The Experience Economy - NYTimes.com

The Experience Economy - NYTimes.com

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Experience Economy

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: February 14, 2011

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• COMMENTS (50)
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

Tyler Cowen’s e-book, “The Great Stagnation,” has become the most debated nonfiction book so far this year. Cowen’s core point is that up until sometime around 1974, the American economy was able to experience awesome growth by harvesting low-hanging fruit. There was cheap land to be exploited. There was the tremendous increase in education levels during the postwar world. There were technological revolutions occasioned by the spread of electricity, plastics and the car.

Josh Haner/The New York Times

David Brooks

Go to Columnist Page »

The Conversation

David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns.

All Conversations »

Readers' Comments

Share your thoughts.

• Post a Comment »
• Read All Comments (50) »

But that low-hanging fruit is exhausted, Cowen continues, and since 1974, the United States has experienced slower growth, slower increases in median income, slower job creation, slower productivity gains, slower life-expectancy improvements and slower rates of technological change.

Cowen’s data on these slowdowns are compelling and have withstood the scrutiny of the online reviewers. He argues that our society, for the moment, has hit a technological plateau.

But his evidence can also be used to tell a related story. It could be that the nature of technological change isn’t causing the slowdown but a shift in values. It could be that in an industrial economy people develop a materialist mind-set and believe that improving their income is the same thing as improving their quality of life. But in an affluent information-driven world, people embrace the postmaterialist mind-set. They realize they can improve their quality of life without actually producing more wealth.

For example, imagine a man we’ll call Sam, who was born in 1900 and died in 1974. Sam entered a world of iceboxes, horse-drawn buggies and, commonly, outhouses. He died in a world of air-conditioning, Chevy Camaros and Moon landings. His life was defined by dramatic material changes, and Sam worked feverishly hard to build a company that sold brake systems. Sam wasn’t the most refined person, but he understood that if he wanted to create a secure life for his family he had to create wealth.

Sam’s grandson, Jared, was born in 1978. Jared wasn’t really drawn to the brake-systems business, which was withering in America. He works at a company that organizes conferences. He brings together fascinating speakers for lifelong learning. He writes a blog on modern art and takes his family on vacations that are more daring and exciting than any Sam experienced.

Jared lives a much more intellectually diverse life than Sam. He loves Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and his iPhone apps. But many of these things are produced outside the conventional monetized economy. Most of the products are produced by people working for free. They cost nothing to consume.

They don’t even create many jobs. As Cowen notes in his book, the automobile industry produced millions of jobs, but Facebook employs about 2,000, Twitter 300 and eBay about 17,000. It takes only 14,000 employees to make and sell iPods, but that device also eliminates jobs for those people who make and distribute CDs, potentially leading to net job losses.

In other words, as Cowen makes clear, many of this era’s technological breakthroughs produce enormous happiness gains, but surprisingly little additional economic activity.

Jared’s other priorities also produce high quality-of-life gains without huge material and productivity improvements. He practically defines himself by what university he went to. Universities now have nicer dorms, gyms and dining facilities. These improvements have not led to huge increases in educational output.

Jared is very health conscious and part of a generation that has spent much more on health care. This may help Jared lead a vibrant life in retirement. But these investments have had surprisingly little effect on productivity or even longevity.

For Sam, income and living standards were synonymous. But for Jared, wealth and living standards have diverged. He is more interested in the latter than the former. This means that Jared has some rich and meaningful experiences, but it has also led to problems. Every few months, new gizmos come out. Jared feels his life is getting better. Because he doesn’t fully grasp the increasingly important distinction between wealth and standard of living, he has the impression that he is also getting richer. As a result, he lives beyond his means. As Cowen notes, many of our recent difficulties stem from the fact that many Americans think they are richer than they are.

Jared is also providing much less opportunity for those down the income scale than his grandfather did. Sam was more hardhearted, yet his feverish materialism created more jobs.

Jared worries about that. He also worries that the Chinese and others have a material drive that he and his cohort lacks. But he’s not changing. For the past few decades, Americans have devoted more of their energies to postmaterial arenas and less and less, for better and worse, to the sheer production of wealth.

During these years, commencement speakers have urged students to seek meaning and not money. Many people, it turns out, were listening.

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: The Wisdom of Booker T. Washington

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: The Wisdom of Booker T. Washington

The Wisdom of Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), the first African-American to receive an honorary degree from Harvard, was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader.

Washington was born into slavery to a slave mother and a white plantation owner in Franklin County, Virginia. He became a national figure with his Atlanta Address of 1895, in which he advocated vocational education for blacks as a way to improve race relations, making him a popular spokesperson for African-American citizens.

Through the support of wealthy philanthropists, he was able to raise funds to establish and operate thousands of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of blacks throughout the South. In 1901, his popular autobiography, Up From Slavery, was first published and has been translated into many languages.

On Leadership

• Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him….Every individual responds to confidence. (Up from Slavery: An Autobiography)
• If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
• There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
• Most leaders spend time trying to get others to think highly of them, when instead they should try to get their people to think more highly of themselves. It’s wonderful when the people believe in their leader. It’s more wonderful when the leader believes in their people! You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

On Respect

• One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
• To hold a man down, you have to stay down with him.
• I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. (Up from Slavery: An Autobiography)

On Work

• I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. (Up from Slavery: An Autobiography)
• Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
• Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work. (Up from Slavery: An Autobiography)

On Execution

• We must reinforce argument with results.

On Friendship

• Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

On Service

• My whole life has largely been one of surprises. I believe that any man’s life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life—that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living. I pity the man, black or white, who has never experienced the joy and satisfaction that come to one by reason of an effort to assist in making some one else more useful and more happy. (Up from Slavery: An Autobiography)
• The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for—and dying for, if need be—is the opportunity of making someone else more happy and more useful. (Up from Slavery: An Autobiography)

On Success

• Success always leaves footprints.
• I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. (Up from Slavery: An Autobiography)

Booker T. Washington speaking to an audience at Carnegie Hall on the occasion of the Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary lecture in 1906. Mark Twain is seated on stage just behind Washington.

The Splendor of Cities - David Brooks, NYTimes.com

The Splendor of Cities - NYTimes.com

The Splendor of Cities

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: February 7, 2011

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• COMMENTS (92)
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

Chicago

Josh Haner/The New York Times

David Brooks

Go to Columnist Page »

The Conversation

David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns.

All Conversations »

Related

• Times Topic: Rahm Emanuel

Readers' Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

• Read All Comments (92) »

The people who run the federal government spend almost no time outdoors. They get driven from home to work and move through corridors from meeting to meeting. So it was a little odd after all those times interviewing Rahm Emanuel when he was the White House chief of staff to be chasing him, outside, down an icy Chicago street.

He was underdressed for the weather, as all politicians feel compelled to be, in a leather jacket and jeans, and he was knocking on doors as part of a campaign for mayor. Emanuel was a colorful figure in Washington, but back home he’s off the leash.

He’s clearly a much happier person — glowing, bouncing, reminiscing and hugging. Gone are all the death-grip battles with Republicans and the Washington interest groups. Now startled people in sweatpants greet him when he shows up at their doorway, sometimes wrapping him in an embrace and sometimes bringing their kids out to pose for pictures. Nearly every single person he meets gets an ebullient high-five, though the cause for each celebration is not always clear.

I was struck by how many voters wanted to talk to him about education. Chicagoans have clearly internalized the fact that their city can’t prosper so long as so many public school students are dropping out. So Emanuel rips through his school reform agenda, which is like Obama’s national agenda, except on steroids.

He’s got a Chicago version of the Race to the Top in which schools that reform the fastest get a pot of money. He’s for school performance contracts in which school leaders vow to meet certain goals or risk losing control of their schools. He’s for sending school report cards out to parents so they can measure how well their own schools are performing.

As people come and talk to him, everything has a marvelous concreteness. In Washington, it’s sometimes hard to connect the abstract laws that are being passed to the actual effects on neighborhoods or families. But in a mayoral race, people talk about this specific playground or that recycling center or the police precinct over there. Many of us are drawn to the big power politics of Washington, but city politics is better than national politics because the problems are more tangible and the communication is more face to face.

This is a point Edward Glaeser fleshes out in his terrific new book, “Triumph of the City.” Glaeser points out that far from withering in the age of instant global information flows, cities have only become more important.

That’s because humans communicate best when they are physically brought together. Two University of Michigan researchers brought groups of people together face to face and asked them to play a difficult cooperation game. Then they organized other groups and had them communicate electronically. The face-to-face groups thrived. The electronic groups fractured and struggled.

Cities magnify people’s strengths, Glaeser argues, because ideas spread more easily in dense environments. If you want to compete in a global marketplace it really helps to be near a downtown. Companies that are near the geographic center of their industry are more productive. Year by year, workers in cities see their wages grow faster than workers outside of cities because their skills grow faster. Inventors disproportionately cite ideas from others who live physically close to them.

For years, cities like Detroit built fancy towers and development projects in the hopes that this would revive the downtown core. But cities thrive because they host quality conversations, not because they have new buildings and convention centers.

The cities that have thrived over the past few decades tend to have high median temperatures in January (people like warm winters and other amenities). But even cold cities like Chicago can thrive if they attract college grads. As the number of college graduates in a metropolitan area increases by 10 percent, individuals’ earnings increase by 7.7. This applies even to the high school grads in the city because their productivity rises, too.

When you clump together different sorts of skilled people and force them to rub against one another, they create friction and instability, which leads to tension and creativity, which leads to small business growth. As Glaeser notes, cities that rely on big businesses wither. Those that incubate small ones grow.

Recently, Emanuel visited Valois: See Your Food, a South Side institution that gives new meaning to the phrase “greasy spoon.” As he made his way from table to table — from cops to middle-class families, graduate students, the unemployed and single moms — he fell into a dozen intense and divergent conversations.

Chicago has its problems: it suffers under one of the biggest debt loads in the country. But it has thrived because it has had good leadership, a constantly updated housing stock, a good business environment and an ethos that attracts talent and celebrates blunt conversation.

Ethics and Intentions, by Michael Josephson @ http://goo.gl/m89No

Ethics and Intentions

from Business Ethics and Leadership by admin

Image via Wikipedia

During the Watergate probe, the question continually asked was, “What did President Nixon know and when did he know it?” Our judgment of his behavior depends on the answer to those questions. The more he knew and the earlier he knew it, the worse it was. The Iran-Contra investigation of the decision to sell arms to Iran and use the proceeds to support the Nicaraguan Contras raised identical questions of President Reagan’s knowledge. Everyone seems to realize the importance of knowledge and intent because the first line of defense is usually a denial of both.
Children are judged by more lenient standards than adults because “they don’t know any better.” So, if a four-year old child steals a friends toy or even takes a gun and shoots and kills her little brother, we temper our moral judgments of the little girl because she did not have sufficient understanding of the significance of her act to be culpable (guilty of moral blame). Does this mean that we do not think the theft or the killing was wrong? Of course not. But in some cases we have to make two separate judgments, one on the act and the other on the actor. Knowledge of one’s moral obligations is generally a prerequisite for imposing blame.
In fact, the traditional form of the legal defense of insanity is based on the claim that a criminal defendant, as a result of a disease of the mind, either did not know the nature and quality of the act or that it was wrong. Thus, although ignorance of the law is no excuse, ignorance of the ethical implications of an act may be. When we are truly and innocently unaware of the likely consequences of our choices and actions, the judgment of us as good or bad persons should be separated from the judgment of the goodness or badness of our conduct or its results.
But what if you know an act is wrong and you do it any way? Does acknowledgment of your wrongdoing mitigate the blame? The first time I conducted an ethics program for high school students I was surprised how many of the students who admitted to cheating and theft comforted themselves with the observation, “at least I know it is wrong.” For some irrational reason, many people feel better about themselves simply because they are willing to admit it when they fall short of ethical standards. Confession may be good for the soul, but it does not negate moral responsibility. A person who knows an act is wrong but does it anyway is actually less ethical than one who does the same act without such knowledge.
A state senator provided a more subtle version of the “partial credit” rationale. During a discussion of the difficulties of being honest during a campaign, the lawmaker justified his willingness to stretch or evade the truth in a peculiar way: “I’m as honest as the voters will let me be.” Even though he admitted that he was sometimes dishonest, his moral self-esteem was high because he acknowledged the importance of honesty and demonstrated a preference for it. He only lied when he had to. Wanting to be honest is important but not sufficient. An ethical person consistently does the right thing despite temptations and pressures to do otherwise. “But “if I don’t lie on my résumé I won’t get the job,” an earnest young woman said. “And I really need the job. What do you expect me to do?” From a moral perspective, the answer is easy — do the right thing. People of character and ethics do the right thing even when it costs more than they want to pay.
Motives are relevant, however, in determining whether an act is truly one of charity or caring. A charitable donation driven primarily by self-seeking or self-serving motives (tax benefits, glory, political clout) is not an act of altruism; it is an investment. The mobster, slumlord, or even the status-hungry tycoon who gives away money to good causes primarily in order to restore a reputation or gain status is engaged in a self-promoting public relations not a morally noble act of generosity. We can acknowledge the practical reality that money is money and appreciate all the good it can do, but we should not confuse this with philanthropy. If we do we obliterate the distinction between those who really care about others and those who don’t. There is nothing unethical about giving money to achieve tax goals or social benefits. Since ethical motivations — genuine caring, compassion, and a desire to do one’s share — do not enter into the picture, such acts are ethically neutral, at best.
When I was teaching law, a student came into my office to tell me I had misgraded his exam. I had miscalculated in his favor. I was pleased at this young man’s integrity and told him so as I began to change my records to reflect the lower score. He looked shocked. “I never would have come in if I knew you were . . .” He blurted out. He didn’t finish the sentence, but it was too late. He blew his cover.
He thought he could have it both ways: he would win praise for being honest and I would reward him by letting him keep the higher, unearned mark. He wasn’t being ethical at all. It was supposed to be a no-lose situation. Once he saw the cost of his honesty, he was unwilling to pay it.
Did I do the right thing by insisting on changing the grade or did I lose a chance to encourage honesty? Some of my colleagues at the time, thought my action was counterproductive, that all I accomplished was to reinforce the cynicism of this young man and anyone else he told about the incident: I had taught him that honesty is for suckers. I think I accomplished more than that. After all, there were other considerations besides this one student’s moral consciousness and other stakeholders. How could I ignore the obligation to all my students and to the law school itself to assure that my grades reflected my best-faith efforts to evaluate competency? It would violate fundamental principles of justice and fairness to give a student a better grade than he earned to compensate for my mistake. Had I failed to correct the grade, I would have been rewarding not honesty but shrewdness. I am glad that this young man left my office knowing that sometimes there is a cost to ethics. If he was unwilling to pay the price, at least he had to give up the claim to virtue.
Doing the right thing only when it’s in one’s self-interest isn’t ethics. It’s a calculated investment based on a cost-benefit analysis where the controlling factor is personal gain or advantage. The law student who reported the error on his test is a good example. My generation was taught to revere George Washington’s honesty because he told his father, “I cannot tell a lie. It was I who cut down the cherry tree.” That proverbial act of honesty paid lavish dividends throughout Washington’s life. I am not really challenging his well-deserved reputation for integrity. He proved it in many far more compelling situations. Still, I can’t help wondering if this story would have been treated as such a positive sign of good character if we knew George had no hope of getting away with a lie and he was simply cutting his losses. Let’s face it, how many other suspects were there.

Three Times You Have to Speak Up, by Nilofer Merchant

Three Times You Have to Speak Up:

It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.

I was thinking about that story by Thomas Merton during a recent board meeting.

The CEO and CFO were marching through their 112-slide presentation. Recent market updates, a technical deconstruction of various trends, then product frameworks — all in quick succession.

One board member sighed deeply. Another glanced surreptitiously down at the BlackBerry in his lap, perhaps thinking no one would notice. Some of the other people at the table were staring out the window at the grey day. It was not a highly engaged moment — but it was an all-too familiar one.

Is this a case of PowerPoint burnout or BlackBerry addiction? Or was there something more meaningful happening? Were they, I wondered, placing an imaginary stone (or two or three) in their mouths? What if this scene was not a demonstration of apathy but the application of wisdom?

Early on in our careers, we might speak up without concern or context. Or we might be reticent to speak up, fearful of what others might think, perhaps remembering the famous quip attributed to Lincoln: 'It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.' Or perhaps we have wondered, as others have, if it's worth the cost of speaking up. Enthusiasm, naïveté, fear of repercussions, conformity to the group norms, and even wisdom are all things that can influence whether someone speaks up or not.

Perhaps the question is less 'should I speak up?' than 'when should I speak up?' To that end, we can ask ourselves more nuanced questions, like:

• How will it improve the process?


• Do I know something that will benefit the organization?


• Of course, underlying all that...does anything need to be said at all?

Seen with that context, the board's silence could be a deliberate choice. In complex organizations and complex times, we face complex choices. We don't get to optimize all products, go after all markets, or add all programs. There are choices to be made in dollars and resources and even if we make our opinion known. Each person could be biding their time until a private closed-door moment, or they could be letting the rest of the presentation unfold before jumping in. The choice to stay quiet may very well be a good one.

Or their passivity could be a state of denial, an unwillingness to engage debate, avoiding unnecessary conflict, or fear of standing out from the others. And that would be a bad thing, especially when it comes to the cost to the organization.

Because silence does have a cost. When great debacles get dissected, very often the underlying tension of why the issue went wrong was that no one spoke up. It happened during the Kennedy Administration's Bay of Pigs fiasco when 'groupthink' carried the day. And it happened again when the Challenger space shuttle exploded during liftoff because of a poor decision-making process. Perhaps the recent BP oil spill, the largest marine oil spill in history, would have been avoided if the right dialogue had taken place; many within the organization knew their well casing and blowout preventer were insufficient but the organization decided to skate ahead anyways.

Whether you're on the board of directors, or an individual contributor in a weekly staff meeting, knowing what to let slide and what to make an issue of, what to bring up publicly and what to raise privately, requires wisdom and judgment. Underlying that wisdom and judgment is the moment of conscious choice when we decide to speak, or to hold our tongues.

When is the time for you to speak? Let me share three crucial criteria:

When it will improve the results of the group. Minority viewpoints have been proven to aid the quality of decision making in juries, by teams, and for the purpose of innovation. Research first published in the Journal of Applied Psychology shows that even when the minority points of view are wrong, they cause the rest of the group to think better, to create more solutions, and to improve the creativity of problem solving.

When it gives others permission to speak their truth. An interesting study of conformity put people into groups and arranged for a majority of the group to lie about the length of a line. When the majority lied without opposition, 70% of those tested capitulated and passively went along with the incorrect group assessment. But when a single dissenting voice was introduced, only 30% went with the group majority answer. In other words, when one person had the courage to speak their truth, it gave permission to the others to have and own their truth.



When the costs of silence are too high. This final point is more subjective than the first two. Only you know how to answer the question, 'Is this worth it?' When do you allow others to determine what you believe and say to be true? If it is an issue of justice or integrity, or when the implication to getting things wrong could affect many, perhaps the cost is too high for silence. In those times, for the sake of your organization and for your own integrity, it's time for you to say something.

There are times when what we say or don't say impacts our organization's ability — and even our own ability — to succeed. And it's rarely as clear as someone handing you some stones to put in your mouth, or whispering that it's time to take them out. Knowing when to speak is an art, and like any art, requires skill. But it's a skill worth pursuing.

Nilofer Merchant is a corporate advisor and speaker on innovation methods. Her book, The New How, discussing collaborative ways to have your whole company strategize, was published in 2010. Follow her on Twitter @nilofer.

Pencil as Power Tool, by Daniel Pink

Pencil as Power Tool:

A few years ago, I took a five-day drawing class in New York City that changed my life. I entered the class a complete ignoramus on matters visual. By week’s end, I was somewhat less of an ignoramus — because, to my amazement, I had begun learning how to see.

Drawing, as I discovered that week and described in A Whole New Mind, is a terrific way to develop the aptitude of Symphony, the ability to put together seemingly unrelated pieces to create something new. If you’re ready to pick up your pencil and try this technique out for yourself, a good place to start is Mike Rohde’s article, “Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool.” (Mike is the illustrator of REWORK, the outstanding book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals fame.)

According to Mike, “Sketching provides a unique space that can help you think differently, generate a variety of ideas quickly, explore alternatives with less risk, and encourage constructive discussions with colleagues and clients.” Most important, “it’s not about the quality of the drawing, but about capturing and communicating ideas from one mind to another.”

I’ll be stuck in an airport for a few hours tonight. But instead of doing what I usually do there (answering email and foraging for red wine), I’m going to spend some time sketching. Who knows? Maybe it’ll help me come up with some new travel tips. If you’ve been using drawing as a thinking tool, tell us about it in the comments.

Why should anyone follow you? « Leadership Freak

Why should anyone follow you? « Leadership Freak

Why should anyone follow you?

By Dan Rockwell

Stated simply, leaders have followers. Put negatively, if you don’t have followers you’re not leading. Here’s the big question, why are people following you?

Successful leaders
know why others follow.

1. What value are you bringing to followers? In other words, what dothey receive from giving you their allegiance? Consider things like new skills and a sense of purpose. Leadership may begin with you but it always transitions to value derived by them.
2. What qualities do you have that inspire followers? For example, your confident outlook or expressions of gratitude lift and invite people to follow you. Collins in, Good to Great, suggests humility draws followers. Or, is it dynamic charisma? Do people look at you like a father, mother, or brother? On the other hand, are you the powerful captain of the ship?
3. What competencies do you have that draw followers? People enjoy following a leader with presence and ability. Our CEO is a gifted strategist. Our manager knows how to enhance efficiency. Know and play to your strengths.
4. What direction do you have that makes others want to follow? The past is like a magnet to many. Leaders don’t let the past determine the future. Articulating and pursuing clear, relevant, and meaningful vision creates alignment and allegiance.

I’ve asked leaders to describe why others follow them. It’s not unusual for them to hum and haw. Perhaps it’s false humility. In other cases, they don’t know. In either case, successful leadership is seldom an accident.

I believe you’ll reach higher and go farther if you know why there’s a constituency gathering around you.

*****

Why do you think people follow a leader?

More importantly, why do people follow you?

Michael Josephson Commentary: The True Meaning of Our Lives 708.4: "Edward the Good"

Michael Josephson Commentary: The True Meaning of Our Lives 708.4

The True Meaning of Our Lives 708.4

I saw a cartoon showing an old king checking in at the gates of heaven. He introduced himself as "Edward The Good." The gatekeeper with a large book in front of him said, "Well, Eddie, we'll be the judge of that."

The point is that, in the end, generous self-appraisals won't matter. Our epitaphs will be written and eulogies delivered by the people who knew how we lived.

There's a story told about Alfred Nobel reading his own obituary because the people at the newspaper mistakenly thought he'd died. This gave him the opportunity to see how he would be remembered. The article described Mr. Nobel as a brilliant chemist who made a great fortune as the inventor of dynamite. For lots of people, being remembered a brilliant and rich would be quite enough, but it wasn't for Mr. Nobel.

After significant reflection about his desire to leave a more positive legacy, he bequeathed his considerable wealth to establish the Nobel Prizes to acknowledge great human achievements.

Few of us can create something as momentous as the Nobel Prizes, but we can all live lives that earn a eulogy our children and parents would be proud of.

In the hurlyburly of everyday living, it's hard to keep perspective. Money, position, pride, and power seem so important – until they're not. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom, and for what.

So, if you want to know how to live your life, just think about what you want people to say about you after you die and live backwards.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

The Quest for Dignity - NYTimes.com, by David Brooks

The Quest for Dignity - NYTimes.com

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Quest for Dignity

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: January 31, 2011

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• COMMENTS (18)
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

I wonder if sometime around 50 years ago a great mental tide began to sweep across the world. Before the tide, people saw themselves in certain fixed places in the social order. They accepted opinions from trusted authorities.

Josh Haner/The New York Times

David Brooks

Go to Columnist Page »

The Conversation

David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns.

All Conversations »

Related in Opinion

• Room for Debate: Mubarak’s Role and Mideast Peace

Readers' Comments

Share your thoughts.

• Post a Comment »
• Read All Comments (18) »

As the tide swept through, they began to see themselves differently. They felt they should express their own views, and these views deserved respect. They mentally bumped themselves up to first class and had a different set of expectations of how they should be treated. Treatment that had once seemed normal now felt like an insult. They began to march for responsive government and democracy.

I’ve covered some of these marches over the years in places like Russia, Ukraine and South Africa. While there are vast differences between nations, the marchers tend to echo certain themes — themes we are hearing once again in the interviews that reporters are doing in Cairo.

Protesters invariably say that their government has insulted their dignity by ignoring their views. They have a certain template of what a “normal” country looks like — with democracy and openness — and they feel humiliated that their nation doesn’t measure up.

Moreover, the protesters tend to feel enormous pride that they are finally speaking up, even in the face of danger. They feel a surge of patriotism as the people of their country make themselves heard.

This quest for dignity has produced a remarkable democratic wave. More than 100 nations have seen democratic uprisings over the past few decades. More than 85 authoritarian governments have fallen. Somewhere around 62 countries have become democracies, loosely defined.

The experiences of these years teach us a few lessons. First, the foreign policy realists who say they tolerate authoritarian government for the sake of stability are ill informed. Autocracies are more fragile than any other form of government, by far.

Second, those who say that speeches by outsiders have no influence on places like Egypt have it backward. The climate of opinion is the very basis of the revolt.

Third, for all the pessimism and nervousness that accompanies change, most countries that have experienced uprisings end up better off. We can all think of exceptions, like Iran, but we should greet these events with eagerness and hope.

Fourth, while the public hunger for dignity is unabated, the road from authoritarianism to democracy is rocky and perilous. Over the past few years, the world has experienced a “freedom recession” with more governments retreating from democracy than advancing toward it. For outside powers, the real work comes after the revolution — in helping democrats build governments that work.

The other thing we’ve learned is that the United States usually gets everything wrong. There have been dozens of democratic uprisings over the years, but the government always reacts like it’s the first one. There seem to be no protocols for these situations, no preset questions to be asked.

Policy makers always underestimate the power of the bottom-up quest for dignity, so they are slow to understand what is happening. Last week, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the Egyptian regime was stable, just as it was falling apart.

Then their instinct is to comfort the fellow members of the club of those in power. The Obama administration was very solicitous of President Hosni Mubarak during the first days of the protests and of other dictators who fear their regime may be next.

Then, desperately recalibrating in an effort to keep up with events, they inevitably make a series of subtle distinctions no one else heeds. The Obama administration ended up absurdly calling on Mubarak to initiate a reform agenda. Surely there’s not a single person in the government who thinks he is actually capable of doing this. Meanwhile, the marchers heard this fudge as Obama supporting Mubarak and were outraged.

The Obama administration’s reaction was tardy, but no worse than, say, the first Bush administration’s reaction to the uprisings in the Baltics and Ukraine. The point is, there’s no need to be continually wrong-footed. If you start with a healthy respect for the quest for dignity, if you see autocracies as fragile and democratic revolts as opportunities, then you’ll find it much easier to anticipate events.

The Working Group on Egypt, co-led by Michele Dunne and Robert Kagan, has outperformed the U.S. government by miles. For months, they’ve been warning of Mubarak’s fragility. As the protests started, they issued a smart and concrete set of policy recommendations.

Over the past decades, there has been a tide in the affairs of men and women. People in many places have risked their lives for recognition and respect. Governments may lag, and complications will arise, but still they will march. And, in the long run, we should be glad they do.