This Week's Newsweek: Bill Clinton Points to Stages of Consciousness

From the Article:

NW: What you're describing is the end of "future preference" [the idea that each person has an obligation to sacrifice today for the benefit of tomorrow, a longtime Clinton principle].

Clinton: Yeah, I'm worried about it. The rich countries' problem is rigidity and the poor countries' problem is capacity. Then we all share a problem that was best articulated by the philosopher Ken Wilber. He's got this theory that there are basically 10 levels of consciousness—the way we view ourselves, the way we view others—and that it's almost impossible for people to keep up with what circumstances require. If you live in an interdependent world, you have to believe as a starting premise—it doesn't mean you'll never go to war, doesn't mean you'll never fight, you can't be naive or stupid, doesn't mean we shouldn't be out there trying to get the leaders of Al Qaeda—but you have to believe that in an interdependent world, what we have in common is more important than our interesting differences. And the only way to celebrate and make the most of our differences is to get rich out of our differences, create vibrant markets out of our differences. It enables people to have fevered debate in politics without stealing elections or shooting the opposition. For me, if you ask how do you live with inequality, instability, and unsustainability, my answer is you've got to build the capacity of the poor people of the world and build the flexibility of the rich countries and move away from rigidity.

Then in both places the rise of nongovernmental organizations gives us real hope. You know, half of America's foundations have been created since I became president. It's an exploding thing. The promise of being able to create partnerships with governments and the private sector and proving we can do things much faster, cheaper, and better is really important. I just think that you have to make the financials work. If you don't make the financials work, you're just whistling Dixie, and we're all just giving speeches.