discover now the most compelling clarity of 2022 is that fostered by the looming disaster. As humanity confronts the Scylla and Charybdis of climate catastrophe and pandemic chaos, we face a clear reckoning of our moral compass, of how we care for each other. Our resolve and our courage are being challenged in surprising, comprehensive, and dramatic ways. Most crucially, we must grasp how irrevocably every single life on Earth is cause and effect to every other.
Now more than ever, the need to understand our common home and interconnected future demand that we work in unison across the senseless borders and insulting bigotry of our past; that we sever the rusty barbed wire of our tiresome, self-defeating mistrust; and, not least, bridge the mortifying moats of religious and racial intolerance.
If we are to find a way through to safer seas, we must collectively imagine a World Order that is not only New but also Inspiring and Ingenious. We must discover all manner of social, political, environmental, and economic re-set buttons, pressing each with care and compassion.
Not least, in our negotiations ahead, it’s time to replace self-absorbed power dynamics with truly listening to each other. Our survival depends on profoundly re-creating our relationships not only with each other but for each other, as the selfless commitment of essential workers reminds us daily.
In fact, let’s begin now – even in the thick of it – before bureaucracy, violence, and dismay calcify our will and confuse our intent. Let’s offer up as many crazy ideas as we can, for if we are lucky if we pay micro-close attention – and especially if the gods forgive our miserable report card for Planet Management 101 – inherent in a few of them will be kernel and key to civilized survival.
To begin here’s one suggestion for our own still united States. Let’s create a 2022 Marshall Plan, involving every aspect of our national life, by re-committing private wealth to the public good. Let’s invent humanistic capitalism that works in partnership with the federal and local government yet without fealty to it, that provides security, safety, and dignity for all of us, helping rescue our only home in the process.
Such a plan involves the twin challenges of recognition and will, including a moral recalibration for each of us, especially those who control the major shares of private wealth. It is painfully clear that we will not leave much of a world to our children if we do not figure this out soon.
Let’s begin by convincing the private sector to finally and forever abandon the primacy of wealth alone and create capitalism with and for humanity. Already we are led in that direction by the kindness of millions of Americans now helping neighbors survive. May their actions be the first steps in creating these interconnected and cross-pollinating partnerships.
Encourage Big Banks, Big Consulting, and Big Accounting to get involved top line in encouraging entrepreneurship. Twenty of the most respected companies work in close association with the top five graduate schools of business to support anyone with an idea for a new enterprise, in the process creating whole new curricula (digital and fixed classroom) that can be customized easily for each student and the future she imagines. For example, one-year programs for food service, two-year programs for retail, and three-year programs for manufacturing.
Big Oil, Big Ag, and Big Cham set out to rescue our land, air, and water. It’s time to come clean. Working with the most respected university programs of environmental science as well as the top environmental non-profits, they delineate the challenges and do the work of revitalizing our arable land, saving our water resources, cleaning our air, protecting our national parks and public lands, and working towards a carbon-neutral existence. In the process, they lead the inevitable shift to a Green economy.
Big Auto and Big Construction rebuild our transportation network and infrastructure, improving commuting efficiency and safety in the process, consulting with other partnerships to encourage working at home and staggered hours.
Big Pharma and Big Insurance work on universal health care and transparent drug development, helping to fund hospitals as well.
Big Utility and Big Tech improve and sustain our digital infrastructure and power grid. Big Education (universities and graduate schools) rethinks what sort of curricula now serves us best, from primary school to graduate degrees. What are the courses we most need now to keep the country strong and society healthy? At the same time, reimagine classroom education itself how necessary is it beyond the age of 18?
Big Law considers how well the Constitution is respected and what amendments are advisable, looking at immigration, prison reform, criminal justice, the court system, public housing, and waste disposal.
Finally, let’s challenge Big Philanthropy itself to become a full partner in this re-imagining, to support private sector revitalization in all its complexity and promise.
So let’s develop thousands of ideas, ones that will make the angels proud of how well we understand our interconnectedness – one sentient life to another – and do so, not least, so that we can work fluently with the rest of the planet on programs that help remake civilization itself, reimagining our social structure to be fluent with the great river systems of the world
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