Your post resonates with my thinking and offerings, that I have been making in regard to re-framing and re-evaluating how we go after change. I'd only add that this council of psychological advisers would hopefully not be constrained by fragmented and reductive paradigms themselves, but more integrative in their approach. What Gregory Bateson referred to as an ecology of thought, would provide an emergent approach.

Barry, you know that you and I are in synchrony on this and you've always shared your belief that psychology could be used not just for academic study, but for the enrichment of our nation and our selves. I think part of the reason that I ended up at Thrive is precisely because businesses hold much of the power in this country to create systemic change, and psychology can be used as a powerful force to create that change.

Perhaps you'd like to nominate me to advise the president? *grins*

This is a great idea for a start. But why do you believe that a counsel of psychological advisers could effect real social change when the people who would make up that counsel received their college degrees in an education system that was accredited by the the very government they would supposedly be advising?

As a volunteer in the War on Terror, I don't have the luxury of thinking about things like this in the abstract. One of my cousins teaches humanities at a charter school for the Yurok Nation (Native Americans) and he's not allowed to tell his students that by the simple dictionary definition of genocide, the White men committed genocide against their ancestors. He's required by law to fill his students' brains up with political lies. So why do you believe the same thing didn't happen in your education? Therefore, any statement to the effect that scientists learn how to be politically neutral by going to governmentally approved schools must be assumed to be false.

Here's something they don't teach you in science class: The United States Constitution was written in 1787. The Theory of Evolution wasn't released to the public until 1859. The Laws of Thermodynamics weren't discovered until 1868. That means our government was founded by people who had fundamental misunderstandings about biology and physics, which means human behavior, the environment, and economics.

Our Capitalist economy is founded on the assumption that rightful ownership should be determined by people's ability to control resources. But controlling resources depends on people removing them from the environment. But we all depend on the environment for our lives.

A Capitalist economy and a secular government of, by, and for the people are both written into the Constitution. But humanity crossed the line from potential sustainability to unsustainability in the 1980s. That means we are now in a global political situation that is previously unknown within the realm of human experience. Either rightful ownership is determined by people's ability to keep removing resources from the environment, or else we are all the rightful owners of the environmental life support systems that we all depend on. It can't be both.

Everyone who serves in the U.S. military or law enforcement swears to defend the Constitution. But because of its inherent self-contradiction, no one can defend it in the long run. But I haven't heard any scientists talking about that. So scientists are actually NOT looking at the facts. And people like me are getting killed for your mistakes. So obviously, scientific political neutrality is not resulting from scientists being trained in a politically biased education system. With all due respect, if you're not looking at the evidence, what you're talking about is not science.