Tomes - The Piano - A History of 100 Pieces

Being able to hear great music enriches everyone's life. Actually playing it takes life's pleasures to a very different level. Having started piano lessons at age 5 and continuing throughout my life has been a profound gift and reading about the 100 best pieces across 200 years of composition reinforced it. Susan Tomes captures the essence of the journey in the closing paragraphs of her final chapter of The Piano - A History of 100 pieces (2021/22):

“The concert pianist is part of an intense triangle between composer, performer, and listener. Take away the audience, however, and the pianist playing alone at home is still part of an intense conversation with the composer… Composer and pianist may never meet, or even live in the same historical era, but their hopes are invested in one another. That is a rewarding relationship which for many pianists is one of the most enduring in their lives.”

 

What does this have to do with leadership? Deeper leadership strives to create something of shared value and benefit and the greatest hope a leader has is that there will be some lasting impact, or legacy. Music is one of the most profound metaphors for, and examples of, deeper leadership because the listener, or indeed the musician performing, has complete choice as to whether they will engage. Only if stuck in an elevator for a few minutes listening to corporate mood music are we forced to listen. The rest of what we hear or play is choice. Thus, the composer knows that to communicate s/he must create something that is either so pleasurable that we want to hear it or a message so compelling that we can’t not hear it.

 

Susan Tomes’ The Piano – A History in 100 Pieces (2021/22) covers two hundred years of piano music. Readers who will most enjoy the book have played, or at least heard, a breadth of compositions across this repertoire. I was delighted that many of the pieces that I regularly play were referenced and further explained by her.

 

The keyboards that pre-dated the piano (piano forte) were strung and played in very different ways – plucking a string by depressing a key rather than a hammer striking a string (this is why the piano is classified as a percussion instrument). The shift to hammered piano resulted in much greater range in volume, the ability to sustain the ringing of a string, as well as more complicated compositions in general. It is for this reason that I mostly play compositions from the Classical era forward and I favor Romantic, late Romantic, and early 20^th century music.

 

Beethoven (1770-1827) dominated both playing and composing in the early 19^th century. Although of common birth he declared “’My nobility is here and here,’ striking his head and his heart” (locator 1016). This view took the status of musicians to a new level, equating it with the inherited privilege by birth granted to the titled nobility of the day. The nobility of Beethoven’s music includes simplicity as well as improvisations that border on “controlled hysteria” (locator 1091). One of his compositions, the “Moonlight Sonata” moves from a quiet, somber, and controlled movement to one of exuberance and then a last movement of frantic runs at a tempo that some might consider hysterical. Chopin (1810-1849) was a prolific composer focusing almost entirely on the piano with 200+ compositions for solo piano. These vary across pieces that can be played by a novice all the way up to some of the most challenging pieces in the piano repertoire. Some of my most pleasurable moments at the piano are with Chopin’s Nocturnes, the Fantasie-Impromptu, and the Etude in E.

 

Early 20^th century music is really my home and is the period of music I most often play on a daily basis. Each of the following composers capture the evolution of musical ideas over time and culture. Norwegian pianist and composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) incorporated folk tunes into his only piano concerto, one of the most loved of the repertoire. Grieg and Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) were part of a Scandinavian movement that celebrated nature and revived mythical stories to help shape the national identities of Norway and Finland. The melodic lines in Gabriel Faure’s (1845-1924) music often incorporated mediaeval purity, inspiring his students to include graceful lines into the emerging “Impressionism” common among French composers. Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) incorporated Faure’s purity of melody as they explored greater complexity, often informed by the precision of math in both melody and harmonic tone. Ravel even incorporated American jazz elements after he fell in love with the complex chords and “blue notes” prominently used by George Gershwin (1898-1937) and jazz greats such as Duke Ellington. Russian Romanticism reached its peak in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s (1873-1943) compositions, with the chromaticism that is so evident in “Impressionism” creating some of the most beautiful melodies ever written. Rachmaninoff’s permanent departure after the Russian Revolution likely increased his influence in Europe and in America where lush melodies in movie themes became the vogue of the 1930s and 40s.

 

Tomes laments in her concluding chapter that “Many people now get their exposure to classical music through film and television” (locator 5565) or in stadium concerts of popular performers. On the positive side she goes on to say that “piano music is in a phase of democratisation, opening itself to influences and philosophies which have particular meaning for our era” (locator 5648), a trend that proves that all music, and especially piano music, must incorporate a wide range of ideas and influences. In essence, this range reflects a collective human treasure that is constantly changing, modulating, and incorporating new cultures and ideas. Music in general, and piano repertoire in particular, personify leadership as we have now come to understand it in the 21^st century – an interpersonal encounter that seeks to engage others, and through building relationships, seeks to honor various human experiences and conditions in creating a more understandable, connected and beautiful world.

Reyes - The Purpose Gap

I felt as if I was overhearing an intimate conversation among friends and allies while reading Reyes' The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive (2021). Patrick Reyes clearly informs the reader that this book is for Black, Brown, and other minoritized individuals and groups that have not had "the resources and opportunities to fulfill their purposes in life" (Acknowledgements). As a reader who has not experienced the debilitating forces of discrimination beyond its corrosive impact on society, the book was helpful as a way to understand what needs to change and it also helped me to accept the limits that liberal advocates of inclusion should consider.

I have written about purpose and calling in life and I admit that I never realized the privilege bias in my own thinking - I wrote as if all one must do is discern purpose, continually hone it for good, develop the capacity to act on it, and stay the course. No, calling to vocation is not available to all people in the same ways and Reyes' writing helped me to understand how I missed the mark on this. The "purpose gap" is proposed as both an individual and community concern for only in a supportive community can everyone discover their potential, with "everyone" being key. Reyes is not talking about individual and exceptional stars who break the bonds of racism. His analysis is about systemic conditions that are deliberately designed to hold entire groups of people back, and these conditions will not change without dramatic transformation.

As a youth raised in a Latinx community in California, Reyes asserts "purpose is defined, stolen, or withheld before we ever enter the world" (p. 2) prohibiting youth from achieving what they were born to do. The barriers are erected by the "inheritors of wealth" who also guard the bridges to opportunity that would otherwise be available.  Reyes indicates that some of the barriers include internalized racism and imposter syndrome, but the greatest challenge is the lack of resources to pursue one's purpose. Grounded in his faith perspective, Reyes soberly recognized that we live in a society that decided who it could and would love and that "parents of color must teach our children they are loved despite a world that is not doing its best" (p. 24). Reyes goes on to say that to assume that the "American Dream" is achievable for all is nothing bot colonial piety.

The Purpose Gap admonishes those in Black and Brown communities to begin the journey by rewriting and retelling their story of purpose, drawing on the wisdom of their ancestors. He takes on Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" by declaring it as a linear and individual story that denies the reality of minoritized communities. Instead, Reyes says, "I reserve my vocation, my life, and my purpose for my community. For my community first called me to life when the world tried to take it" (p. 46). In order to redefine the space of calling, design thinking could be used to answer four questions: What is? What if? What wows? and, What works? Design justice emerges from these questions by guaranteeing the distribution of shared benefits and burdens among various groups and peoples.

Reyes identifies community centers, libraries, parks and extended family networks as places that foster meaning and purpose for minoritized groups. Referencing the importance of faith organizations, he says that "The church not only has a call, vocation, and purpose. More importantly, it has the means and power to act on its purpose" (p. 62) and has a special responsibility in closing the purpose gap. To do this, the church must move from recognizing that stars exist to seeing that they must exist in constellations - places where the conditions for purpose and success are available to all. In these constellation places, leadership is also different. Instead of an individual act, leadership comes from tireless learners, pursuing "new angles, perspectives, viewpoints, and wisdom with excessive curiosity" (p. 109). Leadership must also foster specialists, those with wisdom and salient knowledge (e.g., intuition), and spirit workers to activate and sustain a community where constellations of stars are possible. On this final point, Reyes notes, "Closing the purpose gap is not just about changing the material world. It requires us to connect with and find healing with the spirits that guide our journey" (p. 166). In another passage he advocates hope in this work by saying, "I do want to say to this broken world, 'I see your violence, and I will raise you hope and love'" (p. 174).

In closing, Reyes offered three practices to help close the purpose gap for individuals and communities: 1) tell a new story, 2) design for purpose on our terms, and 3) know that it's about today!

Bremmer - The Power of Crisis

Ian Bremmer's latest book, The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats and Our Response will Change the World (2022), is short and very much to the point. The world community has work to do and we should do it quickly before the crises we now face get beyond our ability to address them. The hopeful part of his warning is that crisis tends to call the greatest ingenuity and most creativity from the human spirit so we can address our shared problems, but it is a matter of awareness of the risks and the will to do something about it.

Bremmer used the recent pandemic of 2020 and beyond to extract the lessons that we need to collectively learn. The three crises he says are eminent are shaking off the effects (economic, political, and social) of COVID-19, climate change, and the impact of new technologies that are changing our daily lives. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated graphically that we have both a civil war within the U.S.A. (polarization around science, common welfare, and politics) and the risk of a new cold war between the U.S.A. and China. In fact, COVID-19 pushed the world into a geopolitical recession where political groups withdrew from engaging with one another and across national borders. The impending crises of climate and technology will require new international systems of engagement that are designed to address today's and tomorrow's challenges.

With all that globalism promised, it has been a miserable failure. Specifically, the anticipated leveling of opportunity and economies was not only unfulfilled but wealth and resource inequality increased in the face of rising commercial exchange across borders. The wealth gaps in the U.S.A. have contributed significantly to the acrimony and divisiveness of political decision making, with those who are wealthy manipulating less-resourced groups against each other. The evidence of who controls political discourse is clearly evident in the $14 billion spent on elections for the two houses of Congress in 2020, a figure double that of 2016. One of the most inflammatory dimensions of politics in the U.S.A. is structural racism, a pervasive dynamic that many assert doesn't even exist.

Bremmer asserted that Xi Jinping, not U.S.A. Presidents and politicians, has placed U.S.A.-China relations on a more precarious path. The most frightening aspect of this is that the world has never experienced a time when its largest economy (soon to be China) was directed by an authoritarian government. The problem is that, for all the frailties of authoritarianism, it creates more cohesion and immediate functionality than messy democracy. At present, the balance of power between the U.S.A. and China is unclear, a situation in which inadvertent or purposeful conflict is much more likely to occur. Conflict could arise from governmental subsidies to businesses that lower production costs, from the theft of intellectual and innovation property, or it could arise from the growing threat China is signaling in relation to Hong Kong, and even more so in relation to Taiwan. The most likely battle between the U.S.A. and China is in relation to the future of technology - communications, machine learning, surveillance, and artificial intelligence.

The lessons that the COVID-19 pandemic taught the world include: invest in national and local readiness, share information, and share burdens and their resolution. The economic damage of the pandemic was widespread and deep, but it also sped up the transition from a 20th century to a 21st century economy. This is particularly applicable in relation to digital age companies.

For possible answers to the dysfunction of both the politics of the U.S.A. and China, Bremmer recommended looking at Europe's leadership on climate, technology, and provision of citizen safety nets. The work undertaken across European borders has been more effective than many other areas of the world, including even within the 50 Unites States. Climate and political refugees have flooded into many European countries and accommodating them has not been easy. However, by contrast to the U.S.A., political leaders recognize that refugees will create public unrest wherever they land and that constant effort to shape public perception in positive ways is essential. Climate and human migration will be challenging but Bremmer predicts that artificial intelligence is the greatest potential disrupter - "The greatest risk that AI presents is the possibility that one country will develop an insurmountable lead in its development, an achievement that would allow it monopolistic control over the world order" (p. 159).

The solution to the crises we presently face is for the U.S.A. and China to recognize that they must avoid economic and political stalemate, parking the differences that are real in order to find solutions that protect the whole of humanity. The technology challenge can be managed by creating a World Data Organization composed of European, Asian, and other allies that will by necessity bring China to the table. The resolution of our joint climate and technology challenges may emerge from a type of "Goldilocks crisis" that demonstrates the viability of multiple forms of government and focuses on practical solutions based on complex social engagement, cooperation, and coordination.

Herman - The Viking Heart

Partially motivated by a search to discover his own roots, Arthur Herman painstakingly documents the Viking Age to provide a more complete picture of who the Vikings were in The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World (2021). By going back as well as recounting the more contemporary impact of Scandinavian immigrants in America, Herman provides a much more complete characterization of a people and period of time that is often portrayed only for its brutality.

The Vikings, originally knows as Norsemen, were a people with a particular "frame of mind, a way of life, a way of doing things and making things, including making things happen in the face of the worst adversity" (Preface). Herman asserts in the book title as well as text that this particular way of being was distinctive and survives to this day, evident in a much larger portion of our collective genetic mix and human history than most people realize.

The Vikings, originally meaning "people of the Vik" or sea voyagers, traveled widely throughout Europe and into the Mediterranean, spreading ideas about astronomy, medicine, mathematics, physics, and instruments wherever they went. Coming from the current lands of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, Vikings first sailed to England in the year 793 when they began their summer raids. Large Norse expeditions began staying over the winter in Ireland by the 840s and York became the capital of the Viking kingdom by 876. By 878 over half of England was under Viking domination, with the Orkney and Shetland Islands, Scotland and Ireland essentially being Norwegian colonies. During the period 780 to 950 Vikings from Norway and Denmark penetrated all of Europe and those from Sweden pushed as fas as the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

The seafaring exploits of the Vikings revolutionized ship design and navigational capability, allowing them to travel faster and farther than any other sailors of the day. Mobility and pursuit of resources quickly turned from piracy and raiding to trade and settlement, resulting in Vikings establishing villages, turning to agriculture and fishing, and intermingling with Saxon tribal groups throughout England. As the number of villages increased, Vikings established "The Thing" as a political institution for landowners to address concerns that affected the entire community and elect their kings. The Althing of Iceland is derived from this self-governing entity and constitutes the oldest continuous democracy in the world.

The Vikings embraced many cultures and languages but men were privileged in all. While women were recognized as playing an important part in Viking villages, they were certainly not recognized as equals. Viking ships also supplied slaves to central Europe who were captured from Slavic tribes widely dispersed from Kiev in Ukraine to Prague in Bohemia. "The wealth and prosperity of the golden age of Islam were made possible in large part by the human labor supplied by Viking slave traders" (p. 49). The trade resulted in Vikings amassing hoards of silver, including eighty-four thousand silver coins eventually discovered in Sweden.

The concept of leadership in Viking days included the leader being one with his subordinates and loyalty terminating only at the point of death. There were no limits to the loyalty expected and given to the most revered among them. The brutality and sacrifice of the early Viking "berserkers" (from which we adopted "going berserk") would eventually merge with the spread of Christianity and by 1000 CE Vikings moved to a spiritual journey rather than a physical one. The myth of seeking a placed in Valhalla, a place where the bravest warriors go when they are killed in battle, was replaced by a Norse-informed religion that viewed the relationship between humans and gods as reciprocal. In this transactional view, "what seems to be decline and destruction is ultimately a source of renewal" (p. 112), a view adopted in Nietzsche's "myth of the eternal return." The progression of Christianity was slow and included the incorporation of previous images and borrowed traditions of paganism. Eventually, Christianity embraced compassion and moral obligation and the "Viking ideal of loyalty and service to community took on a new dimension: one of service to Christ and others as a Christian duty" (p. 122).

The Viking Heart traces the evolution of Viking character from 793 until the days of William the Conqueror (born 1027 or 1028 to September 9, 1087) when Norman's transformed the Viking "aristocracy of the brave" into the "dynastic rulers and cultural transmitters" who "laid the foundations for the unity of the medieval West" (p. 161). These foundations served the descendants of the Vikings well for almost another 1000 years.

Viking myth permeates many of today's most popular books and films - J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, George Lucas' Star Wars, and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter all celebrate the superheroes and fantasies of these ancient stories. The "...dazzling qualities of the Viking Heart - indomitable courage, fierce loyalty, national pride and power, plus a religious zeal and a charismatic ambition" (p. 216) are qualities that inspire many among us. The unfortunate part is that not all recognize the accompanying depth of commitment to community, equity, and helping one's neighbor that a Viking heart would embrace. Bravery, fierceness, and dominance divorced from the commitment to common welfare have inspired some of the hate and aggression that is seen among white supremacy groups today.

The Viking Heart is a long but interesting read. I have only summarized the early history portion of the book and for those who want more on how the Viking heart impacted more contemporary times, the rest of the book will be of great interest. Related to leadership, it was clear that much of the philosophy and many of the images of Vikings are celebrated in the heroic versions of leadership that popular media often portray.

Popelka - Experience, Inc.

Jill Popelka, former SAP executive and advocate for improving the experience of work, offers compelling evidence that organizations of all sorts need to change. The specific change is that they should prioritize employee experience in order to foster motivation, commitment, and innovation and all of these contribute to the bottom lines of productivity, profitability, and sustainability.

Experience, Inc. (Popelka, 2022) is relevant to all types of organizations, although the author is coming from over 25 years as a technology executive. Think schools, not-for-profits, community, churches, and for-profit businesses. None can escape the reality of 2022, a time when post-pandemic recovery is underway but with the new twist of employees being empowered to demand better compensation and working conditions. Even organizations that rely on volunteers would do well to heed Popelka’s advice; perhaps these settings require even greater focus on experience – the experience of being involved, contributing, and spending time in ways that bring meaning to one’s life.

 What do employees (e.g., workers, volunteers, contributors) want?

·      Purpose: to find meaning in their work

·      Agency: to have some say over how, when, and where they work

·      Belonging: to feel part of a community, even if they are remote, freelance, or part-time; to be part of a diverse community.

·      Recognition: to be acknowledged for their contributions, in multiple forms, on a regular basis (p. 12).

It's not about simply going through the motions of employee responsiveness. These conditions must be based on a sincere belief in people and in their desire to both advance themselves and contribute to something greater than themselves.

Agency and autonomy are core to ongoing growth and innovation and, therefore, deserve special attention. Popelka references Dr. Autumn Krauss to explain the primary challenge – “Marketing has got it all segmented down to a sample size of one… we shouldn’t be surprised that employees come to work wanting an individualized experience, specifically catered to them” (p. 54). Agency allows workers to figure out what is important to them and propose ways to achieve what they most want. Agency and autonomy require cultivation, especially among new members of any community. When you’re new, the inclination is to go along with what you believe is expected which tends to disempower. Helping newcomers identify their vision for themselves and how they will contribute may involve ambiguity that is initially challenging but it ultimately contributes to much greater involvement and satisfaction.

Leadership is obviously very important when attempting to create better workplaces or more engaging communities. And the most important responsibilities of contemporary leadership are:

·       Driving clarity of purpose

·       Creating connection

·       Requiring transparency and building trust

It’s not about charisma or power – it’s about the people and leading in ways that engage them.

Popelka’s book is easy to read, provides numerous examples, and offers “Take this with you” boxes at the end of each chapter to remind the reader of key points. Near the end of Experience, Inc. she offers the bold statement “Perhaps my single greatest motivation for writing this book is to argue that what is good for the company can never again be separated from what is good for its workers” (p. 196). Rephrase this for any organization – what is good for the collective can never again be separated from what is good for those who contribute to it. Purpose, a sense of belonging, and recognition of value naturally foster greater productivity.

Pink - Power of Regret

Daniel H. Pink’s 2022 book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, reframes an emotional struggle many of us have throughout life. We look at things we did, and regret having done something we now see as destructive or even morally reprehensible. Or we look at things we didn’t do and bemoan the lost opportunity or different future we could have had.

Pink starts his analysis of regret by debunking the commonly professed “I have no regrets.” Of course, we have regrets and to not have them is to not feel, to not live. Regrets are what make it possible to connect with others – all of us wish that we hadn’t done some things or had done other things that we passed up. He goes on to explain how regrets make us better and identifies the core regrets with which we generally struggle. Then he closes with advice on how to deal with regret.

 

This book is not just an opinion piece; it is based on a worldwide regret survey that included both a tabulated survey and open-ended responses of what people around the world regretted. Before launching into his own research, Pink summarizes seventy years of previous research with two conclusions: 1) regret makes us human, and 2) regret makes us better. And regret is a uniquely human capability because we have the ability to travel across time in our memories and we can imagine different experiences that didn’t actually happen. We can see this easily in a common regret expressed in Pink’s survey – people wish that they had taken their educations more seriously, which they believe would have led to different life outcomes. In addition to mental time travel and imagining other outcomes, humans have the ability to compare their own experiences with others and they are inclined to place blame, either on themselves or others. An example in work is that we can regret following a parent’s advice in career choice, therefore blaming them when we’re stuck in a career or workplace that we dislike.

 

The four core categories of regret that research defined are; foundation regrets (failures to be responsible, conscientious, or prudent), boldness regrets (chances we didn’t take), moral regrets (behaving poorly, or compromising our goodness), and connection regrets (neglecting people who contribute to our wholeness). Pink provides numerous examples of each category and then offers strategies that are applicable to varying degrees across all four. The strategies are: 1) undo it, 2) "at least it," and then heal through 3) self-disclosing, 4) self-compassion, and self-distancing. Owning up to “regret, when handled correctly, offers three broad benefits. It can sharpen our decision-making skills. It can elevate our performance on a range of tasks. And it can strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness” (p. 42).

 

This book is short and has some core wisdom to it. While it doesn’t really break boundaries it is the reframing that helps – reframing that allows us to accept the things in our past that sometimes nag us, learning from them, and choosing to do better in the future. Pink’s book is worth a quick read for anyone in leadership, since leadership regrets are common for those who have attempted anything of note, or perhaps taken on a challenge that could have made a lot of difference in our lives.

Loebel - America's Medicis: The Rockefellers and Their Astonishing Cultural Legacy

The Medici legacy in Florence, Italy, stands across the ages as one of the most amazing periods of arts sponsorship known to history. The Rockefeller family may be recognized as equivalent to the Medicis as history provides a bit more distance on their contribution to art in the 20^th century. The equivalence of the two families and how they preserved, celebrated, and educated around the arts is the subject of Suzanne Loebel’s America’s Medicis: The Rockefellers and Their Astonishing Cultural Legacy (2010).

 

In her introduction, Loeble remarks “the Rockefellers’ most important contribution was to teach America that art and its enjoyment, message, and healing power did not belong to a rarefied elite, but could be loved, understood, and even owned by all” (Introduction). Their advocacy ranged across different eras and places (e.g., Asian, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, American folk art, and Mexico), embraced diverse cultures, and included not only the visual arts of print and painting but impacted architecture as well. Examples of major collections include the Cloisters (NYC), Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Oriental Institute (University of Chicago), the pristine island of Acadia National Park  (Maine), and buildings such as Riverside Church (NYC), Rockefeller Center (NYC), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (NYC), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Mall (Albany, NY), and Kykuit (family mansion in Mount Pleasant, NY, now open as a sculpture garden and museum). 

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. became the founding patriarch at age 16, forced to assume the “head of household” responsibilities when his father abandoned the family. Senior founded Standard Oil Company with a partner. Timed perfectly to take advantage of rising fuel demand in the late 19^th century, he amassed a fortune that would be the base for the generations of Rockefellers to follow. Religion was central in Senior’s life, a staunch Baptist who taught Bible classes throughout his adult life and, along with his wife, Aby, believed in education, aiding the poor, and adhering to principles of thrift and humility. 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. adhered to the business advice and dictates of his father but rebelled to some degree against his mother’s conservative religious views. The rebellion did not stand in the way of Junior’s loyalty being expressed in the establishment of the University of Chicago as a Baptist university or the building of Riverside church in NYC. One of Junior’s greatest skills was identifying mentors and loyal collaborators who helped him achieve his ambitions. Frederick T. Gates became one of his greatest supporters and stewards of Rockefeller’s wealth. Regardless of the family’s commitment to philanthropy, the Rockefellers were included among the “robber barons” who were despised by many in the heady days of growing industrialization.

Senior and Junior sought to democratize art by bringing it to broad numbers of citizens. This inclination toward opening the arts to all is somewhat in contrast to the fact that both were enthusiasts of free and unrestricted trade and opposed unions. Their beliefs were immortalized in Junior’s personal creed, which was inscribed on the staircase leading to the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink:

 

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

 

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

 

Loebel’s book includes extensive detail on the collections of Senior, Junior, and other subsequent Rockefeller family members. Large portions of the family’s personal collections were donated to the museums that they either created or supported.

 

These Rockefeller collections are now on my new “bucket list” to see in the coming years. Clearly, a couple of weeks of touring Rockefeller museums would be an incredible treat. And, it would provide the opportunity to think about art as a catalyst for change, particularly art that is open and available to all, regardless of individual taste, preferences, and interpretation. After all, art is the visualization and symbolization of human experience. Exploring others’ views through art is a primary way by which we can build the bridges and relationships that we need for a thriving and sustainable world.

McGhee - The Sum of Us

Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (2021) not only captures the collective cost of racism to everyone, black/white or privileged/middle income, but also sums up several other author’s contributions to understanding racism and what must be done to eradicate it from the U.S.A. Other books I’ve read that seem to have led me to McGhee’s book include: Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power, Kindi's How to Be an Anti-Racist, Jones’ White Too Long, Wear’s Reclaiming Hope, Wilkerson's Caste, and Kruglanski’s The Psychology of Closed-Mindedness.

Two things stand out as prominent in The Sum of Us that weren’t there, or I did not fully recognize, in other author’s books: 1) that the negative cost of racism is broadly shared and 2) by highlighting this summative impact, we might actually reap a solidarity dividend that will help us to make progress in challenging it.

 

A tension with which I struggle is the philosophical stance of abundance versus that of scarcity. On a very personal basis, I recognize that most of the things that keep me from living the life I want to live are rooted in a scarcity view – fear of missing out, jealousy, regret. McGhee calls it the “zero-sum” game, a worldview that assumes that beating losers is the only way to acquire what one wants. 

 

McGhee’s analysis delves into economics, and particularly governmental policy related to it, and its impact on who has been able to accumulate wealth in the U.S.A. America and the “American Dream” evolved from a starving and scrappy colony that took land away from indigenous people and enforced slave labor to achieve its objective of wealth creation among a few landholders. As early as 1857, a white southerner, Hinton Rowan Helper, wrote that a crisis was on the horizon, one based on southern oligarchs’ refusal to support education and enterprise, a refusal that would result in southern whites being poorer in the long run.

 

Helper’s prescient observation emerged more profoundly as post-Civil War “Jim Crow” unfolded with white supremacy used to unite whites across class and against people of color. After desegregation was mandated by federal law, the combination of “separate but equal” policy and the closing of shared community resources such as swimming pools and other recreation resources were denied to people of color, which in effect denied them to white people with lesser means as well. The creation of a racial hierarchy was conceived and activated as a way of sowing discontent among those without power, pitting less educated and lower class whites against people of color. In essence, the racial hierarchy created a last-place aversion of low-income whites that allowed them to feel superior to at least people of other color and culture.

 

Governmental spending in the middle of the 20^th century grew the American middle class. However, blanket policy was enacted that perpetuated inequality. The U.S.A. “deliberately created a white middle class through racially restricted government investments in home ownership and infrastructure and retirement security” (p. 11). The investment was in; low interest loans to encourage home buying, infrastructure such as roads and public utilities, education, and more. And isn’t it odd that once people of color attempted to access governmental investment, politicians decided that the project was too expensive? The conservative tropes to justify this withdrawal of access included “makers versus takers,” “taxpayers versus welfare exploiters,” and the now familiar “they’re coming after your job, your safety, your way of life” (p. 14).

 

Both spending and public opinion saw a marked shift during the Reagan era, a period of rising antigovernment conservatism. Although the Reagan movement claimed to be about conservatism, McGhee asserted that the shift was more about blunting “the government’s ability to challenge concentrated wealth and corporate power” (p. 47).  In sum, “Racism then, works against non-wealthy white Americans in two ways… it lowers their support for government action that could help them” (p. 50)… and results in racialized political polarization that forces a choice between class and racial interests.

 

The Sum of Us describes how racism, discrimination, and segregation negatively impact youth during their educations as well as how it denies wealth and the opportunity to live in safe and diverse communities to adults and families. It also includes hopeful evidence of successful solidarity initiatives that challenged the hierarchy of race and class. For example, significant cross-racial coalition building was an important part of the rise of unions in mid-20^th century, a movement that improved the lives of workers of all backgrounds and races. More recent grassroots organizations have tapped the solidarity dividend to make progress on other important shared concerns. These include “Greater than Fear” that confronted the emergence of the “Tea Party” in Minnesota in 2018, “Just Transition” that activated coalitions of concerned citizens to tackle environmental degradation, and the “Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation” model and its TRHT Implementation Guidebook used in fourteen communities in 2017 to document and address the impact of racism. McGhee closes with a futuristic proposal to address wealth inequality by providing a “race-conscious housing effort to close the Black-white gap in home ownership” (p. 259).

 

McGhee’s book is not long but it is deep, offering summation and real possibilities for action for those who are serious about confronting and reversing the negative impact of racism on everyone. Abandoning the “zero sum” mentality and seeking a solidarity dividend through multi-racial coalitions of every day citizens are two factors that could bring us all to a new and better place.

El Akkad - What Strange Paradise

Most of my reading is non-fiction but I chose to read Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise (2021) after participating in our local library’s Zoom discussion with him. I immediately connected with Omar because he spent some of his youth in Qatar. I didn’t realize that the content of his book would directly relate to Paraq Khanna’s Move, which I read immediately before What Strange Paradise.

The story is about a refugee, one like those we have often seen in newspaper coverage over the last decade. Amir, a young boy who followed his uncle (actually his mother’s partner) aboard a small boat across the Mediterranean, is on a journey to somewhere that will allow him to escape the devastation of his home by war and economic collapse. The detail of where the boy is from, which is Syria, or other details of location are less important than how Amir’s experience reflects so many children who actively seek, or are taken on, harrowing journeys to unknown places in order to pursue a dream that they are not sure really exists. These children, their families and loved ones, are desperate and willing to do practically anything to MOVE to anyplace other than where they presently are. These are the political, economic, and cultural refugees of our world who want little more than a chance.

Most of the story of What Strange Paradise is set on a resort island where fleeing refugee boats often wash up on shore, thus temporarily disturbing the tourists who otherwise enjoy the pleasures of beautiful water and luxurious surroundings. Local authorities, with one being particularly pernicious, clean up the beach after bodies, clothing, and refuse washes up on the shore. They also track down any “invaders” who are seeking to transit through the resort on the way to a permanent location in displaced refugee communities. The rhythm of the book is unusual because each successive chapter is titled “Before” or “After” which vacillates between the time before and during the Mediterranean crossing and the after of the temporary respite at, and eventual escape from, the resort. 

What Strange Paradise is a quick read that initially did not capture my attention (I later went back to read the first four chapters for context). I’ve purposefully not provided detail because it’s important that readers discover the story as it unfolds. One spoiler alert is that there are those who help Amir, not always with fully positive impact, but their desire to cause him less harm is clear. Sadly, many of those who are privileged to live in places that are secure, prosperous, and open simply have no idea how bad life can be within threatened or refugee communities. That kind of privilege can result in our being no more than tourists on a luxurious vacation. As El Akkad describes the tourists on the island – “these people and their concerns belong to a different world, a different ordering of the world. A fantasy.” This book offers the opportunity for a sober awakening of why refugees of various sorts want to MOVE and the challenges they face on their journeys.