Category: 6 Star Top 10%

Posted on

Review: The leadership of civilization building–Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century

6 Star Top 10%, Change & Innovation, Cosmos & Destiny, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Information Society, Leadership

Leadership CivilizationAstonishing Powerful, Easy to Read, MUST Be Reprinted

February 2, 2008

Richard J Spady

This book was recommended to me by Joseph McCormick, former Army Ranger, world-class philosopher, and one of the founders of Reuniting America, 110 million strong and totally transpartisan in nature. We both agree with Peter Peterson's views in Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It. None of the political candidates today, with one possible exception, understand Epoch B Swarm Leadership (I cannot load images for out of print books, please see the four non-fiction images at this link: Managing the Nonprofit Organization), and even the exception keeps talking about one America, Democrats and Republicans together. This otherwise erudite man fails to understand that over half of the two parties' members no longer identify with the extremist spoils system; that Independents are fully unified as a third party; and that Libertarians, Greens, and Reforms are now a fourth slice of America that must be respected. This book is the ONE BOOK that I would recommend to anyone who wants to be a transpartisan leader and co-steward of America the Beautiful.

If you are completely unfamiliar with the broad literature on co-intelligence, wisdom councils, citizen councils, large-scale human collaboration, this one book is a superb overview and reflects over two decades of pioneering by the authors.

On the other hand, if you are fully or even partially familiar with the books I list below, this book is a marvelous tightly integrated yet smoothly presented stand-alone which won my immediate respect because of the thoroughness of the authors in respecting and citing other pioneers.

Since it is out of print, but I was able to get a perfect-condition signed copy from 6 Finches (5 stars, great deal), I want to point out that the hard-copy cover that does not appear on this Amazon page is world-class, and I believe this book should be reprinted in paperback and also offered free online.

The Foreword by Rev Dr William Ellington and William Cane of the Forum Foundation is alone worth the price of the book. It is a spectacular erudite and yet down to earth overview, and alone, captures the entire book.

This is a solution oriented book, one that represents the view that the meaning of life is social–interpersonal–the collective pursuit of happiness. The book calls for massive social innovation, and implicitly, addresses precisely how we need to deal with the fact that all three branches of the government are broken, the two political parties are craven and corrupt, and most of our other institutions, including the so-called forth estate of the media, are equally decrepit. To take just one example from another book, The New York Times wrote 70 editorials on Iraq, and never once mentioned international law or morality.

The book offers nine pages of quotes from others, and the first part of the book stresses–without any excessive verbiage–that the spiritual core of science was lost; that “science was not only not inevitably progressive but not even inevitably benign. Citing Eltron Mayo, material progress has retarded human collaboration. Further on: slogans, distorted news, and propaganda all undermine diversity of views and potential of human collaboration.

The book states clearly that the current top-down elitist system of government and corporate management is broken. Further on in the book they point out that authoritarian “rolism” denies and deprives the individual of the right to be heard; the right to participate in decisions about their life and the life of their community.

Throughout the book the authors stress that the ultimate source of power is the people themselves; that civic values and the ability to collaborate to discover and communicate and effect common good, is the heart of civilization.

They introduce the concept of Many-to-Many (MTM) communications, and the last half of the book is full of examples including protocols and forms that can be used for large scale deliberative democracy where human opinions are presented by machine and polarization-consensus visualized and returned to the human participants as feedback and inspiration.

This book is at root about enabling, leveraging, and effecting large-scale collaboration that is inherently moral and legitimate.

Below are concise snapshots of each of the main sections of the book.

Basic Attitude: respect, listen, accept or reject, modify.

Learning: damns our rote one-way (didactic) learning, calls for activating and challenging all children from the earliest age with social network and information sharing skills.

Leadership: decisions must be made at the lowest level at which BOTH sufficiency of information and sufficiency of resources can be combined. Centralization of leadership is BAD, dictators (we have 44 of them, 42 best pals of both Clinton-Gore and Bush-Cheney) will not prevail.

Authority: derived from the consent of the governed. Moral authority is the only authority impervious to legal authority that exceeds its mandate as Bush-Cheney and the doormat Congress have done these past eight years. Democracy in the ideal is inspired society in pursuit of happiness for ALL.

Politics: best if completely open, interactive, maximizing understanding, collaboration, and engagement across all boundaries at all levels. I agree, and this is one reason we need Electoral Reform legislation that puts both the Democratic and Republican party machines OUT OF BUSINESS.

Prophecy: Golden Rule, honesty, collaboration instead of pyramidal top-down mandate. Reuniting America uses the word “transpartisanship.”

Administrative (I prefer Stewardship): Diagnose, theorize, accomplish, and review.

Helping Professions: characterized by direct human interaction and the need to recognize and react instantly, build trust, communicate vision.

Zeitgeist: Spirit-of-the-Time, Group must find its soul and its collective understanding. Constant feedback, spirit of listening, vital. Must be impersonal in the good sense, symbolic dialog is rooted in moral authority. We must strive for common opinions, reflections, and interests. I am reminded of Native American councils focusing on total consensus (don't stop until achieved), seventh generation thinking, and the Great Law of Peace adopted by the Five Nations. The right to be heard, to participate in decisions affecting one, one's family, one's community. The ultimate challenge: how to activate and channel human responsibility.

Natural Factors: diagnosis improved, learning improved, peace prospects improved, power of values.

Civilization Theories: unified social field, social quantum mechanics, open societies herald a strategy for peace. Quote Wheatley, “Imagine ourselves as beacons towers of information.” Life is One; One from Many (Dee Hock's book title); Unity in Community.

MTM: communications up and down left and right, forward and back. This reminds me of Paul Ray's brilliant world on “The New Political Compass,” from which I derived a one-page summary of what some of us are now calling “the new progressives” (not to be confused with MoveOn.org's rather myopic assumption that the Democratic Party is the only source of progressive ideas. I certainly disagree, indeed my ideal ticket would be Huckabee-Obama trading places every four years for sixteen years; with Bill Bradley and Susan Collins and a transpartisan sunshine cabinet funded by Michael Bloomberg with Ralph Nader as Chief of Staff, all leading a national conversation based on an online balanced budget open to discussion by all.

Tools: the last part of the book is equally impressive, and the authors present Fast Forum for rapid large scale collaboration and deliberation; importance of mainstreaming reality; social resolution power, Symbolic Dialog as code for human opinions, machine visualization, feedback, and reentry into dialog. I note their phrase, knowledge is in books, wisdom is in minds. The end with hard but civil comments about a social conspiracy and bureaucratic inertia.

Applications: They outline, including illustrative documents and survey forms, how their ideas could be applied at the state, local, and social levels, and especially in education, where they recommend teaching social knowledge and networking from day one; gaming the curriculum with the students' active participation, exploring clean-sheet “how it might work,” and also exploring new forms of moral discussion in which “right or wrong” are set aside to allow for a full embrace of diversity.

There are a number of relevant appendices, the first of which discusses how government and corporate power today are neither responsive nor legitimate. There are conflicts of interest, and only a massive social innovation powered by citizens will break through into new modes of self-governance.

At the end I am introduced to the Dodd Institute for Social Innovation, and I am impressed.

This is a sensational book, and it should be reprinted or at least offered free online. Here are other books that I have found valuable. See also the four images from Earth Intelligence Network that I offer to help illustrate how the 24 co-founders of EIN have absorbed and now give back the kind of wisdom that this book represents. See also:

The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

At Earth Intelligence Network, there are 52 tough questions with transpartisan answers; over 1000 book reviews sorted by threat, policy, or other aspects of achieving the goals that these two authors; and the first of three free books online, COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.

Posted on

Review: How to Change the World–Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition

6 Star Top 10%, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Education (General), Leadership, Philosophy, Stabilization & Reconstruction

Change the WorldSingle best book I have read in past five years

January 27, 2008

David Bornstein

I read a lot, almost totally non-fiction, and for the past several years, after accidentally becoming a top Amazon reviewer on the strength of 300 reviews lifted from the annotated bibliographies of my first two books, I have been dedicated, as a hobby, to reading in the service of the public. My goal in life at the age of 55, what I learned from this book is called an “encore career,” is to be intelligence officer to the five billion poor, and–I now realize from this book–to the social entrepreneurs that are changing the world on a scale and with a speed that governments cannot match.

This book blew my mind, literally. It has not altered my course, but it has dramatically accelerated my ability to make progress by illuminating a path I thought I would have to discover. This book is the first “map” of a completely new form of endeavor, profoundly individual in inspiration and global in scale, that of social entrepreneurship, not to be confused with non-profit or non-governmental, more traditional forms.

The author, apart from mapping examples (33, focused on education, health, protection, and access to electricity and technology), provides what I consider to be the single best preface/introduction I have ever read. Here are a few of the underlined bits:

+ hidden history unfolding
+ landscape of innovators
+ ratio of problem-focused information to solution-focused information is completely out of balance
+ reality distorted, people deprived of knowledge they could use
+ individual social entrepreneurs advancing systemic scalable solutions
+ new sector of social entrepreneurship now being taught, funded, and respected
+ two Nobel Peace Prizes (2004, 2006)–micro-finance now micro-everything
+ Ashoka, founded by Bill Drayton is the spine of the book
+ conceptual firewalls coming down, “whole brains” being used
+ influencing conventional businesses (going green, good) and governments (adopting unconventional education, kids teaching parents, etc)
+ “social entrepreneurs are uniquely suited to make headway on problems that have resisted considerable money and intelligence”
+ government are looking at problems from the outside, social entrepreneurs see problems–and solutions–from the inside
+ scale still a challenge, but coming
+ Students and local groups actively interested in hearing about this now
+ Students are leading the way, pushing for change in curriculums
+ optimism, hope, energy are being unleashed as never before–but not being properly mapped, reported, or appreciated outside small circles
+ new pathways being discovered every day in every place
+ changemakers far more numerous than any might have imagined
+ many levels of changemaker
+ charaqcterized by first-hand active engagement in reality
+ individuals driven to understand, and driven to remove shackles from others with shared knowledge (e.g. kids learning to fix pumps and spreading knowledge across villages with a speed and energy only quick-witten children could apply)
+ social entrepreneurship network now has sensors everywhere, millions of changemarkers, tens of thousands of organizations
+ far better mechanism to respond to needed than we have ever had before
+ decentralized and emergent force

BAD NEWS:
– not yet properly financed
– lacking holistic public intelligence for voluntary harmonization against the ten threats, with the twelve policies, with a special focus on the eight challengers. (Learn more at Earth Intelligence Network)
+ emphasis on metrics slows down the needed pace of funding for innovation

Core principles for social excellence (chapter twelve):
+ Putting Children in Charge
+ Enlisting “Barefoot” Professionals
+ Designing New Legal Frameworks for Environmental Reform
+ Helping Small Producers Capture Greater Profits
+ Linking Economic Development and Environmental Protection
+ Unleashing Resources in the Community You Are Serving
+ Linking the Citizen, Government, and Business Sectors for Comprehensive Solutions (this is where shared public intelligence and a shared Range of Gifts Table can harmonize disparate capabilities with a common interest in stabilization, reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, and relief)

The book ends with a superb resource section including the following headings for lists of one-line access points:
+ Resources for People Seeking Jobs and Volunteer Opportunities
+ Organizations that Identify and/or Support (or Invest in) Social Entrepreneurs
+ Management, Funding, and Networking Resources for Citizen Organizations
+ Academic-Based Resources
+ Resources for Funders
+ Resources for Businesspeople

The notes and index are totally professional.

I put this book down with one final note: WOW!!!

This is an Earth-changing book, an utterly brilliant, timely, ethical, wonderful piece of scholarship, journalism, vision and information sharing. I actually have tears in my eyes. This book is Ref A for saving the Earth seven generations into the future and beyond.

Other books that support this one, but this one is unique:
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)

See also the books I have written, helped edit, or published, including our forthcoming COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, edited by Mark Tovey with 55 contributors. It will be on Amazon 1 March 2008, and is offered free online at Earth Intelligence Network.

In addition, I recommend the “52 Tough Questions” with transpartisan answers at Earth Intelligence Network, that address the ten high-level threats to humanity as identified by the UN study on “Creating a More Secure world” (free online and also sold via Amazon), the twelve policies that must be harmonized, and the eight challengers whom we must help avoid our mistakes of the past 100 years.

This book by David Bornstein could not have come into my life at a better time–the New York Times calls it a bible in the field, I consider it to be my inspiration for my encore career. Simply spectacular. AMAZING–not just the book, but every person and organization the book names and discusses. WOW!!!

Posted on

Review: The Social Life of Information

6 Star Top 10%, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Misinformation & Propaganda, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Social LifeSuperb Primer for Any Age

January 19, 2008

John Seely Brown

I come to this book eight years after it was first published, and with all the accolades and superb reviews that it has already accummulated, my primary focus here, apart from flagging the book for those that follow my reviews, is to suggest that it is one of the finest overviews available and easily exploited as a primer for undergraduates, graduates, or adults pursuing their own continuing education via Amazon, which is now the hub of the World Brain.

As is my custom, I provide here a few highlights from my flyleaf notes, and then link to ten books that can be used to study discrete aspects of the digital age as I have come to understand it.

This is one of the best books I have found that makes the case that “fiber to the forehead” is next to worthless, it is not about acquiring more information, but rather about the nuanced networking and social interpretations of information in context.

Indeed, they say that with all the technologies now pushing and creating digital information, consumption of this information is only increasing among individuals by 1.7 percent a year.

I value this book, in part because I have seen the U.S. secret intelligence community lose its mind, today spending $60 billion a year of the taxpayer's hard-earned money, to create monstrous and often counter-productive technical program that access the 4% of the information we can steal, while ignoring the 94% that is in 183 languages we do not speak, and more often than not, NOT online.

The authors write well, and gifted turns of phrase about, such as “the radical instability of infopunditry.”

They do a superb job of addressing the ills of technology-centered tunnel vision, a point that Peter Drucker made in Forbes ASAP 28 Aug 98, and I repeated in my keynote in Vegas to the National Security Agency (NSA) IT conference, in the early 2000 timeframe. We've spent the past 50 years on the T in IT, we need to start focusing on the I now.

The authors are eloquent in saying that more of the same is not the answer, and I totally agree. Returning to the secret world, I paraphrase an Australian journalist commenting on the pathologies of secret programs, who said that giving more money to dysfunctional secret agencies is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Right on. I want to reduce the secret budget to $12 billion a year, and redirect everything else to US education, global access to open sources in all languages, and free on demand education to the five billion poor via a network of 100 million volunteers with skype and internet access who can answer a cell phone question in any of 183 languages: education “one cell call at a time.”

The authors point out that at its best, technology augments and enhances human capabilities, it does not replace them (less the truly repetitive mechanical aspects).

They observe (in 2000) that 1-2 exabytes of information per year are created, but that much of this is not useful, and there is a major short-fall in sense-making and precision access.

They discuss, most usefully, the reality that designers underestimate what people do (and I would add, what they want or need).

“Information fetishism” is defined as the belief that information and information technology can replaced nuanced relations among people and their individual and shared insights. In Body of Secrets, link below, Jim Bamford ends his second book on NSA by saying that with all the trillions they have spent, they have still not built the ultimate computer, one that runs on a tiny amount of energy, weighs less than a few pounds, and can make petabyte calculations per second: “the human brain.”

The authors respond to earlier criticism about not addressing LINUX, and point out that LINUX is social innovation, not technical innovation. See Wealth of Networks below.

They note that the primary advantage of IT is that it enhances both local and global access. On the downside, it neglects periphery and context.

The authors reassert, compellingly, the value of intermediation, and I am reminded of our earlier criticisms of the Internet, still valid, in that most information is unedited, unformatted, unpaginated, undated, and lacking in source bias insight. This is still true, and Google is making it worse.

By the authors own account, this book addresses:
1) Limits of infopunditry
2) Challenges of software agents
3) Social character of work and learning
4) Limits of management theory
5) Resources for innovation
6) Unnoticed aspects of the document
7) Implications for design
8) Future of information, especially for university

I have a couple of nits, but not enough to warrant removal of one star. This is clearly a seminal work of lasting value.

Nit #1: Organizational Intelligence (Wilensky, 1967) is not to be found in this book. The authors do not go past Quadrant III (see loaded images).

Nit #2: While they have a superb bibliography and include works by Barlow, Kelly, Strassmann, Toffler, and Turkle, they do NOT include the seminal works directly relevant to this book, specifically, Barlow's seminal manifesto, and the following:

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World
Information Payoff
Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit , Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Amazon limits us to ten links. See my earlier lists (the first ten) for 300+ books covering information and intelligence. Here are six more:
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

I regret the limitation on links. See also such gems as Forbidden Knowledge; Voltaire's Bastards; Age of Missing Information; etc etc.

Posted on

Review: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

6 Star Top 10%, Education (General), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Critical Solutions for Five Billion Poor Including US Poor

January 7, 2008

Paulo Freire

Over a year ago 24 of us decided to co-found the Earth Intelligence Network and begin producing public intelligence in the public interest. We quickly expanded the vision to include a Transpartisan Policy Institute and a Public Budget Office. Today, for free, any citizen can get a weekly report on “GLOBAL CHALLENGES: The Week in Review.” Our free report is superior in multiple ways to the President's Daily Brief, which costs the taxpayer $1.2 billion per WEEK ($60 billion for secret intelligence, pro rated over 52 weeks).

Early on we realized that educating the five billion poor was both a non-negotiable first step, and “mission impossible” if we accepted the standard educational system that is part prison, part child care and part didactic dildo display (my lesson outline is bigger than yours).

Before I read this book, we had conceptualized a concept for educating the five billion poor “one cell call at a time,” leveraging free cell phones and 100 million volunteers covering 183 languages, each using Telelanguage and Skype to be available on demand.

Now, with this book, and also Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series), I feel we have struck the mother lode.

A few notes and then some other links.

+ Stark critique of the “banking” system of education that deposits knowledge without teaching critical thinking or how to create new knowledge.

+ Relevant to US, not just Third World.

+ It's about class, not race. Concentration of wealth above, poverty below.

+ The author illuminates for all of us “the humanizing voaction of the individual” and the “power of thought to negate accepted limits.”

+ Modern education instills a culture of silence and lethargy. Friere's work instead inspires liberation, dignity, and the ability to change.

+ Illiterates are not stupid, they just cannot read. They *can* be empowered, taught, and energized orally.

+ Education is NOT neutral–it is either teaching for the benefit of the oppressors (producing docile factory workers) or for the benefit of the opprssed (liberating, empowering with individual volition).

+ Dehumanization is a historical reality.

+ False charity perpetuates dependenct.

+ Recognition of reality liberates BOTH the oppressed and the oppressor.

+ Oppressed must break free from “having is being” and learn that “being is enough.”

+ The oppressed cannot be “granted” freedom, it must result from an interactive dialog that liberates both sides

+ Liberation and revolution or transformation for the good of all are essentially pedagogical missions with very high ethical content.

+ Humanizing pedagogy is the anti-thesis of propaganda, manipulation, and deceit.

+ “Co-intentional” education

+ Authentic thinking can only be realized in communication with another

+ Pyramical (one-way) education enslaves, circular (multi-way)education liberates

+ Any educational system that does not respect nor elicit the student's own worldview is culturally invasive

+ Education of the five billion poor must begin by LISTENING to them.

+ “Libertarian education” STARTS with the needs and views of those to be educated.

+ Communion and communication leads to cooperation and cultural synthesis.

A few links:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

Posted on

Review: Pedagogy of Freedom–Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage

6 Star Top 10%, Democracy, Education (General), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

January 6, 2008

Paulo Freire

I am one of 24 co-founders of Earth Intelligence Network, building the EarthGame with inputs from the Transpartisan Policy Institute and the Public Budget Office, and our biggest insight in the past year has been to realize that the 5 billion poor do not have 18 years to go to school; but that they can be taught orally, one cell call at a time, by 100 million volunteers with Internet access and Skype. We simply have to distribute free cell phones in order to help the five billion create stabilizing wealth.

It was therefore for me personally, at the age of 55, a true joy to run across both this book and Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom both of which I will review shortly.

The only two books coming close in my own reading history, apart from Chomsky, Ellul, and Marcuse, have been Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development. and Improper behavior. See also Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids and Animal Farm (Signet Classics).

The translator tells us that Friere opposed the movement of gaduate studies in education toward atomization, fragmentation, and a false science, “scientism.” The translator is *damning* of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I believe all that he says.

The translator emphasizes that across Friere's works, he condemns false claims of neutrality and objectivity, and says clearly that education is an ethical calling that has a strong need to take a stand on what is good and right.

All three of my children have rejected rote learning, even as taught in the best public school district in America, and I am deeply sympathetic with this author's views that teaching should not be about the transfer of old knowledge but rather about the interactive sharing in learning to create new knowledge. Team leaning, learning to learn, open books testing–that is the way to go, in my view. See also Edutopia: Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age.

We learn that Friere's first book, to set this one in context, taught that education is “that specifically human act of intervention in the world.”

I completely agree when it is stated that the transformation of education must be the foundation for the transformation of all else.

I copy a note “Education *makes* history” (as opposed to losing it).

Note from the book: Democracy from below. Human liberation. Educators inspire rather than shape. See The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All.

The book emphasizes that the study of the oppressed has been squelched by those in authority, inclusive of higher graduate education studies, as an ideological act that declines to recognize that the oppressed are in fact, OPPRESSED, not just poor, lazy, stupid, or otherwise self-condemned.

Note: Curiosity + education + humanity = infinite power.” See A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.

Friere repeatedly returns to a key point, that thinking is an act of communication, and can only take place interactively. Teaching and research should comprise an endless cycle and not be a one-way street (didactic is a fancy word for “I talk, you listen.”)

Progressive teaching respects students and favors student autonomhy. As best I can tell, Evergreen College in Washington State is the gold standard for this kind of teaching.

Friere tells us that teachers who impose no standards, no discipline, are just as bad as teachers who are authoritarian and leave no room for student autonomy or curiosity.

Friere tells us that teachers must apprehend and comprend reality, and not seek to condition students into accepting their poor conditions (or corrupt governances–see Earth Intelligence Network for a range for free offerings on reality).

Friere states firmly that “RealPolitic” is inhumane and wrong. See The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.

The book closes with an elegant discussion of how education leads to decision-making that is aware and conscientious. I have long advocated the need for public intelligence, and for a relationship between how we learn and how we decide. “Intelligence” is about decision-support, not about spying.

My final two notes from this superb book:

1) To accept and respect differences (i.e. diversity) is essential to listening and learning.

2) Globalization (when combined with 44 dictators and the global class war) is oppressive in its ignorance (or concealment) of the human cost, the cost to humanity.

Posted on

Review: The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

6 Star Top 10%, Capitalism (Good & Bad)
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 starsNobel Prize Material–Final Review
December 13, 2007
John Bogle

This book is a work of genius and integrity, with the potential to catalyze Wall Street into fulfilling the promise of moral capitalism and community ownership.

Here are some highlights from my flyleaf notes:

+ America is no longer an ownership society–financial intermediaries “own” everyting and the individual owners are passive

+ We can find the wisdom and will to restore moral capitalism

+ Earnings have been manipulated and misrepresented.

+ Executive compensation plus lax accounting and the fiction of quarterly earnings versus actual cash flow have hollowed industry out.

+ Profound conflict of interest exist across all fronts

+ Fund managers have siphoned off one fifth of the gross value of the funds.

+ Our business world chose the wrong bottom line, and ignored the importance of sustaining human, social, and community capital

+ Stock options aqre out of control.

Seven specific Conference Board suggestions:

1) Corporate citizenship

2) Separate ownership from management

3) Fix the stock option mess

4) Pay on performance not peers

5) Return to long-term focus

6) Let sunlight shine on accounting

7) New mindset for Board (aggresive stewardship)

Page 103: “Investment America went wrong, then, because in the contagious enthusiasm of the day, financial engineering and manufactured earnings became the coin of the valuation realm, accepted by corporate managers and investment managers alike. What is more, the emphasis on short-term price came to overwhelm the reality of long-term value, as investors failed to honor the distinction between investment and speculation drawn by John Maynard Keynes six decades earlier.”

In my view, this book, and three others, should comprise the Christmas reading list for all adults:
Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

I am personally committed to the non-violent legal ethical overthrow of the existing pathologically inept federal government and its politcal leaders in both Congress and the Executive who lack morality, intelligence, integrity, or conscience. Dick Cheney, not George Bush (a village idiot) is their poster child. I find it truly gratifying that a man of such financial stature as John Bogle now articulates and inspires the remorse that Wall Street must feel for running the Earth into the ground.

Below are other books I recommend as a reading list toward November, five about the bad, five about the promise:

The Bad (see my reviews):
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin

The Good (see my reviews):
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

God Bless America. We can unite and fix this. Check out Reuniting America (Unity 08 is a fraud, the last gasp of the spoils system).

Vote on Review
Posted on

Review: The Celestine Prophecy

6 Star Top 10%, Consciousness & Social IQ, Education (General), Philosophy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

CelestinePerfect Catalytic & Summative Work for Our Time

October 6, 2007

James Redfield

This is a remarkable book that was given to me as a gift by a Dutch entrepreneur who has himself been exploring the potential for higher energy and good intentions among individuals and groups. Although it has no bibliography, the story that it tells is quite remarkable and quite valuable as illumination and explication of the only viable path for a sustainable future for mankind, diverse species, and the planet.

I list other books below, in several categories (limited to ten hot links by Amazon, sorry), but would hasten to add that if I had to go back in time and read only one book to clarify for myself both the misguided negative energy path I have been following, and the ease of adopting an open good intentions energy sharing path, this is that book.

The bottom line on this book is that faith, blind faith, is not empowering, it is merely a panacea. Consciousness is the real experience; achieving higher consciousness is what the scriptures mean when they say “the truth shall set you free.” At the end of it all, this book encourages all well-intentioned individual to “lead the many to righteousness.”

I will summarize the nine insights to help those who might be skeptical of the value of this book, and would emphasize there is no substitute for “being there” with the book in hand, digesting its message page by page (very well presented by the publisher).

#1 Critical Mass. While the title emphasizes the number of individuals who are reaching critical mass (Cf. Cultural Creatives), the insight is about one's becoming conscious of coincidences that are not really coincidences, they are good intentions becoming manifest.

#2 Longer Now. This title naturally reminds us of Stewart Brand's Clock of the Long Now but is more pointedly about thinking in time in millennium terms, and more specifically, the fall of grace when the church was abandoned for science, and science led to secularity, and neither proved capable of understanding, much less managing, complexity (See also Collapse of Complex Societies).

#3 Matter of Energy. This insight focuses on the need to learn to perceive invisible energy (quantum physics at core, universe is pure energy). See also the DVD, What the *Bleep*). I especially liked the zen-like aspect of this chapter, on the energy that is generated from perceiving beauty in all its vividness, on seeing mini-environments, and on understanding that the physical universe is responsive to our intentions and expectations (See also The Social Construction of Reality, for a more academic approach).

#4 Struggle for Power. At the intermediate stage of development, humans compete for energy rather than realizing that collaborative or collective intelligence can create infinite energy, infinite wealth. Violence results, negative energy undermines the confidence and capabilities of groups (e.g. the five billion poor). This is where most of us are now.

#5 Message of the Mystics. Here the author emphasizes the role of mystical experiences in helping individuals make the leap from the past (see next item) and into a future of high consciousness that is inherently positive, forgiving, open, and engaging. The ability to receive and to give energy in a catalytic way, rather than draining energy in competition, is emphasized, as is the reality that love gives energy, and all forms of love are to be nurtured. The chapter emphasizes that the universe can provide all the needed energy to all without scarcity or competition, provided that mankind evolves to this higher consciousness of collaboration and sharing.

#6 Clearing the Past. In an unexpected twist, this chapter focuses on the family and the eras of parental control over children with good and bad results, generally emphasizing the bad as the parents competed in shaping the child. The author emphasizes the need to clear out the past, recognize the “dramas” that one plays out, and finally, in reconciliation, discover that inner direction and good intentions in accomplishments are all that are required to “live” righteously and happily.

#7 Engaging the Flow. Consciousness allows engagement, empowerment, and interactive evolution, the need to enjoin the negative, recharge often, stay full of energy, and stay in love with all things.

#8 The Interpersonal Ethic. Following up on 7, this insight opens by stating that love keeps us healthy, and that the relationship between stress or lack of love and disease cannot be underestimated. (Side note: I have noticed with interest that the Catholic Church is now teaching that sex after children and menopause is a form of co-evolution of man and wife, and not something to be denigrated simply because children are no longer possible.) This is the most complex and lengthy chapter of the nine. My notes include the need to recognize that fear and hate are based on misunderstanding. The chapter cautioned on becoming addicted to any single source or object of love, and to avoid at all costs treating children as anything other than young adults–eschew the myths and the adult entertainment, and go straight to the truth with children on all things. The chapter concludes by focusing on the need for every person to be fully in touch with both their masculine and feminine side, and emphasizes that love is at its best when both partners are complete in and of themselves, and sharing their completeness with one another. How we approach other people determines how quickly we evolve. Excluding anyone is negative. TRUTH is the common factor for common advancement.

#9 The Emerging Culture. In this final chapter, there is a sense of hope, an emphasis on slowing down, the thrill to be had from intentional interactive evolution (what Stewart Brand long ago recognized as Co-Evolution). This chapter focuses on the critical mass that are now enjoying their first deep intense introspection, on the emergence of the gift economy of abundance, and of full employment as necessary jobs are filled by multiple individuals. Most significantly for me as a proponent of public intelligence (decision support) in the public interest, “Constant exchange of information is our new economic orientation. Stewardship of the Earth will become integral to us all, and we can and should create Heaven on Earth. This chapter concludes that when we succeed, all religions will be clarified and de-conflicted and we will all become “one.”

Recommended books (see also my lists):

Hope
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization

History
Landscape of History
Fog Facts
Lost History
Cheating Culture
Missing
Voltaire's Bastards

Religion
Left Hand of God
Dowd on Evolution
Faith-Based Diplomacy
Other by Johnston

Wealth
Infinite Wealth
Wealth of Networks
Wealth of Knowledge
Revolutionary Wealth

There are so many others I could list. Let me end by emphasizing that this one book brought everything together for me, and is the first light on my new path toward helping the five billion poor learn and create wealth “one cell call at a time.”