nuance intelligence

If you can forgive me the conceit of talking about myself for a second (not my favorite trait in bloggers), I’ve been a pretty sporadic blogger this year.  A mix of moderately heavy consulting work, reading and thinking about the epochal transition, and an extended experiment with Twitter have kept me from pouring much into the nuance intelligence blog bucket.

There’s an ever-evolving blog post I’m writing called “The New Normal” that starts, “A system that values and compensates an individual’s contribution to their community will replace the “greed is good” ethic that allowed Wall St. to dominate our world for the past 30 years.”  Seems simple enough, but the natural evolution from that concept indicates a fundamental transition in our relationship to economics, natural resources, other people, and — for the most part — how we live our lives. In fact, I believe that we are — consciously or not — re-writing the basic Social Contract that ties us together as humanity.

Leaving the Aristotelian pursuits aside for now, I’ve been reading many articles — good ones getting posted to Twitter at a clip of a few most days — from a wide range of thinking, from the St. Louis Fed’s graph that shows hyper-inflation starting in 2010 (PDF) to Truthout’s piece on Ecological Ignorance and Economic Collapse.  In each case, and many more, it’s clear that a radical change is upon us, and that the mild stock market rally of April, 2009 has very little to do with these fundamental issues, and may well represent the final swings of the tail that wags the dog.

If you think these thoughts could make anyone feel insane, you should have been around in 2006 or even 2002, when much of this was forming for me and my trusted co-conspirators.  As I write, I’m just off the phone with good friend and colleague Anita Burke, who confessed,  “I feel like I’m at the garbage dump of capitalism, picking through the trash to find something I can fix, to use until the whole thing falls apart.”

So, it’s time to act.  I’m no longer interested in debating whether my worldview is valid anymore, rather seeking those who see it the same way and want to walk the path to the New Normal, whatever that might be.  I’m also endeavoring to write more, so tune back in, if you are interested in this line of thinking.  Still waters run deep, so the analogy goes.  And now we must all run.  Deep.  Collectively.