Once again it's time for Davos. Or more specifically the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. For the better part of the week – some of the best minds in the business, economic and academic world – not to mention UN officials and assorted royals and entertainers – have come together to schmooze, network, appear on important panels and of course sit for endless media interviews.
There are many such gatherings – some famous like this one,
some just small think tanks trying to save the world or even a small part of
it. Davos looms large to me because the
TV network I work for always sends a large team to beam back the weighty
interviews and report on some of the weighty panel discussions. So for all the years since my (and Apple's)
first iPhone I've been dutifully browsing the WEF app and checking WEF's tweets.
I was talking to a friend in Europe today who was all
excited about an upcoming Aspen Institute retreat. Where ostensibly the
participants – all credentialed big thinkers – will come up with more ideas to
save the world.
Which brings me to the reason for this rant.
I politely suggested to my friend – as I have before – that
maybe this time all those brilliant minds
-- instead of producing really
big new ideas -- might produce some rather small but practical ones which might
actually work in the real world. And
also produce some practical ways to implement those practical ideas.
My friend said a recent survey found people really want ways
to fix what’s broken. Like the US
Congress. Or middle class jobs. Or
Greece. We agreed that may be an opening
for practical change – if the change agents can find ways to help the rest of
us understand that our society will simply perish otherwise.
I’m not against big ideas.
All societies need people with the ability to see our problems and
suggest fresh ways to solve them. It’s
just that so many of those suggestions or plans or philosophies will never
actually work in the world most people actually inhabit. OK – full disclosure. I got through philosophy in college – a
prerequisite to my beloved broadcasting classes – by reading a book on the
history of philosophy by Bertrand Russell. One manageable chapter for each
unmanageable philosopher from Aristotle on up. As a philosopher himself Russell
must have realized that obsessing about a tree falling in the forest was simply
useless if not impossible for a realist like me. Oh wait a minute… wasn’t there a chapter on
Realism too?
Maybe my “just do it” brand of realism isn’t quite what Russell
was describing. But that’s what we need.
A group of deep thinkers whose names we all know. Who will get together
at one of these high profile forums or quasi-secret retreats. And return to our real world with some real,
do-able plan to just fix it.
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