Robert Theobald on American's changing lifestyles

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Listen: Robert Theobald with Stephanie Johnson
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Following his speech given at Conference on Rural America in Crookston, Robert Theobald talked with Stephanie Johnson, of MPR station KCCM Moorhead. Theobald was asked how Americans are changing their lifestyles in the face of present social problems.

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It's everything from I won't keep the house as hard or as cold at 2. I will recycle aluminum to I will drive less miles. I think there's a frustration in the people I made which is a I don't see how it all adds up to anything and be a will what soda model make sense of all that. So I see people in the sense willing to change but with no feeling that that really will sell very much and that for the frustration of yes, we're doing the best we can but I don't see how it adds up and so I was saying Ellie of the convention Democratic Convention doesn't help much because no sense. It leaves out in Tali all of those new things that people Run 2.We haven't learned how to come up with a model that allows people to be responsible in all of the areas that they understand. And my guess is until we come up with something new which are sometimes called the quality of life. And are able to say okay, we had all those together and come up with something but that's much more complicated because it's an interrelationship thing rather than a nice neat measurement thing and Micah does lab to measure and you've proposed something called a Leadership Model and U Conn tested it with The Optimist the pessimist and maybe the romanticist isn't really the Leadership Model combination of all of those. Who are you saying that the Leadership Model is what will give us that quality of life. You've just been speaking of your right across. Well today that Do you have to have optimism because if you don't you want to move at all? I mean somebody who really has given up its in about to make the decisions. We need to recognize the validity of the pessimists and things that are going wrong. We need the people who do talk about values Jose romantic. So it is that combination. The Leadership Model is one which says that each one of us has a role playing but there's a funny. Kick her in the ass because of my pain in one of the things we need to do is to set Thames for leadership and decide that basically people shouldn't do something for more than three or four or five years. Cuz if you don't do that, the person is very unwilling to give up his power his structure and you definitely people try to keep people will know them down. Where is if you know, you got to leave in three or four or five years you very well 1 to bring somebody up so that when you leave somebody has to take U is competent to take your place. And I'm very much increasingly into this whole idea of shorter terms of leadership. And I'm not only talk about Congress or the presidency of the senator. I think there was a certain pathology in a senator saying I need to serve my country for 30 years and I think it does seem very funny things today heads to the places that are at night like to see 16 e attempt Senators, perhaps one full year term for representatives and certainly no more than 110 for president. Okay. Now one thing that we're also talking about when we talk about leadership is our source of authority. What is the Leadership Model that you propose going to do to our ideas about where Authority really does lie. Well, It's arguing good authority can only lie with competence knowledge understanding. And it's a would you can't use very much but we're tried from a cat fruit called. It's really Anna K Theory and the trouble is in this country of people think Annika theory is chaos, but it really says people do the things that good at if you believe we've got to assume a cup of shoemaking and a whole show of a horse shoeing and did not advise of us and I'm really saying that that's true also on the intellectual area that you go to the people's will come that the world is not forgiving another what's democracy is not The simply the allowing of ignorance to make decisions if those decisions are wrong. I mean, it takes a great deal of Faith to believe in democracy. Anyway to believe in democracy being run by ignorant people is impossible if we could lick the problem of being dull. You know, how do we communicate excitingly? Why isn't learning fun? I mean, I really think it is and how do we help people to get the information they need in the way that they can see we got people so bored in school that if they somebody tries to teach them something as soon as I didn't want to get involved in that so it is the statement that people make decisions out of knowledge. And the to trust people in different areas, not too bad. I don't intend I hope to be involved in every area so somebody who else will be doing the water supply in the electricity Supply and I said that they going to make the wrong decision, but I can tell them what I'm doing which matches with what they're trying to do. Call Terrance but a lot of times we make our decisions politically. Is there a danger in that? I think such to make decisions based on. The narrowest self-interest is infeasible. You know when? The idea that checks and balances to go back to the Constitution Accentra. Could look off to this country was a statement that if everybody did the best. And looked at the broader self-interest then checks and balances would take care of the disagreements. It was not a statement that if everybody follow them now or self-interest that the checks and balances system would allow us to avoid disaster and I think water gauge showed us that that if nobody cares assistant won't work very well and I think we got to a pond. Well, at least we're very perilously close to a point where we run a system on the assumption that there is an invisible hand which looks after has rather than if we all work very hard conceivably this estimate quick the to a very different idea that we often feel incompetent. We can always rely on someone else to do the job that we've been convinced weekend. Do I thinks it's the hardest job I have with to do when working with competent people. Is to explain to them that feeling out of your depth is a realistic and reasonable thing to feel. We were all brought up to believe that we should understand what we're doing. And in fact, I've learned feel you know, what you're doing isn't in a sense of responsible because to repeat what you already know is already to Innocence Lost That find what you need to do a job. Well, So we've all got to learn to be able. To live with uncertainty now, there's a trick unless you do what you can plus 10% for us not plus a hundred know the way you don't just rush Mile and madly head and say Hey, I want to do a 27 pop program on National Public Radio interviewing all of the great leaders of the world. That might be rushed plus 100% or maybe a little bit more you say. Hey, I think I can do this. I think I can do it. Well, it will stretch me, but it won't break me. So that whole set of skills is new to us because we say if we were incompetent less we understand something fully and nobody ever understand something for it. You're a great advocate of diversity at the pluralistic society. If there is an ethic for a pluralistic society emerging in America. How do you say it? Well, I think what's happening is that each Community is beginning to say I need college to some extend. The beginning to say hey, we intend to look at who we on that for where we're going and it's it's a statement know we cannot be a cookie cutter model for other cities with more head is not going to be the same as Fargo or supplement are going to be the same as to tried or Minneapolis the desert history a dynamic a geography and climate and the city is good insofar as it allows. Those reality is to be well at Sprouts. about the I'm supposed to difficulty the difference here. Is that you then really get to the point where I say you say to somebody who says I want to come to Moorhead. You would find. Hey, this is how we live in Moorhead. Maybe one like it instead of trying to attract everybody which we've done up to now and we begin to say look. And when tags 1994 by a book my wife and I did which was about nineteen ninety-four. We said that one of the jobs are parents was to find a community of communities in which that kids could grow up to really learn what that potential was so that I really see that you cannot have total diversity within communities which in a sense is what we've tried for up to now but you're going to have to say this community covers this sort of range and if it's your sort of community, you're welcome. If it doesn't you're not going to be happy here. You can always take the risk of trying to come and change it but you know in a sense of people have been here for a long time is not a very like the thing to happen. But still isn't there a possibility for a sort of collective truth? So that's the only reason I have any hope at all that. any that what I was talking about essentially is the myth that the community and I like that would mess except as the set of lenses through which it will perceive reality. We ended tagged in a place which is related to this because we saw a very major danger and that's if more had becomes different defago to know. Unless we keep a profound sense of each other's Humanity. We could say hey, we don't like you anymore. We don't care about you. So the we're going to have to have an overarching myth of why the world needs to care about each other. I think that two things are becoming one is this computer Information Network, which will make us aware of world reality is and which I see coming much more rapidly than we already full and the second one is that We are beginning to understand the extraordinary path in the pathology. We got into the in the six days where we said that the way to learn how to be human is to care about the Vietnamese or the Indians or whatever so that if we had an Indian Problem up here. We would then invite a black him to talk about the minority problem or vice a versa and we're beginning to realize that the way to realize the human dilemma is to live it in your own community and cope with the immediacy of it and then to be able to save other people live that way to that in the sense. Whatever that culture is. They still have the problem with that kids are all quit occasionally that they could just bring their neighbors neck, but the communities still has to be billed out of that difficult problem, but that's not going to go away. However, however, Grown up to use the red truck. I've been using today we become there will still be moments when it doesn't work and bubble the option to put this in there will be tragedy. And I just begun to be able to Define for myself what tragedy is tragedy is when where everybody has tried their best? It still doesn't work. And that's the different what we have at the moment is usually low fast because people say I like on get deal with that or you know, or just stupidity but tragedy is I've worked with you. For example, we work for a couple of years all we've loved each other for a couple of years and then we find out it doesn't work anymore and we both do our best to deal with that. We conned we both want to I mean it can be can be the point where it doesn't matter anymore. We may both want to but it still doesn't work. Then we say, okay, we got to be out of nothing to deal with the fact that it won't work and also you don't have to do it easily OT play because that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy please as hell won't work then.

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