its head like it did with the British and the Romans? Psychologists write about how people who achieve great success can start to think their desires will always be satisfied; they get so used to getting what they want that they start expecting it everywhere. Sometimes, they start thinking they must be blessed by God. It is not uncommon for whole cultures who have amassed worldly goods to convince themselves that they are “heaven's elect.”
All too often material possessions and power substitute for self-worth—whether we perceive ourselves as honest, kind, courageous, humble, loyal, or whatever virtues we claim to cherish. A colleague makes a point that when “self‑worth” is tied to “net worth,” people can be condemned to living superficially.
Great success can cloud even the most brilliant minds. An inflated national ego crowds out perspective and good judgment. It is easy to develop a sense of invulnerability that can be dangerous, not only for others but for our own nation.
In his book, The Paradox of Success, author John O’Neil states that the “hyper-achiever sometimes deliberately decides that old friends and associates are no longer good enough, especially if their perceptions of new achievements are not always flattering….A dark side of distinguishing oneself is the risk of isolation and alienation.”
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Since the danger represented by the “shadow” is leaving it unexamined, it could be time for all Americans to look deeply into our souls and do some truth-telling about aspects of our nation and our culture that we may prefer stay hidden. Shining light on whatever darkness we may encounter will make us healthier, far less dysfunctional and allow us to thrive.
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John Renesch is a futurist and social commentator who lives in San Francisco. His latest book is Getting to the Better Future. His website is www.Renesch.com.
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July 30, 2004 United Press International
Shouting at Our Choirs:
Political Frenzies Going Nowhere Fast
an op-ed by John Renesch
published in The Washington Times
2004 © John Renesch
The political left is doing it as well as the right, just using different mediums. Both are screaming at their own constituencies with the gospel according to Michael Moore or Paul Wolfowitz, Al Franken or Bill O’Reilly, documentary movies or radio talk shows.
I’m reminded of how children or immature adults will raise their voices when they don’t think they’re being understood. They start screaming in a desperate attempt to get their point across. Rather than reconsider how and what they are saying they raise the volume. That is what both the left and right wings of American politics are doing in what I’m experiencing as one of the most polarized political climates I have witnessed since the 1960s and Vietnam. It is also incredibly adolescent.
The vitriol and rancor being expressed is killing all of us. What is surprising is that we are shouting in the faces of our own constituents, polluting our own nests! Neither side is listening to the other so all that verbal venom is being spewed at the already converted, the true believers, the choirs to which we already belong. Whether we are a member of The Church of the Left or The Church of the Right, why shout at the true believers in our own congregations? Are we so frustrated that we’re having such little impact on “the other side” that we are whipping ourselves into adolescent frenzies like lynch mobs?
Wouldn’t real debate be a refreshing change? Dialogue might be too much to hope for but genuine debate would be far healthier for all of us, including our wonderful country. Debate, however, demands a much higher level of exchange, a “higher road.” Listening is a requirement. Both sides must listen in true debate. Both sides must be open to having their minds changed. But shouting our points-of-view at each other is not debate and it is nowhere even close to dialogue.
I’m reminded of a time when our country was perhaps the most united and energized, in those years between the signing of the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s second term as President. An incredibly visionary man, Washington saw a great deal of benefit in having more than one political party since each could learn from the other and, together, they could better resolve situations than either might achieve separately. His fear, however, was that one party would think of their interests as more important than the whole and try to destroy the opposition rather than learn from it. While he envisioned collaborative opposition as contributing to order and unity of a growing nation, he saw what we’d call “partisanship” today as being absolute poison to the vision of our founders.
Lincoln reminded us that “a house divided cannot stand.” Senator John McCain reminded us of a couple of years ago that we are still “an unfinished nation.” Let’s act as if these three men from three different centuries might be offering us some useful wisdom and start behaving in ways that bring us together, seeking the best for all the people, not just those who have joined our camp. “We the people” of these “United States” are in grave danger of losing both our “we-ness” and our “united-ness” forever.
Let’s declare a cease fire on the venom-spewing and focus on where we might learn from each other. Let’s grow up and stop this adolescent squabbling and name-calling. Let us stop traveling down this road to nowhere, this path leading us to becoming “just another country.” Let’s allow ourselves to transcend the adversarial DNA in our culture that our legal system has planted and our media continues to enflame. Let us break free of our adolescent righteousness, our own addictions to the right-wrong game. Let us stand tall for that greatness that Washington saw in this great nation.
It starts here and now. After all, if not here, where? If not now, when? And it starts with us, you and me. After all, who else is there?
John Renesch is a futurist and social commentator who lives in San Francisco. His latest book is Getting to the Better Future. His website is www.Renesch.com.
United Press International June 18, 2004
Outside View: An
American introspection
by John Renesch
A UPI Outside View commentary
SAN FRANCISCO, June 18 (UPI) -- Don't look now but U.S. arrogance is showing!
Americans still brag about how great we are when the evidence for this being
true is rapidly evaporating. Here are a few examples of where we are really off
in our braggadocio:
-- While we proudly claim to be the world's greatest democracy, fewer than 40
percent of us voted in the last national election, placing us 139th in voter
turnout among 167 democracies.
-- While we brag that we stand for equality our actions convey total
superiority, that we are "king of the hill" and that the rest of the world isn't
equal to us at all.
-- We claim to stand for personal freedom but most of our citizens are feeling
less free, working longer hours, burdened by debt and stress.
-- While we used to be "the world's best friend" we are now the biggest bully
on the planet, relying on military power and economic coercion to "have our way"
with the rest of the world, making enemies right and left as we do.
Mental health professionals call this "hubris" or exaggerated pride or
self-confidence. Self-confidence is one thing but delusion is a much more
serious matter. The United States is acting in such contrast to what we tell
ourselves that we could be clinically designated as delusional. Jung called this
refusal to look at the darker sides of oneself the "shadow." It would seem we
have a severe case of "national shadow" and this concerns me for our country.
This disconnect from reality, which we are all part of, whether we are
actively engaged in it or simply turning a deaf ear to what is happening, could
cost us our wonderful country. Why have we become so fixated on imposing our
"way" on the world, ignoring all other cultures, when we were so committed to
democracy and freedom? Why do we insist on blustery rhetoric such as "USA No.
1!" and promoting our version of capitalism, our version of explicit sexuality,
our version of music videos, our version of a true God?
Hypocrisy is part of it. Arrogance is another.
The Roman and British empires crumbled, as have many so many others throughout
history. Our nation's attempt to establish "a new American Empire" (call it
"hegemony" or some other polite term instead of "domination") is pure folly as
well as a further distraction from the original American Dream. Most great
cultures implode. They destroy themselves.
Is the United States on the same track? Have we reached the epitome on our
path to destiny? Are we on track to be "just another country" as many are
predicting?
I don't think so. I believe that the United States has a much higher calling,
a calling whereby all people have equal rights, opportunity and their basic
needs met. Why can't we live up to that calling and include the rest of the
world rather than pretending that we know what's good and right and, "By God,
we're going to thrust our point of view down the throats of everyone else in the
world just because we can!"
The United States has the military power and can dominate or bully our way for
now. Yes, we have the economic clout to intimidate all cultures to conform or
suffer. Yes, we can insist that the world succumbs to our demands and yields to
our arm-twisting. But will we still be around in a generation? Will we have
manifested the destiny so many of us feel is yet unfulfilled for these United
States of America?
These are questions I ask myself and wonder if anyone else is doing the same.
If they are, they are being very quiet.
Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International
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June 2, 2004 United Press International
|
see at http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040531-025010-3369r
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Is National Outrage About to Finally Occur?
an op-ed piece by John Renesch
2004 © John Renesch
Suppose a young man enters the police academy where he befriends several fellow cadets who share his firmly-held ideology for how the world should be. One of the ideas that binds them together is a vendetta around one particular guy they consider a real hood, a bully within the ghettos. We’ll call him “Bad Guy.” The cadets frequently talk about what they’d do to Bad Guy if they were ever to catch him doing anything wrong when they’re on duty. They itch for any opportunity to “nail” him.
The cadets graduate and start on the local police force. They speculate about what excuses they can muster and how they’ll be real heroes if they could activate their plan and get Bad Guy off the streets.
One day, after hearing the dispatcher report an incident in Bad Guy’s part of town, the young rookie officer invites a couple of his rookie pals to meet him there. They find Bad Guy and bullets start to fly. Bad Guy is seriously wounded and some of his friends are killed. The officers call headquarters and report that they were merely going to question “a nasty looking man” when he went for a gun and they opened fire.
But eyewitnesses come forward and testify that Bad Guy never went for a gun! In fact, they say, he wasn’t carrying a weapon of any kind. Sure enough, no weapon is found. As the media focuses on the story, a former fellow cadet from their academy days informs the media that the young officer and his pals had plotted to put Bad Guy out of commission long before they were ever sworn in!
Now the community gets really pissed! Public outcries are heard on the six o’clock news. The community is outraged and boiling mad. The investigators of the incident feel huge pressures to get to the facts as soon as possible and prevent the public’s rage from turning into frustrated rioting. The offending officers are suspended until the investigation is completed.
An inquest is held and the Grand Jury decides that the men must be tried for murder. The indicted officers post bail awaiting the trial date and the community temporarily cools down, waiting to see if justice will be served.
Public outrage like this is completely understandable for citizens of a nation that claims to be a true democracy and advocates worldwide human rights and democratic principles. This demand for justice is appropriate for people living in a country where “all men are created equal” and our anthem cries for “liberty and justice for all.”
Americans have long served as a model for freedom and democracy for the rest of the world. So why are we mystified when people all around the world are perplexed by our endorsement of an invasion of another country, an entirely new precedent for the U.S.? Why does public legitimacy for this drastic departure of U.S. policy continue, even after discovering that all the justifications for a preemptive attack were false?
Where is the national outrage about this? How can we get so incensed about policemen who use vigilante tactics in our neighborhoods but remain so complacent about our national leaders doing the equivalent on a global scale? How can we remain so silent and polite as we learn of lie after lie in justifying an invasion, a plan which had been part of an overthrow doctrine hatched long before the War on Terror?
Why do we get so worked up over one President who lies about getting blow jobs from an intern (an incident between consenting adults) yet remain so passive when another one lies to justify invading another nation (costing thousands of lives, injuring tens of thousands and costing billions)? Where is our sense of proportion here?
The policemen are supposed to be the Good Guys. The public relies on them for protection, to operate within “just cause” and truth-telling. After all, that’s what the “good guys” are supposed to do in a democracy! Why don’t we demand the same of all our public servants, whether they serve in on the local police force or in the White House?
If we allow our public servants to lie, bully, employ vigilante tactics and dictate new doctrines and policy without our expressed permission, then we are no better than the “bad guys” we claim to abhor. If we don’t express our outrage and stop condoning their actions though our silence, we get what we deserve.
In a democracy, that’s the deal!
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Author
John Renesch is a U.S. writer, futurist and former businessman. He can be reached at John@Renesch.com.
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Waking Up America
A Return to What Made Us Great
an op-ed piece by John Renesch
2003 © John Renesch
Has anyone else noticed that there are a few facts that contradict the values we Americans claim to hold near and dear?
We think of ourselves as champions of democracy yet the majority of us didn’t bother to vote in the last national election. We claim to advocate freedom in the rest of the world yet we do our best to bully, bribe and coerce other countries to do our bidding and impose our values on other cultures.
Our souls scream for community yet we avert our eyes whenever we pass someone on the sidewalk. We complain about how busy we are yet we continue to make choices that add to our busy-ness. Based upon our actions, we’d rather interact with technology than other people.
We claim to abhor violence yet we surround ourselves with it every day – in the movies we watch, the news we listen to, and the words in the music we choose.
We get so righteous about any nation we identify as our foe for going back on its word yet we ourselves break international treaties designed for the good of all. We refuse to join other nations in the banning and removal of landmines, environmental initiatives such as the Earth Summit, remain outside of the international war crime tribunals, and continue being in arrears in our U.N. support. Who’s ignored more UN resolutions, broken more treaties, and ignored world opinion more than the U.S.?
To use the old colloquialism, our walk doesn’t match our talk.
We claim to cherish life but what our actions tell the world that we only cherish American lives.
We condemn religious fundamentalism yet we fill our store windows with posters extorting that God is blessing our country – certainly a strong implication that the one true God is with us.
We see the ourselves as a paternalistic nation – the world’s protector of freedom and democracy - the one nation with the power and the responsibility to make the world safe. Yet, the rest of the world is afraid of us and we tell them to go to hell. We have become the big bully in the world, if not with our military intrusions then with our blustery rhetoric. While we are the richest nation in the world, we give the least percentage of our wealth to other countries.
A psychiatrist friend of mine called this schism or disconnectedness between one’s stated values and how one actually lives their life as “double-mindedness.”
The evidence suggests that we have become a nation of liars and hypocrites – at least if you compare what we say we value and what we value with our actions – our votes, our wallets, our behaviors and the legitimacy we give to our designated leaders.
Perhaps we Americans are not as self-centered as we appear to be. Perhaps we have simply drifted into a stupor as a result of being so wrapped up in our own lives – like falling into a coma. It isn’t too late to come out of our stupor. It begins by seeing our complicity in the state of the world and that it isn’t simply everyone else’s fault.
Americans can transcend their double-mindedness by simply growing up. Like the adolescent who eventually needs to leave the house where he or she grew up, it is time for us to become mature citizens of the world. We needn’t give up our national identity or forsake our patriotism. Adolescents don’t forsake their parents when they leave home, or forget their home towns. They simply expand their sense of who they are to include other neighborhoods, cities, states and other regions of the world. Their universe expands as a part of growing up.
Americans have an opportunity right now. We have another chance to demonstrate global leadership and mature global citizenship, just as we have in generations past.
One of America’s greatest traditions has been that we held ourselves to higher standards in all that we did. I’d like to see us – as a “We the People” nation - renew that tradition, not just in talk but in our deeds as well.
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John Renesch is a San Francisco-based social commentator, futurist and author of Getting to the Better Future: A Matter of Conscious Choosing. More about him can be found at www.Renesch.com.
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A Return to Freedom:
Changing the Regime of Our Own Thinking
an op-ed piece by John Renesch
2002 © John Renesch
We have gone insane. We are allowing a relatively few “stupid white men” (thank you Michael Moore), who have not quite achieved mental or emotional maturity, to make decisions for the vast majority of us while we remain silent. Worse yet, our silence is perceived as agreement, making us just as complicit in the insanity as if we were working shoulder to shoulder with the other “stupid white men.” Failing to dissent, failing to challenge, failing to speak out lends legitimacy to a system gone berserk.
While many talk about regime change – whether it is in Baghdad or in Washington – I suggest that we need to overthrow a government of a different sort. If we are so damn interested in fostering democracy and freedom, as we claim to be, let us begin with ourselves. Let us begin with the regimes of our own minds.