Some nice thoughts from Mark's closing article, which addresses
questions raised recently by Lennart and David...
-enp
http://radicalmiddle.com/x_vision2009.htm
. . . a radical politics, not so much in the sense of radical versus
liberal as in the sense of going to the roots of things . . . a
radicalism that is neither of the left nor right – a radicalism that
is modest enough to borrow what it needs from each of the old
political “isms” but bold enough to transcend them . . . a
radicalism that is less interested in blaming groups and governments
for our problems than in attempting to work out new and viable
solutions to our problems . . . a radicalism that is more interested
in healing society than in championing the exclusive claims to
rightness of any one faction or segment of society. . . .
1. Mastering the Skills of Social Change: Richard Revesz's Numbers-
Crunching Meets Marilyn Hamilton's Meta-Frameworking
“exercising our compassion most effectively . . . requires us to
step back and use our best analytic tools. Sometimes, in order to
save a life, we need to treat a person like a number”)
2. Thinking About Power: David Rothkopf's Institutional Power Meets
Clay Shirky's Internet Power
“Without the emergence of countervailing power centers to represent
and ultimately institutionalize the will of the people at large,” he
[Rothkopf[ says, “we will continue to get only partial solutions” to
the world’s problems.
3. Moving Politics Forward: AmericaSpeaks's Wise Democracy Meets
Chickering & Turner's "Transpartisan" Democracy
the sort of learning process that’s at the heart of the radical-
middle notion of becoming a wise (not just a popular) democracy.
Chickering and Turner don’t see government as The Solution, but they
don’t see it as The Enemy either.
“Transpartisan” includes “bipartisan” but also goes beyond it.
Transpartisan typically involves looking at an issue in a new way that
will bring adversaries together. The central transpartisan insight
has to do with broadening the meaning of “public” beyond governments
to include citizens engaging each other often in informal partnerships
with governments to solve public problems. . . . “Transpartisan”
action focuses on understanding issues in new ways and creates spaces
for cooperation that are sadly often hidden.
4. Moving Business Forward: Art Kleiner's Good Corporate Guys Meet
David Yamada's Good Corporate Laws
A heretic is someone who sees a truth that contradicts the
conventional wisdom of the institution to which he or she belongs and
remains loyal to both entities – the institution and the new truth.
Heretics are not apostates; they do not leave the “church.” Instead
they try to influence the larger institution to change for its own sake.
“Corporations have become powerful because they work,” Kleiner
concludes. “They work because of the power of large-scale business
methods.” But in order for corporations to continue to work for us in
the 21st century (and to continue to do well even for investors in the
long term), corporations must continue “reinventing their purpose away
from merely making money.”
Moving Global Affairs Forward: Fareed Zakaria's Humanistic Pragmatism
Meets Alanna Hartzok's Visionary Idealism
- The world is spontaneously developing a “bottom-up, networked
order. . . . No one institution or organization is always right, no
one framework ideal. The U.N. might work for one problem, NATO for
another, the OAS for a third. And for a new issue like climate
change, perhaps a new coalition that involves private business and
nongovernmental groups would make the most sense.” The U.S. should
embrace such an “ad hoc order,” which one former State Department
official calls “a la carte multilateralism.”
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