10 ‘Big Ideas’ from Day One of the Aspen Ideas Festival
By Andy Burness, June 29, 2012
One of the great perks of working at Burness is the range of topics we encounter– from fighting the scourge of neglected diseases around the world and improving the health care system at home to improving our nation’s community colleges. While many of the health policy experts and political pundits are analyzing yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on health reform, I’m surrounded by experts from a number of different fields in the mountains of Colorado at the Aspen Ideas Festival– many whose work relates to the organizations we support.
Yesterday, I heard an analysis of the Court’s decision, but today I wanted to pass along some of the thought provoking ideas that were shared on day one that aren’t anywhere near the day’s headlines.
The conference’s opening session featured 15 people welcoming some 500 attendees with two-minute “big ideas” for the rest of us to ponder. To give you a sense of what various smart people are thinking these days, I’ve shortened 10 of these two minute “big ideas” to just a sentence or two.
- There’s too much talk about the challenges facing women in the workplace and with family. Men are, in fact, feeling much more angst about not having enough time with their kids. We should do something about that.
- Art is the gateway to empathy.
- We live in an age of leaderless revolution due to technological innovation. There is opportunity for new types of revolutionaries.
- We should re-visit our embrace of universal suffrage for all people. The “opinions” of uneducated peasants whose votes can be bribed should not be the bedrock of democracy. No democracy started with universal suffrage, so we ought to look for other means for creating democracy.
- We have lost our way with political risk-taking, and ought to see much more of this.
- We should be able to “program our bodies” with apps – the “programmable self.” We need data on what we can do to help figure out who we are, a “new machine for the soul.”
- We should worry about the extinction of the human species. We lose one per cent of plankton a year, which supplies 2/3 of the air we breathe. This is not a false concern.
- Filibusters should be “safe, legal and rare.” The President has too much global authority, but too little domestic authority.
- Women should use sports as a platform for speaking out about peace.
- Journalism 101 should be mandatory for high school seniors in the United States. We, as citizens, need to learn how to consume news and to judge truth from fiction. An introduction to journalistic principles will move us in this direction.
Some of these are clearly more controversial than others, but all are worthy of reflection. Check back here in the coming days for more updates from the field – or mountains, to be more accurate.