LONGMONT, Colo. — I was surprised when Andy Schleck’s back wheel popped up and he jolted to a dead standstill in this morning’s stage of the Tour de France.  I was more surprised when Alberto Contador rode past without hesitation.  I had just said to my kids watching the tour with me, “Watch this, I bet Contador slows to a crawl.”  I was wrong.

My favorite historical moments of the Tour are the occasions when Lance Armstrong waited for Jan Ullrich in 2001after Ullrich strayed from the road into a ditch.  The favor was returned to Armstrong when Ullrich and a group of other riders.  It was a great example of “what goes around comes around.”  I remember these moments more vividly than any of Armstrong’s famous break aways.

I must admit I’ve lost much of my enthusiasm for professional bicycling because of the ongoing scourge of performance enhancing drug use.  But, I still love the spectacle of competition between equally matched contestants.  And, I am drawn to any sport with deeply rooted norms of fair play on the “playing field” (yes, I recognize the contradiction of being turned of by drug use but attracted to sportsmanship in the same sport).  I find the tradition of waiting for a competitor who experiences bad luck compelling because it exists in so few sports.

I tuned in with attention to the Tour for the first time this year to watch Schleck and Contador battle in the Pyrenees.  It was great theater indeed and will keep fans talking for days and for years to come each July.  “Do you remember when Contador attacked after Schleck dropped his chain…”

History will not remember as well the global ethics debate sparked by the Schleck-Contador incident.  But, for social media aficionados it was just as thrilling.  The world joined into a group conversations as compelling as any public forum I’ve witnessed.

The conversation took place in virtual spaces such as Twitter, YouTube and countless blogs.  The Twitter posts came fast and furious just after the incident but continue to trickle in over the course of the entire day.

Many sites such as VeloNews posted survey questions asking whether Contador did the right thing.  The magazine posted the results to Twitter:  “Polls: Spaniards support Contador’s attack (VeloNews.com readers do not) http://bit.ly/ceE9E7.”

Well known members of the bicycling community weighed in such as Taylor Phinney weighed in, their comments Retweeted (RT) by others: “RT @johncr8on Feel bad for Schleck cos of his bad luck.. Feel bad for Contador cos he’s gonna get a lot of sh*t for this!”

Andy Schleck weighed in on Twitter: “I lost yellow today!shit happens but the race is not over yet!!!I be back!”  And, so did Alberto Contador.  Indeed, Contador posted a link to YouTube in which he explains his actions: “Aqui un video sobre lo ocurrido hoy en el TDF http://tinyurl.com/2ubpm7y Here a video about what happened today at TDF.”

Main stream media and the protagonists of this morning’s drama were joined by thousands of people in a multitude of languages.  Yes, it is true that there was much noise on Twitter’s #tdf channel.  But there was thoughtfulness and links to in-depth conversations and historical perspectives, too.  It was a spontaneous conversation that, with the collective action of the “crowd,” became rich and nuanced — as well as shallow, trite and glib.

Some people might consider this type of Twitter watching and blog reading a total waste of time — a distraction from more productive disputes; a productivity killer.  I view it as an example of social media’s potential at its best.  It was a teachable moment joined by the world.

I have been less active on social media the past two or three months.  My choice to participate less is a function, in part, of having a lot on my plate.  I do need to avoid the real distractions accessible in the virtual world so I can meet very real deadlines in my world.

But, today, the events I witnessed on T.V. drew me to the web.  I was curious what people thought.  I’m glad I checked.  Today was another reminder of the potential of social media to bring the world together in meaningful conversations.  Social media is not just a place to connect with old friends.  It’s a place where we can join with others to hash things out.  That’s pretty cool.

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John Creighton can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook.

But, as we’re all tightening our belts for the moment, now may be the best time to think through how we manage surplus.  Better times will return.  And, we need to prepare for the good times just as we should have prepared for the bad times we’re experiencing.

Why do we need to prepare for good times?  Because, quite frankly, we Americans (and purpose other societies, too) aren’t very good at dealing with a surplus.

Prior to the Great Recession, household income (adjusted for inflation) for most Americans rose gradually, with a few dips here and there, for more than forty years.  Much of the gains were made because the percentage of people living in two income households has increased.  More than forty percent of households have two wage earners.

Did we save the extra money being earned by the extra household wage earner? No.  We expanded our lifestyles to use up both incomes and then some.  Government statistics show that personal saving rates have steadily declined and consumer debt has ballooned over the past four decades.

We’re spending this money on things that past generations never imagined.  For instance, we buy bigger and bigger homes.  The average home size in the United States was just under 2,500 square feet in 2009 (down from the peak reached in 2007) compared to just under 1,700 square feet in 1973 according to Census Bureau data.  During the same period, the number of people living in each house decreased from just over three people per home to around two and one-half.

An abundance of food is another surplus we’ve bungled.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that Americans spend far less on food (in home and at restaurants) in recent years than in 1970.  Americans spent about fourteen percent of their disposable income on all food in 1970.  We spend less than ten percent of disposable income in 2008.

And, we’re getting a lot more calories for our buck.  We eat meals today that are thirty percent larger than a typical meal thirty years ago.  We’ve increased our portions to fill the standard dinner plate that has grown from nine to twelve inches since 1960.  That’s one reason, according to a June, 21 NBC Nightly News report, an astounding seventy percent of Americans are overweight.  The average American today is nearly thirty pounds heavier than the typical American was in 1960.

We don’t seem to know what to do with a surplus of time, either.  Americans work (paid work, including commute, plus household chores) about eight hours less per week than forty years ago, according to a report produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.  What do we do with that time?  Young parents shuttle their children to and from abundance of activities.  But, most of us just watch T.V.  About half the extra liesure hours are devoted to this past time.

We don’t spend our time with family, friends or communities.  Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, has documented that there has been more than a fifty percent drop in attendance at civic clubs, more than a forty percent decline in family dinners, and more than a thirty percent drop in getting together with friends.

Americans attend church more regularly than citizens of all but one G-20 nation, according to World Values Survey.  Yet, we don’t seem to learn the lessons we’re taught while sitting in the pews.

One of my children’s favorite Bible stories is Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors.  One of the lessons we learn from this Old Testament parable is the critical need to plan ahead.  Joseph helped save Egypt from famine by persuading Pharaoh to store surplus food during seven years of bountiful harvests.  When seven years of drought set in, the nation lived off its stores.

The current edition of Time Magazine, The Broken States of America, documents the pitfalls a society must confront when there is a lack of looking ahead.  During the go-go 1990s, state governments across the nation cut taxes and increased services.  Common sense says that’s a formula that won’t work long.  Now, states can’t afford the services which their voters are reluctant to give up — and may need more than ever.

A popular mantra is, “Live like there is no tomorrow.”  The idea is to make the most of each day because death may cheat us of another.  I understand the sentiment.  My parents both died young, which makes me want to maximize my experiences.

But, my hope is the Great Recession will teach us to take a long view and to restore reasonable limits to our bad habits of devouring abundance.  We must do a better job of learning to manage the surpluses of time, money and food (among others) we’ve been blessed to have in a nation that enjoys more wealth than any society in history.

Clay Shirky’s talk on “Cognitive Surplus”

I’m guilty, in my youth, of being a TV watcher.  I can recount far too many episodes of Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeanie, The Brady Bunch, Beverly Hillbillies, Big Valley…  After my wife and I had kids, I realized I had a whole lot of free time before kids but never even knew.  Why?  Because I was sitting in front of ER, Friends, Frasier, The Simpsons, Northern Exposure, Mad About You, Star Trek: The Next Generation…

Robert Putnam’s conclusion that television (including video games) is a primary culprit behind declining participation in the public square resonated with me.  Of course people are involved less than they used to be, join fewer clubs, spend less time at dinner with their families.  Their minds are numb from sitting in front of the “boob tube.”

The response over the years to the negative affects of television is just what one would expect: Just Say No.  New organizations, such as the Center for Screen Time Awareness, were born to fight the media drug plaguing society. People are encouraged to participate in “Turn Off Week” giving up television and computer games for a week.

Shirky’s talk on cognitive surplus offers a fresh lens on television viewers.  Television viewers are an untapped resource — not just couch potatoes who must be rehabilitated.  We are learning, with the help of researchers such as Shirky, that people don’t want to be just be passive consumers.  People like to produce, share and participate, too.  But, on their own terms.

Many institutions — non-profit groups, schools, civic organizations — only know how to engage people if people participate on the institution’s terms.  This institution first thinking limits the possibilities for engaging people’s talents and resources.

Here is another example of new possibilities when we look at the world from the individual’s rather than the institution’s point of view.  Many school children need far more learning and instruction time than schools offer (175 to 180 days).  The National Center on Time & Learning is trying to tackle this challenge.  This group has visions of expanding the school day and year by 300 or more hours.

The Center on Time & Learning makes a compelling case and many of their ideas deserve consideration.  But, the idea of lengthening the school day and year is a non-starter in many states and school districts.  Budget shortfalls are prompting many schools to cut, not add time.  Funds to pay teachers to work longer years simply don’t exist.

The good news is there are other ways to extend instruction time besides just requiring students to spend more days in the classroom.  Columbine Elementary School, in the school district where I serve on the board, adopted a Take My Teacher Home program, which is being used in other school districts around the country.  Students are given iPod’s — a technology they want to use — to work on their reading skills at home.  Looking at reading from a student perspective rather than a school perspective opened up new possibilities for expanding the time that teachers and students can work “together.”

Consider these findings from a private survey I recently had the chance to review.  Fifty-three percent of survey participants agree with this statement: “Cutting vital public services during a recession hurts our families and economy.”  Sixty-one percent of respondents favor an increase in state funding for public schools.

But, here is the kicker.  More than half of those surveyed agree that “middle class families” pay more than their fair share of taxes.  Nearly that many agree that “small businesses” pay more than their fair share, too.

How are “middle class families” defined?  As those making less than $250,000 a year.  That means just about all of us pay more than our fair share.  Who is not pulling their weight?  Big business and the super rich.

How should a politician deal with a public that wants its cake and eat it, too?  It depends on who your constituents are.  Those on the right tap people’s anger toward government.  Those on the left try to exploit people’s animosity toward big business.

Let’s start with the left.  Liberal politicians know people oppose new taxes but they aren’t willing to take the lead on offering up permanent cuts to government services.  So, they try to build political support to raise taxes on large corporations and the rich.

According to political consultants, building political will is a matter of packaging.  Frame the issue in the right way, use the right language and you can get people on board.  For instance, liberal strategists advise clients to say things such as,“While taxes keep going up for all of us, corporations use loopholes to avoid paying taxes.  That’s not fair.”

The idea behind this type of phrase is that voters will be supportive when legislators jack up tax rates on big business.

It may or may not be true that corporations use loopholes to avoid paying taxes.  But, it is disingenuous to say, “Taxes keep going up for all of us.”  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal tax burden is near a three decade low.

Data compiled by the Tax Foundation shows that state and local tax burdens are relatively low, too.  The state and local tax burden in seventeen states is at or near a thirty year low.  The burden is approaching a thirty year high in only nine states.  Thirty-one states are on the low end of the thirty year scale.

This is not an argument that taxes are too low or too high.  The point is that to say, “taxes keep going up for all of us,” simply isn’t true.  Liberal politicians, unwilling to call for permanent reductions in government services, are convinced it’s bad politics to ask for broad based taxes we all pay.  So, they make corporations the boogeyman that should pay more.

Conservative politicians take a different tact but are just as disingenuous as their liberal counterparts.  Let’s take the Colorado GOPs “Platform for Prosperity” as an example.  The platform states that Republicans will oppose taxes and fees, cap state spending and invest in roads, higher education, and workforce development.

How will the GOP pay for these investments while, at the same time, place a cap on state spending?  They plan to review state government to eliminate waste, fraud, excess and abuse.  They offer no specifics on what types of government services are wasteful and what they would eliminate.

I am sure fraud and abuse exists in government.  But, it is a bigger fraud to suggest that eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse can close the substantial budget shortfalls that plague state and federal budgets while at the same time pay for new services voters say they want.  Indeed, conservative politicians, unwilling to ask for tax increases to pay for government services, seldom get specific about cutting government programs.  That’s not good politics.  Conservatives know that voters like government services.  So, rather than squaring with people, it’s easier talk about that magic pot of money we call waste, fraud and abuse.

The Colorado GOP may be basing its strategy on survey data that shows people believe fifty cents of every government dollar is wasted.  But, here is the thing.  One person’s waste is another person’s priority.  Many liberals believe money spent to fight the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars are wasted.  Many conservatives are equally convinced government spending to prop up the economy is wasteful.

Liberal politicians know voters oppose higher taxes.  Conservative politicians know voters want government services.  Both pretend, in their own unique way, that voters can have their cake and eat it, too.  Both refuse to take on the mantle of leadership.

The survey data I have been looking at over the past few weeks and years has one consistent theme.  There is no consensus on government priorities.  Rather than candidates who pander to voters’ delusions that government services are free, we need leaders who will help our states, and our nation, reach agreement on priorities.  Then, we need leaders who will cut those things that don’t make the top of the list and call on people to pay for those priorities that do.  That’s what leaders do.

We voters need to use our power to choose leaders to represent us in legislatures and Congress rather than people who just tell us what we want to hear.  If we don’t, then we’ve learned nothing from the Great Recession.

What do cell phones, the internet, and the pill have in common?  They all are structural changes in our lives that changed our culture.  And, they all have downsides… as well as upsides.

A spring issue of Time Magazine reported on the 50th Anniversary of The Pill — the pharmaceutical contraceptive that has achieved the status of one name moniker enjoyed by icons such as Madonna, Pele and Lebron.  It is hard to argue that The Pill transformed society.  National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry O’Neill says in the Time article, “There is a straight line between the Pill and the changes in family structure we now see.”  She cites these statistics as evidence, “In 1970, 70% of women with children under 6 were at home; 30% worked. Now that’s roughly reversed.”

There is much to celebrate about women having the freedom to pursue careers.  There also is not doubt that having two people in a family work has put more stress on the family.  And, the two income society is a contributor to our current economic woes.  Most families expanded their standard of living in a way that made full use of both salaries — buying bigger houses and other luxuries that, in people’s minds, became necessities.  When the unexpected happened, long term job loss, it was more difficult to absorb the blow.

Like many people I love my cell phone.  My family ran the Bolder Boulder 10k race last week in three groups.  It was easy to find each other in a see of 40,000 people because each group had a cell phone.  I overheard a man say as he reunited with his group, “How did we do this before cell phones?”  Cell phones make it so much easier to navigate many situations in life.

But, it’s easy to make a list of the negative consequences cell phones have wrought on society, too.  Studies have been published that suggest drivers using cell phones are as bad as drunks.  Many state legislatures are now setting limits on cell phone use in cars.  Then there are the new issues parents face with children using cell phones — sexting, locker room photos — that were unimaginable just a few years ago.

The Internet is an integrated part of our lives now.  The iPhone and Google advertisements that show people using the internet to navigate through life issues large and small capture the remarkable changes in our society.  We can find information, places and people from anywhere at anytime.

Yet, here too, concerns are rising.  An article by Nicolas Carr in a recent Wired Magazine sounds the alarms with the headline:  The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brain.  The article is adapted from Carrs book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.  Carr’s thesis: overuse of the web makes individuals, and by extension, less knowledgeable.  (Apparently, all the hyperlinks I added to this post increases the odds that you won’t remember what you read.)  He suggests that we are in the midst of a reversal of civilization.

Often times, it seems, when there are structural changes in society we engage in debates about whether a new technology is good or bad.  This phenomenon has been going on since the dawn of civilization.  My colleague Brad Rourke featured a book on his blog called America Calling: A Social History Of The Telephone To 1940 by Claude S. Fischer.  Mr. Fischer documents the social turmoil caused by widespread adoption of the telephone.

When we engage in these technology, good or bad, debates those who favor the changes brought about by a new technology often dismiss the downsides.  These enthusiasts often adopt an Alfred E. Newman attitude — shoulders shrugged, “What me worry?”  They dismiss those who raise concerns as alarmists or luddites.

Those who consider the new technologies to be problematic often overstate the extent of the problems (e.g. all teenagers are sexting) and adopt a nostalgic attitude — if only this didn’t exist and the world was the way it used to be.

Neither attitude is particularly helpful.  There are slim possibilities that The Pill, cell phones or the internet will disappear.  Indeed, it’s more likely, in the case of the internet and cell phones (or whatever we call them in the future) will become more integrated into our lives.

Rather than debate good or bad we must strive to frame useful questions.  Many people already have and are thinking hard about these questions.  I heard Bill Gates articulate a few good questions in a recent interview with Larry King.  They are necessarily new or unique but they are still valuable questions to consider.

What do we want to make public and what should we keep private? This is something that every family and extended family is having to sort out.  How many of us have cringed when a friend or family posted news or photos on Facebook we would have liked to keep to ourselves?  Or, perhaps, we made the post and can’t figure out why people are upset.  An educator I’ve come to respect, Bud Hunt a.ka. budtheteacher, approaches this question with an idea he calls purposeful transparency.

When do we want to be connected and when don’t we? It is easier to be connected all the time.  Who hasn’t been distracted by the cell phone and/or internet in the past few days?  How do we stay on top of important interests without undermining family and work time?

Where do we draw the line on human altering technology? The Pill is one thing but what about technology that enables us to design human genes?  We know that technology will arrive soon that enables people to design their own children.  What’s okay?  What’s not?  This needs to be a discussion that extends beyond dinner parties and becomes a serious national dialogue.

We should neither wish away technologies away nor dismiss the negative consequences that come with all things new.  Instead, we need to keep evaluating how best to manage the affects new technologies create.  There typically isn’t good or bad, right or wrong.  Typically, it’s about finding the balance that works for today (and may or may not tomorrow).

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John Creighton can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook. ]]> http://johncr8on.com/dispatches/dealing-with-the-downside-and-up/feed/ 0