A Letter to the Democrat Nominee-Elect, Sen. Obama
DO NOT GET TAKEN INTO THE TOWN-HALL PROPOSAL, please!! In the campaign speaking coming up, you WILL NOT (FACT #1) be speaking to a “town”. You WILL (FACT #2) be speaking to the people of the world, with some significance for every person near and remote. You WILL NOT (FACT #3) be speaking in a “hall”. You WILL (FACT #4) be speaking through the global conduits of many types, your words being picked up in every medium of communication everywhere.
Herewith, I am asking you to do something that will “evolve” political speech. It’s not an easy point to make. Bear with me.
Do not fall for the “folksy” trick of Sen. John McCain. That’s what he knows works best for him. You, Sir, will know better because you have a different intelligence, more youth, more in touch with world tendencies, more capable of learning, study, inquiry, and having a propensity for giving and taking instruction. I conclude that on the strength of your education and experience, you must stand against your opponent in a public communication and formal framework.
“TURN THE PAGE!” You said that and, I am sure, comprehended the full significance of that catchphrase.
Our ancestors have “turned the page” many times over the past four millions of years. The machinery of evolution is inexorably still in effect, a law that will never be repealed. (Check that: except perhaps through human blundering. H-m-m-m.) I wish to invoke the operation of that theory for this campaign and your presidency to follow. I mean, REALLY, REALLY turn that page. You must be up to it.
In these present times, there are more and more pressures to act under threats sensed as global, and immediate, like climate change and fossil fuels, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, the sinister changes in the nature of terroristic underground warfare. The list is very long.
People of the world will not be reached through a “town hall” of folksy “conversation”, a few sentences followed by a few sentences, skimming over the great number of issues. Presidential messages must be directed at the thousands of cultures and billions of people to be affected by the advocacy. Our president is a world leader. Messages must have a diplomatic style and a technically correct content. The special nomenclature for Presidential speaking dictates, mandates, requires an important distinction of forms and styles, requiring leaders who are carriers of the “social mutation” in the “genes” for public speaking at a higher level of consciousness. I am just saying that the next President should show qualifications to speak at a higher level of awareness, which should be apparent to us all. That carrier of the duties and skills that match the global job will be favored in this changing global environment, a change in political speech leaving behind the old model of politician in George Bush and John McCain. I sense that you, Sen. Obama, have the right stuff which will be revealed in your judgments and decisions about these campaign meetings.
Citizens must also turn the page in their attentiveness, lengthening their attention to a level of concentration that their experiences in this current society do not encourage. The citizen in any world democracy must have the opportunity and ability to receive longer, more technical speaking presentations. I am not talking about a magazine article standing on two legs. I am talking about a “communicator” with style, a higher level of diction. (Diction is a large trunk of mental and physical abilities.) The listeners’ attention must be controlled and pressed beyond a few sentences of “conversational” talk to a higher level of ability to concentrate on policies for future action in the world society.
For that reason, on those bases, we must have the presidential campaign “debates” at a higher level of structure and performance, involving a higher level of presentation and reception. “My friends” audiences are a thing of the past. “My friends” speakers are outmoded. The intent to speak down through that mode of address is not of a higher order of diction. The volume and reach is not there. The speaking amateurism of Bush and McCain can no longer be the model, can no longer be tolerated..
Audiences should be given what they should be expected to handle.
I would ask Barack Obama to lead the world with that new intellectual approach that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it’s the formal principles of “discussion” and “debate” and “deliberation”. Your political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.
I believe that there was some body wisdom operating in the body politic that nominated you, Barack Obama.
Here is the evolutionary context for my turning-the-page point. The global society gives the competitive advantage to that person with the ability to string together lengthy and complex explications of national and international policy in such a manner of speaking that nearly everyone gets to message clearly and enjoyably. That audience which survives will have had the advantage of articulate leaders who have risen to a higher concept of their communicative role. And citizen-audiences will complement their president with their abilities to concentrate being challenged and found capable. Chattting with an audience as you wander around a stage is a lower order of confrontation with the listeners and topic. The urgency of the problems demands more.
I see the wretched model of leadership we have had the past eight years. Unfortunately, a society that may be amusing itself to death and that has a poor record of electing sub-standard leaders has a long way to go to accept, understand and operate in a new communicative context that is equal to the challenges in the global context of threats to our survival. Amusement is fine, but it is the tail, not the dog.
The context for ideas for “turning pages”, to take you seriously, follows. It is certainly considerably more complex than John McCain’s understanding of “change”.
Turning pages goes back to the evolution of consciousness in human history on Earth. Certain variabilities in human development over millennia were selected by environmental pressures and proved to be advantageous for survival. Isn’t that true in our present global environment? If nature changes, human nature must change. Evolution is the mechanism. Those (people, nations) adapted to the old nature will probably not survive. Those (people, nations) adaptable by their nature will find the new environment no threat.
The hunter-gatherers developed a simple instrumental communication serving their tribal affairs, with no need of consciousness (as defined below).
In an advance toward, but falling short of consciousness, language and speech was necessary to cope with the increasing population and the complexity of larger societies wherein the voice of a leading spirit gave the rules and laws to a people in an extended social unit no longer tribal. Everything was done without consciousness, for after the chief’s death, his voice authorizing behavior would still bind together the population-at-large under stress to determine some course of action. The hallucinated voices of dead kings became gods maintaining that higher-power to authorize behavior. Even in early Greek times, the heroes were still closely tied to the commandments of the gods.
At the next turn of a page, there followed a higher-order ability of human beings to be self-directed by their own inner narratives of self-authorization. Consciousness was thus obtained. There was, of course, an overlap of those people proceeding with consciousness and those maintaining the mentality of god-speak. (The theory rests on the differential functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain.)
Presently, the number of worldwide threats to human survival creates more and more pressures to behave differently, to grow a new mentality to cope globally involving a world consciousness that surpasses the egoistic narrative. We are at a place where the self recedes into the background as global threats must be met, climate change, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, terrorism, and so on.
President-nominee Obama has to lead the world with a new intellectual focus that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it is now “discussion” and “negotiation” and “debate” and “deliberation” and “argumentation” and “rhetoric” (finding the possible means of persuasion in any given case—a definition not commonly understood: “Oh, that’s just rhetoric!”).
Your presidential political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.
You, Sen. Obama, as President, will stand on the threshold of a new regime to teach a new way of proceeding to a new set of policies. Start now by avoiding the traps set by the old fashion of communicating.
TURN THE PAGE!
