Let’s call it the faith-based equivalent of a cage match: on one side of our national Mall, this afternoon, V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, will deliver the invocation at the Beyonce-Bono-Springsteen inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.
Two days later, the Rev. Rick Warren, the prominent mega-church pastor and high-profile crusader against same-sex marriage from California’s Orange County, will deliver the invocation at the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama on the West Front of the United States Capitol.
While putting aside the 555-foot phallic symbol that rests squarely between those two locations, and its frightening potential as a symbol of our sexual politics, I’d like to introduce a third name that has not been introduced thus far to this ecumenical face-off: Vilfredo Frederico Damaso Pareto.
Despite a name that would lend itself well to the papacy, Vilfredo Frederico Damaso Pareto was an Italian sociologist, economist and philosopher, born 160 years ago this past July to an exiled Genoese family in Paris. He is best known as the father of the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule (or, for all you eggheads out there, and you know who you are, the “law of the vital few” and the “principal of factor sparsity”).
While studying income and wealth in 18th Century Italy, Pareto observed that 80 percent of Italy’s wealth was owned by 20 percent of the population—and then was surprised to note that the same distribution applied to other countries as well (not to mention America, circa 2009).
Over the past century, the principle has found life well beyond economics: in America today, for instance, 80 percent of our health costs are driven by 20 percent of the population. In engineering control theory, the 80/20 rule is applied to optimization efforts. In Six Sigma, the 80/20 Pareto chart is a primary control tool. Some have even speculated that we wear 20 percent of our favorite clothes 80 percent of the time.
One area where the Pareto principle has not yet found a home is politics. And yet, if you look at the beliefs, teachings, and preaching of Rev. Warren and Rev. Robinson, while 20 percent is as diametrically opposed as it can possibly be, about 80 percent of it is exactly the same: from fighting global poverty to ending illiteracy to stemming the spread of HIV/AIDS to better stewardship of our planet. On global poverty, in particular, there are passionately held, shared beliefs.
They’re not alone. For the better part of two decades, while public opinion polls show that most Americans comfortably share about 80 percent of the same beliefs, our politics and public life have lived in the 20 percent in between.
Name your wedge issue—abortion, stem cell research, death penalty, sex education—and you’ll find people shouting at the top of their lungs, who would likely agree with the people shouting on the other side eight out of every time times on most every other issue.
Maybe the key to transcending the red state/blue state partisan divides in Barack Obama’s America is to create a new Pareto principle for politics: which simply states, rather than dwelling on the 20 percent where we disagree, let’s start with the 80 percent where we do agree, and build from there.
It’s basically what we all learn about conducting successful meetings: if you start the discussion in the places where you agree, it’s much easier to reach some kind of consensus on the places where you disagree.
There is a faith-based precedent for this as well: the Interfaith Center of New York.
When the Center first opened, it sought to bring people together to talk about God and religious truths. It received terrific support from liberals, but not conservatives. As its director of programs, Matthew Weiner once explained, “The more conservative religious folks were not interested in talking about spirituality, peace-building and social justice.”
So instead, the Center re-focused its seminars and sessions on issues such as domestic violence, health care access and immigration issues—in other words, the practical application of shared beliefs—and suddenly, religious leaders of every kind turned out, including conservatives.
Would the Pareto Principle for politics actually work? Who knows? Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe the 20 percent that divides us is too big to overcome. But isn’t it worth finding out? The President-elect’s invitation of both Rick Warren and V. Gene Robinson would certainly suggest he believes it. Shouldn’t we?
source:http://www.podiumpundits.com/author/porzulak/
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