photo © amy sly

John Zogby: We Don’t Need Data, We Need People.

I am an optimist and maintain that. I didn’t start out that way. I let my numbers do the talking. I think that America has increasingly come to grips with spending less in tougher times. There has been a redefinition of the American Dream, away from what I call “traditional materialism” towards “secular spiritualism.” We do not want our lives to be defined by what we own, but want them to be defined by what kind of legacy we are leaving. It is in terms of leading a genuine life and making our world, community, and even our family, better than when we started. I think that, at least generationally, we will be doing less but being smarter consumers, using credit cards a lot less, and not living beyond our means as much.

We need more access to information. More importantly, we need to be trained and experienced in what to do with the information. How do we work in teams? How do we crowd source? How do we sift through responses from peers and make decisions? This creates direct democracy. I am not going to say that Congress is obsolete but I am going to say that corporations will have a hell of a time buying off a hundred million people. It is now a hundred million party system.

John Zogby works as a national pollster and veteran analyst. He is a well-known interpreter of the American and global scene. As author of The New York Times bestseller The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, Zogby continues to put his finger on the pulse of America, creating a portrait of the trends that drive our society today, and in the future.

This excerpt is from American Dreamers, available now at Sharp Stuff.