MOUNT VERNON — According to political consultant Dr. Lee Peterson, most of the world’s current troubles come from how well various leaders recognize reality.
The reality, according to Peterson, is that the world has experienced three ages in the last few centuries: The Agrarian Age, The Industrial Age, and, since its beginnings just a few decades ago, The Information Age. As a result of this, the stability of world regions depends on how much their leaders recognize that world commerce has shifted away from valuing land or industry, to valuing information. Peterson espouses no opinion about how good or bad that is, he merely states that it is.
“Wealth is now ideas,” Peterson said, citing Bill Gates as an example.
In a nonpartisan speech delivered Wednesday during a lunchtime Brown Bag Chat at the library, Peterson boiled issues down to their functional, economic points. Peterson said he has often had people violently object to his comments, which have the potential to ruffle feathers on both ends of the political spectrum. His comments can be valuable, however, because he focuses more on what is and what can be than on what should be.
Peterson said one can either make the most of the Information Age, or waste time and effort fighting against it. He pointed out that every political movement that has sought to revert to an earlier age’s structure and values has ended up being crushed by the forward movement of the current age. This happens, he said, because what is valued during each age determines its structure, quite independent of what reigning powers may or may not want.
For instance, he said, the collapse of monarchies around the world was directly connected to the shift from agrarian society to an industrial society. Once manufacturing became the most valued commodity, government had to become more codified by consistent laws instead of the personal whims of kings, in order to help industry flourish. Now, he said, to achieve the same end for information technology, government has to become transparent and directly answerable to the source of ideas: People.
According to Peterson, this is the mechanism behind the spread of democracy around the world. Unfortunately, he said, what stands between the world as it is now and how it could be someday, are the dictators and terrorists who are trying to deny the shift toward valuing ideas.
Peterson said there is great fear in many Islamic countries, many of which have remained isolated pockets of agrarianism not greatly changed by the industrial revolution. That social stasis, he said, allowed those patriarchal systems to survive into modern times. But today, those patriarchal societies are losing power to technological advancement. As young people in these Islamic countries can now get news, music and fashions from outside sources, Peterson said, the authority of the patriarchs erodes, leading to reactionary and fundamentalist movements which have launched the likes of Al-Qaïda, Hamas and other terrorist groups.
“In opposing change, they want to go back,” Peterson said, adding that in one of Osama bin Laden’s recorded messages shortly after 9/11, bin Laden called for a return to the caliph — the agrarian, monarchical structure of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey which collapsed in the early 20th century.
“He wants to turn back history, he wants to go back to something that is already past,” Peterson said. “Well, let me tell you, the train’s already left the station, and that can’t happen.”
The problem is, he said, bin Laden and his supporters are going to fight for that anyway. As Peterson put it, it’s already a certainty the world is going to end up in a technological age where people have more power to determine the outcome of their own lives. The question, he said, is how much pain is going to have to be endured in order to get there, thanks to the bin Ladens and Putins of the world?
Despite its flaws, Peterson said democracy is spreading because it is flexible and allows for evolutionary change. Thus in his work as a political consultant to leaders and organizations in Russia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere, Peterson has encouraged his clients to go in that direction. As he admitted, it is difficult to get many leaders to accept the possibility they might get voted out of power. But the end result, he said, is that power shifts back and forth, stabilizing a nation, thus allowing national prosperity.
One of the many questions raised by listeners at the end of Peterson’s speech was, what effect will environmental and ecological issues have on stabilization of the world in the Information Age? Peterson responded that they are bound to have an impact, but his hope was that an age centered on valuing ideas would find new ways to address these problems. He said retreating to the past would be no solution, for the world has already entered the future.
“History refuses to allow you to go back,” Peterson said.
To another questioner, who asked if, today, power wasn’t more in the hands of corporations than governments, Peterson said that even if it is, in the end they won’t be able to control it. He did not, however, address how much pain society would go through before such an equalization would take place.
