nuance intelligence

I overheard a Mormon (both a political and social conservative) debating climate change and politics with a corporate sustainability strategist at the Angel Capital Summit this week.  He said, “it doesn’t matter what has come before, it’s what we do now that matters,” referencing in the first half of the comment a slightly disagreeable detente on the facts of several climate-related matters, but nonetheless acceding to the basic premise and acknowledging it as a systems condition.

While this comment may be out of context of the larger conversation, it highlights an interesting point that signals the beginning of the end of political conservatism – by which i mean a systematic aversion to change.

In most of history, a slow pace of change enforced the status quo, which was, generally speaking, a known entity.  Now that the global eco-system (ecology and economy) is changing, the risk of doing nothing becomes unacceptable.  Don’t believe me?  Consider the difference in the quality of life between the citizen of two low-lying principalities: Holland and Louisiana.   The Dutch actively address and maintain their defense from the sea, while the US Army Corps of Engineers and a complex political deadlock doomed the citizens of the Gulf Coast to a much less comfortable fate.

Many key aspects of the current system are sinking like the proverbial Titanic.  Many of us will be forced to jump off the ship and start swimming for an island.  The choice of when to jump, which direction to swim and one’s native ability to swim will determine the fate of individuals and many small groups.

So, political conservatives, will, in fact, be faced with a choice: you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone.

This is not a criticism, per se, but rather an objective assessment of changing pscyho-poltical dynamics.  I think conservatism will survive in many forms.  Social conservatism will remain for the forseeable future, while a new conservatism will emerge — from those strong swimmers — that starts to look a lot more like a conscious sustainability.

Great piece on the bioneers blog today lamenting the fact that important issues get overlooked in favor of the latest news cycle.  They call these important issues “Olds,” in contrast to the “News” in the headlines each day.

And they point out that our Olds are not getting addressed very often in the News — issues like overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and decreasing energy supply, among others.  They go on to point out that these are the issues that have led to the collapse of several previously great societies, like the Anazazi, May, Norse and more — a point they adopted from Jared Diamond’s book Collapse.

I can summarize it any better than they could:

His list and the list of things that aren’t in the News are disturbingly similar. The truly disturbing part is that while the civilizations Mr. Diamond described were peak civilizations rivaling any now in existence, they were all relatively contained in their own geographic region. Their collapse was a loss to humanity, but there were plenty of people around to rebuild and continue the species. Now we find a civilization that has become global and that is facing the same kinds of problems the led to the demise of all the great civilizations from the past. These are not new problems, but the situation for humanity is more tenuous. When this civilization collapses who will survive and where will they go?

The yin of entrepreneurism is a steady dose of optimism.  Without it, we’d just take a 40-hour a week executive gig and slowly rot our brains.

This optimism is going to be in full force this week at the Angel Capital Summit.   As I wrote in my Colorado Biz column on angel investing this month,

Some businesses are responding [to the credit crisis] by getting small, reducing risk, laying off staff and hoarding cash. Others are anticipating a better future and ignoring today’s awful financial news in favor of the promise of tomorrow. Technophiles are promising productivity gains from new tools while “free-range” thinkers have gone completely off the reservation, and are designing new currency systems.

So it’s character-building time. A real entrepreneur has the courage and the drive to leap across the proverbial chasm and create a new fortune.  The shifts are happening to allow once-in-a-lifetime wealth creation as the old system dies and a new one is born.

Join us in Denver on Friday to learn how and where the money will flow, which businesses will thrive, and how to spot the previously unseen differentiating factors, a process we are calling evolutionary risk management.

It’s time to choose wheter you are going down with the economic Titanic or hop on a lifeboat and start rowing.