Stand for Something

Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Will Marre.
Categories: Leadership, Community, ADP Diary.

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I just returned from a week-long retreat with 22 other Americans from a cross-section of society. The group included a career diplomat, a large business owner, two software engineers, a young entrepreneur with a Master’s degree in Philosophy, a very successful real estate agent, a petroleum geologist, a scientific lab manager, a dentist, a restaurant owner, a professional photographer, an LA city fireman, and several others ranging in age from 24 to 60. First of all, spending a week with 22 strangers in unguarded conversation is a thoroughly encouraging experience. I am constantly amazed at the thoughtful concerns and original ideas found in everyday people who care about our future. What I learned will not surprise you.

To the degree our wonderful tossed salad group of humanity is a representative of America there is much agreement about our desperate need for moral leadership of our nation and our global businesses. There is a strong sense that the chance for a “systems collapse” of our economic system, environment, energy supply and political peace is not only possible but also getting much more likely. What our group agreed on was that although solutions to all of our problems exist, our political and business leaders simply don’t have the vision or the will to do what it will take to lead us out of our desolate wilderness. We agreed that most of our leaders seem to hope muddling through will somehow produce a magic “soft landing” from our current free fall. Leaders present their fantasy world where we win the Iraq war, gasoline returns to $2.00/gallon, medical care becomes affordable and our mortgages get refinanced at payments we can all afford. Since no one at the retreat believes in magic, we saw this as a failure of leadership in terms of both competence and character. It’s a failure of leadership character because we view our national political leaders and the new candidates who wish to run things as either self-interested or controlled by special interests.

For instance, none of us are naive enough to believe that Bill Clinton’s rock-star income “earned” from speaking in the Middle East to dictators and big global corporations will have no effect on policies coming from a Clinton White House. Most of the group worried that a continuation of Republican leadership would lead to even more special interest corruption, corporate welfare and tax subsidies to oil companies, the synthetic food industry, and predatory drug companies. And while Obama is certainly inspiring to listen to, his actual policies seem like failed refried liberal programs of increasing taxes and more social “programs” that sound good but accomplish little.

People are universally outraged at government waste and out-of-sync priorities. As one person said, “We don’t need more taxes. We need smarter spending.” Turns out our own government accounting office agrees. They recently estimated one-third of our $3 trillion budget is wasted. Just think of what we could do to solve our education crises, rebuild our roads, bridges, sewer and water supplies, find solutions to clean-renewable energy and increase the number of doctors and nurses trained if we spent the trillion dollars we were wasting on priorities that mattered!

But no one believes much will change unless we change it. Most of the group views our present Congress as completely ineffectual, even incompetent, to lead. They spoke with outrage that American oil companies could make $123 billion in profit in 2007 while oil soars to $117 a barrel and yet our spineless, bought-and-paid-for-Congress couldn’t even attempt to cut the $18 billion tax subsidy they give these bad boys every year.

We still have no realistic energy policy, no trade policy, no plan to save our children from the abject collapse of our education system, no sensible foreign policy, no plan for universal health care that we can honestly afford, no plan to rethink social security, except to raise taxes. In short, it seems from our national leaders we have nothing, zip, nada. It’s like watching your house burn down with the fire department standing in the street with their hands in their pockets chatting about who’s to blame.

So what did we decide to do about it? Basically—all we can. We decided to stand for something. As Paul Hawken writes in his brilliant book Blessed Unrest, we are society’s immune system. Our beliefs and behavior can be an immune response to life threatening toxins like political corruption, environmental destruction, economic greed and plain incompetent leadership. Increasingly, concerned citizens are speaking out to identify cancerous thinking and promote robust healing. As Hawkin points out, there are millions of people worldwide increasingly linked into a growing network of activists and supporters fighting for the future of humanity. These are moms and dads fighting for their children’s education, employees confronting bad behavior and wasteful policies and community groups planting trees and cleaning the beaches. It all matters.

So, where to start? One of the members of the group, a realtor, wowed me with his business card. It of course had his company name and contact information and under his own name, in unmistakable type, were the words, “Peace Activist and Environmental Advocate.” Surprised I Said, “Doesn’t this put off some of your potential clients? Doesn’t it create risk for you?” He replied with a shrug, “If you don’t take risks, you’ll never stand for anything.” It got me thinking. What if we all put what we stand for on our business cards? What would you put on yours?

Will Marre

 

Founder, American Dream Project

 

To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.

8 comments.

The Rule of Love »« We Are Better Than This

Michelle
Comment on April 24th, 2008.

I am also sensing the rising level of frustration. I have been shocked recently by the number of people who really don’t seem to care enough to stand for something, and encouraged by the number of people who are starting to raise their voices. You can find my perspective in my blogpost “Do the right thing”: http://breakroom.buildingbsolutions.com/2008/04/11/do-the-right-thing.aspx

I think generally people at this point don’t want to have to fight to make things happen. The key from my perspective is uncovering a way for peaceful motivation, growth and change.

I’m with ya’!

June
Comment on April 24th, 2008.

Will,

I’m not sure how I got on your email list but I have a couple of resources I think you would benefit knowing about. I’ve just started my PhD program at Wisdom University in San Francisco, CA and I invite you to go to their website www.wisdomuniversity.org and check out their link Cultural Creatives. Paul Ray, a sociologist published a book based on a national survey he did in 1996 called The Cultural Creatives. How 50 Million People are Changing the World. He is one of the main instructors at Wisdom U. He has done an update survey which has expanded to an international scope and will be releasing the results in June or July. The goal is to make this powerful group of people consciouse of one another in order to coordinate efforts together. Plans are being made to hold a world conference in 2009 in the U.S and internationally in 2010 and after. More about this vision is on the Wisdom U. website.

The second resource deals with Integrity Intelligence a newly released book by Dr. David Gruder (in Southern California) about the need to restore integrity in ourselves and our leaders. His work is a roadmap for doing that. His website is www.willingness.com. He challenges people to take his integrity pledge and to connect on his forum to discuss how to impliment this in each one’s individual realm. I am being trained in taking leaders specifically through this process - preferably in groups.

We are at the end of an era and have the opportunity to help determine what the next one will look like. Paul Ray has several things to say about this and might be interesting for you to check out his downloads from Wisom’s Website the Emerging Wisdom Culture class he teaches.

Hans
Comment on April 24th, 2008.

How about empowering yourself by throwing out the TV-set? The cable etc is an unfiltered pipeline to your consciousness that does NOT evolve us. To the contrary it is negative low frequency energy and you invited it into your life and you even pay for hearing/seeing the propaganda that is destroying us; fear, violence, dissatisfaction, dissonance, addiction, desperation, stress, etc.

As suggested by others, we can boycott Exxon-Mobil- just drive by, single out one big player and see what happens!

Don’t give in to desperation because you allow yourself to be manipulated; see the world through eyes other than your own. Through out the news paper too. Become a critical thinker and start asking questions. Read about Nazi Germany, about their proven practices, that should wake us up out off our stupor of Bread and Games promoted by “Big Television”.Cheers.

Mark Alan Effinger
Comment on April 24th, 2008.

Fear.

What keeps people from making the RIGHT decision?

Ignorance (but in leadership positions, brilliance is all around, so this is no excuse) and fear.

Will, I couldn’t agree more.We need to open the kimona on the decision making process, and let leaders know that making the right decision, the empowered decision, is the path to success.

And sleep. You sleep a LOT better when you make the right decisions.

Awesome. This is yet ANOTHER book-length post that needs publishing…

To your continued success,
Mark Alan Effinger
RichContent.com

tomk
Comment on April 24th, 2008.

WE are all living in a state of DENIAL. There is no immediate way out of this mess for the United States - the Rubicon has been crossed. ‘Dark Ages America - The Final Phase of Empire’ - Morris Berman. Good night and good luck!

Carol
Comment on April 24th, 2008.

I see the outer world and the condition that it’s in as a reflection of our collective unconsciousness. The only way I see a significant change happening is for individuals to wake up and treat themselves, each other and the planet with respect. That is what I stand for and the reason I founded Destination Satori. Satori is the awakening that occurs when the body, mind, heart and spirit are in their natural state of harmony. The way our world situation looks right now, most of us must be operating from a state of disharmony, which unfortunately is considered “normal.” I wholeheartedly support the idea of getting involved and taking action and I believe that passion is coming from an awakened state of consciousness in the form of Will Marre. He’s an inspired visionary that gets stuff done!

Lorrie
Comment on April 24th, 2008.

We all need to start relying on ourselves rather than on others - there’s a lot one person can do - one big thing - do some research on biofuels (most notably B100 - PURE vegetable oil) to run your diesel car engine on. Get off dino juice AND stop polluting the air - just remember - the diesel engine was invented to run on PEANUT oil - not on petroleum based diesel as THAT hadn’t been invented yet….I believe that we need to get back to what it was that made America great in the first place - ordinary people doing extraordinary things - and inventing the technology necessary for continued and prosperous growth. We CAN do it - we just need to realize that NO ONE ELSE is going to do it for us. We must all become the inventors and creators of our own lives.

Richard E. Bull
Comment on April 26th, 2008.

“The Truth Shall Set You Free!” And there isn’t much of it in our current society. I agree with so much in this entry. Polictically “Bush” or “Clinton” … haven’t we done this before? Neither has added much to a dialogue about truth. Every ballot should have a “None Of The Above.” box to check.

How many people in our current society are willing to tell the truth about anything? Not many.

The economy is in trouble, education is an abject failure (our high school graduates or down in the 30s in rankings of industrialized nations). As a college instructor I am often appalled at the text we are given to use. Politically Correct, but (and therefore) inaccurate in so many ways. We are not telling our students the truth (although I try to do this as often as possible.). How can we call our young people educated if they are brought up on lies? A community college AA degree barely is up to high school diploma 40 years ago. And we don’t teach our young people how to think, only how to parrot the positions put forth by the schools. Nor are our young people taught to question things

‘nough said for now

Richard

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