In Davos this past week, there was much talk of the "G-Zero" world, which the Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer coined as reflecting the lack of strong leadership from any of the G-20 (or other) nations. This stands in stark contrast to last year's event, when all the talk was about the "G-2," or the United States and China as the de facto world leaders. The thinking behind the "G-Zero" is that neither those two nations, nor any others, are providing leadership on topics ranging from climate change to economic recovery to security in Asia. The thinking behind the "G-Zero" theory is that the international community is, in effect, leaderless.
In my view, this logic misses a crucial point. In fact, whether on the streets of Cairo or in the meeting rooms in Davos, we are in fact seeing the emergence of a world led by the "G-Everybody," with leadership coming from an unprecedented number of sources.
Examples of this abounded in Davos. Based solely on meetings I participated in (with 2,500+ attendees mixing over five days, one person can't be everywhere), the spirit of productive partnerships was in strong evidence.
A coalition of companies joined with the UN Global Compact and the WWF to launch "Windmade," the first product label providing consumers with the ability to find and purchase products made with wind energy. A group of consumer product companies discussed plans to work jointly with governments over the coming year to develop innovative policy solutions promoting more sustainable consumption models. And the World Economic Forum itself is exploring the creation of guidance for multi-stakeholder partnerships to help them go to scale and deliver results.
All this was happening against the backdrop of the events in Tunisia and Egypt. These latest examples of what used to be called "people power" reinforce one of the most central realities of our times: power and influence are distributed more widely than ever before.
The theme of Davos this year was "Shared Norms for the New Reality." Within the halls of the Congress Centre, where the meeting takes place, I spoke to a lot of people who questioned whether there are in fact "Shared Norms" shaping the world in 2011. And indeed, if we look to a small group of governments, whether a G-20, a G-8, G-2, or G-Zero, to dictate these norms for the rest of us, shared norms are hard to find.
But if we look more widely, shared norms are in fact emerging. Our thinking, our communication, and our social organization are being shaped today by distributed power. Welcome to the world of the "G-everybody," where our information, perspectives and influence come from more sources than we can possibly count. This is our new reality.
Follow Aron Cramer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aroncramer
http://musea.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/musea-extra-national-hiring-day-update/
You can't just ask for-profit businesses to accomplish good and actually expect any good to happen. I mean, putting that out on the media might help as further pointing this out to the American people, but it won't help anyone get hired.
Business people need to think this through. Let's say you run a small business, by hiring one person, you are a part of this. Many others hire one or more. Then because you (and others) hired one or more, thousands have gotten jobs, lost insecurity and worry, and are ready to buy from you and others. AND they have a good reason to support your company. Just one hire from enough small businesses and the whole country has a big boost. You help a little and get good will from thousands that find jobs, in return.
But again, let's let corporations talk (and the media that won't talk about it). Let them stand up and say why they can't be bothered to help their country by doing so little when it would mean so much.” Maybe they can have a motto, greed over patriotism because that's what our customers want.
Yes! Let's make room for the new era of shared norms because it's so clear that our current value system has failed. Our education system did not help us build a sustainable way of life. Our social infrastructure is totally out of balance. Mother Nature is reacting to this imbalance in ways we never imagined possible.
Up until now we lived according to the capitalistic law of profit, where our income depended on our ability to take advantage of others. Some did this openly while others did it inconspicuously. But now humanity is going to have to learn to take care of the same people it exploited in the past. In the new human system we will only reap benefits to the extent that others are doing well.
It’s not easy to realize that we are all in one boat, and that anyone that causes harm on an individual level is actually hurting everyone. Once we realize this, we will enter a mutual guarantee, even though it will still be based on personal interests.
At some point we will begin to realize that this new bond holds something higher than the material benefits we pursue – and people everywhere will begin to aspire to this higher type of fulfillment.
In the modern age, things move with a fluidity that defies prediction, and synergies can emerge that can completely throw any fixed expectations in the shredder. We might see flying cars and a city on the moon, or a big hole in the earth where the asteroid took a bite out of it, there's no telling what the future holds. But, if all goes well, and the speculators don't have a betting match out of it, maybe we'll see dinner, and commodity prices that kind of hold still so that most people can afford to buy them and thus support themselves.
'' In Modern, meritocratic, expert-based, top-down reformism, enablement comes first, empowerment as a reward. This is compliance system of rule-based Modernity.
In Postmodern (new definition), democratic, knowledge-based, renewal from base empowerment is enacted immediately so that enablement may take place. This is consent system of democratic Postmodernity.''
Eric Clyne