Cracking our genetic code leads to the discovery of America’s character—that is, what’s in the hearts and minds of “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,” as the Preamble introduces our Constitution. Are we, in truth, heading toward a more perfect Union? How do we pursue that more effectively? Let’s take a closer look.
Consider that the United States is an organized system in an open society. The US Constitution sets up a federal government designed to enable the consent of the governed and to protect the rights of its citizens. It divides the government into three separate but interdependent branches. The president is commander in chief of the armed forces, but not chief executive of the government. As the principal leader, he must negotiate the direction of his administration with Congress in order to enact his national agenda.
Organizations are aggregations of human beings guided by a genetic code of their own. They are analogous to a genetic architecture that frames the future and, therefore, the seed from which this future germinates. Organizational leadership evolves in the relationships of the people who serve them in one role or another.
Genetic codes carry the organizational DNA or ODNA just as human beings carry their living DNA. As aggregates of their people, they create policies and carry out programs following practices that are unique in their genetic architecture. These genetic attributes are the super genes that mature their organizational development.
These super genes function metaphorically as the organizational driver, nucleus, and accelerator or ODNA. The Driver is the life stream or cultural superfluid that carries the elements of the organizational DNA. It corresponds with the organization’s high mission. In the case of the Constitution’s Preamble, it is the authority of the People of the United States who may be forming a more perfect Union and who are the population, but not the property, of the nation.
In the Preamble, the Nucleus corresponds with its grand strategy: Justice, domestic Tranquility, the common defence, and the general Welfare. These are, in essence, an ordered sequence of interconnected steps which, when taken, lead toward realization of the organizational mission. They are the core from which a unified organizational body develops. Without any one or more of these steps, the organization missteps and destabilizes. Instability can become a grave threat to the organization’s functioning and, therefore, to its future.
The Preamble’s Accelerator corresponds to the unity of its leadership in securing the Blessings of Liberty for the benefit of its people and their Posterity, as set in the Constitution, on behalf of America as one nation—presumably a just society of civic virtues. The unity and stability of the nation as a whole is quite dependent upon its leadership. And its leadership, in turn, is wholly integrated with the nature of its followers. Sustainable leadership and willing followers are dependent upon one another. In fact, the finest leaders are also followers, and the most reliable followers are also leaders.
Looking at the prospects of America today, the Driver becomes the issue of economic growth for all hopeful Americans. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as Thomas Jefferson considered them, were all one—three aspects of a single reality, the well-being of individual citizens. When, however, the quality of life and the degree of liberty produce unhappiness, there are more troubled experiences, upset lives, and angry temperaments. Instability rises and civic virtue deflates. Government suffers as the public dissembles. Leadership falters, democracy fractures, and the nation is endangered.
When this is the case as it is now, the nucleus reorients to the issue of mutual security, a fear mode for many Americans—fear of terrorism from any source, war of any type, or poverty by any definition—that deactivates them as producers of healthy growth and activates them as disgruntled non-producers of community well-being.
In any case, the accelerator reflects the state of national governability for Americans. Here is where we are experiencing a very significant indifference among prospective voters. In the 2016 election, for example, the largest block of 235 million eligible voters were 106 million nonvoters! And this doesn’t include millions not registered to vote. In a democracy of 323 million people that number is alarming. It indicates that huge numbers of people are opted out of our democratic system.
Cracking our genetic code does lead to the discovery of America’s character, if we pursue it honestly. Because that, in turn, will lead us to the truth about the strength of our nation.
Promise America Alliance 