The last Week of January: Ends on a Trio of Positive Notes

The past two weeks I have been reading grand thinker and visionary, Howard Bloom's latest offering, The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism. Bloom lays out his thesis in 70 short concise chapters that land on target like precision cruise missiles. His message is that humans need booms and busts to trigger the evolutionary source code of repurposing to adapt to the future and survive. Here is a brief example of how he explains repurposing.

Your heart and mine will each beat roughly three billion times in the voyage from the womb to the grave. During that time we will be put together, taken apart, and put back together again without noticing it. We will dance to the beat of the pendulum of repurposing. Remember we were first constructed as embryos. Then we were reconstructed as infants, repurposed as children, radically remade as teenagers, dramatically reshaped as young adults, re-created as middle-agesters, reshuffled as oldsters, rejiggered as doddering post-seniors, and discarded as corpses, and finally we will be taken apart again and repurposed as bacterial cells, cells that are eaten by worms that are eaten by birds. The birds will relieve themselves as they fly over farmlands. Their waste will help make the grain that feeds our children and their children beyond them. Repurposing.

This gives us a responsibility. We are parts of an evolutionary search engine, components in a secular genesis machine. We are among nature's tools for reconstructing herself in flamboyant new ways. Economies are also among nature's tools of creation. But when nature creates, she destroys to make new things. She creates by driving us with strange forces-discontents, desires, and dreams. We do nature's work when we turn those restless dreams into realities, realities that amplify the powers or elevate the lives of our fellow human beings.

Bloom's approach is secular, but calls on a cast of historical figures both secular and religious, ranging from Moses and Isaiah, to Croesus and Marco Polo, to explain how humans have adopted to the fissions and fusions that define booms and busts. The story weaves a tapestry of life that shows that we humans don't accomplish anything alone. Regardless of your persuasion of faith or lack thereof, there is a message of hope and understanding of our human condition woven within the chapters of this book.

How does this book square with today's world? We are fed a constant stream of visual and audio information that in some ways amplifies fears that fade to minuteness when compared to what even our recent ancestors faced. We are led to believe that the economy will only recover by turning to the same system of government controls that failed miserably in the Depression and again when tried by nation states on a vast scale. War is portrayed as more pervasive and deadly and our stewardship of the environment is leading to the imminent demise of life on Earth. What Bloom does best is remind us that this is not humanities, "First Rodeo," to borrow a phrase from a long past cowboy I once knew.

One recent article in World Politics Review, by blog friend and grand strategist Thomas Barnett addresses the issue of false assumptions that we are living in a world filled with increasing danger due to instability and war. Barnett begins.

It's taken as gospel by most pundits today that we live in an increasingly dangerous, deadly and unstable world -- with Haiti's horrific earthquake serving as the latest, irrefutable data point. We are told that ours is a planet at perpetual war with itself, locked in a global conflict that is not only cast in civilizational terms, but superimposed over a landscape chock-full of never-ending combat and ever-rising death tolls. The end of the Cold War superpower rivalry, rather than pacifying the world, actually unlocked a Pandora's box of tribal hatreds. In retrospect, the Cold War has even taken on a nostalgic hue, reminding us of simpler, more manageable times.

This creed is a complete lie, unforgivably peddled by fear-mongering "experts" as a way to justify their mindless schemes -- typically, uncontrolled defense spending from the right, unmitigated trade protectionism from the left, and unthinkable isolationism from both. Worse, both extremes deny the essential gift imparted by America to the world these past seven decades: a globe-spanning networking phenomenon variously described as the postwar global architecture, the international liberal trade order, the "free world," the West, the global economy, and -- last but not least -- globalization.

Barnett's article contains a link to a data rich report produced by Simon Fraser University of Canada, that pretty much dampens, like the familiar downpours of British Columbia, the flames of a 21st Century consumed by war. I have linked that report, The Shrinking Cost of War  in my blog favorites as well as their original report The Mini Atlas of Human Security.

Read Tom Barnett's article.
The New Rules: The Fallacy of an Increasingly Dangerous World

Lastly, this past week I learned something that reaffirmed my commitment to reach out to encourage the next generation. Any frequent reader of this blog will notice that I have a blog link section entitled, Honoring our Commitments. I posted the links in that section after I wrote a post a year ago about the trafficking of women, specifically in South East Asia. The links not only address the worldwide problem of trafficking, but also has links to sites that reach out to Cambodia, a country largely forgotten after we left Vietnam. When I wrote that post, I used a few photos for an introduction. That post and and a later post, Cambodia Revisited are two of the most visited posts on this site. Many visitors are looking for the obvious and move on; but a growing number stay and read the articles and visit the links, proving that the power of the word can make changes in attitudes and hopefully ensure a better life for someone.

One of the little rewards in my life was to know a person whose parents escaped the Killing Fields of Cambodia and made their way to America.For a brief time we worked together and I would share articles about cognition, global affairs and history, which she devoured, then always had a question or comment that revealed she totally understood the concept. Time moved on and we lost touch, but I learned this week, that she remains even more committed and focused to make a difference in this world. I am confident that her commitment, sensitivity and courage to learn about her fellow humans will pay dividends not only to America, but to the world at large.

The Medici Effect Meets Haiti

Eleven days ago, the world's attention was drawn to the impoverished nation of Haiti as its buildings and its corrupt and fragile infrastructure collapsed as a result of an earthquake. The outpouring of first responders, led by our own nations armed forces and joined by countries as far away as China is to be honored as a mark of the finest of traits in caring for your fellow human in need. The problem now has turned from rescue to sustaining the survivors until the country can be rebuilt. But, therein lies the question, how do you rebuild something so broken as Haiti,  Economy of Haiti.  The last two decades saw a resurgence in U.S. military intervention trying to stabilize the government and the economy. The United Nations has been on a concurrent track lending peacekeeping forces and economic aid in the billions with almost naught to show. What then is the path that the United States and the World can take to ensure the future for Haitians is better than being kept alive until the arrival of the next natural disaster scythes down more souls.

Astute minds have been asking that question this past week. I felt it best to provide an intersection here on the blog to allow those ideas to come together in the best tradition of the Medici Effect.

Author and grand strategic thinker Thomas Barnett along with his business associate Steve DeAngelis have gotten out in front of this story and begun a series of posts asking that very question, what comes next? In this first post, Tom Barnett comments on a post penned by Galrahn for the U.S. Naval Institute Blog.

Reader Gerry left this link after commenting on my somewhat acidic interpretation of Bret Stephen's truly acidic piece on the disutility of foreign aid. It is a very informative blog post from Galrahn, who appears to be doing a yeoman's effort on Haiti, a subject I have yet to gain any serious traction on due to recent nonstop travel.

Gerry's comment was to the effect that the Haiti response could be a Katrina-like, politically damaging affair for Obama--quite possibly true.It could also reveal, a la Galrahn's observations, that SOUTHCOM was ill-prepared for this sort of thing.

Read more:
Do We Require Catastrophic Faiures to Change?

Barnett continues his commentary in this next post on why Haiti remains disconnected.

...if your take is that globalization crushes local cultures (and it sure does when they have nothing useful to offer, but then again, check out the Japanese as slick mega-exporters of an isolated culture and wonder why they succeed where others fail), then be prepared to keep on paying while the glory that is Haitian stay-at-home culture (as opposed to that which comes along with immigrants to America and adds to our mixing bowl) is given free reign to prove its disutility yet again after this disaster.

Read more:
Haiti's Cultural Poverty

In this post, Barnett comments on two articles that support the idea that capitalism has done more to restore societies after disasters than any other economic system.

By definition, Haiti's in for a bad time, because it's capitalism was stunted (especially in its rule sets) and highly criminalized and informal prior to the disaster--hence a city not built to anybody's code and thus the profound destruction at merely a 7.0 quake level (bad, but not off anybody's charts).

But since there seems to be equal camps on the question of "is capitalism/globalization the answer" or "the culprit," there's unlikely to be any renaissance in Haiti, as it'll remain the sole, exclusive property of the NGO/PVO crowd.

Read more:
Shocking capitalism! It actually helps after disasters!

Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions, a company devoted to helping countries develop a more resilient rule set has been way out in front of thinking about how to help Haiti. In this post, Steve tries to answer the question, can Haiti bounce back, or will she do as she has always done, slide back to the bottom of the pyramid and be ignored until the next wave of disasters strike.

The outpouring of concern for Haiti has been remarkable. The American Red Cross, for example, has been amazed at the amount of money that has been donated through mobile phone contributions (over $22 million was the last figure I heard). There is a nagging suspicion, however, that once the bodies are buried, the wounded attended to, the streets cleared of rubble, and the rebuilding process begins, that Haiti will return to its status as a failing and fragile state. New York Times' op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof reports that some people have actually had the courage to state what many others are obviously thinking ["Some Frank Talk About Haiti," 21 January 2010].

DeAngelis goes on to discuss Kristof's article and points out several areas where he feels Kristof misses the mark.

I think Kristof is confusing humanitarian assistance with developmental aid. Only the most calloused soul would opt to withhold humanitarian assistance to a suffering nation. Humanitarian assistance, however, is in intended to relieve suffering not foster development. Even though Kristof claims that the debate about whether foreign aid fosters development remains "a bitter and unresolved argument," most people in the development community understand that foreign direct investment is much more important than aid in helping a country grow its economy. That is not to say that foreign aid doesn't play a role.

Steve's post is rather long and deserves a careful read as well as the linked articles. As many of us have been moved to contribute to helping rescue and sustain the Haitian people in this time of need, we owe it to them to help build a better future, than just a short reprieve from an early grave.

Read more:
Can Haiti really become resilient?

As I read Tom's and Steve's posts and pondered the merit of what they argued, I was reminded of a similar line of thought that was the main theme of Howard K. Bloom's latest book The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism.  Bloom argues that capitalism is a product of human evolution and is the perfect vehicle for repurposing ourselves after a bust or fall from grace. This concept seems to dovetail perfectly into what Tom and Steve's posts allude too. Bloom writes that the Panic of 1857 and the American Civil War, combined to be our greatest social and economic upheaval and brought about a new form of social consolidation; the modern nation, capable of sustaining itself through the kind of trials that before had led to total collapse of society. Tom Barnett wrote of this very example, in his latest book, Great Powers: America and the World After Bush where, in chapter three he recaps how America, continually repurposed itself after each crisis, to grow stronger and more resilient as it spread it's unique brand of economic system worldwide.

Much ink and megabytes have been used to describe what happened in Haiti and prophesize the future. Sadly, as the stench of decomposing bodies wafts away on the trade winds, so will the world's attention. That is, unless heed is taken of men like DeAngelis, Barnett, Kristof, Bloom and Collier who have devoted much thought to the benefits of connectivity and social and cultural responsibility. Hopefully my little effort will stimulate some thought about how we of the developed world can provide a lasting connected future to those left swirling in the back wash of civilization.

UPDATE-
What to do about Haiti-Los Angeles Times

Comment Upgrade-more Haiti data-Thomas PM Barnett-blog

Feeding Metacognition, Ideas, Reflection, Innovation

Reading blogs have become an important source to exchange information, across this planet. I have been noting that almost 50% of the visits to HG'S World, are from countries outside the United States. I want to welcome those readers and encourage all who feel the urge, to make comments and open a dialogue.

This week there were several post that deserve attention for their thought provoking and reflective themes.

Howard Bloom offers up a post, In Praise Of Consumerism - It Was Good Enough For Marco Polo So It's Good Enough For You.
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Consumerism is responsible for some of the most important events in Western civilization. Consumerism has produced empowerments that have radically upgraded the lives of even the poorest people on the planet. And consumerism has even advanced the grand ambition of biomassto kidnap, seduce, and dragoon as many inanimate atoms as possible into the 3.85-billion-year-old enterprise of life.

And complementing the human spirit, is the Medici effect blog, where Frans Johannsen writes about the result of diverse ideas coming together to create new innovations.

Another U.S. Navy ship has joined the blog world. The USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) Blog will follow the daily life aboard a hospital ship as it preforms a mission that should make every American proud.

Captain Bob Wiley, is the civilian skipper of the USNS Mercy, currently on a voyage to the Southwest Pacific.

Dear Family & Friends,I am not a professional writer; however, I spent most of last night having what professional writers call “Terror of the Blank Page.” I knew I needed to write something…anything… But what? It was as though the “writing lobe” of my brain went ashore for a couple of beers and left me here on the ship to fend for myself. Come on, Mr. Lobe, it’s time to go to work! Today at lunch I realized the answer was sitting all around me. Aboard this vessel we have so many different people from so many different organizations. There are Civilian Mariners (like myself), Helicopter Pilots, Doctors, Nurses, Seabees, and Veterinarians. We have professionals aboard from partner nations - Australia, Canada, Japan, and the Philippines.....
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Yesterday, was the 64th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Europe by the Allies. Several blogs noted the day, but two deserve special recognition.
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6 June, 1944 is the moving post by Zenpundit his introduction speaks to it's message.

I decided that I didn’t have any better commemorative than this post from two years ago. Thank you to all of the veterans of D-Day for your courage and sacrifice:

Often overlooked in recounting the action on D-Day, is the role played by Naval Air, Steeljaw Scribe honors their bravery in this post. Flightdeck Friday: Naval Air and D-Day - 6 Jun 44.

Turning to Iraq, the intrepid independent correspondent Michael Yon makes An Open Offer to U.S. Senators to be his personal guest and join him for a tour of the progress in Iraq.

I hereby offer to accompany any Senator to Iraq, whether they are pro-or anti-war, Democrat or Republican. I will make this offer personally to a few select Senators as well. Our conversations during the visit would be on- or off-record, as they wish. Touring Iraq with me, as well as briefings by U.S. officers and meetings with Iraqis, would provide an accurate and nuanced account of the progress and challenges ahead, so that the Senators might have a highly informed perspective on this most critical issue.

And finally, my good blogger friend Brad of potbangers has returned to explain his absence.Updates...

Introducing Howard Bloom

I want to give credit again to my fellow blogger Mark at zenpundit.com for making this post, Hey…Howard Bloom has a Blog!

For those who don't know who Howard Bloom is, the following link, and a few snippets of what he has been writing about will introduce you to one of the most interesting minds in today's world. I've linked it in my history and culture favorites under Howard Bloom's Blog. Bloom along with an esteemed group of scientists write about physical and earth science, biology, medicine, neuroscience and culture in a flowing style that holds the reader spellbound. The following is an example, Mother Nature And The Evolutionary Mandate.

We've seen the beginning of mass behavior among quarks, the proto-memory of atoms, and a strange preview of culture long before life arose. We've run a background check on Evolution (aka Mother Nature) and have discovered her track record of violence and destruction. Destruction from which she's pulled enormous leaps of creativity.

And takes on the pop buzz word sustainability in a post entitled Screw 'Sustainability' - And I Am Here To Tell You Why.

Why screw sustainability?

Because the word implies merely hanging in there, merely surviving, merely sustaining. It implies a penny-pinching earth, a miserly existence, a nature that punishes change, and a nature that prefers small tribes to large groups of human beings.

This sort of attitude has traditionally led to ignorance and to self-inflicted poverty. It pitched Europe into misery from the fall of Rome in 476 ad to the revival of optimism, technology, and entrepreneurialism in 1100 ad. That 600-year-long slump was the famous dark ages of the West. An attitude of self-denial and an urge to return to the past also led to an age of darkness in the Islamic Empire starting in 1566. For the first time, Islam saw its limitations more clearly than it saw its possibilities. How did it respond? It banned every new technology, shunned every new idea, and withdrew into fantasies of a past mistakenly viewed as a paradise.

Then moving on to talk about bees and bacteria. In Praise Of Consumerism - Bees, Bacteria And The Value Of Wasted Time.

What is consumerism? It’s the flaunting of surplus. It’s the conspicuous display of surplus time, of surplus energy, and of surplus luxuries.

More important are these two facts. First, consumerism is the way that nature expresses herself in men and women. Yes, you heard me right. Consumerism is natural. More important, consumerism evolved long, long before there were industrial machines. Consumerism evolved billions of years before there were human beings. Consumerism isn’t the creation of mankind. It’s a strategy deployed by mother nature.

Bloom and his fellow columnists representing the above fields and several more, have something for everyone with an open and inquisitive mind. Howard Bloom takes information from science and culture and brings it together in one of those famous intersection of ideas, and feeds us brain food that will nourish our understanding and stimulate us to learn more.