Category: quotes

Stories

“The most powerful force in the world is the feeling that one is not alone.”

Last night Abra and I attended the live series finally of our local radio theatre group Rabbit Hole Theatre (http://www.rabbitholeradio.org/). The program was the last in their series “Mythologica,” which consisted of several episodes of the myths at the core of several cultures around the world.

Two lines stood out and made me think:

“The most powerful force in the world is the feeling that one is not alone,” and

“Our stories are what bind a culture together.”

When you think of those two statements together, it’s easy to understand the power of family, religion, patriotism, community, class, and even rooting for your favorite sports team.

Creative people have the duty to preserve, present, capture, and refine those stories. That’s why I love working with creative people – they always have a home.

Artocracy

‘artocracy,’ an elite based on mastery of visual arts, music, and drama.

Another quote in the March issue of Fast Company Magazine got me thinking this weekend. Fast Company says it’s a “good call.” Here’s the quote:

“First came the aristocracy, an elite based on bloodline. Then came the meritocracy, an elite based on academic achievement. Next will be what I’d call an ‘artocracy,’ an elite based on mastery of visual arts, music, and drama.” The person cited as the author of the quote is Daniel H. Pink (author of the books A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information age to the Conceptual Age, and Free Agent Nation. www.danpink.com).

I have not read those books, but I’m going to do so as soon as I can.

While I believe that education must return to more of a liberal arts/problem-solving focus, I have a hard time with the concept of any sort of “cracy” – an elite of any kind really kind of bothers me. Maybe that feeling comes from being raised on a hog farm in Iowa. My background is far from “elite” – at least in my mind. While we didn’t have a lot of money, I went to a good public school (47 people in my graduating class – 25 of us went to kindergarden together), and I was never hungry. I have to recognize that there are milllions of people in the world that would consider my childhood “elite”… While elitism bothers me, I’m not an advocate of forced mediocracy – kids should get graded on tests.

The problem I have with this quote is that in order to become elite based on a mastery of the visual arts, music, and drama a person probably has to have time to practice. Time to practice means time away from earning money to pay the rent – at least until the practice has paid off and the arts in question bring in enough money to pay the bills that add up while the person is off practicing.

Who’s to pay the bills in the interim? The patron of the artist is still the elite until the artist makes the “big time”. Who is that patron, in this age, probably someone from the aristocracy (who made their money the old-fashioned way – inhertance) or from the mertitocracy. And, when you really think about it, isn’t becoming an elite artists really just a form of merit-based respect.

No, I don’t think “meritocracy” will be REPLACED by “artocracy” – it will simply be (and is already) subdivided into different categories of earned, merit-based, respect.

Transparency

In the March 2006 issue of Fast Company Magazine (page 28), John Mackey – Charman, CEO, and cofounder of Whgole Foods Market, Inc says:

“When there are fewer secrets, there is greater motivation to do the right thing. That’s driving busines. There’s greater accountability, and more businesses are getting leadership that recognizes that we can’t hide.

So we better do the right thing.

I think this is part of a larger trend, toward businesses having a greater responsibility in sociiety than just maximizing profits. Customers want that, employees wnat that, and shareholders want that: They want businesses to be good sitizens. Businesses today have a too-narow concept of why they exist. Particularly with the scandals at the beginning of this century, historians will look back and see that business is being called upon to do more. It’s not an either-or situation — it’s not profits versus good citizenship. And right now, a new generation is becoming CEOs.”

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I like this quote because it pushs back at the legal system. I believe the reason short-term profits have been put at the top of the priority list is that short term profits are the only objective way for JUDGES to make business decisions when the leaders of businesses want to do different things. What is in the best interest of the shareholder – TODAY and ONLY TODAY – is relatively easy to adjudicate. What’s in the best interest of the stakeholder (people in the community, our children, ect. who don’t own stock) is a far more speculative experiment to determine. On one side, it makes sense to look at the needs of the community, or maybe even the needs of the shareholder in the mid- to long-term. But this gives a judge – who may be far more interested in keeping criminals off the streat than figuring out a corporate dispute – a lot of power and responsibility that she may not be qualified to handle.

I think the only real answer are:

1. As leaders, define the corporate mission in terms of values – not profits.
2. As investors, only invest in companies that have defined their vision in terms of values and pull your investment when those values are compromized.

Yes, that’s idealistic – but idealism is one of the things I value. 🙂