Volume 2, Issue 30

The election is over and Obama has a second term. Both parties’ base constituencies came out to vote, signifying high motivation that their side must win, which means a lot of people feel they have lost. Some of these people are not going to agree to bring the country back together, yet that is exactly what would be best for everyone as we move forward. It is all about how we handle the situation now.

Romney won among white males and in many States. Obama won the popular vote by about three million votes. In CNN exit polls more people want to repeal Obama’s healthcare program than to keep it, possibly largely based on hearsay, some of it purposeful disinformation. The consensus pattern suggests that Obama’s actions to date should not be predictive of what he aims to do from this point forward. His best move would be to acknowledge the arguments of the other side and seek new creative ways to postulate compromise concepts and action programs that can bring both sides together — enabling processes of refinement of initial concepts, where everyone gets to add creative elements to the final solutions so that everyone can feel parentage.

Romney’s speech in accepting defeat for his bid emphasized the right notions of how America can succeed, calling upon job creators to step forward and invest in growth. That would be the right guideline for the Republican Party in the next four years, and starting instantly, a quick winding down of negativity and a pulling together toward creativity and compromise.

Creativity is in fact the one thing that has still been missing. All we have heard are variations in ancient themes. No inspiring new ideas. Exactly the opposite of what is needed. Look at the world around us — it is full of amazing surprises in technology, lifestyles, new ideas in every field except politics. The American people want creativity in public policy too. Both sides need to retrain themselves to think, stripping back to start from fresh sheets of paper, reinventing themselves anew. Think the unthinkable. Pour out ideas without regard for taking credit, without attachment to seeming smarter than the other guy. We are one team, we have real challenges, and we must together devise the real new solutions that lie just beyond a fictitious barrier of our own making.

The real leaders on both sides are the ones that will propose new, positive and healing compromises in the days ahead.

The President hinted at the value of our dynamic differences in his victory speech, saying that people around the world are fighting and dying in order to gain the right to freely discourse their differences in self-governance. True. However, our political discourse has all too often fallen to name calling, and must be re-elevated to a Socratic dialectic that progresses to a commonly supported synthesis. Respect for those whose views differ from yours is the mother from which invention of new creative re-bonding ideas spring. Lack of such respect is infertile ground for creativity. Do not be put off by the extremists on the side you consider to be the other side, listen to the moderates on the perceived other side for inspiration of your own creative ideas that might succeed in bringing us together. Let the American people share in the creative process and bubble up grassroots ideas for leaders to build upon.

In this spirit of America, we will in the very near future add THE DEMOCRACY CHANNEL to this blog, as an adjacent page on which we seek your ideas for solutions to the challenges faced by the country and the world. We will reach out to academics, think tanks, students, writers, and the general population, and we’ll publish the ideas we feel are truly creative and can potentially heal the rifts we have formed out of our genuinely differing perspectives, ideas that can solve the challenges the human race has created for itself.

Please embrace healing in your own life so that it may radiate out — as from pebbles in a vast pond.

Best to all,

Bill 

PS – Next week the Smart TV Summit is being held in San Francisco with over 150 major names registered so far. I’m speaking on a panel about the future of television and also presenting research relevant to the future. Hope some of you can make it, let’s have a drink too. Cheers, Bill