The Decision Age
I just did a book exchange with my neighbor. I had just finished reading Collapse, by Jared Diamond and traded it for what he just finished reading, Straw Dogs by John Gray. As we each exclaimed over the amazing insights we got from our books and why the other just had to read it I realized – everything is already known. What’s lacking in our world is not knowledge, but decisions.
Collapse is a book about societies, both ancient and modern, which have either succeeded or failed. In each success case, the societies that have succeeded did so because they made a choice at one point in their trajectory that dramatically went against prevailing thought or deeply ingrained cultural patterns. In many cases where societies have failed it has appeared they did so because they weren’t willing to make a choice, even understanding the consequences. A question is posed at the end of the book of why, knowing it was headed toward collapse, would a society continue along its same patterns when they could change them and, literally, save themselves?
It is ubiquitous these days to hear that we are the Information Society. The web, Google, smart phones and all their cousins have brought the world of facts and knowledge to everyone at the instant. With it has come the belief that Knowledge is Power. True, knowing a company is purposefully filing bankruptcy to avoid an expensive environmental clean up only to form again under another name and continue the grievances is an important fact to know. Knowing world commodity prices so that farmers can get fair market value for their crops in rural areas, as the Manobi Development Foundation provides, is necessary for those farmers to improve their income. No question knowledge is necessary. However, I propose that knowledge without decision is nothing.
There’s a sign in my temple from Deuteronomy (22:3): You must not remain indifferent. I once worked with a woman who had seen the fifteen minute documentary The Story of Stuff and been so moved by it that she went home, cleaned out her house of everything unnecessary, toxic or otherwise unhealthy and then left her job to start her own company that helps women to rid themselves of the unnecessary and bring in income through healthy, sustainable means. That’s decision. I have also seen The Story of Stuff and I did nothing. I remained indifferent, my client did not. She is an example of how knowledge, when infused with directed decision, becomes powerful.
Every day we are presented facts. Some are facts about the world we live in. Others are facts about our own inner selves. But a fact without action is inert. A question I have begun asking myself is: Once I know something, what am I willing to do about it? Am I willing to start an organization to develop it, like my client or the Manobi Foundation? Am I willing to stop using a product, write a letter or visit a neighbor I haven’t seen in a while to see if they’re ok? Am I willing to shift an unhealthy pattern, such as acting out of anger or impulsiveness?
I can read my life away, and fill my head with all kinds of knowledge about the environment, the inequity of food and other resources, or about how to become enlightened; but, if I do nothing about it, the next generation will be left to fill their heads with the same information and the problems will just roll forward. If I do nothing, I will cheat myself of my own development, and of the opportunity to engage in the world, to become a fully realized participant in life.
We say we live in the Information Age, but what if we lived in the Decision Age?
