(Back to Part 1)
(3) Alignment Requires Deadlines
A third principle is that the social alignment needed to create a largescale employment project requires targetable, society-wide deadlines. If we want alignment on a planetary scale, we cannot agree to accomplish our project “some day.” We must have a specific deadline to orchestrate the coordination involved.
Putting a man on the moon succeeded, all other things being equal, because President John F. Kennedy attached a deadline to it – the end of the decade of the Sixties. Had President Kennedy left the matter without a deadline, the necessary social coordination of efforts might never have taken place and the goal might never have been achieved.
(4) Alignment Requires Win/Win, Global Solutions
A fourth principle in the creation of largescale employment projects is that win/lose solutions do not create alignment. Alignment is created with win/win solutions that leave no one out. Win/win solutions are global, contextual. They create no “us against them” divisions. They leave no residue.
Many society-wide solutions don’t invite society-wide alignment because they create as many new problems as they solve. Their formulation creates new conflict. Their accomplishment transfers a burden from one shoulder to another. Their completion leaves a festering wound.
Social programs to fight crime, help minorities, or combat disease go on within a fragmented context, with some people left out of their scope, some people winning at other’s expense, and some people, identified as the cause of the problem, being penalized.
At the moment our global scene is riven with divisions. Blocs of nations, rich and poor, varying religions all oppose one another. Typically alignment is sought by justifying one’s own side and seeking to win against the other.
Righting one imbalance or injustice at the cost of creating another will not win social alignment. Only global, win/win solutions to unworkability will win the degree of social alignment that will invite success.
(Concluded in Part 3.)