By Akio Matsumura
America’s leadership—in Washington and in each state—is gridlocked. And instead of politicians and economists coming to the rescue, they are the ones causing the traffic jam. Myopic leadership coupled with recycled policies are clogging the road forward. Governor Jerry Brown’s victory in California encouraged me greatly. His bold ideas will help California to close its yawning fiscal and social gaps, but we need individual leadership and creative vision across the board. Some years ago I missed an opportunity to bring together some of the country’s most visionary minds to discuss our common future. Such a meeting, if held now, would help to energize America enormously.
A Timeless Visionary
In 1984, I went to Los Angeles to meet with former Governor Jerry Brown, who had just finished his two-term governorship of California. Governor Brown came to my hotel and we sat in the lobby to discuss and share our perspectives for the world for the coming century. Because I worked at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), I shared my concern for the increasing imbalance between the growing population—then projected to hit 7 billion by the year 2000 and 10 billion later in the century—and the availability and distribution of natural resources. How would we deal with food, water, and natural resource shortages? Governor Brown suggested we might send people to the Moon and avoid all of these problems. Clearly we were discussing big ideas. We went on and on for hours.
Suddenly, Governor Brown stopped and asked, “Akio, what time is it?” I was surprised that he was not carrying a watch, but told him it was 8:30 pm. He jumped up. “Akio, this is terrible! My father’s hosting a big dinner in my honor and I’m very late.” He scolded me for talking too much and rushed out to catch a cab.
I have met so many political leaders throughout the world, but he is certainly one of the most unique. I have never met a politician who practiced Zen in Japan, was full of unpredictable responses, carried no watch—and certainly never one who forgot a dinner held in honor because he was absorbed in conversation.
Thirty years later, despite running as part of a slogging Democratic Party and having a much weaker financial situation than his opponent, Governor Brown managed to make an extraordinary comeback and became governor of California for the third time. His creative and flexible mind, tightly honed political instinct, and sharp communication skills let him catch the attention of the younger generations while encouraging those frozen by their fear for the future. But now he must get to work.
California’s economy is the eighth largest in the world, but is buried in deficit—the crisis extends across the entire state, from the school system to the police and fire departments. California’s crisis is a detail of a much larger painting–America’s fiscal burden looms large.
Yet I have hope. Governor Brown has the opportunity and ability to enact bold and difficult policies to rescue California and create a model for other states and the federal government. Vision comes only from the individual, not the institution. The governor’s extraordinary vision can transcend the political straightjacket that binds his state and the country. I hope he’s able to carry out his ideas, for the sake of California and the United States.
Visions from a Fading Star
At a lunch he once hosted for me, Governor Brown introduced me to actress Shirley MacLaine, who I came to know well when she attended my 1992 Parliamentary Earth Summit Conference in Rio de Janeiro. Shirley has produced many best selling books and is deeply in touch with the spiritual world. I can certainly understand the bond between Shirley and Governor Brown. (Shirley and her large hearted, right hand person, Ms. Brit Elders, have always been kind enough to share my blog on her website.)
Together Shirley and I attended the inaugural State of the World Forum held in San Francisco. Guest speakers included President Gorbachev and our mutual friend Dr. Carl Sagan, the American astronomer, with whom I had an agenda. As I mentioned in a December 2008 post, I’ve always admired Carl’s enormous skill as a communicator. He could match any politician in his ability to explain a difficult concept. At the conference we all knew that Carl, suffering with cancer, was in the final stage of his life.
During the coffee break, I mentioned to Shirley that Mother Teresa had said a person who is dying has the purest eyes. To me, this has always meant that a dying person can move beyond dogma into purer thoughts. Around this same time I had read an article describing a Cardinal in Chicago who, with only a few months to live, was spending all of his time visiting prisoners on death row to discuss their story and life. Each prisoner’s life was of the utmost concern to him. My idea relied on Carl’s unique talents. I wanted him to help convene and lead a one or two day meeting with the Cardinal and several other eminent leaders at the end stages of their life from the political, military and business sectors, free of media or any observers. The goal was to listen and develop our mission for the next generations, an outcome that could only come from such experienced and eminent people freed from dogma and able to speak frankly in their final days. Such a mission would surely be unmatched in its purity, uniqueness, and scope.
Shirley agreed this was an idea well worth discussing with Carl. Because of its delicate nature, I thought Shirley should bring the idea to Carl. But she insisted it was my job, as he might question her motivation. She had passed the hot potato back to me! I was thinking over and over how I could explain to Carl such a touchy issue, show my selfless motivation, and convince him of his essential role as convener and spokesman. With an undecided mind I stood awaiting the elevator in the lobby of the conference building. The doors opened and, surprisingly, Carl walked right out! He saw me and asked if there was something I wanted to talk to him about. I was caught by surprise and still hadn’t made up my mind as to the best approach. “No, Carl,” I said and headed into the elevator. That was the last time I saw him. Shortly thereafter, I attended his memorial service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Vice President Al Gore gave a eulogy, highlighting Carl’s extraordinary ability as communicator.
I regard this as an incredible opportunity to have missed. Although we would be hard pressed to find someone with Carl’s talents to lead it, such a meeting wouldn’t clear America’s traffic jam; it would open a whole new road forward.
Your eloquent commentary fills me with great hope. I imagine Governor Brown's biggest challenge is not just the incredible budget deficit the state government faces but trying to change the mentality in Sacramento. I wonder if they study the relationship between state budgets and revenue from businesses. Nearby Nevada, hardly as attractive a state to live in as California, has been attracting businesses from the Sunshine state in part because of their business friendly (read no state tax) demeanor. Is there a way to balance the books without sacrificing any services or changing tax rates for businesses and individuals? I will be very curious.
Good Morning Akio,
Your latest blog is profound and in keeping with your life role as an
inspirational visionary.
I remember with fondness the Moscow Conference and sitting in the audience as a participating journalist fascinated by what I was hearing. I
remember thinking, " could it be – could we as a species with our diverse cultures, dogmas and political needs finally start on the road to
universal achievement?"
Akio, you pointed us in a positive direction. I'm not sure many took the first step, but the road was there and still is with all is bumps and curves of hopes and wishes and its crevasses of dogmatic and parliamentarian obstinacy.
Worry not about missed opportunities. Let us create new ones.
Rolland
Dear Mr. Matsumura
I appreciate your vision and activities trying to change our thinking and governments.
However, I believe that the problems we are facing today are based on the structure we have been building last 100 years. Unfortunately I do not see any sign of the improvements on the structure and mechanism. In fact, the structure is getting stronger for the worse. No longer, our population, roughly 300 million can not be effectively managed due to the fact that the overhead required to manage itself uses more resources than what we can create and produce. I believe that we are only able to push back our fundamental problems a little bit further unless we change our value system and the structure to go with. Even my simple mind can easily understand the inevitable and critical problems of the interactions among population growth, food supply, water supply, energy supply ,climate changes and pollutions. Many refuges from these problems would not be managed effectively, where even we have not established a concept of World Citizen. On the top of them, we see our religious conflicts and racial conflicts. We see more and more the worst parts of our capitalism and corporate interests.
Now unconsciously or consciously we are fighting for the inevitable limited resources. As it has happened to our world history, our scarcity and scarily minds brought many wrong decisions and actions in all levels, political, corporate and individual.
I still want to be optimistic on human race for a long term (50 years or more). But only a catastrophic event, which may happen shortly can trigger a true wake-up call to all of us in the world. I just hope that the event goes easy on us.
Wish you a lovely holiday season and more.
N.Sugano
Dear Akio,
I will start publicly with how I miss our conversations and this is one that we can carry on over the blog, something that did not exist when I was your program director at the Global Forum.
The return of Jerry Brown may be very good but, unfortunately, it is too little to overcome the many mistakes that our generation, that of the sixties and the seventies has made. Most of us knew what the earth would be facing and many of us pledged ourselves to frugality and simplicity to counter what we knew was happening. However, by the time the eighties came around, we had given the pledges up for conspicuous consumption. In fact, we produced children in whom we instilled the idea that nothing was beyond their material reach. By the nineties, we looked askance at those amongus who were still preaching reasonable limits as we jumped on to the wonderful wagon of computer inspired dreams.
It was only the burst of the dot-com bubble, the tragedy of 2001, the sobering reality of a transformed world in which we were no longer the dominant economic power, and the gradual realization – bringing back images of a war forty years ago – that we could not transform even small parts of the world by military means nor implant our version of democracy, that has forced us back to our far-seeing youth.
We and the world have lost forty years. Why the world? Because it is our incessant demands for an even great amount of goods that has spurred the world to an ever increasing production of goods for an ever growing population. We outsourced what we would not produce ourselves and instilled the same love of goods in those who produced them for us.
Can we now help overcome what we have created? Can our children, raised without the idea of limits, make the wise, depriving decisions that will safeguard the future of their children? Can we, now in the beginning of our old age, take on the simplicity that we have spurned all our lives, so that we can become models for our grand-children and fufill at least part of the promise of our long lost youth?
This is a question for each and all of us to answer. We who came to adulthood in the sixties and the seventies have no one to blame but ourselves. At the same time what we do now can become a redeeming legacy for generations to come.
I work as a link coordinator for my school, establishing links with other schools across the globe. I along with my school team act as ambassadors. We have created our global context by understanding and respecting the cultural differences. I find your mission very similar to mine but in your own context. Your article is to looking ahead to create new ways of understanding our roles as a global citizen. The perspective I developed as your blog reader is to create such an environment on our planet where people work with dedication and live with positive thinking viewing themselves as a one world citizens. It is never too late. Need not to worry about losing opportunities to bring same minds/visions at one platform. You always give your readers a wake up call through your articles to live in a seamless world. People weather in USA or Pakistan they all are ready to welcome such visions.