Vague and outdated.

Is the US facing a crisis today because of lack of principles ?
Are some principles bad and others good ? Do we really need principles ?

Unfortunately, this seminar was given thru the optics of a business school. America is portraited as a corporation that was sucessfull (at a moment in time) and requires reengineering to reclaim the lost market share. While a more post-modern approach would be to stop acting like a modern corporative nation-state.

Open mind, aiming the greater good and common ground are principles that can be tracked down to Nazi Germany. Hitler was very open minded towards science, specially medical scientists that supported ethical discrimination. Let’s not forget that in the 30’s, racial centered researches were “in vogue”. All of Mengele’s research could fit in the “aiming for the greater good” principle, and last, but not least, the main objective in Nazi Germany’s invasions were to secure vital space aka “common ground”.

Science, by itself, is not open minded at all. For one to succeed in any science field, one must struggle to publish the most. Selection Comittees aren’t at all open minded, notably famous institutions receive much more bandwidth than obscure distant colleges. There are several stories of scientists that had papers rejected at first and succeeding publishing them only 20 years later, after a lifetime of struggle.

There is no such thing as one-way open-mindness, a cleric who refuses to accept science is as bad as a scientist who refuses to accept that people may have religious beleifs. I cannot percieve someone like Richard Dawkins as an open-minded person.

And regarding politics, all politics are open minded by default, otherwise they don’t maintain themselfs in power. How do you vote in a ecological bill when you were elected by a conservative religious group ? You may end up partnering with a gay activist if both percieve that by doing this some gain will be obtained.

The war in Iraq was issued by the latter two principles, aiming a greater good – by taking Saddam off power and getting rid of the WMDs – and Common ground, by protecting it.

I really dislike this kind of generalisation applied as a specific, implied superior national/cultural trait (I feel the same way about Aussie “mateship” too).

de Tocqueville was a man of and by his age; a 19th century French philosopher, ruminating on the “… vicissitudes and practicing the virtues and vices common to savage nations…”, with little if any actual experience of the lives of his observed objects; and this lack of exposure and understanding into the pre-existing, actual social structures of a majority of the Native peoples cultures around the world, seems to me, to excite followers of de Tocqueville’s ideas, to assume that this is somehow a new concept born of a “civilised” nation.

No, sorry to burst your bubbles people, it’s not particularly “civilised” nor American (which American? USian, Mexican, Canadian, Panamanian, Columbian, Peruvian, Mayan, Aztec?).

From pre history, the human traits of inclusiveness and shared responsibility have allowed survival of the species against common threats (stampeding mammoths, leaping sabre tooth tigers, ice ages, floods, famines etc.).

It’s hard wired into our genes. The only difference is that here in the 21st century, those of us living in “the west”, having spent so many decades under the sway of capitalism, arm in arm with “individualism” and “personal responsibility”, find that when we don’t like what this has brought us to, we cast about like a drowning man flailing for the float ring, and finding it thrown from a dead white aristocrat, shout “Hallelujah!” and seek ownership of it.

I do like “Everything looks like a failure in the middle.” Appeals to my optimism.

Of course, I’m open to changing my mind. With the higher purpose. Of standing on common ground. With those of you who did find her enlightening.