Efficiency: a new paradigm?

In a recent speech, President Obama called for the prioritization of energy efficiency as a means for job creation. (Obama-Touts-Clean-Energy-As-Jobs-Booster) Big applause to Obama for moving in the right direction. It should have been done ages ago, many might complain. But the important thing is that it gets done, sooner rather than later. Efficiency may have much broader applications beyond environmental and energy policy. As political rhetoric and metaphorical language, efficiency could be a buzz word that unites a variety of disparate policy issues, such as the environment, government reform, military reform, and media technology. In the above example, we see it mixed with job creation: energy efficiency can lead to a more productive economy.

Several months ago, I wrote a post on a Unitarian Universalist meeting in Tokyo which featured Asby Brown speaking about his book Just Enough: Lessons on Living Green from Traditional Japan. What struck me about the talk was the way almost everything was reused in traditional Edo Japan. Reflecting on this theme for the past few months, it is of course apparent that we need to relearn some of the "precycling" techniques that frugal peasants used out of necessity. However, the concept of using "just enough" and reusing the rest may be applied in a more metaphoric sense. Not only should our products and packaging have multiple uses, but so should our intellectual and digital lives.

Multi-purpose ideas.
Multi-purpose media.
Energy efficient thinking.
Not just win-win solutions, win-win-win solutions.

A great example of this multi-purpose, multi-level, multi-meaning efficiency is freerice.com. The website allows you to play educational games (such as an English vocabulary quiz game), and for each correct answer rice is donated through the U.N. World Food Bank program to countries and people in need. Conceptually, it is my favorite website. It combines education, recreation, humanitarian aid, and entrepreneurship to create a 4-win situation. You win when you play the game (it's fun and you learn something); the people of Haiti win (all the rice this year is donated to Haiti); and advertisers sponsor the site to get revenue for their businesses (and they boost their image as socially responsible or progressive by underwriting humanitarian donations). That's a win-win-win-win media solution, and that's something that doesn't seem to happen much. But it should happen more.

"Gaming for change" is becoming an increasing reality. For example, online gamers could plug into a network to find and treat cancer cells, effectively crowd sourcing oncology and radiology. Check out these podcasts to hear more about how gaming can (and is) changing the world:

http://www.wpr.org/book/110213a.cfm
http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2010/12/31

What does freerice.com have to do with efficiency? By combining multiple purposes into one site, a user doing one activity can work toward solving four problems. This is efficient media use and efficient problem solving.

Note the difference between a multi-purpose activity and multitasking. Multitasking has been proven by loads of research to be hopelessly inefficient. It has been proven time and time again that people can only actually focus on one thing at a time: it is in fact impossible to be conscious of two things at once. Attention is actually indivisible. (You can try this for yourself by slowing your thoughts down through awareness and watching them as they arise. You will see that your mind darts between sense perceptions and various constructed thoughts or impulses. I think Buddhists have noticed this phenomenon for thousands of years, but that's the subject of another post.) In short, multitasking is effectively prolonged distraction, whereas a multi-purpose activity allows for prolonged, concentrated attention on one stream of thought or action, and the activity itself has multiple, intentional outcomes.

In the current economic and political environment, efficiency has the potential to be a powerful political metaphor. Piggy-backing on the green-washing movement that has been promoted through the advertising of even the most conservative of companies (think B.P. and McDonalds), efficiency can also reshape notions of "waste, fraud and abuse" which have come as attacks from the right-wing and tea party movements. It takes the concerns of these groups seriously. Indeed our government should run as efficiently as possible, while still providing the vital services, such as civil engineering and education, that would otherwise be neglected. This is hardly debatable from either side of the aisle.

The word efficiency, and its associated metaphors, could have the power to change even the most stalwart government institutions, namely the military. Here is the metaphor:

Our current military is like a gas-guzzling 18-wheeler careening down a steep hill into a bottomless financial abyss. We need to put on the brakes, bring it in the garage, and give it a tune-up for the 21st century.

This military reform could be draped in the language of efficiency to emphasize the need to make our military run more smoothly and effectively. In a literal sense, what if we retooled all our military vehicles to run on 25% less gasoline? How many jobs would this create and how much money would it save in expenditures?

The need for military reform was recognized over 50 years ago by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech, in which he called for checks to the dangerous power then commanded by the "military-industrial complex."


Full video available at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2465144342633379864#.

I recently attended a talk about Afghanistan by Matthew Arnold, who has worked with the French military in Afghanistan, the U.N. as an aid worker, and is currently writing a book about Sudan. He is an expert in conflict resolution. Arnold argued that only special forces, such as the Green Berets, can do appropriate, small scale counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. Large scale military operations, such as the current deployment of the Army, are largely unproductive and ineffective. Basically inefficient. In his concluding remarks, he acknowledged that the American war in Afghanistan is basically a failed effort. "At some point you have to do a basic cost-benefit analysis. Spending one trillion dollars on an unfortunate war that was somewhat necessary is a mistake."

John Kerry seems to support troop reduction in Afghanistan, even if he is backing away from his original statement as a political moderate. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/06/john-kerry-breaks-obama-afghanistan_n_819243.html) On a more basic level, the Obama administration is realizing the need for more financially competent soldiers. (see "Local bases – and Obama – press for financial literacy in the military") Actually, Matthew Arnold's talk was mainly about the perceptions and identity of Afghans, and based on 300 interviews, he found that Americans are viewed as wasteful and financially incompetent. They get hustled and pay way more for products, services and contracts in Afghanistan than any native Afghan would. Thus, they've earned a reputation for not only being reckless spenders, but also for contributing to corruption in the Afghan government.

Today, lawmakers voted to cut a $450 million in funds for a military jet fighter engine project, signaling a tightening on defense spending. (Story at http://www.npr.org/2011/02/17/133847158/In-Win-For-Obama-House-Kills-Jet-Fighter-Engine)

Military reform needs to be a real issue. I absolutely support President Obama's re-election in 2012, but the left needs to apply real pressure to make defense spending a priority. The proposed budget does not meet this challenge. Rather than stopping the construction of unwanted military bases in Okinawa, the Obama administration is cutting funds for heating low income homes (i.e. the LIHEAP program) American tax dollars maintain golf courses on military bases abroad, but won't be used to construct high-speed rail at home.

I envision a military that largely works as a domestic self-defense force in the vein of the National Guard, rather than a foreign aggressor. (I'm not taking an isolationist stance, but I think it's largely the job of our diplomats to handle foreign threats and disputes, not the military.) This NPR story about a National Guard commander who helped a pregnant woman get to the hospital to deliver her baby during a recent snow emergency almost brought tears to my eyes. It illustrates how the military, so often vilified by those in the anti-war movement, can be a force for peace and well-being at home.

We can look to other countries to find examples of militaries that are far different from our own. Japan is prohibited from having a standing military capable of waging war through Article 9 in its constitution, although it maintains a Self Defense Force which has taken on many of the military's functions and features. Moreover, Article 9 prohibits Japan from using war as a means of settling international disputes. Though its interpretation has been controversial and led to a dependence on the U.S. military for defense, both its advocates and opponents must note that it has prevented Japan from taking a larger role in global military and combat actions.

We might even learn something from Egypt's military, which has become as much of a state-sponsored business as security force. In a sense, the military as a job creation machine doesn't really bother me (perhaps it should). As long as the military is focused on domestic projects, why not use it as an umbrella for jobs that will lead to economic health and prosperity? Of course, this sort of military must also be run efficiently, and the jobs created through it should be of high quality and value.

In short, the linguistic shift already being used by the Obama administration is a focus on efficiency. Though the above description of a reformed military may seem like an idealistic vision, it may become a political reality through the language of efficiency.