HE CAN BE IRASCIBLE, COMPETITIVE, impatient, and childish. He can also be charming, amusing, compassionate, and visionary.
One thing he always is is flat-out busy on projects. For example, with his wife Sedena, he’s conceived and produced a forty-part PBS series on aging. He has been a TV producer and director. And now he is launching new livestream program called Humanity Rising.
As a kid, George was the muscle against bullies. Today, he’s an advocate of the aging and preaches the value of elders in communities. He asks for no special consideration for being eighty, nor does he appear to offer it to others.
And he is still very much becoming.
You described yourself as determined, like “a dog with a bone in your mouth.”
Fairness, justice, and alignment have always been themes that activate me. And there have been many occasions where I have paid a significant price for not being willing to walk away until I feel like alignment has either been achieved or the impossibility of it has been made apparent.
Give me an example.
We’re doing it right now in our world. The pursuit of saving democracy against all kinds of odds; understanding that we haven’t even been practicing democracy for a long time. But it’s the promise of it, the possibility of it, what it can do for humanity and for the consciousness of the future that keeps me at it.
I’m doing everything I can to point out the value of democracy as a practice and what will happen in America and around the world if that practice is lost.
So I’m producing programs on democracy. I write books about democracy. I’ve managed political campaigns and consulted with people running for office because I thought they could advance this issue.
Is Humanity Rising an example?
Humanity Rising is a livestream global network. I’ve been producing a series of programs called The Democracy Dialogues, bringing together activists, leaders, political candidates, donors, secretaries of state, attorney generals – all of whom are doing what they can to try to beat back this offensive toward turning America into an autocracy or a kleptocracy or whatever you want to call it. So we’ve been dialoguing, looking at what the challenges and possible solutions are.
The reason we’re encouraging audiences to listen to these dialogues is that they offer paths for people who don’t know how to get involved. They give people an opportunity to volunteer, to contribute, to vote, to participate in changing legislation.
We want people to understand how we can practice what I call the power of one. That’s the innate power that resides inside of all of us. We can use our voice; we can use our vote; we can use our money; we can use our attention; we can use our ability to protest. All of these things are ways that each of us exercises our sovereignty and integrity.
Do you ever get discouraged?
All the time.
How do you manage that?
I’ll back off for an hour, or a day, or a week; wrestle with my discouragement; and then realize that I don’t have any other choice. There’s the old expression: The way to is through. It’s not in my DNA to sit on my ass and not get involved.
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