The Futurist Manifesto

F. T. Marinetti, 1909

Source:

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.

Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.

`Come, my friends!' I said. `Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness.'

We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel - a guillotine knife - which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. `Smell,' I exclaimed, `smell is good enough for wild beasts!'

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

`Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!'

As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself - vlan! - head over heels in a ditch.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.

For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!

Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.

The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.

Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!

Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: `We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors,' it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

The magic instant

by Paulo Coelho

http://www.warriorofthelight.com/engl/edi201_instante.shtml

We have to take risks. We can only truly understand the miracle of life when we let the unexpected manifest itself.

Every day – together with the sun – God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day we try to pretend that we don’t realize that moment, that it doesn’t exist, that today is just the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if you pay attention, you can discover the magic instant. It may be hiding at the moment when we put the key in the door in the morning, in the silence right after dinner, in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. This moment exists – a moment when all the strength of the stars passes through us and lets us work miracles.

Happiness is at times a blessing – but usually it’s a conquest. The magic instant helps us to change, drives us forward to seek our dreams. We shall suffer and go through quite a few difficult moments and face many a disappointment – but this is all transitory and inevitable, and eventually we shall feel proud of the marks left behind by the obstacles. In the future we will be able to look back with pride and faith.

Poor are those who are afraid of running risks. Because maybe they are never disappointed, never disillusioned, never suffer like those who have a dream to pursue. But when they look back – for we always look back – they will hear their heart saying: “What did you do with the miracles that God sowed for your days? What did you do with the talent that your Master entrusted to you? You buried it deep in a grave because you were afraid to lose it. So this is your inheritance: the certainty that you have wasted your life.”

Poor are those who hear these words. For then they will believe in miracles, but the magic instants of life will have already passed.

We must listen to the child that we once were, and who still lives within us. This child understands about magic instants. We can muffle his sobbing, but we can’t hush his voice.

If we aren’t reborn, if we don’t see life again with the innocence and enthusiasm of childhood, then there is no more sense to living.

There are many ways to commit suicide. Those who try to kill their body offend God’s law. Those who try to kill their soul also offend God’s law, although their crime is less visible to the eyes of man.

Let us be heedful of what the child within us has to say. Let’s not feel ashamed of it. Let’s not allow it to feel afraid, because it’s lonely and is scarcely ever heard.

Let’s allow the child within us to take the reins of our existence a little. This child says that one day is different from another.

Let’s make the child feel loved again. Let’s please this child – even if it means acting in a way that we’re not used to, even if it seems foolish in the eyes of others.

Remember that the wisdom of men is madness before God. If we listen to the child we bear in our soul, our eyes will shine once more. If we don’t lose contact with this child, we won’t lose contact with life.

Let’s live all the magic instants of 2009!



Love

There is always someone in the world waiting for someone else, whether in the middle of the desert or in the heart of some big city. And when these two people’s paths cross and their eyes meet, the whole of the past and the whole of the future lose all importance, and there only exists that moment and that incredible certainty that everything under the Sun was written by the very same Hand. The Hand that awakens Love and creates a sister soul for everyone who works, rests and seeks treasures under the Sun. Were it not for this, the dreams of the human race would make no sense.

What You Don't Know About Gaza

The New York Times , January 8, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08khalidi.html

------------------------------
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By RASHID KHALIDI

NEARLY everything you've been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS. Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION. The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza's air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE. Israel's blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment with the tacit support of the United States of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE. Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES. The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn't really about rockets. Nor is it about "restoring Israel's deterrence," as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people."

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."

Inventory of normality

Paulo Coelho


I decided to conduct a survey among my friends about what society considers to be normal behavior. What follows is a list I have made of some of the absurd situations we face in day-to-day life, just because society sees them as normal:

1] Anything that makes us forget our true identity and our dreams and makes us only work to produce and reproduce.

2] Making rules for a war (the Geneva Convention).

3] Spending years at university and then not being able to find a job.

4] Working from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon at something that does not give us the least pleasure, so that we can retire after 30 years.

5] Retiring only to discover that we have no more energy to enjoy life, and then dying of boredom after a few years.

6] Using Botox.

7] Trying to be financially successful instead of seeking happiness.

8] Ridiculing those who seek happiness instead of money by calling them “people with no ambition”.

9] Comparing objects like cars, houses and clothes, and defining life according to these comparisons instead of really trying to find out the true reason for being alive.

10] Not talking to strangers. Saying nasty things about our neighbors.

11] Thinking that parents are always right.

12] Getting married, having children and staying together even though the love has gone, claiming that it’s for the sake of the children (who do not seem to be listening to the constant arguments).

12ª] Criticizing everybody who tries to be different.

14] Waking up with a hysterical alarm-clock at the bedside.

15] Believing absolutely everything that is printed.

16] Wearing a piece of colored cloth wrapped around the neck for no apparent reason and known by the pompous name “necktie”.

17] Never asking direct questions, even though the other person understands what you want to know.

18] Keeping a smile on your face when you really want to cry. And feeling sorry for those who show their own feelings.

19] Thinking that art is worth a fortune, or else that it is worth absolutely nothing.

20] Always despising what was easily gained, because the “necessary sacrifice” – and therefore also the required qualities – are missing.

21] Following fashion, even though it all looks ridiculous and uncomfortable.

22] Being convinced that all the famous people have tons of money saved up.

23] Investing a lot in exterior beauty and paying little attention to interior beauty.

24] Using all possible means to show that even though you are a normal person, you are infinitely superior to other human beings.

25] In any kind of public transport, never looking straight into the eyes of the other passengers, as this may be taken for attempting to seduce them.

26] When you enter an elevator, looking straight at the door and pretending you are the only person inside, however crowded it may be.

27] Never laughing out loud in a restaurant, no matter how funny the story is.

28] In the Northern hemisphere, always wearing the clothes that match the season of the year: short sleeves in springtime (however cold it may be) and a woolen jacket in the fall (no matter how warm it is).

29] In the Southern hemisphere, decorating the Christmas tree with cotton wool, even though winter has nothing to do with the birth of Christ.

30] As you grow older, thinking you are the wisest man in the world, even though not always do you have enough life experience to know what is wrong.

31] Going to a charity event and thinking that in this way you have collaborated enough to put an end to all the social inequalities in the world.

32] Eating three times a day, even if you’re not hungry.

33] Believing that the others are always better at everything: they are better-looking, more resourceful, richer and more intelligent. Since it’s very risky to venture beyond your own limits, it’s better to do nothing.

34] Using the car as a way to feel powerful and in control of the world.

35] Using foul language in traffic.

36] Thinking that everything your child does wrong is the fault of the company he or she is keeping.

37] Marrying the first person who offers you a position in society. Love can wait.

38] Always saying “I tried”, even though you haven’t tried at all.

39] Putting off doing the most interesting things in life until you no longer have the strength to do them.

40] Avoiding depression with massive daily doses of television programs.

41] Believing that it is possible to be sure of everything you have won.

42] Thinking that women don’t like football and that men don’t like interior decoration.

43] Blaming the government for everything bad that happens.

44] Being convinced that being a good, decent and respectful person means that the others will find you weak, vulnerable and easy to manipulate.

45] Being convinced that aggressiveness and discourtesy in treating others are signs of a powerful personality.

46] Being afraid of fibroscopy (men) and childbirth (women).

47] And finally, thinking that your religion is the sole proprietor of the absolute truth, the most important, the best, and that the other human beings in this immense planet who believe in any other manifestation of God are condemned to the fires of hell.

www.warriorofthelight.com 

What Complexity Science Teaches Us About Social Change

by Virginia Lacayo

From 1992 to 2004, I worked at a Nicaraguan nongovernmental organization called Puntos de Encuentro, which means "meeting points" or "common grounds," a feminist nonprofit organization that believes in the role of communication, research, and education in fostering social change. Puntos advocates an innovative approach to designing communication strategies to promote social change, believing that "while societies have to change, they have to decide for themselves how to change." Rather than seeking to change individual behaviour, it seeks to influence the social context in which individuals act and in which discussion about different aspects of daily life, both public and private, occurs.

To this end, Puntos uses its weekly television social soap series Sexto Sentido (Sixth Sense) as a launching pad for a multimedia, multilevel communication for social change strategy called Somos Diferentes, Somos Iguales"”We're Different. We're Equal. The award-winning strategy combines entertainment-education outcomes, youth leadership training, alliances between partners and strengthening on-the-ground social movements to promote change in Nicaraguan society.

In spite of its wide recognition as an innovative, risk-taking NGO, Puntos has been struggling to frame theoretically and justify its outreach strategy. This is because, while Puntos is experimenting with alternative approaches to promote social change through its communication interventions, it still has to contend with traditional log frames, planning models, impact indicators and research methods based on behaviour change communication theories, which respond to the standard criteria scholars and granters have established to legitimise project outcomes. Seldom do such methods and indicators reveal the multilevel mechanisms through which social change occurs.

Contradictions arise when organizations such as Puntos approach social change as a nonlinear, "messy," complex problem, while most donors, social scientists, and practitioners approach it as a predictable, linear process. A minority of practitioners and scholars, who share a more holistic and complex definition of social change as a process, increasingly criticize the notion of conceptualising social change as an event that can be achieved by strategic behaviour change communication inputs. However, barring some exceptions, these criticisms have not translated into revamped field-based interventions.

In the development enterprise, even those grant makers and leaders who may intrinsically believe that social change is a long-term, complex process silently collude to support theories, indicators, methodologies, and policies favouring a linear, step-by-step, cause-effect approach. The hegemony of behaviour change theories and steps to change models persists. Meanwhile, organizations that use communication strategies deal with the pressure of sustainability and the need to demonstrate"”with legitimised standard indicators"”their "success" to compete for funds necessary for their work.

New theories and methodologies that respond to the notion of social change as a complex, nonlinear, contradictory, emergent and self-organizing process are necessary.

How I Came Across Complexity Science

Hoping to find some of the answers I was looking for, I left Puntos de Encuentro in 2004 to pursue my master's degree in Communication and Development Studies at Ohio University. I am now enrolled in the university's Ph.D. program in mass communication.

At OU, my path crossed with Professor Arvind Singhal, who himself was questioning the relevance and applicability of traditional social science methods in understanding the complexities of social change. Highly intrigued by the complexity science framework, he had become a passionate advocate for its usefulness in providing alternative explanations of how social change occurred. He introduced me to the complexity literature and some of its key practitioners. I saw that complexity science is increasingly used as a framework to analyse complex interactions between various actors in systems, such as stock markets, human bodies, forest ecosystems, manufacturing businesses, immune systems, termite colonies, and hospitals. I was so intrigued by the insight this new science could provide that I read about the topic voraciously.

I started to understand better the role of relationships, connection and interactions. I began to understand the concepts of emerging orders, self-organizing, nonlinearity. I began to see the importance of pattern recognition, the difference between the whole and the mere sum of the parts, the value of outliers and diversity, and how small inputs can lead to big changes and so on.

Even though these concepts were familiar to me, the wholeness of them gave me eyes to see Puntos and its work from a different perspective.

What Is Complexity Science, And How Can It Help?

Complexity science is not a single theory. It is a combination of various theories and concepts from a variety of disciplines--biology, anthropology, economy, sociology, management and others"”that studies complex adaptive systems (CAS).

All three terms in the name CAS are significant in the definition of a CAS: Complex implies diversity, many connections among a wide variety of elements. Adaptive suggests the capacity to alter or change, the ability to learn from experience. A system is a set of connected or interdependent things. From this definition, it is possible to approach organizations, communities and societies as complex adaptive systems.

Complexity science seeks to understand how complex adaptive systems work the patterns of relationships within them, how they are sustained, how they self-organize and how outcomes emerge.

In this sense, complexity science addresses aspects of living systems that are neglected or understated in traditional social change approaches. Complexity science provides insights to understand better how complex social systems work and change. It invites us to examine the unpredictable, disorderly and unstable aspects of organizations and societies.

So instead of describing how systems should behave, complexity science focuses the analysis on the interdependencies and interrelationships among their elements to describe how systems actually behave.

How Complexity Science Speaks About Social Change

According to complexity theorists, all complex adaptive systems, such as organizations or communities, are governed by a few basic principles and share a number of associated proprieties. Understanding these principles could provide clues to design and implement interventions that evoke the natural quality of living systems to change and re-create themselves.

Let me share a couple of examples.

Complexity Idea No. 1: The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts

Complexity science argues that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Most of us know this already, but each of us interprets and applies this in a different manner. For Puntos, this meant to develop its communication strategy Somos Diferentes, Somos Iguales by chunking, that is, experimenting to get pieces that work and then linking the pieces together, while being aware of the unpredictable, emergent behaviours and outcomes that new interconnections brought. Puntos realized through these experiments that combining media and methodologies for an ongoing period of time would produce more cost-effective outcomes, and would be more aligned with its conception of a messy process of social change.

Puntos understood that interpersonal and organizing activities at the local level were essential to promote individual-level changes and organizational capacities of communities. But, but at the more macro level, the mass media played an important role to shape public opinion, creating a supporting environment for structural changes to occur. A multimedia, multi-method strategy allowed Puntos to have both individual and social change catalysts operating simultaneously and over time.

Puntos's strength, in this sense, lies in the synergies of the integrated whole"”more than the sum of its isolated parts.

Complexity Idea No. 2: Order Is Emergent and Self-Organizing

Another example of a complexity principle applied to Puntos's work is the case of the distribution network of La Boletina, the organization's national feminist magazine that shares news and promotes dialogue within Nicaragua's growing women's movement.

La Boletina's circulation has gradually increased from an initial print-run of 500 copies in 1991 to the present 26,000 copies, making it the largest circulation magazine in Nicaragua. This growth can easily be explained: La Boletina is free of charge, and it is distributed by hundred of volunteers who travel long distances in buses and canoes to Managua to pick up packages of the magazine. They hand-carry them to towns and villages all over the country and distribute the newspaper to local groups. These groups may then distribute the magazine to smaller groups in their communities.

The distribution network of La Boletina is a unique phenomenon of self-organization. It works on the principle of solidarity and is sustained by mutually supportive relationships among women's groups. Puntos didn't plan the distribution strategy, and has no direct control over it. The system emerged on its own.

This absence of centralized control in the distribution of La Boletina provides a lot of freedom for emergence, but it also has, ironically, jeopardized its own existence.

The lack of control by Puntos over the delivery and use of La Boletina makes it hard to demonstrate its impact, the indicators established by donors. Donors have pressured Puntos to increase its level of control over the magazine by, for instance, charging a price. It has been difficult for Puntos to justify to its donors how charging a price might actually "kill" the most important distinctiveness of La Boletina: its volunteer,-self-organized distribution network and the collective ownership of the magazine by women's groups.

Complexity science, on the other hand, values this lack of centralized control as an essential quality of healthy systems. The most illuminating paradox of all is that in complex adaptive systems order is emergent and self-organizing. In a healthy, complex adaptive system, control is distributed rather than centralized, meaning that the outcomes emerge from a process of self-organization rather than being assigned and controlled externally by a centralized body. Order emerges from the interactions among the individuals. It results as a function of the patterns of interrelationships between the agents, and it is characterized by unpredictability. It is not able to predict precisely how the interrelationships between the parts will evolve.

Complexity Idea No. 3: The System Changes When It Chooses To Be Disturbed

Another principle of complex adaptive systems, which is that the system changes when it chooses to be disturbed by the information it receives, is appealing. The system will choose to be disturbed when the information adds new meaning to what exists. In other words, the system becomes different because it understands the world differently. It is not just the intensity or frequency of the message that gets our attention; but mostly how meaningful the message is to us personally.

The key word here is "choice." The system "chooses" to be disturbed by something it considers meaningful. People do not want to be bossed; they want information so they can, when they can, make their own choices and decisions.

That is where Puntos's strategy is fundamentally different from most other communication for behavioural change initiatives.

First, instead of following the general advice "keep it short and simple," Puntos believes in making it "long and complicated." This allows Puntos to show how social issues are closely interrelated with each other"”and how people often engage in contradictory behaviours.

Second, Puntos believes that people have the right to decide what they want, so rather than presenting behaviours as "good," e.g., modelling them as "socially desirable" or advancing them because they are endorsed by international donors and population control organizations, Puntos promotes the right of each individual to make informed decisions and take responsibility for these choices. Puntos does this by showing a variety of alternatives to analyse and deal with different realities and issues. Puntos also believes that "appropriate behaviour" may vary from person-to-person. It is complex and should be decided upon by the people affected by the situation, so they can take responsibility for the decisions they make.

Complexity Idea No. 4: Free Flow Of Diverse Information Is Essential For The System To Evolve

Meaningful information can be presented in various forms to convey a meaning for the system/receptor, and the more diverse the sources, the better. Complexity science values both diversity and participation.

Diversity means not only having different voices on an issue, but it also means addressing issues generally considered taboo. Participation means creating an environment in which everyone can feel comfortable sharing opinions and feelings. It is not only what information is being shared, but also who is sharing it. The wider the variety of people who share ideas, the greater the opportunity for new associations to form and new patterns of meanings to emerge.

Through its own mass media and interpersonal communication activities, Puntos aims to promote dialogue and debate among different people and groups. The purpose is not to create consensus around a topic but to explore, and be exposed to, different points of view in a climate of respect and tolerance while strengthening and legitimising minority voices.

Showing and dealing with complex and contradictory behaviours and issues, instead of stereotypical ones, doesn't make for a short-and-clear message, e.g., bad guys lose, and good guys win. But it allows audiences to reflect more deeply about their attitudes, behaviours, and options. It shows that people aren't bad or good, but often both, which is consistent with the complexity view: Life is cluttered, full of paradoxes and seldom is either/or. Puntos believes in this complexity.

Complexity Idea No. 5: Planning the Unpredictable

While organizations like Puntos can dream, based on a complexity approach to social change, their operative planning usually follows a complicated, linear, step-by-step approach required by their donors and by the expectations of their partners. These planning methods require that an organization plan its mission and goals in terms of actions, activities, outputs, outcomes and measurable results.

But does social reality work that way? First, not all social processes are linear, meaning that not every action has a direct and single effect. Second, there are many unpredictable events that can influence one's strategy, and so it should be flexible enough to adapt. Third, by detailing how expected outcomes will be measured, the assumption is that they are the only possible outcomes"”ergo, one is predisposed to them"”and focuses on measuring them exclusively, perhaps overlooking other important factors. In a world that asks for measurable outcomes, it is easier to go with the flow and not resist the dominant currents. But when the measure of success is defined in quantitative terms, what matters more is how much was done, and not the quality of the processes and the relationships.

Although some planners would argue that a log frame is a guiding tool not a straight jacket, the way the boxes are organized is linear, connecting each one to the other by arrows that show the cause-effect relationship between one and the next... .

This doesn't mean that social change organizations must not plan; it means they should consider changing the way they plan. Interventions in complex adaptive systems require careful consideration and planning but of a kind different from a mechanistic system. It is more important to understand local conditions and to be aware of the uncertainty and feedback that accompanies any intervention than to predict the number and type of the outcomes expected.

Complexity science recognizes the difficulty of planning everything in detail, especially when working within an unpredictable and constantly changing environment. It suggests that the best way to plan is by establishing minimum specifications and a general sense of direction, that is, to describe the mission the organization is pursuing and a few basic principles on how the organization should get there. Allowing the flexibility of multiple approaches by trying several small experiments, reflecting carefully on what happens and gradually shifting time and attention toward those things that seem to be working the best. Once the minimum specifications have been set, the organizational leadership should then allow appropriate autonomy for individuals to self-organize and adapt as time goes by to a continually changing context.

In a perfect world, Puntos and its allies"”organizations and donors"”should get together routinely, with a shared vision about the complex nature of social change, and to agree on the main strategies, or minimum specifications, to achieve common goals. Then, let each one trust the process and plan its activities and indicators accordingly.

Puntos is still far from realizing that perfect world. In fact, this idea of minimum specifications is frightening. In a world that expects activism rather than reflection, and assured outcomes rather than experiments, it is hard to suggest such an evolving approach. Yet, we do know that planning harder, and in advance, will not do any better.

Complexity Idea No. 6: Complex Adaptive Systems Are History And Context Dependent

Evaluations and impact assessment are another challenge for organizations like Puntos. The generally positive results demonstrated by impact evaluations of edutainment strategies around the world have created expectations of regularity and predictability about social change. This positivist approach leads us to think that there are "effective" ways to change societies. Many organizations, especially international aid organizations and foundations, use concepts as "best practices" to re-enforce the idea that successful experiences in one setting can be replicated in different settings. This notion of replication privileges the importance of "outside experts," and it re-enforces beliefs that local organizations and communities need them to find the "right" solutions.

As much as success stories may attract new converts to social communication strategies, the pressure to "succeed" in traditional terms may also prevent innovation within the field, not only in terms of project design and implementation but in terms of evaluation. The required predefinition of the evaluation methods and indicators by donors left little room for opportunities and unexpected changes that arise during the implementation process"¦.

Complex Adaptive Systems: Are History And Context Dependent?

Complex systems learn new strategies from experience, and they are shaped and influenced by where they have been.

While it is important to recognize what does work to promote social change and use it as an inspiration for other interventions, it is risky to scale it up and/or replicate it in a different context. Even in the same locality, a single intervention would unlikely have the same results twice because the environment and the community are constantly changing.

Wholeness matters. As complex adaptive systems, societies "“ made up of thinking, feeling, and believing people -- are for the most part unpredictable and uncontrollable. They do not respond to general laws. Yet, while social change is complex and incoherent, it is not at all unintelligible.

Planning and evaluation are important to social change, but we need to open our minds to new ways to understand how social systems evolve. So instead of looking for the formulae for social change, it may be more useful to understand and focus more on the processes that lead to effective interventions.

In Closing

The issues discussed here are not new. Indeed, some of the "answers" proposed by complexity science are not new. But as some complexity theorists state: "In many contexts, these 'answers' were not explainable by theory." They were the intuitive responses known by many but appeared illogical, or at least idiosyncratic, when viewed through traditional scientific theories. Complexity science provides the language, the metaphors, the conceptual frameworks, the models and the theories that help make the idiosyncrasies nonidiosyncratic and the illogical logical. It also provides a rigorous approach to study some of the key dimensions of organizational life.

There is still much more to learn from, and understand about, complex adaptive systems and complexity science. In addition, there is much more to understand about social change. Complexity science is still in development. Debates about complexity-based indicators and research and evaluation methods are urgently needed if we are to be able to provide communication for social change strategies and interventions with better instruments.

However, complexity science applied to social change strategies, such as Puntos's, can open our minds and help us look for different ways to do things; to ask different questions; to get different answers; to try different strategies; and to understand better what does work and what doesn't in each context. Most importantly, complexity science helps us understand how and why social change happens.

Even if this essay only sparks new questions, that would seem to me a good place to start.

[Important references for this essay were: Plexus Institute and Margaret Wheatley's Finding Our Way: Leadership for Uncertain Times. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Inc. 2005.]

---

Afterword

In Fall 2004, when I first met Virginia Lacayo at OU, I was immediately struck by her intelligence, her wide repertoire of activist experiences in Nicaragua, and her gentle but irrepressible "irreverence." Not shy of asking why?" or, more importantly, "why not?", Virginia challenged my thinking over the next two years in ways that few had done. In late 2005, I was honoured when she asked me to work with her on her master's project.

For the most part, social scientists and practitioners are trained erroneously in believing that social change phenomena, much like "raising a child," can be predicted, controlled, and achieved in linear steps"”and with a high degree of certainty. This problematic prevailing mindset"”if we do this to people, they will behave in this way"”is a result of the overwhelming dominance of Newtonian thinking that spilled over to social science and was reified over decades without much questioning. To question this prevailing paradigm meant turning upside down the Holy Grail and inviting derision and condescension about "not being scientific enough." The notion that the thoughts and actions of human beings could be predicted and measured in the same way as the movement of heavenly bodies seemed to me as being downright faulty.

The social change enterprise, in my opinion, was badly in need of a framework that could explain the certainty and uncertainty associated with outcomes, as also the agreement and disagreement about how those outcomes could be achieved. What we needed was a framework that could explain why small inputs in a social system could result in surprisingly big outcomes; and why often big, expensive interventions yielded small, dismal outcomes. We also needed a framework that could account for the simultaneous order and disorder in a system, as well as the co-existence of paradoxes and contradictions. As Virginia Lacayo has shown, complexity science provides that framework.

Arvind Singhal, Ohio University: singhal@ohio.edu

For Lacayo's entire master's thesis: Visit either OU's Department of Communication and Development Studies Web site: http://www.ohio.edu/commdev/Resources.cfm, or Puntos's Web site at http://www.puntos.org.ni/sidoc/nuestras_publicaciones.php#englishtitles.
Or you may write her directly at: lacayo@mac.com

Bold Strokes

Oct 16th 2008
From The Economist, print edition

A strong economic stylist wins the Nobel prize

WHEN Paul Krugman won the Nobel prize in economics on October 13th, the news was greeted with nostalgia as well as congratulation by some of his fellow economists. Since 1999 Mr Krugman has written a twice-weekly column for the New York Times, in which he has devoted himself to attacking the Bush administration and all of its works. The nostalgists feel these jeremiads have distracted him from the cutting-edge research that secured his reputation. The polemicist, they feel, has buried the theorist.

And yet the old Krugman is still recognisable in the new. Indeed, the arts of the columnist are not so far removed from Mr Krugman’s style as an economist. In his most celebrated academic papers, Mr Krugman paints with bold strokes, striving to render his insights as starkly as possible. Like a good columnist, he cuts to the quick of a problem, stripping it of clutter and encumbering nuance. The result is a revealing caricature: what economists call “models”.

Mr Krugman won the prize for his models of international trade and economic geography. Both belong to the same grand project he confidently launched just a year after earning his doctorate: “Before my 25th birthday,” he has written, “I basically knew what I was going to do with my professional life.” In 1978 he realised that a model of “monopolistic competition”, published a year earlier by Avinash Dixit and Joseph Stiglitz, could help him introduce economies of scale into trade theory and beyond.

Economies of scale had long posed awkward problems for theorists. If bigger firms face lower costs, then in principle one firm should supply the entire market, thereby enjoying the lowest costs of all. But in the Dixit-Stiglitz model, this monopolising logic is offset by a countervailing force: consumers’ taste for variety. People prefer to spread their custom over different versions of the same good. The market is therefore carved up among competing firms, each offering a product bearing its own distinctive stamp.

The model is highly stylised. Nonetheless it gave Mr Krugman, as he put it, “a tool to open cleanly what had previously been regarded as a can of worms”.

Mr Krugman used this tool to save economics from an abiding empirical embarrassment. According to one of the discipline’s founding doctrines, countries gain from specialisation and exchange, concentrating on what they do best and importing the rest. The theory explains why the Portuguese might sell wine in exchange for English cloth. But it cannot explain why similar countries, blessed with similar ratios of capital, labour and land, should so vigorously trade similar goods back and forth. This is not a small blind spot. According to the World Trade Organisation, 52% of Germany’s exports to France are things France also produces and exports to Germany. But the Dixit-Stiglitz model, with its subtly differentiated firms competing for variety-loving consumers, lent itself to explaining why Germans might import Renaults,
even as the French imported Volkswagens.

Mr Krugman’s model showed that when trade barriers fall, firms gain access to bigger markets, allowing them to expand production and reap economies of scale. But openness also exposes them to competition from rival foreign firms, paring their margins. Some firms may go out of business. But between the domestic survivors and the foreign entrants, consumers still have more goods to choose from. Thus the gains from trade arise not from specialisation, but from scale economies, fiercer competition and the cornucopia of choice that globalisation provides.

Scale economies also allowed Mr Krugman to give economics for the first time a sense of space. In a 1991 article, he notes that night-time satellite photos of Europe reveal the distinctive contours of economic activity: bright lights cluster around metropolitan centres, shining particularly brightly around the triangle of Brussels, Amsterdam and Dortmund.

Before Mr Krugman, economists found these images difficult to square with the rest of their body of theory. They were accustomed to assuming that firms face constant returns to scale. But if that were true, then every peasant could build a small smelter or assembly line in his backyard. There would be no need for an economy to divide into a farm belt and an industrial belt.


Geography lessons

In Mr Krugman’s model, by contrast, big factories benefit from lower costs of production. Manufacturing firms might therefore cluster near to a large market, leaving behind a sparsely populated hinterland, in order to make the most of scale economies and minimise the cost of transporting goods to their customers.

Earlier theorists had instead assumed that firms herd together to benefit from some kind of “spillover”. Perhaps firms pick up tricks of the trade and other know-how from their neighbours. However plausible, these explanations were nonetheless unsatisfying. Because economists could not measure spillovers or delimit their scope (“How far does a technological spillover spill?” Mr Krugman wondered), they could invoke them to explain just about anything.

Mr Krugman’s models instead identified a less elusive benefit of proximity. He pointed out that a firm’s decision to locate in a district is a gift to other firms in the area, because in attracting new workers it also brings new customers. Unlike a technological spillover, this gift would in principle leave a paper trail, showing up in local firms’ sales figures.

In neither contribution did Mr Krugman claim great originality for his ideas or great realism. His achievement was to formalise insights that many people had previously had informally. Ideas that had fluttered in and out of people’s grasp for decades, he pinned down like a butterfly on display. Sometimes a good economist, like a good columnist, succeeds not by making a point before everyone else, but by making it better than anyone else.

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Demokrasi dan Disilusi

Oleh: Goenawan Mohamad
(Orasi ilmiah disampaikan dalam rangka Nurcholish Madjid Memorial Lecture II, di Auditorium Nurcholish Madjid, Universitas Paramadina, 23 Oktober 2008.)

17 Oktober 1953: di pagi hari itu, sekitar 5000 orang muncul di jalanan Jakarta. Pada pukul 8, mereka sudah berhimpun di luar gedung Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat. Tak jelas siapa yang memimpin dan organisasi apa yang mengerahkan mereka, tapi yang mereka tuntut diutarakan dengan tegas: “Bubarkan Parlemen”. Kata sebuah poster, “Parlemen untuk Demokrasi, bukan Demokrasi untuk Parlemen”.

Tak lama kemudian mereka memasuki gedung perwakilan rakyat itu, menghancurkan beberapa kursi dan merusak kantin yang biasanya diperuntukkan bagi para legislator.

Dari sini, rombongan demonstran bergerak ke jalan lagi. Peserta makin bertambah besar. Akhirnya mereka, mencapai 30 ribu orang banyaknya, sampai ke Istana Negara. Mereka ingin menghadap Presiden. Bung Karno, yang mengetahui apa yang dituntut para demonstran itu, akhirnya muncul. Dalam pidato singkat ia mengatakan: ia tak akan membubarkan Parlemen. Ia tak ingin jadi diktator. Ia hanya berjanji pemilihan umum akan diselenggarakan segera.

Ringkas kata, Bung Karno menolak. Tapi rekaman ucapannya menunjukkan bahwa ia juga punya ketidaksukaan yang sama kepada “demokrasi liberal” yang dianggapnya sebagai cangkokan “Barat” itu. Di tahun 1958, ia membubarkan dewan perwakilan pilihan rakyat dan mengubah Indonesia dengan menerapkan “demokrasi terpimpin”.

Sistem ini kemudian berakhir di tahun 1966, ketika “Orde Baru” memperkenalkan format politik yang disebutnya “demokrasi Pancasila” – yang sebenarnya merupakan varian baru bagi “demokrasi terpimpin”. Boleh diatakan, dalam “Orde Baru”, sebagian dari yang dikehendaki para penuntut pada tanggal 17 Oktober itu dipenuhi. Kita tahu, seperti dicatat oleh Herbert Feith dalam The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, bahwa para perwira Angkatan Darat berada di belakang aksi hari itu. Sementara Bung Karno berpidato, militer memasang dua buah tank, beberapa panser, empat batang kanon yang ditujukan ke Istana: penegasan agar Presiden membubarkan Parlemen dan melikuidasi demokrasi liberal. Kita kemudian tahu, dalam “demokrasi Pancasila” yang ditegakkan Angkatan Darat, DPR memang dipilih secara reguler, tapi pada akhirnya, konstruksi sang penguasa – dalam hal ini Suharto – yang menentukan. Berangsung-angsur, kekuasaan berkembang dari sifat “birokratik-otoriter” menjadi otokratik. Suharto mengulangi posisi Bung Karno sebagai “Pemimpin Besar Revolusi”, dengan gelar yang berbeda.

Di tahun 1998, otokrasi Suharto itu rubuh. Indonesia mendapatkan “demokrasi liberal”-nya kembali. Satu dasawarsa kemudian, kita masih tampak percaya kepada demokrasi ini – jika itu berarti pemilihan umum yang regular, partisipasi masyarakat pemilih lewat partai, pembentukan undang-undang melalui para legislator di parlemen, pengawasan kinerja kabinet dari sebuah lembaga negara yang dipilih rakyat. Tapi akan bertahankah kepercayaan itu?

Kita bisa menduga – melihat betapa korupnya para anggota DPR sekarang, melihat tak jelasnya lagi alasan hidup partai-partai, kecuali untuk mendapatkan kursi – Indonesia sedang memasuki sebuah masa, ketika rakyat – dengan hak penuh untuk memilih dan tak memilih – akan mencemooh, bahkan mencurigai, para pemegang peran dama demokrasi parlementer yang ada.

Saya tak akan meramalkan bahwa “Peristiwa 17 Oktober” baru akan terjadi segera. Tapi saya kira siapapun bisa melihat, kita akan hidup dengan harapan-harapan yang retak kepada demokrasi liberal. Dan tak akan mengherankan bila kita akan segera mendengar kecaman seeprti yang pernah diutarakan Novelis, Pemenang Nobel, Saramago: “Pemiihan umum telah jadi representasi komedi absurd, yang memalukan”.

Dalam pembicaraan saya hari ini, saya akan mencoba menunjukkan, bahwa disilusi seperti itu memang tak akan terelakkan. Persoalannya kemudian, sejauh mana dan dalam bentuk apa demokrasi bisa dipertahankan.

II

Demokrasi – sebagaimana kediktaturan – menjaga dirinya dari khaos. Ia jadi bentuk yang harus praktis dan terkelola. Ia dibangun sebagai sistem dan prosedur.

Tapi sebagai sebuah format, ia tak dapat sepenuhnya menangkap apa yang tak praktis dan yang tak tertata. Salah satu jasa telaah kebudayaan dan teori politik mutakhir ialah pengakuan terhadap pentingnya apa yang turah, yang luput tak tertangkap oleh hukum dan bahasa, yang oleh Lacan disebut sebagai le Riel, (dalam versi Inggris, the Real), dan yang saya coba terjemahkan di sini sebagai “Sang Antah”.

Dengan itu sebenarnya ditunjukkan satu kekhilafan utama dalam pemikiran politik yang mengasumsikan kemampuan “representasi”. Pengertian “representasi” dimulai dari ilusi bahasa, bahwa satu hal dapat ditirukan persis dalam bentuk lain, misalnya dalam kata atau perwakilan. Ilusi mimetik ini menganggap, semua hal, termasuk yang ada dalam dunia kehidupan, akan dapat direpresentasikan. Seakan-akan tak ada Sang Antah.

Namun baik oleh teori “demokrasi radikal” yang diperkenalkan Laclau dan Mouffe dengan menggunakan pandangan Gramsci, maupun oleh pemikiran politik dengan militansi ala Mao dalam pemikian Alain Badiou, kita ditunjukkan bahwa sebuah tata masyarakat, sebuah tubuh politik, adalah sebentuk scene yang tak pernah komplit. Senantiasa ada yang obscene dalam dirinya, bagian dari Sang Antah, yang dicoba diingkari. Tapi yang obscene – yang tak tertampung dan tak dapat diwakili oleh tubuh politik yang ada – justru menunjukkan bahwa scene itu, atau tata masyarakat yang kita saksikan itu, tak terjadi secara alamiah. Menurut Laclau dan Mouffe, tata masyarakat itu lahir dari hubungan antagonistis. Ia merupakan hasil perjuangan hegemonik. Itu sebabnya suatu tubuh politik yang tampak stabil mau tak mau dihantui oleh pertentangan – yang membuatnya hanya kwasi-stabil.

Dari pandangan seperti itu demokrasi, sebagai sebuah format, memang terdorong hanya merawat tubuh politik yang kwasi-stabil itu. Sebagai amibatnya, ia cenderung mengubah antagonisme dan perjuangan hegemonik itu jadi majal: demokrasi acapkali menghentikan proses politik dengan mendasarkan diri pada sebuah suara terbanyak atau sebuah konsensus. Dengan itu apa yang dianggap menyimpang, apa yang obscene, disingkirkan. Maka ia tampak sebagai sesuatu yang tak hendak membuka diri pada alternatif-alternatif baru.

Contoh yang segera dapat dilihat adalah Jepang; di sana, kekuasaan Partai Liberal Demorasi (LDP) berlangsung hampir tak berhenti-hentinya. Hal yang sama dapat dikatakan tentang demokrasi Amerika. Hari-hari ini, justru di sebuah masa ketika suara untuk perubahan yang dibawakan Obama terdengar nyaring, sebetulnya tak tampak dahsyatnya “perubahan” yang disuarakannya.

Pernah saya katakan, demokrasi adalah sistem degan rem tersendiri – juga ketika keadaan buruk dan harus dijebol. Pemilihan umum, mekanismenya yang utama, adalah mesin yang mengikuti statistik. Tiap pemungutan suara terkurung dalam “kurve lonceng”: sebagian besar orang tak menghendaki perubahan yang “ekstrim”. Statistik menunjukkan ada semacam tendensi bersama untuk tak memilih hal yang mengguncang-guncang. Statistik itu status quo.

Dalam haribaan “kurve lonceng”, Obama tak akan bersedia mengubah politik Amerika dengan yang baru yang menggebrak. Akan sulit kita menemukan perbedaan pandangannya tentang Palestina dari posisi Bush. Ia, yang harus mencari dukungan lobi Israel di Amerika, tak akan nekad bilang akan mengajak Hamas ke meja perundingan. Ia tak akan berani menampik sepenuhnya hak orang Amerika memiliki senjata api pribadi, meskipun korban kekerasan di negeri itu tak kunjung reda. Ia tak akan bertekad mengubah sikap orang Amerika yang cenderung memandang perang sebagai kegagahan patriotik, bukan kekejaman.

Seraya bersaing ketat dengan McCain, Obvama – yang memproklamasikan diri sebagai pemersatu Amerika, negarawan yang akan menyembuhkan negeri yang terbelah antara “biru” dan “merah” – akan tampil sebagai si pembangun konsensus.

Tapi konsensus tak akan mudah jadi wadah bagi perubahan yang berani. Di Spanyol di tahun 1982, misalnya, ketika kediktaturan Franco sedang digantikan dengan demokrasi yang gandrung perubahan. Felipe Gonzáles Márquez, waktu itu 40 tahun, memikat seluruh negeri. Partai Sosialisnya menawarkan lambang kepalan tangan yang yakin dan mawar merah yang segar. Semboyannya: Por El Cambio. Ia menang. Ia bahkan memimpin Spanyol sampai empat masa jabatan. Tapi berangsur-angsur, partai yang berangkat dari semangat kelas buruh yang radikal itu kian dekat dengan kalangan uang dan modal. Di bawah kepemimpinan Gonzáles, Spanyol jadi anggota NATO dan mendukung Amerika dalam Perang Teluk 1991.

Sebagai tanda bagaimana demokrasi tak menginginkan yang luar biasa, Partai Sosialis menang berturut-turut. Mungkin itu indikasi bahwa “perubahan” pada akhirnya harus dibatasi oleh sinkronisasi pengalaman orang ramai. Di haribaan “kurve lonceng”, kehidupan politik yang melahirkannya kehilangan greget yang subyektif. Keberanian disimpan dalam laci.

III

Tapi mungkinkah sebah masyarakat bisa berhenti dan proses politiknya tak tersentuh oleh waktu?

Pertanyaan retoris ini penting. Di dalamnya tersirat adanya harapan — di suatu masa masa ketika utopianisme Marxis digugat, tapi ketika pada saat yang sama pragmatisme ala Richard Rorty tampak tak memberikan daya bagi perubahan yang berarti.

Tapi untuk itu, memang diperlukan penyegaran kembali tentang apa arti “politik” sebenarnya.

Sebuah buku yang dengan amat baik memaparkan pemikiran politik kontemporer, Kembalinya Politik (Jakarta, 2008), menguraikan “dua muka yang terpisah” dalam pengertian “politik”:

Yang pertama adalah sisi di mana politik terjadi sebegitu saja dalam rutinitas kelembagaan dan perilaku aktor-aktornya…Yang kedua adalah politik yang diharapkan, yang tersimpan secara potensial, tidak teraktualisasi: politik sebagaimana diidamkan, yang tertekan di bawah instansi ketaksadaran.

Dalam pengantarnya, Robertus Robet dan Ronny Agustinus menunjukkan kemungkinan – atau malah kenyataan — ketika demokrasi “telah membunuh politik” dan “menggantikannya dengan konsensus.” Dengan kata lain, “politik” yang di-“bunuh” itu adalah politik sebagai proses perjuangan, bukan politik sebagai saling tukar kekuasaan dan pengaruh sebagaimana yang terjadi melalui pemilihan umum dan negosiasi legislatif dewasa ini di Indonesia. “Politik” yang seperti itu sebenarnya hanya mengukuhkan tubuh sosial yang seakan-akan sepenuhnya direpresentasikan Parlemen. “Politik” yang seperti itu berilusi bahwa kita bisa mengabaikan Sang Antah. “Politik” yang seperti itu adalah bagian yang bersembunyi dari apa yang disebut Rancière la police: struktur yang diam-diam mengatur dan menegakkan tubuh itu.

Di sini sebuah pemaparan selintas tentang teori Rancière agaknya diperlukan.

La police itu (mungkin ada hubungan kata ini dengan “polis” sebagai negeri dan “polisi” sebagai penjaga ketertiban) bersifat oligarkis. Tubuh sosial mengandung ketimpangan yang tak terelakkan; selamanya ada yang kuat dan ada yang lemah, yang menguasai dan dikuasai.

Tapi la police itu tetap saja tak bisa membentuk sebuah satuan sosial yang komplit. Di dalam hal ini, pemikiran Rancière juga menunjukkan bahwa satuan itu kwasi-stabil sebenarnya. Sebab bahkan la police tak akan bisa mengabaikan, bahwa yang kuat hanya kuat jika ia diakui demikian oleh yang lemah — meskipun dengan mengeluh dan marah. Dengan kata lain, si kuat diam-diam mengasumsikan adanya posisi & potensi si lemah untuk memberi pengakuan. Bagi Rancière, itu berarti nun di dasar yang tak hendak diingat, ada kesetaraan antara kedua pihak.

Di situ kita menemukan bagaimana sebuah negeri, polis, hidup: ada la logique du tort. Ada sesuatu yang salah dan sengkarut tapi dengan begitu berlangsunglah sejarah sosial. Di dalam “logika” itu, ketegangan terjadi, sebab hierarki yang membentuk masyarakat justru mungkin karena mengakui kesetaraan. Ketegangan dalam salah dan sengkarut itulah yang melahirkan konflik, guncangan pada konsensus, dan polemik yang tak henti-hentinya. Ranciere mengakui, selalu ada sebuah arkhe, sebuah dasar untuk membenarkan timpangnya distribusi tempat dan bagian dalam masyarakat, tapi ia menunjukkan bahwa arkhe iitu selamanya bersifat sewenang-wenang.

Dari itu terbit la politique: sebuah pergulatan. Ia bukan seperti aksi komunikasi ala Habermas: di arena itu tak ada tujuan untuk bersepakat; di medan itu yang hadir bukanlah sekedar usul dan argumen yang berseberangan, tapi tubuh dan jiwa, “perbauran dua dunia”, “di mana ada subyek dan obyek yang tampak, ada yang tidak.”

Agaknya yang tak tampak itulah yang menyebabkan la politique, atau politik sebagai perjuangan, mendapatkan makna sosial. Sebab yang menggerakkan adalah mereka yang bukan apa-apa, yang tak punya hakikat dan asal usul untuk menang.

Walhasil, selalu akan ada ketegangan antara la police dan la politique. Sebuah tubuh sosial akan bergerak, tak mandeg, dalam ketegangan itu. Di sini Rancière memperkenalkan istilah lain, le politique,. untuk menyebut proses mediasi antara kekuatan yang menjaga demokrasi sebagai format dan politik sebagai perjuangan ke arah kesetaraan.

Berbeda dari Badiou, Rancière – yang menyebut keadaan demokrasi liberal sekarang sebagai “pasca- demokrasi” — masih menaruh kepercayaan akan peran demokrasi parlementer dan kemampuan perundang-undangan dalam perjuangan ke keadilan.

Tapi Ranciere bukanlah orang yang menganggap, bahwa demokrasi parlementer dengan sendirinya adil. “Politik” sebagai perjuangan, “politik” sebagai la politique, itu sesuatu yang tak secara rutin terjadi. Bahkan jarang terjadi. Demikian pula, tanpa menyebut saat demokratik sebagai “kejadian” (l’événement) yang luar biasa, Rancière menganggap dalam sistem demokrasi yang ada, saat demokratik sejati tak selamanya didapatkan.

IV

Dengan memakai pemikiran Rancière, saya berharap dapat menunjukkan bahwa disilusi terhadap demokrasi liberal adakah sesuatu yang sah dan harus dinyatakan.

Tuntutan akan kesetaraan – dan dalam pengertian yang lebih luas: keadilan – adalah tuntutan yang tak akan habis-habisnya. Ia lahir dari apa yang tak hendak dilihat oleh sistem yang ada. Ia lahir dari yang obscene, dari yang turah dari representasi, ia adalah gaung Sang Antah yang tak tertampung.

Tapi haruskah kita menghancurkan demokrasi, karena menganggap bahwa demokrasi semata-mata format, bukan sebuah proses pergulatan, bukan arena la politique? Jalan itu ada: “nihilisme aktif” dalam pengertian Simon Critchley, ketika ia menguraikan pendiriannya tentang “ethika komintmen” dan “politik perlawanan” dalam Infinitely Demanding (Verso, 2008). Nihilisme aktif inilah yang dilakukan misalnya oleh teror Al Qaedah – yang pada gilirannya juga tak menumbangkan demokrasi liberal, bahkan memperkuatnya: makin kukuhnya aparat keamanan Negara merupakan peneguhan dari la police.

Satu-satunya jalan yan masih terbuka adalah selalu dengan setia mengembalikan politik sebagai perjuangan. Jalan yang ditempuh tak bisa dirumuskan sebelumnya; selalu diperlukan keluwesan untuk memilih metode, baik melalui perundang-undangan atau justru melawan perundang-undangan, baik melalui partai ataupun melawan partai.

Artinya, tiap kali kita membiarkan diri untuk didesak oleh panggilan akan keadilan yang tak pernah akan membisu.

***

Bill Gates on Corporate Philanthropy--Posner

From: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2008/02/bill_gates_on_c.html

I became acquainted with Bill Gates when some years ago I mediated (unsuccessfully) the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft. I was reassured to discover that the world's wealthiest person is extremely intelligent and surprisingly unpretentious. But I am disappointed by the recent speech on "creative capitalism" that he gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.

Almost half the world's population is extremely poor, subsisting on less than $2 a day; a billion are thought to subsist on less than $1 a day. Most of the very poor live in sub-Saharan Africa and in southern Asia. Gates argues that the key to alleviating their poverty is "creative capitalism," whereby private firms in the United States and other wealthy countries seek both profits and "recognition" (praise) in serving the needs of the poor, for example by developing technologies designed specifically for their benefit. C. K. Prahalad, a business school professor admired by Gates, notes that Microsoft is "experimenting in India with a program called FlexGo, where you prepay for a fully loaded PC. When the payment runs out, the PC shuts down, and you prepay again to restart it. It's a pay-as-you-go model for people with volatile wages who need, in effect, to finance the purchase."

If there are good business opportunities in poor countries, however, it does not require Gates's urging for businesses to seek to exploit them. So the only meat in his concept of creative capitalism is his proposal that businesses accept subnormal monetary returns in exchange for getting a good reputation as do gooders. But if a reputation for good works has cash value, then, once again, there is no need for Gates to urge businesses to serve the poor; self-interest will be an adequate motivator. If it is true as he says in his speech that "recognition enhances a company's reputation and appeals to customers; above all, it attracts good people to the organization," then creative capitalism pays because it enables a firm to charge higher prices to its customers and pay lower quality-adjusted wages to its employees. Whether this is true of a given firm's customers and employees is something that the firm is better able to gauge than an outsider, even so distinguished a one as Bill Gates.

If on the other hand reputation does not have cash value, or enough cash value to offset the reduction in financial returns that would result from conducting one's business in such a manner as to obtain a reputation for altruism, then the motivation for creative capitalism would have to be businessmen’s feeling good about helping the disadvantaged. But which businessmen--corporate managers or investors? Do shareholders--the corporation's owners--feel good when corporate management picks objects of charity, unless the charitable giving feeds the bottom line (as when a firm makes charitable donations to activities and institutions in the places in which it has its plants or offices)? Unless shareholders are eager to see their corporations give massive amounts to charities that are chosen not by the shareholders but by management and that do not contribute to corporate profits, it is hard to see how urging businesses to be disinterestedly charitable can have a significant effect. A business that fails to maximize profits places itself at a competitive disadvantage relative to businesses that do maximize profits. Only if charity contributes to profits is it a plausible investment for an investor-owned firm.

There is a hint in Gates's speech that profit maximization is the real goal, and the question for "recognition" a veneer. When he talks up "business models that can make computing more accessible and more affordable," it sounds as if he may be trying to develop new markets for Microsoft. That is also the implication in Prahalad's statement that I quoted. Gates talks about "markets that are already there," that is, in poor countries, "but are untapped." In other words, there are business opportunities in poor countries, and business opportunities require imagination rather than altruism to exploit.

A curious omission in Gates's speech is a theory of why so many people are desperately poor. When he says that "diseases like malaria that kill over a million people a year get far less attention than drugs to help with baldness," he does not pause to inquire why that is so. It is so, first of all, because people in wealthy countries do not suffer from malaria, and, second, because cheap but highly effective methods of combating malaria, such as mosquito netting and indoor spraying of DDT (which would have few negative environmental effects, unlike outdoor spraying), are somehow not provided, but for reasons political and cultural rather than financial. We know that a nation doesn't have to be rich in natural resources to be prosperous. The essential ingredient of economic growth is human capital, and it depends primarily on the existence of a political system that prevents violence, enforces property rights, provides a minimum level of public goods, and minimizes governmental interference in the economy. Without such institutions, economic growth will be stunted; altruistic capitalists will not cure their absence.

Gates has discovered the Adam Smith of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Smith argued that people are not purely self-interested, but instead are actuated, to a degree anyway, by altruism. But modern studies of altruism find it concentrated within the family and trace it back to the "selfish gene"—helping someone who shares one's genes may increase the spread of those genes in subsequent generations, and if so there will be natural selection for a degree of altruism. And so as the relationship between people attenuates because of distance, race, and other factors, the degree of altruism declines. That is one reason that Gates's argument that "recognition enhances a company's reputation and appeals to customers; above all, it attracts good people to the organization" falls short. Few customers will pay more, and few skilled workers will accept lower wages, to benefit poor people in distant lands.

Finally, I take issue with Gates's assumption that alleviating world poverty is an unalloyed social good. He calls himself an optimist, but some might describe him as a Pangloss, when he says that "the world is getting better" and will be better still if there are no more poor people. If Gates said that prosperity, longevity, and other good things have increased in most of the world, he would be right. But there is no basis for predicting that these trends will continue, given such threats to peace and prosperity as international terrorism, political instability, nuclear proliferation, and global warming. And if creative capitalism does succeed in lifting billions of people out of poverty, the problem of global warming will become even graver than it is because the world demand for fossil fuels will soar.

Making Capitalism More Creative

By Bill Gates

Time, Thursday, Jul. 31, 2008

Capitalism has improved the lives of billions of people — something that's easy to forget at a time of great economic uncertainty. But it has left out billions more. They have great needs, but they can't express those needs in ways that matter to markets. So they are stuck in poverty, suffer from preventable diseases and never have a chance to make the most of their lives. Governments and nonprofit groups have an irreplaceable role in helping them, but it will take too long if they try to do it alone. It is mainly corporations that have the skills to make technological innovations work for the poor. To make the most of those skills, we need a more creative capitalism: an attempt to stretch the reach of market forces so that more companies can benefit from doing work that makes more people better off. We need new ways to bring far more people into the system — capitalism — that has done so much good in the world.

There's much still to be done, but the good news is that creative capitalism is already with us. Some corporations have identified brand-new markets among the poor for life-changing technologies like cell phones. Others — sometimes with a nudge from activists — have seen how they can do good and do well at the same time. To take a real-world example, a few years ago I was sitting in a bar with Bono, and frankly, I thought he was a little nuts. It was late, we'd had a few drinks, and Bono was all fired up over a scheme to get companies to help tackle global poverty and disease. He kept dialing the private numbers of top executives and thrusting his cell phone at me to hear their sleepy yet enthusiastic replies. As crazy as it seemed that night, Bono's persistence soon gave birth to the (RED) campaign. Today companies like Gap, Hallmark and Dell sell (RED)-branded products and donate a portion of their profits to fight AIDS. (Microsoft recently signed up too.) It's a great thing: the companies make a difference while adding to their bottom line, consumers get to show their support for a good cause, and — most important — lives are saved. In the past year and a half, (RED) has generated $100 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, helping put nearly 80,000 people in poor countries on lifesaving drugs and helping more than 1.6 million get tested for HIV. That's creative capitalism at work.

Creative capitalism isn't some big new economic theory. And it isn't a knock on capitalism itself. It is a way to answer a vital question: How can we most effectively spread the benefits of capitalism and the huge improvements in quality of life it can provide to people who have been left out?

The World Is Getting Better

It might seem strange to talk about creative capitalism when we're paying more than $4 for a gallon of gas and people are having trouble paying their mortgages. There's no doubt that today's economic troubles are real; people feel them deeply, and they deserve immediate attention. Creative capitalism isn't an answer to the relatively short-term ups and downs of the economic cycle. It's a response to the longer-term fact that too many people are missing out on a historic, century-long improvement in the quality of life. In many nations, life expectancy has grown dramatically in the past 100 years. More people vote in elections, express their views and enjoy economic freedom than ever before. Even with all the problems we face today, we are at a high point of human well-being. The world is getting a lot better.

The problem is, it's not getting better fast enough, and it's not getting better for everyone. One billion people live on less than a dollar a day. They don't have enough nutritious food, clean water or electricity. The amazing innovations that have made many lives so much better — like vaccines and microchips — have largely passed them by. This is where governments and nonprofits come in. As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. And the world will make lasting progress on the big inequities that remain — problems like AIDS, poverty and education — only if governments and nonprofits do their part by giving more aid and more effective aid. But the improvements will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that's tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

Naturally, if companies are going to get more involved, they need to earn some kind of return. This is the heart of creative capitalism. It's not just about doing more corporate philanthropy or asking companies to be more virtuous. It's about giving them a real incentive to apply their expertise in new ways, making it possible to earn a return while serving the people who have been left out. This can happen in two ways: companies can find these opportunities on their own, or governments and nonprofits can help create such opportunities where they presently don't exist.

What's Been Missed

As C.K. Prahalad shows in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, there are markets all over the world that businesses have missed. One study found that the poorest two-thirds of the world's population has some $5 trillion in purchasing power. A key reason market forces are slow to make an impact in developing countries is that we don't spend enough time studying the needs of those markets. I should know: I saw it happen at Microsoft. For many years, Microsoft has used corporate philanthropy to bring technology to people who can't get it otherwise, donating more than $3 billion in cash and software to try to bridge the digital divide. But our real expertise is in writing software that solves problems, and recently we've realized that we weren't bringing enough of that expertise to problems in the developing world. So now we're looking at inequity as a business problem as well as something to be addressed through philanthropy. We're working on projects like a visual interface that will enable illiterate or semiliterate people to use a PC instantly, with minimal training. Another project of ours lets an entire classroom full of students use a single computer; we've developed software that lets each student use her own mouse to control a specially colored cursor so that as many as 50 kids can use one computer at the same time. This is a big advance for schools where there aren't enough computers to go around, and it serves a market we hadn't examined before.

Cell phones are another example. They're now a booming market in the developing world, but historically, companies vastly underestimated their potential. In 2000, when Vodafone bought a large stake in a Kenyan cell-phone company, it figured that the market in Kenya would max out at 400,000 users. Today that company, Safaricom, has more than 10 million. The company has done it by finding creative ways to serve low-income Kenyans. Its customers are charged by the second rather than by the minute, for example, which keeps down the cost. Safaricom is making a profit, and it's making a difference. Farmers use their cell phones to find the best prices in nearby markets. A number of innovative uses for cell phones are emerging. Already many Kenyans use them to store cash (via a kind of electronic money) and transfer funds. If you have to carry money over long distances — say, from the market back to your home — this kind of innovation makes a huge difference. You're less tempting to rob if you're not holding any cash.

This is how people can benefit when businesses find opportunities that have been missed. But since I started talking about creative capitalism earlier this year, I've heard from some skeptics who doubt that there are any new markets. They say, "If these opportunities really existed, someone would have found them by now." I disagree. Their argument assumes that businesses have already studied every possible market for their products. Their attitude reminds me of the old joke about an economist who's walking down the street with a friend. The economist steps over a $10 bill that's lying on the ground. His friend asks him why he didn't take the money. "It couldn't possibly be there," he explains. "If it were, somebody would've picked it up!" Some companies make the same mistake. They think all the $10 bills have already been picked up. It would be a shame if we missed such opportunities, and it would make a huge difference if, instead, researchers and strategists at corporations met regularly with experts on the needs of the poor and talked about new applications for their best ideas.

Beyond finding new markets and developing new products, companies sometimes can benefit by providing the poor with heavily discounted access to products. Industries like software and pharmaceuticals, for example, have very low production costs, so you can come out ahead by selling your product for a bigger profit in rich markets and for a smaller profit, or at cost, in poor ones. Businesses in other industries can't do this tiered pricing, but they can benefit from the public recognition and enhanced reputation that come from serving those who can't pay. The companies involved in the (RED) campaign draw in new customers who want to be associated with a good cause. That might be the tipping point that leads people to pick one product over another.

There's another crucial benefit that accrues to businesses that do good work. They will find it easier to recruit and retain great employees. Young people today — all over the world — want to work for organizations that they can feel good about. Show them that a company is applying its expertise to help the poorest, and they will repay that commitment with their own dedication.

Creating New Incentives

Even so, no matter how hard businesses look or how creatively they think, there are some problems in the world that aren't amenable to solution by existing market incentives. Malaria is a great example: the people who most need new drugs or a vaccine are the least able to pay, so the drugs and vaccines never get made. In these cases, governments and nonprofits can create the incentives. This is the second way in which creative capitalism can take wing. Incentives can be as straightforward as giving public praise to the companies that are doing work that serves the poor. This summer, a Dutch nonprofit called the Access to Medicine Foundation started publishing a report card that shows which pharmaceutical companies are doing the most to make sure that medicines are made for — and reach — people in developing countries. When I talk to executives from pharmaceutical companies, they tell me that they want to do more for neglected diseases — but they at least need to get credit for it. This report card does exactly that.

Publicity is very valuable, but sometimes it's still not enough to persuade companies to get involved. Even the best p.r. may not pay the bill for 10 years of research into a new drug. That's why it's so important for governments to create more financial incentives. Under a U.S. law enacted last year, for example, any drug company that develops a new treatment for a neglected disease like malaria can get a priority review from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for another product it has made. If you develop a new drug for malaria, your profitable cholesterol drug could go on the market as much as a year earlier. Such a priority review could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a fantastic way for governments to go beyond the aid they already give and channel market forces so they improve even more lives.

Of course, governments in developing countries have to do a lot to foster capitalism themselves. They must pass laws and make regulations that let markets flourish, bringing the benefits of economic growth to more people. In fact, that's another argument I've heard against creative capitalism: "We don't need to make capitalism more creative. We just need governments to stop interfering with it." There is something to this. Many countries could spark more business investment — both within their borders and from the outside — if they did more to guarantee property rights, cut red tape and so on. But these changes come slowly. In the meantime, we can't wait. As a businessman, I've seen that companies can tap new markets right now, even if conditions aren't ideal. And as a philanthropist, I've found that our caring for others compels us to help people right now. The longer we wait, the more people suffer needlessly.

The Next Step

In june, I moved out of my day-to-day role at Microsoft to spend more time on the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I'll be talking with political leaders about how their governments can increase aid for the poor, make it more effective and bring in new partners through creative capitalism. I'll also talk with CEOs about what their companies can do. One idea is to dedicate a percentage of their top innovators' time to issues that affect the people who have been left behind. This kind of contribution takes the brainpower that makes life better for the richest and dedicates some of it to improving the lives of everyone else. Some pharmaceutical companies, like Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, are already doing this. The Japanese company Sumitomo Chemical shared some of its technology with a Tanzanian textile company, helping it produce millions of bed nets, which are crucial tools in the fight to eradicate malaria. Other companies are doing the same in food, cell phones and banking.

In other words, creative capitalism is already under way. But we can do much more. Governments can create more incentives like the FDA voucher. We can expand the report-card idea beyond the pharmaceutical industry and make sure the rankings get publicity so companies get credit for doing good work. Consumers can reward companies that do their part by buying their products. Employees can ask how their employers are contributing. If more companies follow the lead of the most creative organizations in their industry, they will make a huge impact on some of the world's worst problems.

More than 30 years ago, Paul Allen and I started Microsoft because we wanted to be part of a movement to put a computer on every desk and in every home. Ten years ago, Melinda and I started our foundation because we want to be part of a different movement — this time, to help create a world where no one has to live on a dollar a day or die from a disease we know how to prevent. Creative capitalism can help make it happen. I hope more people will join the cause.