What Now?

As we noted back in 2017, you reap what you sow. The seeds of this week’s unrest and Capitol riot have been sown for many years throughout our political and popular culture. Conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation propagated and were allowed to thrive. This week we witnessed the harvest of anger and resentment and their related narratives of hate.

In a democracy that values independence and individual choice, it is incumbent on every citizen and elected leader to accept the responsibility of maintaining and strengthening our democracy by valuing the voices of every citizen and working to define the common good. This involves a commitment to listening to views different from one’s own, to dialogue, and to finding ways to improve how we think and work together. What can one citizen do? Quite a lot, and just in your day to day interactions. Call out the narratives of hate, learn and tell stories of wisdom, and work to check and dismantle your own learned habits of tribalism and division.

Note: You can obtain a complete copy of the Metaphor From The Midwest blog post series for free here.

Improving Our Information

For several weeks now I have been teaching a class called “Democracy Lab.” The class reflects the hypothesis that increasing both dialogue and critical thinking skills will improve our democracy. As we discussed the current state of our politics, two key themes emerged, both relating to the information available to voters.  The first theme related to information validation and transparency, and the second to information and mechanisms for holding elected officials accountable.

With the constant push of information – some factual, some made-up, and much of it distorted – it can be hard to sort through the many conflicting accounts of what is happening and why. This often results in the adoption of a partisan lens, simple tuning out, or over-reliance on what “feels right”. As noted in a prior post, we need new filters.  Simply voting once every four years is not a structure in which the citizen voice is easily heard and interpreted.

Our class generated a range of ideas on how government might work with its citizens to improve information flows and ultimately accountability.  Some were relatively simple, such as requiring the president to sign a HIPPA waiver allowing key information on health to be disclosed and disseminated in a prescribed way that took into account national security concerns. Others were more complex.   These included the following, all of which are worthy of further dialogue:

+ Develop a rating system for different types of reporting so citizens could more easily sort through information — unrated sites would be a form of rating. Something like this is emerging for on-line reporting. The class didn’t think though that these ratings could be left to the market, or to elected or appointed officials. One approach identified for engendering trust especially on issues requiring technical or scientific knowledge would be for known professional organizations and civic groups to appoint representatives to an oversight board, and the board be funded through a mix of private and public donations.

+ Require a “state of the union” exit report that follows a prescribed form, is audited by the GAO, and that is disseminated widely.  This could be modeled on the “exit memos” that President Obama had each agency prepare. These were unfortunately ignored by much of the media and few in the public were even aware of their existence or content. The exit memo from the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, included a review of what had been learned fighting the H1N1, Ebola and Zika viruses, and recommended the establishment of a new Public Health Emergency Fund, warning that “a ready supply of financial resources is necessary for rapid response to emerging public health threats and would save lives, save money, and protect America’s health security.” How might widespread public knowledge of that warning have affected public support for the tax cuts that occurred in the next few years? Members of our class would have welcomed wider dissemination and discussion of these memos and their recommendations.

+ Create a public dashboard administered by the GAO that allows the public to easily track progress (or lack of progress) on key legislation and the promises made as that legislation was pushed through, and also track diversion of funds from their budgeted purposes. Class members agreed that when public money is being spent the public deserves to know whether the anticipated benefits materialize or whether that money is being diverted to another purpose and why.

Our founding fathers viewed an informed electorate as a safe-guard for our democracy and our freedoms. We need better dissemination of not just data and opinions but also the historical and current context of key issues and the trade-offs to be made as we apply limited funds to meet a range of needs. This would equip voters to better inform themselves and to hold their elected representatives accountable for both the decisions they make and the narratives they share.

Thinking Together

We got to where we are politically today through millions of consumer driven decisions on what information to look at and where. How many of those decisions were driven by a desire to be comfortable, to have one’s worldview or worst fears confirmed?

To move forward, we need to build new ways of sifting through the waves of information pushed at us. One way to do that is to spend time thinking about what you value and where we might go if we work together. This citizen-created guide might help with that.

Another way is to critically evaluate our information sources. There are several sites that help us evaluate our information, both on-line and elsewhere.

Be informed, vote your conscience, and regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s election, pledge to get to know and work with your fellow Americans across the political spectrum to get our country back on track. We have more in common than you might think.

Peace and Prosperity: What Will It Take?

We know what brings peace and prosperity. The Institute  for Economics and Peace has been studying that for 13 years, publishing annual “Global Peace Index” and “Positive Peace Index” reports.

The Global Peace Index looks at the presence (or absence) of violence and the threat of violence. The United States is in the bottom half of nations in the GPI.  Our North American neighbor, Canada, is by contrast in the top 10 most peaceful countries. The US score has been declining in the last few years, and in the 2020 report, the US is ranked 121 out of 163 countries. You can explore current and past rankings for the US and other countries here.

The lack of peace has a cost.  Overall economic losses related to violence or the threat of violence include direct costs to people and property and also losses related to productivity shortfalls and adverse effects on consumption and spending patterns. As the 2020 GPI report states, “Expenditures on preventing and dealing with the consequences of violence divert public and private resources away from productive activities and towards protective measures.” The Institute estimates the economic cost of violence in the United States at 8% of GDP. 

More peace means more money for a country’s citizens to flourish.  The Institute also studies the factors that lead to greater peace, referring to these as “positive peace.”  Key factors of a peaceful and prosperous society include: equal distribution of resources, free flow and quality of information, low levels of corruption, a sound business environment and well-functioning governments.

High levels of Positive Peace strengthen a country’s resilience “to absorb, adapt and recover from shocks, such as COVID-19 and the ensuing recession.” (GPI 2020 Report, p. 4).  Here the US scores higher, ranking 26 out of 163 (PPI Report 2019, 26-27) — although its scores are declining here as well.  Attention to and strengthening our performance on the positive peace factors could enhance our recovery. 

The US is often said to be the wealthiest country in the world, so it’s not our lack of natural assets that contribute to our lower rankings on the peace indices (or other indices of social well-being such as the Social Progress Index).

As our country starts to recover from the pandemic, we have an opportunity to build a more peaceful and prosperous country.  This will require taking a hard look at how we allocate our resources, particularly between production and protection, and rebuilding trust between citizens and their government.

We know what to do. Will we?

*Thank you to Vincent Leloux, a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Germany who interned with us in Spring, 2020 before returning home, for his help with this post.

How Do We Want It To Be?

“There is an simple solution to every human problem – easy, plausible, and wrong.” H.L. Mencken

It’s easy in our debate-oriented culture to get stuck in an exchange of positions and arguments over who is right or what is wrong.  So how do you move through that?

Here is one question that often works to change the pattern when a conversation starts falling into an unproductive exchange of competing views:

“How would you like it to be?”

This can also be asked in the form of an invitation: “I think we are getting lost in the details, can we talk for a moment of how we would like it to be?”

This question (or invitation) opens a path for dialogue, steering away from debates on who is to blame, or what action should be taken, or whose information is better.  Instead this question/invitation shifts the focus to desired outcomes in a shared future. It invites creativity, invokes values, and offers hope – all in just 7 words.

Then, as you listen to and reflect on the responses to this question, you can further expand the dialogue by asking questions that gently explore definitions of terms used by the speaker (e.g., can you tell me more about your definition of democracy? what do you mean by “a great nation”, who is “we” or “they”?).  You can also ask questions that explore the “why” of the preferred outcomes. And as to any proposed outcome you might also ask “how might we get there”?

Both the opening question and the exploratory questions that follow provide more opportunities than do our standard forms of conversation to make a shared connection  whether to values, to hoped for outcomes, or to the hurts that need healing.

In recent conversations I have had, people across the partisan continuum have expressed concern for their families and a desire to see “more human values” or “respect for human dignity” in our policies. Many also want to “live their lives in peace”.  They connect with each other as they share stories and imagine a better future for us all. That connection is what is needed to help us work through the difficult issues together.

In our next post we will look further at the issue of pursuing both peace and prosperity, what the data tells us, and how that data can be used in building an ongoing dialogue.