Right-wingers and Left-wingers need to wake up. The election of Barack Obama has rendered irrelevant your outdated ideologies.
A funny thing happened yesterday. An elder family member of ours, who voted for McCain-Palin and can be described as quite socially conservative, said to us, “You know, I think this Barack Obama might be OK.” She said it with sincerity, optimism, and a smile. Later that day, we caught a bit of Countdown with Keith Olberman, in which the Left began to express doubts about Obama’s cabinet picks, such as keeping Gates at Defense, along with his broader policy plans. Then we flagged this piece on AlterNet: Watch out for Obama’s Team Selling Conservative Policies as Progressive Politics.
It’s incredible how quickly things can…change. Obama hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and already he’s changing people’s minds.
The election of Obama represents a major shift in attitude toward American politics. We’d go so far as to call it post-partisan. The two-dimensional, left-right politics of the past are no longer sufficient or relevant. They’ve been rejected, specifically by the 80-million-strong Millennial generation, who truly won this election. This is a new era. If you want to be a part of it, and you want to keep up and have a voice, you have to come to terms with this new dynamic. Just as it’s no longer black versus white, it’s no longer left versus right. It’s not that simple. Obama represents a new mental model. It’s politics in three dimensions.
Of all the problems the new Obama administration faces–health care, national security, the economy, global warming–none is more pressing than energy.
No sooner than the 270th electoral vote was confirmed, bloggers and reporters started to wonder aloud about President-elect Barack Obama’s energy plan. In his campaign, the talking point boiled down to $150 billion dollars of investment and five million new jobs. More recently, he outlined an immediate economic recovery plan that will create 2.5 million new jobs by 2011, in part by “building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technology that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years head.”
The challenge we face with energy, however, is unprecedented. It’s bigger than fascism, communism, and putting a man on the moon. It’s entirely global in scope, and our survival as a civilization depends on it. Nevertheless, there are powerful interests working against it…and us.
Energy is the world’s largest single industry. It just so happens that it’s controlled by so many dictators and multinational corporations, and the incentive structure is such that they are compelled to maximize short-term gains at the expense of long-term prosperity and well being, both for themselves and their six billion stakeholders. First of all, the rules governing energy economics must profoundly change. It’s a tall order. And the American government, backed by its multi-trillion-dollar economy, is the only entity big enough to pull it off. Obama knows this.
General Motors produces a bailout video that threatens to take down the economy. The YouTube public isn’t buying it.
GM’s plea for a $25 billion taxpayer bailout for the American auto industry has gone from Congress to YouTube. If the comments are any indication, the public does not support it. It has 216K views and 1,920 comments as of this post.
As the financial crisis rips across the economy, it’s forcing innovation and adaptation on a scale that should make Darwin proud.
This is no ordinary economic downturn. And so it won’t be an ordinary recession with an ordinary recovery. Some have been given to using the D-word, though we’d hesitate to go that far. It’s true that we’re in uncharted territory. The wealth that was created over the past five years was largely an illusion. Giving it back won’t be easy.
Of the 3% annual growth in GDP for these years, a good 2.5% was in housing. Which means that our economy was “growing” without actually producing anything of value. We’ve been in a recession for these years but chose to ignore it. Our economy was like a patient with life-threatening injuries who was anesthetized with cheap, abundant debt to the point where it couldn’t feel the pain. It was nearly unconscious. But instead of treating the injuries, we chose to pour salt into the wounds (leveraging that debt and inflating asset prices). With little warning, the anesthesia wore off. Now we’re on life support and feeling the pain at an exponential level.
Nearly all of that supposed wealth has to be erased. Housing prices must return to the mean growth trend they’ve followed since the end of WWII…because they have to. There’s nothing Congress can do, other than to prolong the inevitable. It’s an economic truth. And according to these laws, it will take just as long to work out the mess as it took to get us into it. This won’t be easy.
Social media is the accelerant that drives change and innovation, moving us more quickly and efficiently toward the solutions of our time. That’s precisely what it did for Barack Obama.
Max Gladwell was founded in April of this year (2008) as the nexus of social media and green living. We saw these two mega trends coming together to form an exponentially powerful force, and we chose to personify it in Max Gladwell. We positioned this persona in terms of the heroic ideal, where social media technologies are fused with–woven into the very fabric of–the virtues of sustainability and conscious living, thereby giving the technologies purpose and meaning. Social media provides the accelerant for change, as if pouring gasoline on a camp fire.
What the victory of Barack Obama means for the nexus of social media and green living. What it means for the ideals of Max Gladwell.
It’s now been a full week since we woke up to that momentous new day in our history. Barack Obama was elected president with 367 electoral votes and 52% of the popular vote. It was a sweeping mandate for America’s first black president. It was a victory for the greatest political campaign ever run. A victory for social media technologies and Web 2.0. A victory for clean energy and the five million jobs it promises to create. A victory for hope and pragmatic idealism…a triumph over the politics of fear and division. It’s a victory for the Millennial Generation, who turned out in record numbers and who will forever change politics in America. Indeed, their numbers are staggering, and only a small percentage of were old enough to vote this time around. In fact, many now prefer the moniker of Generation O.
In this series of posts, we’ll look at what the election and presidency of Barack Obama means within the context of Max Gladwell. We’ll explore the trends and principles that made the Obama revolution possible, and we’ll forecast a bit about what it means for America and the world on a go-forward basis. In no particular order, we’ll discuss what the Obama presidency means for Internet technology, energy and the environment, community organizing and national service, the economic crisis, campaigning and governing, entrepreneurship and philanthropy, marketing, the Millennial Generation, and even the Republican party. First, we address the title of this series: the heroic ideal.
Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed will participate in a presentation workshop at Opportunity Green 2008.
Max Gladwell has been invited to present at the Opportunity Green conference on November 8th and 9th at UCLA. We’re honored to be participating in a workshop-style panel with esteemed colleagues Michael Leifer of SWIRL, Ben Black of New Cycle Capital, and Ryan Scott of Causecast. Our workshop is on November 9th at 2:20pm PT.
Subject: This presentation workshop highlights and explains social media best practices with an emphasis on cause marketing, sustainability, and green investing. Just as the business landscape is being revolutionized through opportunities in green, the marketing landscape is being revolutionized through opportunities in social media. We’ll look at the use of blogs, social networks, video sharing, micromedia, online communities, and mobile technologies as the new agents of change for business, society, and the environment. We’ll demonstrate how they’re being applied in Banking (Shorebank), Micro-Finance (Kiva.org), Credit Cards (Advanta), VCs (New Cycle), and Social Enterprise (Ideablob). Given the financial crisis and future uncertainty, it’s more important than ever for companies to do more with less, to connect with their customers and potential customers, and to communicate more efficiently.
“In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Mr Obama deserves the presidency.”
A classic yet timely TED presentation from award-winning scholar and author Jared Diamond.
Jared Diamond’s Collapse is one of the defining texts in the Max Gladwell ideal and worldview, which is why it has a permanent place in our “Recommended Reading” sidebar. Very simply, Collapse demonstrates how unsustainable living will, in fact, lead to a society’s downfall and total collapse. There are many other reasons why societies succeed or fail, but living within its ecological and technological means is chief among them.
Diamond’s case studies, as it were, include Easter Island, the Mayan Civilization, and the Anasazi…three societies that suffered complete extinction.
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A funny thing happened yesterday. An elder family member of ours, who voted for McCain-Palin and can be described as quite socially conservative, said to us, “You know, I think this Barack Obama might be OK.” She said it with sincerity, optimism, and a smile. Later that day, we caught a bit of Countdown with Keith Olberman, in which the Left began to express doubts about Obama’s cabinet picks, such as keeping Gates at Defense, along with his broader policy plans. Then we flagged this piece on AlterNet: Watch out for Obama’s Team Selling Conservative Policies as Progressive Politics.
