Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "integrity"

New York, Henry Holt &Co.,2014.
The solution is clear now--Elizabeth Warren points the way, along with other books I have referenced in my work: Dietz and O’Neill’s Enough Is Enough: Building A Sustainable Future in a World of Finite Resources and Tom Friedman’s Hot Flat and Crowded. We need to ‘fix what’s broke’ first—usury, dishonesty and subterfuge in business, law and politics—then, with the excess money saved, perhaps we will support (even subsidize!!) education, infrastructure renewal and honest research instead of overpaying CEO’s, rock stars and ball players.

As the steady state experts say, a small difference in income should be enough incentive to inspire creative work or compensate those doing less desirable jobs. Once the playing field is reasonably level, excess money from football tickets or other popular endeavors can be made available to create jobs repairing roads and bridges, supporting motivated students, and exploring new information and technologies.

Even the tougher problems could be tackled—like the relocation needed as the oceans rise and harsh weather forces us to move north. Maybe some excess money could be directed toward rebuilding efficient rail transport and sustainable energy systems, creating jobs while curing addiction to fossil fuels that now threaten our safe and healthy existence.

I suggest reading Elizabeth Warren’s A Fighting Chance first. Her story begins with her fight against the horrifying effort to tighten bankruptcy laws and ends with her equally horrifying battle to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. She makes her points clearly by sharing the details of her personal experiences, feelings and ideas as if she were talking to a close friend. There is no doubt that her axes to grind are hewn with deep concern, honest emotion and conviction.

Most of us care about our personal ethics. We don’t lie and cheat as a matter of policy. Neither should our politicians, bankers and businessmen, Warren insists. We are better than that. We deserve and should expect integrity.

Once we regain American integrity, we can embrace Tom Friedman’s “Code Green.” We can reverse the trend away from democracy that occurs in countries flooded with too much money. He makes a strong case that it has happened with too much oil money. We can also reverse our bad example and provide the world a good example in how to create a good life for all, without using up the world’s resources.

It will take a new paradigm that gives human well-being and a healthy Earth top priority above “money uber allus.” The guidelines are crystal clear in books like Enough Is Enough. We might even find solutions to social and religious dilemmas—like education and equal rights for women—that keep the human population growing at an alarming rate.

I have decided not to review The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (Columbia University Press, 2014). Though I agree with the authors’ worry about what they call “anti-intellectualism” in current Western thinking, I will neither read this book nor recommend it. Rather, if you are still curious, I suggest doing a close read of Michael Shermer’s August 2014 Scientific American Skeptic article.

Then concentrate on reading the many thorough nonfiction studies that suggest real solutions to our many concerns, including our health problems, malnutrition, population stress and limited resources. Many such books appear in the previous reviews in this blog.

Or read our series The Archives of Varok, where solutions to our dilemmas are portrayed as realistically as possible in a fun setting so you can see what might be required to secure a long-term future. Two more books in the series will be coming out in November. Let’s focus on solutions. We don’t need more poorly presented dystopias. We can do better than they portray. The guidelines to an equitable humane future are rational and clear, though not easy.

A Primer On Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, by James G. March, New York, The Free Press, 1994, from his lectures at Stanford University.

This is a treasure trove of timeless one-liners—for anyone who is involved in making decisions, which is most of us. Jim March challenges us with a plethora of ifs, ands, buts, and might-have-beens, if we would only step back from our assumptions and take a good look at what we might be missing.

Based on lectures given while a professor of political science and sociology at Stanford University, the book is divided into six sections—the limits to rationality, problems with decisions based on rules, and on “multiple actors” working in teams and in politics, problems with “ambiguity and interpretation” and problems with “using knowledge.”

March begins by noting the role of ignorance in decision making and ends the book with the role of knowledge and power. He keeps our feet to the fire by listing all the ways we manage to avoid difficult decisions, even when making contracts. Among our limitations, he pays attention to cognitive dissonance (without naming it), environmental limits, bio-constraints, and the future.

Read this book with a pencil and notepad in hand, so that you can write down all the examples that come to mind when reading his summary observations. The world will be made a better place when you act on those notes.

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou, New York, Random House, 2008.
In giving this book to my granddaughter to read, I felt, like author Maya Angelou, that I am "...giving to a person who is naturally generous...[reminding] me of a preacher passionately preaching to the already committed choir."

Nevertheless, I want to share this book. It's written in short chapters that resonate with deep tones. It's sentences are also short, and they are direct. Unmistakable in both fact and meaning. No guessing is needed to relate to her experience. Perhaps some will trigger a memory or inspire a thought.

Angelou speaks of truth, and she means it. She talks about people who "...allow their tongues to wag with vulgarity..", which really expresses their self-humiliation, "...but we are brought low by sharing in the obscenity."

In sharing her life experience so profoundly and so honestly, she provides an example for all of us to follow, especially in these times when our public figures ignore the values that made this country great