The Big Answer

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The Tofflers talk with Wired about their book War and Anti-War. They look at the world trend in which the rich secede from the poor—trying to avoid the taxes that force them to carry the poor on their backs, as it were. (Robert Reich and Richard Louv have written books on this. But we needn't be concerned that the rich will have to carry the poor on their backs. Both Bush and Obama couldn't wait to give the rich more tax breaks since much of their political funds come from these sources. And there are lots of loopholes in laws to give the rich ways of avoiding much of their tax burdens.)

“I think the main failure of culture is the failure of imagination. It’s very hard to think outside the boxes—cultural box, institutional box, political box, religious box—that we are all, every one of us, imprisoned in.”

Think outside the box

The Tofflers avoid in-box thinking by traveling a lot, reading outside the culture, meeting interesting people, and mistrusting the experts when they talk about their own disciplines. (If our cultural innovators finally managed to show enough imagination and insight to “think outside the box,” what would they come up with to address the national and global dilemmas? The MC movement, of course. See Why Register for an MC?.)

Registering for MC search and match

They don’t think politicians are dumb, but the institutions are—dumb and obsolete. Change is likely to come about because of a horrible crisis—little else could get over their inertia. Even if politicians can see what is the right thing to do, “Where politicians get their money and where they get their votes will determine what they do irrespective of what they say.” See Who Will Tell The People?: The Betrayal Of American Democracy and Supercapitalism.

Where politicians get their money from will determine what they do, irrespective of what they say