I was involved for several months with various OWS working groups. I started with Education and later moved to Demands. Given my near obsession with the importance of goal-directed thinking, I finally gravitated to the Vision and Goals group. I met a wonderful and diverse group of individuals. There was a real dedication to the goal of drafting a document that would represent the entire OWS movement. Unfortunately this never happened during the time I was part of the group. It was hard enough for us, as a working group, to come up with something and whenever we did present to the General Assembly, there were always enough detractors to prevent anything from be ratified.

It is wrong to say that OWS has failed or fizzled, and it certainly has had an effect on the debate in the US. That said, it never blossomed into the American Spring and it is clearly not where we all hoped it would be 1 year later. Was OWS a victim of dichotomous thinking? In part. There was a certain amount of “me, me, me” replacing “us, us, us” along the way.  The real problem was entropy, that natural tendency for things to become more disordered. People did not appreciate the amount of work it takes to create order among such a diverse group. Inclusivity is great, and I am glad OWS was never co-opted by lager interests like the Tea Party was. It is an unfortunate example of how important goals are to human activity.

OWS needs to go beyond the simple dichotomous “Wall Street is bad.”  Until there is a clear Vision and well formed set of Goals, I am afraid that OWS will remain largely ineffective in the future.