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America’s Arc of Moral Madness (and Hope)
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America’s Arc of Moral Madness (and Hope)

American Identity, Current, General, The New Realities

America’s Arc of Moral Madness (and Hope)

The path of human progress is random, chaotic, and often maddening. Taming humanity—organizing ourselves for the common good—has been a fool’s errand since antiquity; cajoling and coping with humanity are perhaps the best we can do. Yet there is also a spirit in each of us that never surrenders. That in the face of what seems insane and insurmountable in the moment, we find a sliver of light through which we squeeze ourselves and dare to meet the challenge; through which we emerge again to restore ourselves and renew hope. Most Americans rise each day with the expectation that the day is theirs; that they will be left to their own desires and devices, as long as they treat others as they wish to be treated.

This fundamental right of self-determination governed by the norm of reciprocity has been with us since our nation’s inception that we are, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, “endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Life, liberty, and happiness. Throughout our history, we Americans have respected and protected—often with our lives—these freedoms fostered within the norm of reciprocity. At its essence, this is the magic of America—of an experiment that has (thus far) prevailed regardless of the enemy (external or internal) who might wish to shatter the persistent dreams and aspirations of Americans who are inherently in charge of their destiny. Today, we are facing one of those daunting moments when those we have chosen to represent our interests have, at best, a dubious commitment to our interests over their own.

The last seventy-five-or-so years have produced incredible gains in human welfare as The United States ascended to its throne as the world’s lone superpower. Compared to our parents and grandparents, our lives are a cakewalk. The affluence we enjoy is unprecedented in human history. The question today is are better-off humans better humans? Moreover, is what it means to be human due for a major overhaul? The late French philosopher, Michel Foucault argued humans are a curated composition of intellectual and moral architecture that if revised or discarded “would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.” Foucault was suggesting we humans are a constellation of cognitive illusions which durability relies on our collective subscription—of our willingness to play along. That what it means to be human is dynamic and impermanent, which is as the Buddha further argued, the nature of everything.

On the last day of March, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. during which he sought to assure us that justice was always on the horizon, that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” For those who remember 1968, or have studied that period in American history, our society was as fraught with division (if not more so) than it is today. The Viet Nam War, racial conflict, generational animus, severe air and water pollution, and a stagnant inflationary economy made us feel as if we had entered a dark tunnel that was sure to collapse before we ever got to any light at the other end. And, like today, there was plenty of violence in our streets, more often waged with bombs than with guns.

Our victorious euphoria that ended the long period of crisis that began with the stock market crash in 1929 and ran through Word War II, and which subsequently gave rise to large American families living in tidy idyllic suburban neighborhoods in the 1950s, would reach its climax in 1969 when we landed a man on the moon. During this period, “America is good” was our moral mantra. Four days after King’s assurance of justice at the National Cathedral, he was gunned down on the balcony of The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, the future suddenly looked bleak. The paint was peeling off the post-World War II America. Unbeknownst to any of us at the time, King’s “arc of the moral universe” had achieved its apex. It would prove to be a bridge to moral peril more than an arc—maybe even a bridge to moral collapse.

We then entered what became the malaise decade of the 1970s with double-digit inflation, a dishonest law-breaking president in Richard Nixon, and an ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation posed by the Soviet Union. With the Viet Nam War winding down in the shame of defeat, and the mess of Nixon’s Watergate scandal destroying what had been a stellar run for our federal government through the 1950s and much of the 1960s, the best President Carter could do was offer us redemption; if we would only turn down the thermostat, put on a cardigan sweater, and sacrifice more, Carter’s evangelical sensibilities believed we would be born again into greatness. He came to epitomize the decade with what presidential historians still refer to as the “malaise presidency.”

Then, a sunny smiling actor-turned-politician from California, Ronald Reagan, arrived on the scene to offer Americans absolution. We weren’t the problem; government was the problem. Our civil religion flipped from Carter’s jeremiads to a re-inspired version of the late 19^th century prosperity gospel. Reagan was here to liberate us—to lift the cloud of malaise. In 1980, Reagan beat Carter in a landslide with 489 electoral college votes to Carter’s 49; a 10X drubbing. Then, suddenly, we embraced an ethos of entrepreneurial zealotry in pursuit of prosperity. Among other shifts, the best and brightest no longer sought a role in our federal government as they had after World War II. They became lawyers, investment bankers, and technologists who embraced investor Carl Icahn’s new ‘morality’ conveyed by the character, Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 movie Wall Street that “Greed is good!” The nouveau riche were back in style for the first time since the Roaring Twenties. Heavily starched shirts, suspenders, and mousse-laden hair for men, and leg warmers for women who swarmed the new Jane Fonda-fueled craze of aerobics became uniform staples of the 1980s. (I still have my suspenders by Hermes and my hair eventually recovered.)

In the period’s cultural observer, George Gilder’s, 1984 book The Spirit of Enterprise, he romanticized this new spirit of America in the 1980s as reflected in its newly-minted entrepreneurs.

Some are scientists, some are artists, some are craftsmen; most are in business. Although they act as individual men and women, they are nearly always driven by familial roles and obligations. They are not always temperate. Rarely elegant or tall, only occasionally glib or manifestly leaders of men. By fleeing their homes and families to go to far-off lands, may inflict and suffer a trauma of loss—and fight to justify and overcome it. As immigrants, many seek an orphan’s fate, and toil to launch a dynasty. Ugly, they wreak beauty; rude and ruthless they redeem the good and true. Mostly outcasts, exiles, mother’s boys, rejects, warriors, they early learn the lessons of life, the knowledge of pain, the ecstasy of struggle.

This spirit of enterprise, as Gilder called it, was accompanied by a new spirit of victory with the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Christmas holiday in 1991. The subsequent peace dividend was characterized by a sudden increase in both political and economic power for America. The United States was now the world’s lone superpower. The thesis of American exceptionalism that began with John Winthrop’s (1630) “A Model of Christian Charity” in which he suggested “we shall be as a city upon a hill [and] the eyes of the world are upon us” to settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and later invoked by many politicians including Kennedy and Reagan, made its transition from setting the humble example for the world to the neocon dream of reshaping the world in the image of America. We had won the Cold War and quickly dispensed with humility in favor of hubris. Winning is its own intoxicant.

An era of politics as blood sport was ushered in by the congressman and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich from Georgia in 1994 whose “Contract with America” began our precipitous descent into the dysfunction we see in Washington D.C., today. Gekko’s “greed is good” became Gingrich’s “gridlock is good.” Destroying the institutions of our democracy was picked up by the Tea Party in the early 2000s and is the core of the MAGA movement thirty years after Gingrich’s so-called contract. The late 1990s caught another huge tailwind after the end of the Cold War with the coming of the Digital Age. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs completely transformed the economy from bricks and mortar to 1s and 0s. We survived the fearful doomsday transition we imagined in “Y2K” as we rang in the new millennium and our moral orientation shifted again. “Digital is good” as the next moral mantra was born.

Americans were entranced with digital technologies in all aspects of their lives: work, play, and love. Meanwhile, in a cultural fit of delusions of grandeur, we lost sight of the virtues and values that created the greatest empire in the history of the world. Initially and dramatically, following the attacks of 9/11, with the lies of weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda in Iraq to justify the Bush/Cheney aspirations of an American exceptionalism on steroids. We had been poked with a painful stick and it was time America showed the world what it meant to be a superpower, or at least how we could spend trillions of dollars, kill tens of thousands of people, and destabilize an entire region of the world.

However, our greatest delusion may have been believing that linking human beings on a filter-free platform through Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook would somehow propel humanity forward. Social media promised to be an elixir for everything from the proliferation of democracy (remember the Arab Spring of 2010?) to solving all our issues related to human connection by friending and liking at the click of a button rather than a handshake or a hug. But like a toxic solvent, the ether of the Internet dissolved America’s social fabric. Within ten years, sharing cute pictures of grandma’s cats morphed into a laboratory of disinformation including an incubator of suicide for our youth. Contrary to what initially seemed to improve our lives, social media made us vulnerable, narrow-minded, depressed, and dangerous.

The Age of Deceit that began with Bush/Cheney has subsequently achieved its pinnacle of expression with the second election of Donald Trump. We experienced a moment of potential moral reset during the period of Barack Obama’s “hope and change,” but alas, a black man in our White House was more than too many Americans could tolerate. “Deceit is good” is today’s perverted moral mantra. If nothing else, Trump has demonstrated that lies have no consequences, at least no negative consequences for him. It is hard to find King’s “moral universe” anywhere in American life, today.

Many believe that the institutions we have built over two-and-one-half centuries will survive the wrecking ball of Trump and the MAGAs. As one scholar recently suggested to me in a retort to my concern that we now have a virtue-free president, while our founders believed wholeheartedly in the importance of virtues, our institutions are strong enough to survive regardless of who might occupy the Oval. In other words, virtues-in-leadership no longer matters. This seems like a specious—plausible but wrong—argument to me. I suspect it may even prove to be the ultimate expression of American exceptionalist hubris. At the very least, it is an extremely risky proposition. Alas, such is the life and inevitable death of empires; on this point history speaks with great clarity. Our city upon a hill may be reduced to rubble sooner, rather than later.

Recently, I attended the new Broadway show, McNeal, at Lincoln Center in New York City. It stars Robert Downey, Jr. as an aging Nobel prize winning writer faced with the many dilemmas of artificial intelligence (AI). Downey’s natural irascible nature was a perfect fit for his character, Jacob McNeal, who is a near-perfect writ-large reflection of the American character in 2024. Often intoxicated, but never wrong, never apologetic, and never in doubt. “AI is good” as our next moral mantra appears to be a certainty. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is our new Gekko, Gingrich, Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, and Trump.

To be clear, I am not advocating for the end of the development of new technologies. Technology has been essential to advancing human welfare. I am simply asking that we heed our mistakes—like those we have experienced with social media—and consider carefully how we apply technology in our lives. To pick our moral compass up off the floor and put it back on the table. Today, the arc King idealized in 1968 is a nearly unfathomable, random, chaotic, and maddening black hole into which algorithmic equations and quantum computing are sucking humanity into the abyss at astonishing speed. Notwithstanding the promise of improving human welfare, we risk allowing AI to extinguish the human spirit; to suppress volition and homogenize our lives. To prove Foucault’s thesis.

As creativity advocate, Kirby Ferguson has illustrated, we are experiencing a crisis of sameness produced by technology. AI doesn’t create thought; it flattens it into an average of everything. It wrenches the spirit out of the human. It turns both poor writers and great ones into mediocre writers. But, as Ferguson points out, conformity and repression often lead to rebellion and rebirth. Anyone up for the next Renaissance? Are you, or your child, the next Leonardo da Vinci?

Unfortunately, the endgame of AI may be to replace American exceptionalism-on-steroids with nihilism-on-steroids. From humility to hubris to nihilism may be the signposts which tomorrow’s historians use to define America’s final descent. Taming humanity—let alone assuring justice—is becoming a quaint notion, indeed. Humanity itself may be an irrelevant locus of focus. But, no, it doesn’t have to be that way.

What comes next in the cycles of American history is anyone’s guess. Rebirth, or a descent into an entropic collapse are both possibilities, as are other variations between the two. Our task remains, however, the same: look for that sliver of light to squeeze through to fortify and restore our humanity—to bring hope back into our lives. We made our history what it was: a messy and inelegant march into the future. But, march we did and we remain (mostly) upright today. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt argued during another period of great uncertainty in America, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

For many, Trump is a blessing: a savior who will restore them to what they view as their historic and rightful place in social, political, and economic order. To produce a sort of retrotopia. Others view him as a curse whose deceitful, cruel, and sleazy manner is not just an existential threat to American democracy, but also to their own lives. Either way, our best hope—however perversely accomplished—is to get Americans back on track to moral goodness where truth, self-determination, and reciprocity snap America back to its potential as that city upon a hill. At our essence is something no technology or demagogue can defeat: a flame of resilience and ingenuity that resides deep within our souls. Not even a Blackwell chip from Nvidia can generate this spirit.

Our founder Thomas Paine wrote at the time of our nation’s birth, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” He also acknowledged, however, that

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

In other words, we need look no further than into a mirror to point the finger of blame for the government we endure.

In my lifetime, the four most inspirational leaders were Kennedy, King, Reagan, and Obama. Theirs are the faces that should be on our Mt. Rushmore of today. They each had very different political perspectives and extraordinarily different personal backgrounds. However, they had one thing absolutely in common: they all made Americans feel good about being Americans. They believed in the American experiment that began in 1776. They lifted us up and made us reach for what Abraham Lincoln called our “better angels.” Like Lincoln, the first two were assassinated; the third nearly assassinated; and the fourth, spared. (The optimism of unity is threatening to those who seek power through animus.) Their courage resided deeply in the core of their being and their belief in the unlimited capacity of the human spirit. They personified hope. In their honor, it is our duty to stand in opposition to divisive forces and to avert America’s moral collapse.

We are better off today, but are we better humans? The Latin-based word nihilism in its literal translation means nothing-ism: the rejection of moral principles where cynicism reigns and life is meaningless. Based on America’s current trajectory, we need to face the possibility that nihilism may become the defining character of the next America. Although our institutions may hold, they remain the object of human leadership. As columnist David Brooks observed, MAGA is perhaps most accurately considered as an inversion of morality made up of “performative arsonists.”

Destroying things is easy, building things is hard. I think we all believe (and expect) that soon-to-be empowered MAGA loyalists can destroy, but can they build? As we learned with our attempt at regime change in Iraq, being able to do the first and not the second can result in long term instability and expanded regional conflicts with no end in sight. Is that really what we want for America?

For the moment, as Americans we still enjoy most of our rights of self-determination. Being human still matters. All of these developments over the last seven-plus decades have been, as they always have been: up to us. Individually and collectively, we need to act to direct the future of our lives, our communities, country, and world. Notwithstanding the headwinds of Trump’s authoritarian nationalism devoid of any subscription to virtues, in America the people still decide. We have the power.

It is an evident truth that without darkness there can be no light. The spiritual parallel is that without suffering there can be no enlightenment; without despair transcendence is unachievable. That the only way out is through. Therein lies the path forward. It is time to stand again; to honor our voices; to move on from this moment with humility and determination. To make our presence known and, moreover, felt. To open, to release, and to rise.

By William Steding|2024-12-07T23:21:20+00:00December 7th, 2024|American Identity, Current, General, The New Realities|0 Comments

A Conceit of Contempt
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A Conceit of Contempt

General, Recent, The New Realities

A Conceit of Contempt

In the human journey to create the most peaceful, stable, and perfect society, the ancients considered many issues, conditions, and regimes to govern themselves. In Book IV of The Republic of Plato, Socrates, while brainstorming a perfect society with his students, suggests that if virtues like wisdom, moderation, and courage were established in a city there would be no need for laws. Further, that if each man pursued his particular and unique skills to the best of his ability to affect what economists later termed “division of labor” and “economic specialization” while taking care to manage his appetites by his commitments to reason and goodness, that a natural harmony—a state of justice—would prevail.

More than two thousand years later, our founders had a more skeptical view and laid down a Declaration and Constitution to provide a framework within which laws would be made to guide and guard our pursuit of living in peace and harmony. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both maintained lists of virtues they frequently reviewed to assess their compliance and self-govern their characters. These lists and the founding documents of our nation were strongly influenced by the ancients (in particular Cicero) as well as English and Scottish philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Franklin suggested the founders had given us a “republic if you can keep it” at the time of our nation’s birth. In our nearly two-and-a-half centuries of the American experiment we have kept it. In the election of 2024, a majority of us selected a leader who, unlike the ancients and our founders, has no apparent subscription to any virtues (let alone a discernible conscience) and believes norms and laws—in addition to serving in our military—are for “suckers and losers.” My, how far we have fallen.

Trump’s conceit of contempt targets virtues and laws in the nature of elitist arrogance that holds he is above following any rules meant for people lesser than he, what the Greeks called the hoi poloi, meaning the masses. As a result, whether or not our republic makes it to a third century is now a serious concern. A rogue virtue-free leader may appeal to America’s maverick mythology, but also risks all we have built as the exemplar of freedom in the world. In the next four years, we may look more like Victor Orban’s Hungary than the United States of America. One might feel that our founders would be extremely disappointed, but I expect they would also be surprised the republic lasted this long; late-life correspondence between Jefferson and John Adams shows that founders didn’t believe the republic would make it out of the 19^th century.

However, in the election of 2024, this conceit of contempt was not only expressed by Trump. It was at the core of the losing campaign by Harris and the Democrats, albeit of a different nature with different targets. Their conceit of contempt was an elitist form of judgment deployed with the blame ‘n shame game, which can be an effective form of manipulation (commonly deployed by organized religions), but not a successful method of persuasion. Their targets were not virtues and laws, they were voters. Trump certainly also aims his contempt at people—his enemies—but not at his supporters. He brings his supporters alongside his own (baseless) victimhood as their protector. He forms a duplicitous yet sturdy bond with them. His contempt acted to attract voters, while Harris’s acted to repel voters.

In my last post, the Sunday before the election, I suggested that “Trump could win—maybe even by a large electoral margin” due in no small part to Harris’s mistakes. Many of my Democrat readers let me know how much they did not like my prediction. Fair enough, but I am compelled by my own center of gravity to write things as I see them—as they are, rather than the way I might wish them to be. I also suggested that “Four more years of Trump will be devastating for our country and the world.” If we consider ourselves proper guardians of our republic, we must understand how to appeal to people in a persuasive manner. Understanding this is really fairly simple; it is based in the nature of how humans support and curate their egos. Then we have to give them a reason to identify (in a healthy way) with better candidates.

At the essence of human flourishing is a healthy sense of self-worth. If this essential element of personhood is not established early in life, destructive behaviors to one’s self and others are inevitable; all in a twisted and nearly-always futile attempt to fill the void where worthiness belongs. In relationships, those lacking a strong sense of self have little hope of ever forming an intimate, authentic, and strong bond with another human. Those so afflicted are like human wrecking balls in social structures, especially families.

Among Americans today, who we are and why we are—our sense of worth—is in abject jeopardy. It is a borderline epidemic and insidious human tragedy; especially tragic (and perplexing) considering that we live in an age of abundance. From anxious to angry to chronically depressed, many Americans feel like victims; they feel unworthy. “Woe is me” is not conducive to a healthy mindset. These people are always looking for external affirmation inasmuch as self-affirmation is difficult to impossible. Incidentally, this condition frames the fundamental appeal of cults, which a number of sociologists have suggested fits the MAGA movement, referring to it as a “cult of personality.”

All humans strive to feel good about themselves. Those with fragile egos often seek psychic nourishment beyond their immediate social support system by a referent. Referents come in many forms through the processes of self-identification that shape and continually curate the ego. They are those things—usually persons or ideas or beliefs—that without acknowledging and understanding make it impossible to completely consider who someone is, or at least who they would like us to believe they are.

Trump (who himself struggles with a fragile ego) has become a referent for many Americans who are fed up with the conceit of contempt many political movements and campaigns—including too often Harris’s—used to target them. Trump identified with voter’s sense of victimhood and offered them absolution through him in much the same manner Jesus Christ offered absolution to his followers. It was a slick con. His supporters will learn soon enough that, unlike Christ, he couldn’t care less about them. He is, and always will be, concerned only with himself. Disgruntled Americans (most bizarrely many evangelicals) might have chosen a deity with a durable track record, like Christ, but opted for a con-man from Queens.

The blame ‘n shame game has been central to many political movements like the environmental/climate change movement, Occupy Wall Street, Me Too, calls for reparations, Black Lives Matter, and others. Mostly considered Liberal movements, or movements of the Democratic Party. Similarly, as we saw in the later stages of Harris’s campaign, the Obamas in particular were dispatched to shame men—particularly black men—to vote for her. Women were also targeted with a sense of gender-allegiant guilt (as they were in Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign) to vote for Harris. These movements and campaigns have another thing in common other than being somewhere between less-than-successful and outright failures: they each prove that a conceit of contempt is no way to affect persuasion in human beings.

This is the subtle yet deep and instructive lesson of the 2024 election. Notwithstanding the proclaimed brilliance of party loyalists, pundits, columnists, and pollsters who have been making their many and varied claims of election omniscience after the fact, none of them I have read have a clue when it comes to this lesson that actually produced the election results this year. None recognize that this conceit of contempt in America is endemic and toxic—across both political parties and all segments of our society. They apparently are blind and/or numb to its pervasive rampancy.

If you have followed my posts over the last few years, you know I continually advocate for lifting people up to persuade them to follow a virtues-founded course in life. The ancients did get that part right, and while our founders worried about the prospect of divisive “factions,” they also recognized the extraordinary opportunity for a union in a free land characterized by abundant resources. In the political realm, I have recommended Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign of 1984 as a model for politicians to follow forty years later. Alas, what we face now is mourning for America.

In life, we often toggle between enjoy (to be in-joy) and endure (in this usage to be in-suffering). This conceit of contempt—regardless who deploys it—is responsible for much of the social, economic, and political destruction we must now endure. I would say shame on us, but I recognize blame ‘n shame does not put anyone on a path to en-joy.

America today is a sad society. The barbarians are at the gate, although they are not arriving from beyond our borders, they are from within the republic. Socrates would probably call us “feverish” and “unhealthy,” which are inherently unstable and ungovernable conditions. We seem locked-in to our preferences for contempt over respect, suspicion over trust, falsehood over truth, and delusion over reality. Further, we cannot deal with anything except very short-term issues, leaving the substantial but longer-term issues of our national debt and climate change beyond our capacity to consider.

A superpower must lead to maintain its relative power in the international system. In today’s America, we are stuck in a cycle of reactivity swinging our fists at each other and perceived boogeymen that are like ghosts lurking in the shadows. Not exactly enlightened or reliable leadership. We need to get our act together and soon. Our allies are deeply concerned and our adversaries can’t wait to see us fall.

The stakes are high and there is much work to do. We must work on ourselves first—we must heal our own dispositions—then work with each other. Above all else, we need to set aside our contempt for each other. There is no better time to begin repairing and restoring ourselves and our society than in the present moment—regardless of who is president. Waiting four more years may render our republic beyond any prospect of restoration.

By William Steding|2024-12-07T23:01:38+00:00November 17th, 2024|General, Recent, The New Realities|0 Comments

It is Up to Women
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It is Up to Women

General, Leadership

It is Up to Women

There is one thing the vast majority of Americans agree on in an otherwise deeply divided nation: we all wish this election would end sooner rather than later. Politicians have discarded the art of persuasion for crass tools of manipulation that strain our democratic sensibilities to the breaking point. The new American machine of political outrage has turned discourse into a bloodsport while the now-banal deployment of deceit has produced a leaden blanket of exhaustion that smothers our better spirits.

Notwithstanding vote counting shenanigans that could leave the results in question for days and weeks to come, at least the ads designed to scare us into voting for one candidate or against another will end on Tuesday. The streaming will, hopefully, quit screaming. That said, regardless of who wins, or appears to win on November 5^th, Trump and his team of sycophants will work to assure chaos through at least early January. Chaos is, after all, the fundamental modus operandi of the charlatan; it keeps the truth always just beyond our grasp, and the fraudster out of chains.

Pollsters have been pulling their hair out trying to predict how we will vote. Millions of dollars have been spent on research and consultants to design messages to move us towards one candidate or another. In an imperfectly divided America few, if any, understand Americans because traditional identifiers like race, religion, party affiliation, age, etc. are no longer explanatory, nor predictive.

While educational achievement remains a somewhat reliable predictor across all age groups, gender is the only significant marker of voting preference, principally among the youngest voters. When you combine education and gender there is an astounding 43 point spread between voters for Harris and Trump; college educated women prefer Harris by 27 points while non-college men prefer Trump by 16 points. The age-old dictum still applies: “It’s all about turnout.” We should also expect split-ticket voting—where people vote for candidates without regard for party loyalty—to reach an all-time high this election. The impact of the independent voter will continue to rise.

Eventually, the candidates and their donors will realize the mistakes they have made. Frankly, nearly all have run strategically inept campaigns. Only one candidate, Donald Trump, got it more right than wrong, and he only got it half right. Despite his outrageous and despicable character, he has had his finger on the emotional pulse of Americans better than Biden or Harris. Biden never understood it while Harris had it right initially, then she got it all wrong. Emotions—not facts—drive feelings, and in 2024 we will vote based on our feelings. Regrettably, Trump understands this much better than Harris.

Allow me to explain.

In America, we are nearing the end of the fourth period of crisis in our history. Trump may extend this period of crisis, but it will end eventually, consistent with the universal rule of impermanence. For the last several years we have been enveloped by a fog of various anxieties leaving many depressed. As a fog, it is difficult to recognize in real time as it creeps in, and once we can’t see well it becomes challenging to find a road out. The War on Terror, the Great Recession, the pandemic, climate change, and political dysfunction have all affected us in different, but negative ways.

In the process, the social, political, and economic fabric of our union has been severely compromised. If you are under thirty-five years of age, it is unlikely you even recall the relentless and optimistic spirit that defined America in the last half of the twentieth century unless you watched it in an old movie. Today, we are looking for a way out. It’s what humans do. At first, we cope, then survive, then (hopefully) prosper.

The new reality is that traditional demographic identifiers that pollsters use to slice and dice voter responses are no longer relevant; what moves us to vote has little to do with them. In an angst-addled state, we tend to suspend the rational for the emotional. Although when pressed by pollsters or friends to answer why we are voting one way or another, we can still muster a plaintive response like “economy’” or “immigration,” or “reproductive rights,” or “crime,” or something else. But the truth is we will vote based on who makes us feel better, or at least doesn’t make us feel worse. In a hyper-divided America, we no longer fall neatly into groups; we have become complex and highly individualized beings with our own specific tangle of desires and aversions.

The things that depress or inspire Americans are very different for each of us. Those who feel they are losing their position in American society—are being disenfranchised—may be white, black, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, straight, gay, old, or young. Those who feel the American Dream of self-determination is being threatened also include people of varied demographic backgrounds. Those who feel their personal security is at risk can be an old white man or a young trans woman. Those who feel their best years lie ahead of them can be the young Hispanic male graduate, or the recently divorced middle-aged woman. The tech-bro engaged in AI and quantum computing may feel he is going to change the world, while the septuagenarian woman engaged in teaching mindfulness to her cohorts at the assisted living facility may view her life as reaching its pinnacle of fulfillment. In 2024, our personal outlook has little to do with our respective demographic profiles; feelings are everything.

Three years ago, in November 2021, I wrote an essay called “MAFGA” which stands for Make Americans Feel Good Again. I argued that it was “a simple and powerfully persuasive proposition.” I railed against the use of shame and fear as tools of manipulation that are not only ineffective, they are injurious. I further argued that “lifting people up has always proven more powerful than putting them down,” in hopes that candidates in the 2022 and 2024 elections and other social and political movements would change their ways.

Then, last year and again this year I reminded those seeking public office of the great success of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 who, after another depressing period in America following the Viet Nam War, Watergate, super-high inflation, and the jeremiads of Jimmy Carter, simply offered Americans absolution while painting a bucolic picture of “Morning in America, Again.” Reagan’s absolution was, “You are not the problem, government is the problem.”

Harris initially had it right. At the Democrat convention and the immediate days that followed, she engaged in a MAFGA campaign. Not only did she aim at making Americans feel good about their lives, more fundamentally she was making Americans feel good about being Americans, again. It was about us, even as she introduced us to her own story. The Trump campaign was on its heels faced with a young optimistic new opponent. Trump, himself, slid into an apoplectic stupor. He had been erased from the headlines. Then, she took the bait.

She was goaded by her opponent and the media to get specific about policy after her mid-Summer meteoric rise in the polls following Biden’s abdication and the convention. She then relinquished her feel-good strategy and fell into the policy trap. Tax the billionaires! Everyone gets a down payment for an affordable home! Small businesses will get a tax break! And on. While it was certainly appropriate for her to articulate her policy proposals, she failed to connect them to the positive effects they would have on voter’s lives. She failed to answer the question, what does it mean to me?

Policies are features, and people don’t buy features, they buy benefits. Even a car salesperson understands the difference between features and benefits. Features are based in facts while benefits are based in meaning. How will this policy improve my life and my family’s future? How will it lift me up to make me feel proud of myself and my country? What does it mean to me? Features appeal to our rational state while benefits appeal to our emotional state. The latter will determine how we vote in this election. It is a distinction that makes a huge difference. One of my questions for Harris is, how can a campaign with a billion dollars not hire an advisor who understands this basic tenet of persuasion?

When her policy orientation caused her numbers to plateau, she shifted again, but in the wrong direction. She tried to out-fear the master of fear, Donald Trump. She ranted endlessly about how awful it would be if he were elected. It was as if she was channeling her inner Joe Biden. Consequently, she committed the cardinal sin of campaigning: she put her opponent in the spotlight at the expense of her own campaign objectives. She made herself look like she was losing, and people at the margin—the undecideds—are unlikely to cast their vote for someone they think may lose. It’s not the way they want to feel. To modify James Carville’s old maxim, in the election of 2024, it’s how you make people feel, stupid!

The Harris campaign even dispatched Barack and Michelle Obama to shame men into voting for her even though shame seldom works—especially with men. As the columnist Maureen Dowd pointed out, Trump appeals to men who feel emasculated, who see Trump as the “antidote to shrinking male primacy.” Trump pandered to enervated men while the Harris campaign shamed them. In effect, Trump invoked Reagan’s absolution: you are not the problem, Harris and the woke Dems are the problem. Which do you think would attract more voters—especially testosterone-loaded young men? Harris’s shame, or Trump’s absolution?

In short, Harris traded optimism and making Americans feel good again for mundane feature-based policies, fear-mongering, and shame. She abdicated the high road and cast herself as a struggling coming-from-behind candidate rather than the voice of a winner—of change and optimism—even while she was being supported by more than one billion dollars. Oops.

Meanwhile, in spite of his ugly disposition and complete lack of any semblance of policy credibility, Trump continued to do what he does best: tweak the fears—the emotional anxieties—of distressed Americans, especially men. In the late stages of crisis, those driven by anxiety outnumber those who are content. This, and Harris’s strategic mistakes, is why Trump could win—maybe even by a large electoral margin. Trump could never be optimistic—could never execute a MAFGA strategy—but he did engage with feelings even if they are our lesser feelings—our anxieties. He owns the market on fear and anger and he played on feelings much better than Harris down the stretch.

Obviously, I don’t know who will win any better than the pollsters, but I do understand how people will vote in 2024. It is both complicated and obvious. People don’t fit neatly into old categories and may never again. Welcome to our infinitely diverse world, pols and pollsters!

For years now at my blog, and in my 2020 book, Saving America in the Age of Deceit, I have characterized Trump as a wannabe fascist. Many suggested that I was guilty of hyperbole. It is now clear that if anything I should have dropped the adjective, “wannabe.” Even the venerable ninety-two-year-old historian, Robert Paxton, who first resisted the label for Trump, calling it a “toxic label” in 2017, believes Trumpism is fascism today drawing comparisons to his studies of how fascism swallowed France in the early 1940s.

Four more years of Trump will be devastating for our country and the world. If Trump gets his way on tax cuts and tariffs, and allows Elon Musk and the Project 25 bros to run wild destroying government agencies, it could produce an American economic tragedy that could rival the Great Depression; similar to what President Hoover and Treasury Secretary Mellon did that preceded the crash of 1929. Politically, what could happen may mirror the rise of fascist tyranny in the late 1930s that we were warned of by Sinclair Lewis in his 1935 dystopian novel, It Can’t Happen Here.

Alas, Harris had her shot. Had she stayed on the MAFGA path (where Trump could never compete), I expect she would have won in a landslide. Instead, she decided to try to compete on Trump’s platform of fear. It is as if Taco Bell, whose core competency is cheap tacos, decided to abandon tacos to compete with McDonalds in selling hamburgers and fries. I imagine the taco giant’s next decision would be made in bankruptcy court: chapter 7 (liquidation) or 11 (reorganization).

I do truly hope Harris eeks out a victory. I hold out hope for an upside surprise—that the pollsters have it wrong (as they most certainly will), but in her favor rather than his, this time.

Let me be clear, it is up to women—especially Gen Z women—who can pull it out for Harris. My late mother would be so pleased that her granddaughter, Corsica Steding, and her peers, might have the power to swing a presidential election. In 2010, President Obama penned a letter to my mother on her 87^th birthday stating, in part, that “You have witnessed great milestones in our Nation’s history, and your life represents an important part of the American narrative. I hope you are filled with tremendous pride and joy.” At the time, not many 87-year-old white women supported Barack Obama, but my mother did. She had hoped a woman would become president in her lifetime, but was nearly as pleased when a black man did; she recognized his wisdom and grace as her own. My plea to women across the country this Sunday is that my mother’s narrative does not die on this coming Tuesday, and that my daughter can live the life my mother worked so hard for her to have.

Like many Americans in the center, I am not as much for Harris as I am against Trump. I struggle with several of her policy positions and her inability to answer questions clearly and succinctly, but for those of us for whom character is paramount and who care about the founding principles of our nation, it is an easy call. She has certainly won the dollar-donation polls, so perhaps that proves to be a better indicator. However, if Trump wins (as the bond market and gamblers at Polymarket and Predictit expect), I will certainly understand why.

I expect most of us will escape Trump’s tyrannical wrath, but we will all know some of his victims—some may even be friends and family. His tariff proposals alone will severely harm the American consumer (mostly middle class) and our economy will endure yet higher inflation and an exploding deficit—even economists at the very conservative American Enterprise Institute concur with this assessment. As for our democracy, as Harvard’s Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have argued, our last pathway to save the republic may be “societal mobilization.” In sum, if Trump wins, the decline of the American empire that many international relations scholars suggest peaked in its power in 2001, will accelerate. And, it will have been our choice—our doing.

If there is any good news, it is that there is life after empire. Good people will still lead good lives. The pendulum will swing again from darkness to light as it did in the late 1940s. World order will be remade; as multipolar rather than unipolar. In the process, the United States will lose its stature as sole superpower. Perhaps the indomitable spirit of earlier Americans will be reborn in our next Americans. Our spine of character is being tested as it was during Crisis I: the American Revolution; Crisis II: the Civil War; and Crisis III: the Great Depression and World War II. So far, our character has stood the test of time.

Whatever the outcome of this election, hopefully we will shed the many bad behaviors we have accumulated over the last couple of decades and our narcissism will be replaced by a new order of personal responsibility founded in the stewardship of our communities and of our fragile environment. We may even begin to respect each other, again. Perhaps also set aside manipulation in favor of persuasion. I won’t hold my breath, but I will certainly use it to find a sense of calm.

Please don’t hold your breath either; breathe my friends, breathe.

By William Steding|2024-11-17T13:37:34+00:00November 3rd, 2024|General, Leadership|0 Comments

From Resilience to Transcendence
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From Resilience to Transcendence

General, Recent, Spiritual

From Resilience to Transcendence

What do we live for?

We arrive screaming pulled from the comfort of our mother’s womb. Whether we leave this world with someone at our side, or alone, we all hope someone remembers us—at least for a while. In the years between our beginning and end, we forge a life we call our own. Failures and victories mark our path which, full of transgressions and glory, defines who we are, then once were.

Soon, we are forgotten. Which is as it should be. But the contribution we’ve made to the soul that offered us its eternal wisdom upon our first inhalation has been made even wiser at its departure upon our last exhalation. Our primary job is to be the vessel and steward of our soul. Although we give our ego much more playing time during our lives, we should revere our soul with a sense of respectful awe—especially in the last quarter of life. Upon our death, our soul moves on to possess another being in their first breath as an older and wiser soul. That is our everlasting contribution—the one true legacy that is ours, alone.

That’s it. That is why we are/were here. That’s all there is. And, it’s grand.

In August, I wrote about how to achieve resilience in your life that included three steps: Know Thyself, Honor Thyself, and Steel Thyself. That if you successfully pursued these steps it would result in a “constitution that is unassailable.” That you might even become “that person that in the face of adversity has a curious grin on their face.” If you missed that essay, or want to review it, go here.

I need to admit now that I was holding out on you; that there is a fourth step that takes you beyond resilience to transcendence. In order to move from resilience to transcendence (what others may call enlightenment), there is another step that is important to enjoy a thriving last quarter of life and to leave this world in peace: Liberate Thyself.

In some cultures, folks in their last quarter of life are revered. They are cared for, respected and, moreover, listened to. I suspect these people have an easier time finding peace, equanimity, and transcendence before they pass as compared to those of us who are more often ignored and discarded in American culture.

Our culture is fast: fast food, fast fashion, fast cars, fast relationships, and fast opinions. We dismiss the rule, “speed kills,” with cheerful ignorance. The wisdom of living more slowly is borderline unpatriotic. As a consequence, liberating thyself is arguably more difficult in America, and also more important to those of us who want to make our exit in peace rather than in a state of suffering.

We can, however, achieve a state of transcendence that assures sweet peace. In America, we may just have to work a bit harder to get there. Among other things, we have to recognize the delicate and often contentious relationship between our ego and our soul.

If you are a long-time reader of these essays, I actually haven’t been holding out on you about liberating thyself as I have written about this before. However, in the face of disturbing unknowns that seem to increase dramatically as our country faces national elections today, and since many more readers have recently joined ameritecture.com, I thought it might be time to pull things together again in one essay with links for you to conduct a deeper dive to suit your own particular needs or concerns. To give you all the steps to understand the path to transcendence.

In “The Identity Trap: Suffering or Transcendence” (click here), I argue that while we arrive in the world as a clean slate—egoless—we should also leave the world as a clean, or relatively clean, slate. That in the first three phases of life, preparation (0-25 years); achievement (26-45 years); and actualization (46-65 years), during which we are creating and refining our egos, our identity serves to both differentiate us as uniquely valuable as well as provide a basis for belonging to places, organizations, and groups. Our egos and attendant identities act to locate us within society. But then there is a fork in the road.

In the fourth quarter of life (65+ years), if we cling to that ego that has defined us, we may spend our final days suffering. That the key to achieving sweet peace and transcendence is to let go of our ego. It is a very challenging process, but like anything else you have accomplished in life, with diligence and discipline it can be achieved. Fair warning: your ego will fight like hell to preserve itself. It has been the alpha actor in your life since a few days after birth. But it is time for the other actor—your soul—to become the touchstone to govern the balance of your life. The desires and aversions and delusions that occupy that ego-driven voice in your head must be expelled to take the path to transcendence—to avoid suffering. This is what some spiritual teachers refer to as living in the seat of the soul.

As I summarized in this essay,

The disturbances and discontents that inflicted others no longer afflict me. FOMO (fear of missing out) has been replaced by the equanimity of missing out. Let the rabble roar. If you have triggers, they are yours, not mine. My awareness is elsewhere. My mind is sucking up knowledge like a kindergartner. It is a very different me than the one I left behind. No burdensome expectations or obligations, no doubts, or fears, or anger. Moreover, no hurry. Death will come when it will and I will welcome it in the same manner I welcomed life: with a sense of optimistic curiosity. Whether it is a door or a wall doesn’t matter, because I have my sweet peace in this world and it is simply magnificent.

In a later essay, I hung ornaments on the tree; I offered “Twelve Contemplations for a Better Tomorrow” (click here) that included practical tools and steps to free yourself from your ego based on my learnings from Buddhism and Stoicism. In this essay, I cover fun things like getting naked, dying to live, discarding regrets and desires, and leaving things better than you found them, as well as eight other contemplations. I’ll add Christ to the mix today including his teaching in John 17: 14-15 which (in my interpretation) suggests that being in the world, but not of the world is what happens when you forsake your ego for your soul. You transcend the world in favor of sweet peace. You live in a spiritual realm that enables what I have been pursuing for the last several years now: heaven on earth, which I suggest is the true Holy Grail of life. (My poem, “Heaven on Earth,” is included at this post.)

Finally, in “Curating Sweet Peace” (click here), which I published in the transition month of November—between autumn and winter—I wrote about “coming to terms with one’s life and inevitable death” and offered the mental gymnastics exercise of considering that “if we knew we would live forever—a deathless existence—what meaning would our lives have?” to embrace, rather than resist, death’s inevitability. Further, I suggested that we recognize the challenges the world keeps throwing in our face and the role of good practices:

Dastardly dissonances come and go with high frequency. This is why we must find a rhythm of practices that support our desire for sweet peace. This is where the process of curation comes in. In your constellation of practices that involve different tools (principal among them meditation) you will, over time, land on elements that prove effective in producing that sense of harmony that literally resonates in a manner to shield your sweet peace from a world that seems determined to disrupt, if not destroy, it. This is what is meant by ‘doing the work.’ There are many so-called spiritual teachers out there. And, as with your formal education, you will experience ones that work for you and ones that don’t. In my experience, it is a highly idiosyncratic process. Sometimes, just an irritating voice can eliminate a teacher, at others you will find more substantive points of attraction or dismissal. The point is (as with any regimen aimed at improving your life) to get started and stick with it.

As we face the coming chaos of our elections while we search for handholds of sanity, take comfort in your capacity to achieve your own sense of peace, regardless of your current age and station in life. The Stoics used the practice of negative visualization to steel themselves in advance of undesirable outcomes. It may be time to deploy this practice before what may be disturbing events over the next few months. I will conclude here with the same ending to “Curating Sweet Peace.”

Be patient with and attentive to others, but be selfish, too. Our country and world have many challenges, but I am a big believer in the power of one, which is to say making the world a better place starts with making a better, more peaceful, you. If your practice only yields glimpses of sweet peace, as mine has, trust me when I say it is well worth the effort. Tranquility is its own reward.

Once you pursue your own liberation, you may add a calm sense of knowing to your “curious grin” of resilience. No more navigating, or calculating, or striving, or becoming. Just thriving in the flow of whatever is in the moment. Whomever inhales your soul next will be a very fortunate being.

My blessing for you (and me) is always: “May you wake in glory, enjoy your day with grace, and spend your night in peace. Glory, grace, and peace.”

By William Steding|2024-11-03T13:11:03+00:00October 20th, 2024|General, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments

Rebooting American Dynamism
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Rebooting American Dynamism

General, Recent, The New Realities

Rebooting American Dynamism

Every day and all day our world, dominated by online media, demands that we stare at our feet. Especially the flames at our feet that politicians, pundits, influencers, family, and friends warn us are ready to consume us all. Most of these folks fan the flames rather than attempt to extinguish them in a twisted attempt to get attention at the expense of our well-being. Fear mongers have become endemic in our society in the last several years. “World War III is imminent!” “Our democracy is about to collapse!” “Immigrants are rapists, drug mules, and murderers!”

Of course, most often what the fear mongers are saying is “Look at me!” to feed their vanity and to influence those they wish to manipulate. And while doomsayers can cause expectations to spin up into manifestation—the proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy—generally all they actually accomplish is increasing our anxiety to the point of our exhaustion. Their claims, while possible, are not probable based on facts and reason. These fear mongers are political and social parasites gnawing at the feathers of our better-angel wings. Their pessimism promotes peril at the expense of prosperity.

We live in an open society by choice with limited guardrails as a democratic republic. Openness, which is also known as (small “l”) liberal, is what our founders wanted for us after escaping the tyranny of religion and monarchies in Europe. Self-determination, which is a concept born of the Protestant Reformation when the Calvinist notion of pre-destination was set aside in favor of the notion that any person could become worthy of a heavenly afterlife through their own volition and perfection, together with individualism born of the same Reformation that allowed a direct relationship between people and God (without, in particular, papal intermediation), became two of the pillars of liberalism.

The ideal of a self-directed destiny is the most fundamental value in our founding documents as well as the foundation of the American Dream. Writers in the 19^th century, from Charles Dickens, to Alexis de Tocqueville, to Frederick Jackson Turner, all lauded the spirit of Americans who they considered as curious, intriguing, and at times, inspirational. As the journalist, John O’Sullivan wrote in 1845, it was Americans “manifest destiny to overspread the whole of the continent.”[1] Americans are, after all, an irascible bunch of high achievers.

In America, we decided to embrace capitalism as our economic system and democracy as our political system. Both have served us extraordinarily well. Together with some other basic structural advantages like being on a continent protected from most foreign threats by large bodies of water, and the only industrial capacity left in the world after World War II, The United States under capitalism and democracy became a superpower. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a lone superpower. We were actually granted the unusual and perhaps unprecedented opportunity to quit staring at our feet to instead look out at a horizon of promise to set the example for the world and affect the advancement of humanity both at home and abroad.

For most of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, we Americans did look at the horizon more than at our feet and ushered in the digital age and the age of affluence which, among other things, marked the transition worldwide from the perpetual condition of scarcity that had been with us since the beginning of time, to the condition of abundance in terms of resources and wealth never before achieved in the history of humankind. It is amazing what you can achieve once you stop staring at your feet.

But then, we traded self-determination for self-absorption. (Affluence does have deleterious effects.) In what I have termed the “Age of Deceit,” Americans sacrificed three founding values in the last twenty years. We abandoned individualism for narcissism; perfectibility (making things better) for entitlement; and, exemplar exceptionalism (setting the humble example) for hubris. This period of crisis, now twenty years old, was marked by the War on Terror, the Great Recession, the pandemic, and now punctuated by a nearly completely dysfunctional federal government. The through-line thread has been our embrace of deceit amplified most shamelessly and hideously by the most prolific liar in American presidential history, Donald Trump.

Great crises do, however, produce great opportunities. By its nature, evolutionary change is a slow process whether you are observing genes, or social norms, or the broader operating systems of civilizations. However, the response to crises can create a moment in time when progress can accelerate faster than what Charles Darwin hypothesized in The Origin of Species. Lifting one’s eyes toward the horizon in the context of new realities and rethinking legacy norms and systems are essential to the advancement of humanity.

Two types of events in American history illustrate how these accelerated periods of progress can occur: awakenings and foundings. The first impacts the character of the citizenry and the second impacts the structures and systems by which those citizens govern themselves. Both are necessary to affect the rebirth of any society and today are necessary to save us Americans from our current selves; to restore American dynamism. Frankly, in America, we are overdue for both a re-awakening and a re-founding.

America’s two so-called “great” awakenings (early 18^th and 19^th centuries) were based in religious revivalist events. At their essence, however, their effect was to restore and reinvigorate the American character. While organized religion has, at best, a dubious track record (especially among leaders) at representing high moral character, the popularity of these awakenings does illustrate the nature of Americans who, at their core, want to be people of good character. Our prevalent and natural disposition is to achieve consonance between our behaviors and common virtues like honesty, humility, discipline, and hard work. Frankly, in this regard, the Age of Deceit in the last twenty years has been exceptional rather than normative. Although we have recently been exploited by some really bad actors, our history is full of better examples of leadership in all sectors of our society.

These first two awakenings also illustrate the ebb and flow of religion in America by and between the private, public, and political spheres of our society. When religion peaks, it is in all three spheres as it last did most recently in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then, it retreats as it is doing today never leaving the private sphere, but back from the public and political spheres.

Although the religious right claims a third period of awakening in the 1980s, this period was not about reinvigorating virtues-based character; that claim is a ruse. It was about politicizing religion to gain power and attract financial support for Bible-pounding evangelists and a cadre of televangelists who preferred Gucci loafers and private jets to Florsheim shoes and Greyhound buses, let alone the sandals and walking staff of Jesus Christ. Their wallets were much more important to them as they swindled the souls of Americans.

Today, the question is where shall we turn to guide us to better behaviors and better days? How can we make a better America?

As for our national character, inasmuch as we are in a period of waning religiosity today, religious texts and preachings may not resonate. Thankfully, we do have a clear option. Our founding documents should suffice when considered together with the inspirations our founders took from classical literature and moral philosophy from ancient philosophers as well as philosophers from the period of Enlightenment (18^th century). Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Epictetus are among the ancients they studied (especially Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations). And, John Locke, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Henry St. John (Lord Bolingbroke), and Henry Home (Lord Kames) were among the British and Scottish philosophers our founders often cited from the Enlightenment period.

Although I will leave it up to our adult population to reestablish their own footings of character today, I do believe we need to demand that civics and moral philosophy return to the classroom as requirements for our children and young adults. Think of what I am suggesting as a second period of enlightenment, al la Locke, Hume et al. We might also include the works of more recent people like William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and poets like T.S. Elliot, Mary Oliver, and Langston Hughes, among many others.

Further, to bind our students to America in a meaningful and authentic manner, I would also suggest (as others have) that we require two years of national/community service of our high school graduates that would qualify them for a four-year college scholarship following their service. Not only would their service help bind them to their country and communities, it would undoubtedly make their subsequent college education much more meaningful and fulfilling. Whether we call it an awakening or enlightenment is not important; our national character most certainly needs a reboot.

On the structural issues, America also needs a reboot in the form of a third founding. After the Civil War, we had our second founding that was aimed principally at achieving a closer semblance to the founder’s aim held in the ideal that “all men are created equal.” In effect, we were recognizing that in the context of that postbellum era we could craft new amendments, laws, and policies to actualize an ideal. In particular, the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th amendments (abolishing slavery, establishing due process for all, and voting rights for all citizens, respectively) were directly intended to actualize that ideal that “all men are created equal.” Although these so-called “Reconstruction Amendments” were passed, they were subsequently attacked by certain justices in the Supreme Court and diluted repeatedly by what became collectively known as Jim Crow laws. While not yet fully realized today, they are largely intact; progress is, after all, marked by steps forward and steps backward, which is to say, irregular and ragged.

In all, since the Bill of Rights ten amendments in 1791, we have enacted seventeen more amendments. The point is, dynamism must be embraced to meet the conditions of the day. The First Amendment provides “the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”[2] We should exercise that right. Without amendments to our Constitution, revisions of law, and the evolution of norms, it is unlikely our Constitution and republic would have survived. Indeed, I expect our founders would be astonished that our republic has survived as long as it has.

In my opinion, we must recognize that our federal government has become locked into an abysmal state of inefficaciousness. Its scope must be dramatically narrowed with authority and resources returned to the states to deal with many issues we have (inappropriately) put on the back of our federal government. At both the federal and state level, we must also consider allowing the private sector to turn some of our issues into their opportunities. I recognize that suggestion is like touching the third rail for many of my leftward leaning friends, but we must all be open to new ideas. In addition, partisanship that has been institutionalized through gerrymandering must be reformed, and an electoral college that does not assure a fair and certain election must follow the lead of Maine and Nebraska to award electors proportionally to the popular vote (which can be done without an amendment to the Constitution).

I am sure others can think of further reforms to revitalize our federal government and heal the union. At some point, all sides will reach a level of frustration and fatigue to motivate them to entertain these discussions. That point may come sooner rather than later as we face election chaos in the next few months that while deeply concerning may also—finally—cause enough of us to demand fundamental changes to our structures and systems of governance.

I acknowledge that these are troubling times for many reasons and that the flames at our feet require our attention. I also know, however, that if we ignore the horizon, progress and greater well-being for humanity will remain perpetually beyond our reach. As long as we are focused on the short term, we will continue to be a victim of circumstance in the long term. Long-held and highly regarded virtues must be placed back on the table to be embraced with fidelity. The usage of “probity,” which the Cambridge Dictionary defines as “the quality of being honest and behaving correctly,” has dropped so low as to be considered archaic, today.[3] Perhaps TikTok can restore its use. Finally, we must ignore the fear mongers in our midst. Like anger and violence, stress and anxiety do not help solve problems; in most cases they make them worse. Lifting our eyes, embracing virtues, and ignoring the doomsayers will also lift our hearts and spirit.

It is our duty as adults and parents to assure that every future generation has the tools to build their own spine of character, and to build an appropriate and effective societal infrastructure through our constitutional, legal, and normative commitments so that they may thrive on their own terms.

If we accomplish this, the American beacon of hope that was once the light of the world will shine brightly again.

[1] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 151. Manifest Destiny and its contribution to new imaginings of America in the late 1800s are also explored in Patricia Limerick Nelson, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987).

[2] See the Bill of Rights here: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript.

[3] To see the usage of “probity” since 1800, see Google NGram Viewer, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=probity.

By William Steding|2024-10-20T12:49:33+00:00October 6th, 2024|General, Recent, The New Realities|0 Comments

The Election as Reflection
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The Election as Reflection

General, Recent, The New Realities

The Election as Reflection

If humankind survives, someday historians and eventually, archaeologists, will look back at today to wonder how a society that had largely achieved all of its ambitions—that successfully achieved an abundance of prosperity—went to war with itself. That some external threat or cataclysmic event did not do them in; rather, that they defeated themselves. They will study how the greatest empire in the then-modern era—the United States of America—imploded. Jared Diamond’s, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), that covered the last 15,000 years of history may be followed by Stupidity: How the Smartest Society in the Anthropocene Epoch Imploded.

Each weekday, I rise and turn on the financial markets as reported by Bloomberg Television. I am interested in financial markets, but the real reason I tune in is that it is the only news outlet where the actual news is told without being coated in bias and deceit. All they care about is how the actual news impacts capital markets. They are realists in the spirit of Niccolo Machiavelli as opposed to spin artists pursuing eyeballs and ears with righteous ideological blather. Fox, MSNBC, CNN, Facebook, X, et al, which have far larger audiences will, no doubt, be one factor cited in future cultural analysts’ assessments as prime contributors to the implosion. Financial news outlets are not, however, completely innocent. They are simply assisting wealthy folks and institutional investors in their exploitation of market inefficiencies. Financial opportunity exists in both functional and dysfunctional societies.

As financiers and traders hope, the upcoming election will produce gridlock in Washington D.C. People who make money for a living in capital markets know that the market manipulations, represented by Trump and Harris including his macho “tariff man” bluster and her anti-free market “price gouging” controls, are economically unsound. Capitalists want a congress addled by pettiness to get none of these market manipulations passed. They recognize the benefits of political constipation.

Capitalists also know that a U.S. deficit that is approaching $40 trillion dollars in 2025 is only sustainable as long as the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency. The dollar’s days as such will not last forever. I first studied and wrote about moving to a single global currency in 2008, well before cryptocurrency. My analysis showed that notwithstanding the risk to the U.S. of a non-dollar single global currency, the benefits to both world security and economic stability far outweighed protecting the dollar. My argument then (and now) is that the U.S. needs to embrace the idea to affect a soft landing for the dollar; to manage the transition rather than risking its inevitability. Today, we have cryptocurrency that is the obvious instrument to affect this transition. While much maligned by traditional bankers and politicians, it has the potential to deliver a legitimate global currency beyond the reach of central bank manipulation making it a more stable medium of exchange than the dollar.

Allowing our debt to ratchet higher—in spite of all of our other sources of power—will compromise America’s hegemony and allow the endemic deceit-driven negativity and avarice of our society to tip the U.S. toward implosion. Of course, the solution for the deficit is simple: raise taxes and reduce expenses for decades to come. But we don’t have the character and attendant will power for anything that is simple and clear. We are too immersed in delusion while staring at our loveliest selves on our social media feeds. Omphalos syndrome— the belief that a place of geopolitical power and its currency is the most important place in the world—is our most fundamental delusion. In Greek mythology omphalos represented the naval of the earth. In other words, as a syndrome, naval-gazing is not a particularly healthy condition for world leadership, especially when your own house is not in order.

As the saying goes, “in a democracy you get the government you deserve.” This election, as illustrated through the partisan avatars of Trump and Harris, is actually a reflection of who we are as a people today: profoundly selfish and divided against ourselves. Our allies grimace while our enemies drool. Indeed, as another old saying goes, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Largely because of our social media ideosphere and corrupt/deficient/compromised political leaders, reasonable fact-based discourse that favors consensus-driven problem solving that is both inclusive and optimistic has been set aside for fear, hate, violent, and shame-based rhetoric. This rhetoric is aimed at manipulation in the interest of swindlers rather than persuasion meant to serve the common interests and purposes of a stronghold society. Our founding fathers, in particular Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in The Federalist Papers (Federalist no. 9 & 10, respectively), repeatedly warned us of the danger of factions who prefer passion over reason; in today’s vernacular, bullshit over reality.[i] But few of us study these cornerstones of civics and moral philosophy anymore. It has now been decades since they were required courses in student curricula. Optimism and high-mindedness that defined America’s character through the 20th century has been set aside in favor of deceit-driven negativity and avarice in the 21^st century.

The manner in which we conduct our lives is so far from the character that produced the most powerful society in the history of the world that it will not take future historians or archaeologists long to write the story of the great implosion—as another chapter in the long history of how empires fail.

However, it is not too late to reclaim the moral high-ground. There is hope. What we can’t foresee may save us, but only if we add integrity of character back into the mix. The unforeseeable always drives history, and in our nation’s first two centuries, the unforeseeable has tilted in our favor. The reason it did was the American character.

My maternal grandfather was born in 1890. In his earliest days on the prairies of South Dakota, his family lived in a windowless sod house. He fought in World War I, raised a family during the Great Depression and World War II, and just three months after his death we landed a man on the moon—the rocket engines for which my father helped engineer. Was any of that foreseeable? Hardly. In my lifetime, the arc of history continued with advances in science and technology that produced enormous increases in the well-being of humankind. From basic vaccines to digital technologies to now the promise of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and fusion-based sources of new energy—a trifecta of extraordinary potential. Just two generations after a sod house, we stand at the edge of unfathomable frontiers of human progress. None of it, foreseeable.

Americans have done amazing things, and can do amazing things again. In spite of ourselves, the quiet diligent explorers, inventors, and innovators of tomorrow may offer us a way out—to save us from ourselves. But we have to add back the advantage that our founders established in the late 18^th century, that Tocqueville documented in the 19^th century, and that 20^th century generations actualized together with dramatic advances in science and technology. We must restore our character. The Roman playwright, Terence, adapted by the Roman poet, Virgil, argued that “Fortune Favors the Bold.” They were only partially correct. Substantial and sustainable prosperity favors those who are bold, but who also have high character. Who honor virtues with integrity.

Regardless of any potential breakthrough solutions, my plea today is that we must drop the mongering—of fear, hate, violence, and shame—to have a chance of doing the right thing together in unison. If we don’t shed these debilitating modalities, the unforeseeable will flip from hope to implosion. Further, that until we start thinking of each other instead of just ourselves, it is unlikely we will be little more than fodder for those future historians and archaeologists.

In their late-life correspondence, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson questioning whether any great society could recover from its curse of prosperity and lost character. He asked, “Have you ever found in history one single example of a Nation thoroughly Corrupted—that was afterwards resorted to Virtue?”[ii] He pointed to Rome which in his assessment had been a “vast empire until it was felled by riches and luxury.”[iii] My sense is that America is at its tipping point and we will soon know if we can right our own ship, or fail as the Roman empire did. Our founders doubt us from the grave.

While we wring our hands and argue over the war between Russia and Ukraine and the future of NATO, or the conflicts between Israel and Iran, or the potential invasion of Taiwan by China, or the many other concerns beyond our borders, the most pressing issue is here at home: the collapse of the American character and the impending implosion of the greatest empire in the history of humankind, the United States of America. If we don’t focus on fixing ourselves all the other issues do not matter. We will have no influence over them, anyway.

In a few weeks we will (hopefully) all vote. Many of us may be holding our noses as we do so, but not voting is simply unacceptable for those of us who claim to be citizens. To be clear, we need look no further than a mirror to see who is responsible for both today and tomorrow. It is not just the politicians—including Trump and Harris—it is principally us. What emerges is our doing. What comes next is unforeseeable, but can once again save us as long as we couple extraordinary developments with a humble, compassionate, and determined sense of character.

[i] Hamilton, Madison & Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin Group, First Signet Classic Printing 2003), p. 66-79.

[ii] John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 21, 1819, Founders Online National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7287.

[iii] Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024), p. 214.

By William Steding|2024-10-06T13:26:17+00:00September 22nd, 2024|General, Recent, The New Realities|0 Comments

Reverence for Me
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Reverence for Me

General, Recent, Spiritual

Reverence for Me

As a writer, I am always searching my mind for what I think, know, and believe. Moreover, trying to find patterns between them to explain myself, the world, and the relationship between the two. Then, to write it all out coherently enough to maintain my bearings—my sanity. Finally, to share it if I think it might benefit others.

Painters paint with the stroke of colors, chefs paint with food and spices, and writers paint with words. Writers don’t make a mess in a studio or a kitchen, they make a mess in their mind then try to sort it out to make it informative or even inspiring for a reader. I wish that my favorite Lyle Lovett lyric, “I live in my own mind, ain’t nothin’ but a good time” was always true. Alas, life does present difficult challenges that, if properly considered, allow us to grow into ourselves.

Each of the painter, the chef, and the writer are trying to create a connection with others out of the messes they make. If it only pleases themselves, that is okay too. In my case, I write for myself first and always, but share it to affect connection with others. It is always interesting and informative for me to see what resonates with whom. It is sometimes even humorous to experience criticism from both sides of an issue, which I guess makes me the occasional equal opportunity offender. In any event, helping people think—to understand—is its own reward.

In my process, I have become very fond of both analytical narrative and poetry. I was well trained in analytical narrative, especially in the pursuit of my PhD, which was at its essence a deep dive into learning to write well. An undergraduate degree teaches us to think well; graduate school teaches us how to properly express what we are thinking for the benefit of others regardless of the medium like paint, food, or words.

However, analytical narrative—writing persuasively with high regard for facts and reason—is not as engaging for the reader as is poetry. By its nature, analytical narrative is not designed for interpretation; rather, it is designed to be both clear and persuasive with limited opportunity for the reader to weigh in. On the other hand, poetry is abstract and invites rather than prohibits interpretation, which is its superpower inasmuch as interpretation invites engagement which creates a relationship between writer and reader that can produce a more meaningful experience for both. The reader has the opportunity to make a poem their own. In effect, the poet is saying, “I release this to you to do with it as you wish.”

I have found that toggling between the two—analytical narrative and poetry—while sticking to the same subject/content is challenging and often produces new illuminations as the renderings, while different in form, become intriguing complements to one another. To take verse and turn it into analytical narrative or vice versa, take analytical narrative and turn it into verse. It’s like jazz: synchronicity thriving in asymmetry. Today’s poem, “Reverence for Me” is my last analytical narrative post, “Three Steps to Resilience” expressed in verse. If you missed the last post, you can find it here: https://ameritecture.com/three-steps-to-resilience/. “Reverence for Me” is like a pocket version of the essay on resilience. 221 words instead of 2,483 words.

Now, go ahead: interpret, engage, and most importantly, make it your own.

Reverence for Me

It’s a daunting world

With lurking unknowns

Every day unpredictable

The noise is deafening

As well as I know me

There are always distractions

The world wants me

To indulge its seductions

Enslaved by desires

And high expectations

Leaving me to suffer

The cost: dissatisfaction

Me, I have for certain

If I am certain of me

The best of, the worst of

The honest me

The fashionable changes

But doesn’t change me

Soulless influencers

Don’t have a hold on me

The high priests offer shame

Trying to heal & heel me

But my heart is full

And my soul is mine

Still others have opinions

To suit their needs

To capture me in their web

To suck what they can

But my home is here

Wherever I may be

Choosing virtue over vice

With authenticity

The world keeps turning

And the treadmill churns

Learning to honor me

My essence, core, and soul

That beautiful me

One in billions of yous

Me just for me

Worthy just as I am

Body, mind, and soul

Fortitude becomes me

Upright, clear, and calm

Leaning into the moment

I stand before peril

With a wink and a grin

I’ll leave when I wish

My home travels with me

Wherever I go

There I am again

Finding grace in suffering

I rest in divinity

Living in the moment is not an argument for instant gratification. TikTok is not life. Using your moments to be reflective and contemplative is meant to build your future one moment at a time. We live in a world of seduction and provocation. Succumbing to these petty ploys must be treated as noise—as empty distractions—if we want our lives to be meaningful and fulfilling. Living as a pinball by bouncing around without agency is a waste of the gift you were given the moment you took your first breath when you inhaled your soul. Tending to yourself is not selfish, it is redemptive, and makes you a much more valuable member of society. Your physical, mental, and spiritual self needs care and compassion. It is the one job we must not ignore. There is always time for you. Use it wisely. You are worth it.

By William Steding|2024-09-22T13:12:49+00:00September 8th, 2024|General, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments

Three Steps to Resilience
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Three Steps to Resilience

General, Recent, Spiritual

Three Steps to Resilience

Every so often in America we experience unsettling times. In my lifetime, I recall the late 1960s, late 1970s, and early 2000s as being spans of two to three years when there was decidedly more uncertainty in America than certainty. When political, economic, social, and/or security concerns left my head and heart troubled. Every day had an edge to it and, at times, it was unclear we would come through it. Occasionally existential dread, but mostly just a persistent low-level agitation that is both impossible to ignore and impossible to expel. It leaves your mind troubled and your stomach churning just enough to cause us to take a step back and place life on pause. Relief eventually arrives with little fanfare as, more often than not, life simply moves on thanks to the rule of impermanence: “this too shall pass.”

The Covid-19 pandemic glazed with the chaos of the Trump presidency qualifies, at least for me, as the fourth unsettling period during my lifetime. In my case, divorce and cancer added to the challenge. Yes, there was dread, but mostly just a daily grind that made both mornings and nights—which in the human experience should be joyful and reflective—marked by the stress of unknowns. It was during this recent period that I created my daily prayer: “May you wake in glory, enjoy your day with grace, and spend your night in peace.” Glory, grace, and peace. It makes a nice mantra, too. Not an excited state of joy, success, or happiness; rather, just a stable level of calm contentment. Calm as the new joy. That is enough for me.

Getting to the other side of these unsettled periods requires a level of grit and fortitude that are generally available to all humans, at least for a short period of time like two to three years. However, these periods offer a larger opportunity if we care to pay attention and do the work of building the deeper and wider capacity of durable resilience. A capacity that will serve us under any circumstances we face from unsettled periods to outright catastrophes. It may be because of my particular challenges that I have spent a great deal of time on this subject, but the truth is my challenges are not more profound than what you or your loved ones will endure—maybe even less. Frankly, it’s just life, and as the meme suggests: shit happens.

I have become convinced that the power of resilience is the most important capacity we can develop and maintain in our lives, but probably also the most difficult to understand, which makes its nurturing a lifelong challenge. It requires a mix of what to do as well as what not to do to succeed. Our resilience must be both strong and subtle in its deployment. Like a steel glove covered in soft velvet, it must do its job while not crossing the line into coercion—into doing further harm. We must learn to restore our equilibrium without creating any new disequilibria—for ourselves or others. Resilience requires an extraordinary sense of balance to keep us physically, mentally, and spiritually on an even keel. It is critical to our sense of tranquility that supports our capacity for equanimity. Without resilience, our suffering can cause permanent damage to ourselves and perhaps to others—often to the ones we love the most.

In Stephen Flynn’s book, The Edge of Disaster (2007), wherein he outlines all the threats facing the United States (at the time, mostly external), he offers us a definition of resilience based on Yossi Sheffi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s rendering as: “the ability of a material to recover its original shape following a deformation.” Flynn goes on to suggest that the United States must be able to “match its strength to deliver a punch [coercive power] with the means to take one [resilient power]” which will make it “an unattractive target.”[1] His focus, and our national obsession at the time when the events of 9/11 remained a fresh source of fear, was on outside terrorists. Flynn provided a worthy analysis of how we might refocus our national resilience, but what about resilience at the level of the individual? This has become especially important as the threats in our lives have become more internal like domestic terrorists, the pandemic, and the many threats we perceive and experience from a deeply divided America.

There is actually quite a bit of scholarship out there on the subject of resilience. It tends to accelerate as a research interest during periods of crisis. Of the material I reviewed, I suggest Rick Hanson’s Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakeable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness (2018).[2] Hanson’s approach is to remain at all times thoughtfully aware; develop grit and confidence while practicing gratitude; know how to self-regulate your disposition depending on the circumstances; and, be courageous and generous while also being humbly aspirational. Hanson argues all of these factors will assure your safety, satisfaction, and connection to others, which are foundational for resilience. Makes sense, but it seemed to be missing some things that were less abstract and more practical. What follows here is more of a how-to approach.

In my view, developing and maintaining a deep and wide reservoir of resilience is possible in three steps of contemplative and practical work: know thyself, honor thyself, and steel thyself.

Know Thyself

Answering the question, “Who are you?”, is a fundamental requirement to determine the nature and identity of just who it is resilience is supposed to serve. Its importance is similar to the old requirement of strategic planning prompted by the axiom, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” In this case, if you don’t know who you are, serendipity may be your only shot at resilience. Aristotle viewed knowing thyself as a necessary foundation of life. “Know thyself” was, according to legend, also inscribed above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece.

Knowing thyself is largely a contemplative exercise that should be repeated and refreshed from time to time throughout your life. The ancient Greeks had a word for what Jesus would often do to refresh himself: eremos (air-ee-mose). He would disappear into the forest for contemplative solitude where followers believed he conferred with God. Who you are will and should change. Knowing thyself requires you to examine all the elements that define your identity—the descriptors in your unique and personal profile. How would you-describe-you in an honest, the many ways I am me, manner? You should identify your core beliefs (particularly as to values and virtues) and areas of knowledge that you have acquired through your experiences, education, indoctrinations, and socializations. Also, pay attention to what you inherited through your particular cultural and familial heritage. Don’t judge, just capture. This exercise is for you, alone. Avoid including the opinions/contributions of others. They tend to be generated through the lens of their own identity and, therefore, suffer from innocent corruption.

Next, perform a self-assessment of your strengths and weaknesses (which are important to have for step three: steel thyself). It is very important to know what you can leverage to your advantage and what you need to work on, or at least be aware of—like blindspots. One way to prompt yourself here is to simply list those things others rely upon you for (strengths) and what areas do you require help from others (weaknesses). Be kind to yourself here. Most of us (who are not afflicted by narcissism) are much more self-critical than is appropriate. Also, strengths and weaknesses are, by definition, things that are within our control—what an economist would call endogenous variables. Things out of our control are exogenous variables; more commonly called opportunities and threats. Deal with that which you can affect and accept the rest as it is.

Honor Thyself

You are a unique and glorious human being. You are so special there is actually not another person exactly like you in the entire 8.2 billion people in the world. Honor yourself as such. This second step, honor thyself, is probably the most often missed step in the process of building resilience. It can feel like a selfish exercise. But notwithstanding the spike in narcissism in the contemporary era, humans generally think of others as much as themselves; cooperation and service to others has been—throughout the history of humankind—key to our survival as a species and as individuals. To build personal resilience, you’ve got to allow yourself to be important, too. Grant yourself this permission. (This was my most difficult challenge in building my own resilience.) No, honoring yourself is not selfish. Get over that.

Honoring the self that you defined in step one includes respecting the values and the virtues you deem important. Consider these values and virtues as the vertebrae in your spine of character. Be true to them as best you can with the humble understanding you are still human and subject to irregular fealty. “The pursuit of happiness” found in our Declaration of Independence was intended by our founders to mean “happiness” as based in moral goodness. Further, it was intentionally described as a “pursuit” as in an ongoing journey and, therefore, in need of dutiful care, rather than a destination. Without integrity of virtues, Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson all argued, there could be no happiness. One might speculate this is why Trump is always angry. Pythagoras (born 580 BC in Greece), whom the founders often referenced, offered us the injunction to “reverence thyself” which included both self-awareness (knowing) and self-discipline (honoring), which brings us to step three: steeling thyself.[3]

Steel Thyself

That steel glove covered in soft velvet is achieved by tending to your body, mind, and spirit. Steeling requires the balance of hard, soft, and flexible. As you steel yourself, be mindful of the strengths and weaknesses you identified in step one.

Americans know a great deal about tending to the body, but not as much the mind and spirit. We all understand the value of diet, exercise, and sleep. There are many—way too many—products and services available in America to affect caring for our bodies. The challenge here is to make your way through that jungle to determine what works for you. Then, stick with your program. The general rule is that if you stand naked in front of a mirror and like what you see you are probably okay (setting aside the psychological distortions some people suffer as they interpret the image in the mirror). It is also recommended you tune into your body so you don’t miss messages it is trying to send to you. A consistent exercise regime is one way to develop this feedback loop inasmuch as the body under stress will behave differently when something is wrong (as long as you listen). Also, body-scan meditations are useful here.

I have found that the mind is best stimulated and maintained by a commitment to lifelong learning. Another mantra of mine (besides Glory, Grace & Peace) is to “Stay curious. Always curious.” Make the question mark (?) your icon worthy of veneration. To constantly challenge yourself to learn more in order to avoid what I call intellectual sclerosis, or a hardening of the mind. Remain open to new ideas and discoveries and embrace another rule of mine: every person I meet knows something I don’t know and can do something better than I can do it. Shut up and listen. Constantly challenge yourself to know more. Every day should include at least one new learning. Stick with it and you will become a very wise person. One more thing for the mind: live within your means in every sense of that word. Avoid burdensome obligations, troublesome dependencies, and unnecessary conflicts. When in doubt, discard.

Tending to the spirit, or what I call the soul, begins with affecting a healthy balance between the ego (largely defined in step one) and the soul. Left alone, the ego will dominate and often suffocate the soul. Mindfulness training achieved through contemplative and meditative practices is the best way I have found to nurture the soul. To remain in a state of open awareness, project a sense of calm authenticity, and enjoy a comfortable level of tranquility. I will further suggest that the ego is more important—should be granted more playing time—in early stages of life, but that balance should be flipped in the last quarter of one’s life. The ego that served you so well in the first three quarters can become your enemy in the last. There is a fork in the road around your mid-60s. Holding on tight to your ego puts you on a path of suffering while elevating the soul sends you on a path of transcendence. It is difficult to let go, but the big benefit is a state of peace and calm that—trust me—you will wonder why you waited so long to discover.

Knowing, honoring, and steeling is the best way to develop and maintain resilience. Pursued with diligence and discipline it will produce a resolute constitution that is unassailable. You will be that person that in the face of adversity has a curious grin on their face. You will know that you will always be okay and you will be much more valuable to those you care about. Yes, there is and will be suffering, but at the center of suffering the resilient find grace. In a world of unknowns and certain peril, you will not only survive, you will prosper. The “pursuit of happiness” will always be in your grasp. You will achieve a sense of dynamic enlightenment and pleasant liberation. You will rest in the hands of divinity.

What more could one want?

Finally, a note on the presidential election: The scene is now set. The light versus darkness. Inclusion versus exclusion. Elevation versus humiliation. Persuasion versus manipulation. As a presidential historian, I can predict how this ends. The optimism of F.D.R., Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama all prevailed. Only once in the contemporary era, in 2016, did darkness win when Trump’s “American carnage” won. Frankly, because the Clinton light was dimmed by her dismissive arrogance. In 2024, we need optimism more than ever. While many things could intervene to change the current course, Harris has captured the high ground of optimism, something Trump could never do. Because the only light he supports is the one shining on him.

[1] Stephen Flynn, The Edge of Disaster (New York: Random House, 2007), p. xxi.

[2] Rick Hanson, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakeable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness (New York: Harmony Books, 2018).

[3] Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024), pp. 28-30.

By William Steding|2024-09-08T12:46:46+00:00August 25th, 2024|General, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments

Our Secret Superpower: Intuition
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Our Secret Superpower: Intuition

General, Recent, Spiritual

Our Secret Superpower: Intuition

Freeing oneself from the chaos of disinformation in our world today is imminently possible once we learn to nurture and honor our intuition.

One of the great challenges of the modern era is discerning truth from falsehood. In what I have characterized as the Age of Deceit that has been with us now for twenty years, assessing the firehose of inputs we receive each day in our digital era can be overwhelming.[i] This condition has given rise to, among other things, the strategy espoused by Trump advisor Steve Bannon to simply “flood the zone with shit” to disorient and deceive people to affect their manipulation. Overwhelming people with “shit” as opposed to informing them with facts that serve their best interest has become a prevalent modality of many politicians and has, unfortunately, been adopted in other sectors of our society from business, to education, to religion, and even the gaslighting that has crept into opinions rendered by justices of our Supreme Court.[ii]

Manipulation, which is designed to serve the interests of the advocate has displaced persuasion, which intends to serve the interests of the citizen. We can, however, nurture and honor intuitive skills that focus on the energy that accompanies the messages that bombard our lives to quickly and reliably determine what to consider and what to discard. All without having to indulge in comprehensive and time-consuming fact checking that can be extremely challenging in the slick algorithmic-driven messaging we endure today that is often designed to manipulate us.

I won’t get too wonky with you about quantum field theory and energy flows in our universe but, briefly, our world (and universe) is essentially an unbounded arena of energy flows that carry all of the elements that effect our lives. Intuitive discernment, which is based in these energy flows, is readily available to every human being regardless of intelligence, education, age, gender, or any other of the many ways we attempt to differentiate ourselves. If we nurture our capacity to feel the energy that accompanies the information we encounter and, further, if we pay attention to what that energy is conveying, we can avoid disorientation, deceptions, and our own manipulation. We can recover a sense of stability and calm; perhaps even optimism about the future.

“It just doesn’t feel right” is an example of our intuitive energy receptors flashing a red warning light. Disturbed energy that “doesn’t feel right” escorts information that is deceitful, angry, fearful, envious, etc. Our job is to recognize it for what it is and move on. As fully formed rational adults, however, we often ignore what to our intuition is obvious. We pay for our indiscretion with pain: emotional, psychological, financial, or even physical pain. Correcting this imbalance in our decision making and judgments begins with expanding our awareness and increasing the weight we assign to what we commonly call feelings. It also requires reducing the speed with which we discard these feelings in favor of our rational minds. Not much time is needed—just a few seconds—to honor what our intuition is trying to tell us before it is overruled by our rational mind.

This capacity of intuitive discernment begins with clearing and cleaning our own psychic house. Children generally have higher intuitive capacity than adults for two basic reasons. First, because they have yet to develop much else cognitively, and second because they are filter-free. They neither block nor accelerate inputs based on knowledge or beliefs. Their principal operating system is intuitive based on how the accompanying energy makes them feel. They cry or laugh out of feeling rather than knowing. So, to improve our own intuitive discernment in later life, one way to look at the task is to channel the innocence of being a child, which means shedding much of what we have naturally accumulated throughout our lives. Further, where this stuff that impedes our intuition resides is in the ego, which is where we need to start clearing and cleaning.

Mindfulness gained through contemplative and meditative practices are powerful tools to begin the enlightenment we need to become aware of the role our egos play in our lives—for better and worse. Our egos contain what I have called our cognetic profiles that embody all of our knowledge and beliefs acquired through education, experience, socialization, and indoctrination (the four vectors of cognetics). Our cognetics are what we call upon to conduct what we believe is rational decision making. I designed the system originally in my PhD research to understand and predict the decisions of our presidents and, subsequently, foreign leaders. But it can be applied to any human being. It is also a great tool for personal assessment: to know thyself (as Aristotle suggested) which, when considered in a contemplative/meditative mode, can help each of us understand how our cognetics (in the ego) are both beneficial and detrimental to the decisions and judgments we make.

As we age, I have become convinced that the path to transcendence requires that we routinely challenge our cognetics that become cluttered with many elements of knowledge and beliefs that may no longer be relevant or, in many cases, are just wrong. To get on the path to transcendence and avoid the path of suffering, we must humbly learn to carefully discard many of the ideas and practices we have utilized in the past. To relax and release to rise. Further, this is why some of us are characterized as wise as we age, and others become insufferable curmudgeons. This clearing and cleaning process will affect a rebalancing that allows intuition to regain its footing vis-à-vis our rational mechanisms as we consider the world before us. Embrace the psychic cleanse for your mental health in the same manner you may have cleansed your microbiome for your gut health.

The goal is integrative or holistic decision making. Holism in judgment means blending inputs to decision making in a balanced manner where intuitive feelings are considered first as an initial screen rather than after the rational processes (or not at all). In other words, if the initial intuitive sense is negative, discard the consideration altogether before wasting time on the rational. How the energy that accompanies information feels is often the only thing we should consider. “Trust your gut” is another common dictum that applies here.

As many have adopted Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” approach to making us do what they want, we need to improve our holistic decision making. Intuition, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning,” needs to get much more playing time. The great news is that it is available to all of us—from children to elders—and can allow us a sense of tranquility we could all use much more of today. We really shouldn’t be enduring the agitation that we do, but we should recognize what the energy in the agitation is trying to tell us. All we must do is embrace a little clearing and cleaning—psychic cleansing—and calm our monkey-minds with meditative awareness. To liberate us from the shit-vendors and put a smile back into our lives.

[i] See William Steding, Saving America in the Age of Deceit (2020).

[ii] See Jesse Wegman, “The Supreme Court is Gaslighting Us All,” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/opinion/supreme-court-psychological-manipulation.html.

By William Steding|2024-08-25T12:48:13+00:00August 11th, 2024|General, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments

How America Wins Again
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How America Wins Again

General, Recent, The New Realities

How America Wins Again

Historians like to look back in time to identify moments when everything changes in such a dramatic fashion that the structure and direction of societies and our civilization is forever altered. The week that followed the assassination attempt on Donald Trump could have been one of those moments when a week changes decades to come. But it wasn’t. The collapse of Biden’s campaign and the assassination attempt of Trump offered Trump an opportunity to close out the election of 2024 in July. His golf ball was teed up as big as a beach ball, but he whiffed. (Even though I am certain he claimed a hole-in-one on his scorecard.)

All Trump had to do was take a humble unifying tone to gather millions of newly available voters under his tent. To speak positively and optimistically about America’s future to assure Americans and allies that America had regained its footing—that he would unite us to, once again, respect the values of our founders and to set the example for the world. To claim, as Reagan once did, that it was “Morning in America, again.”

Like a toddler driven by impulse, however, Trump is imprisoned by self-indulgence. His many deficiencies of character overwhelmed the opportunity. His angry, mean, true self prevailed. His messianic delusions of being both victim and savior in an attempt to claim the gilded throne of the second coming drove him into the ditch.

All of which once again proved the centuries-old Stoic dictum that what matters is not what happens; rather, what matters is how one responds to what happens. Pivotal moments in history don’t find their pivot if those who face the opportunity do not respond appropriately. They become buried in the footnotes of history rather than driving the narrative.

By failing to address the opportunity, Trump unwittingly put that beach ball back on the tee for the Democratic Party. To their credit, the Democrats got past their stubborn old guy first. Most Americans want neither Trump nor Biden. We may be finally past the two-old-white-guys malaise many Americans feel about our national politics. The Democrats now have an opportunity to address that desire. It’s too soon to know whether they will hit the ball, or whiff like Trump. The Democrats don’t have a great track record in strategic thinking, let alone effective execution thereof. But this much is certain, as I wrote a month ago (“A Loud Silence,” June 30, 2024), “It looks like it will be an intriguing (maybe even exciting) election year after all.”

That said, what Americans want in 2024 is not much different than we did in 2020: stability, calm, and optimism about tomorrow. We thought Biden would bring that and for awhile he did. Covid was in retreat and Trump was sent to Mar-a- Lago to scream about a stolen election, show off stolen documents to his sycophants, and fight subpoenas. Then, inflation accelerated, Putin invaded Ukraine, the Supreme Court went rogue, our border was trampled, Israel and Iranian proxies decided to fight for real, and Trump proved fear and anger remained a powerful political lever of coercive attraction while Biden’s capacities entered precipitous decline. On Biden, it was painful to take grandpa’s car keys away, but thankfully it got done before anyone got hurt.

So, what do we do now to achieve stability, calm, and optimism at home and restore America on the world stage?

Below are some initiatives—some fundamental dispositions—we can pursue as individuals and that those seeking our support in this year’s election would be wise to embrace. Things I believe could put America back on track to win again. These are the things we can do to restore America in spite of political chaos. After all, a government “of the people” begins and ends with the values and behaviors of the people. The people can control their destiny, or abdicate it to vainglorious demagogues. For the moment, it remains our choice.

Consider committing yourself to the following six initiatives:

Reverse the lens. Instead of pursuing American prowess from the top, down, do it from the bottom, up. We must set aside our fixation on the loud dysfunctional national political scene and focus instead on our own local, county, and state governance. To spend our energies and resources on making our communities strongholds of human well-being. As I wrote in Saving America in the Age of Deceit (2020), “stronghold communities mean a shared place that is largely self-sustaining and foundationally resilient; which looks no further than its common interests to guide its application of power and resources; and, which seeks to achieve a sense of virtuous humanity where every member holds both the responsibility and opportunity of participation in achieving the objectives of the community.”

For the moment and to the greatest extent possible, we need to decouple ourselves from our federal government. To take back what authority and financial resources we can and assume greater responsibility for our future in as many strategic result areas as we can.

Embrace an optimistic ethos of dynamism and abundance grounded in accountability. Notwithstanding all of our hand-wringing, we live in the greatest era of abundance in the history of humankind and America remains the greatest nation in the world to realize one’s dreams. After centuries of living in a state of scarcity, we now have the capacity to achieve well-being for every human on earth. Now is not the time to pull our heads back into our shells as turtles do when feeling threatened. Further, we must embrace dynamism over stasis, and reject the Trumpian impulse to restore the mid-20^th century when white men ruled while everyone else served them. We must not be seduced by Trump’s fantasy of a retro-topia. We must lean into the future. The great irony of today in America is that we behaved better—embracing dynamism in pursuit of abundance—in the late 20^th century during a period of prolonged scarcity. We can and must behave better.

We also need to honor consequences again—both the good ones and bad ones. Debt forgiveness should remain the purview of bankruptcy court, not for a president trying to buy votes from every student who over-indulged in a college they couldn’t afford. Bailouts should be eliminated for banks that pursue higher stock prices and executive bonuses while risking solvency. Consequences teach us how to manage risk, they are essential to our development of judgment. In an age of abundance, it is easy to shield ourselves from the effects of bad decision making. Doing so disrupts our ability to learn and capacity to fail our way to success, which is a fundamental human condition. We need to stand up with strength and humility, take responsibility for our actions, and behave in a manner consistent with our historical ideals that “all men are created equal” and each of us should have the opportunity to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

We must seek power not through coercion; rather, through our service to others. This applies to both domestic and foreign initiatives. It is based on a concept I developed years ago in graduate school while pursuing my PhD in diplomatic history. I called it enlightened altruism. It’s based in part on the 1977 book by Robert Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: a Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Many may recognize it as a Christian concept from the time before American Christianities were hijacked by televangelists and right-wing politicians who corrupted the Word of God into a fear-based form of extortion and coercion. Enlightened altruism embraces the idea of referent power where people bestow authority upon you in reference to your service to their well-being that empowers their lives. It is much easier to affect service to others today in an age of abundance than it was when Christ walked the earth, or even when Greenleaf wrote his book. We would be wise, and all of us better off, if we were to apply this ethic at home and abroad. Empowering others is the ultimate expression of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Power through inspiration rather than coercion and destruction.

We must reconsider our focus on growth—on increasing wealth—in favor of improving the distribution of the wealth we have. No, this is not a scary socialist or communist scheme. Soften your reflexive resistance, take a breath, and read on. It acknowledges that capitalism is the greatest system in the world for the creation of wealth while also recognizing its downside: that it also results in the concentration of wealth that threatens democracy and the objective of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all. We have already seen how the concentration of wealth results in the concentration of power that compromises our government “of the people.” (See, for example, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).) We have also seen how income inequality and related inequities foment conflict between Americans. Now we need to understand that if we want stability, calm, and optimism, and if we want our children and their children to enjoy the same, we need to re-embrace policies that lift all boats as opposed to a few basking on the decks of super yachts while others drown in overloaded dinghies. It won’t be easy to affect the appropriate policies, but we ignore this reality at our growing peril.

The right of self-determination is at the heart of America’s greatness and must be protected now and forever. For the first time ever, we now have a Supreme Court and a political party—MAGA/Trump—who believe our many and varied rights of self-determination, which have been at the core of our greatness since the American Revolution and have always been our competitive advantage when doing everything from creating business enterprise to fighting tyranny throughout the world, are suddenly theirs to modify and/or cancel to fit their ideological whims and racist misogynist predilections. Their continued attack must be stopped if America is to win again. Ask any immigrant why they are here—why they sacrificed everything to be here. They will look you straight in the eye and recount the fact that they believe America offers them an opportunity to realize their highest ambitions. That our freedoms—our rights of self-determination—must never be compromised in any manner whatsoever. If we allow this idiocy to continue, America’s decline as an empire will be assured.

We must restore our reverence for Mother Nature before she selects against us. In the 20^th century, we became inebriated by the promise of science and industry. We believed that through our many inventions and innovations that we could bend everyone and everything to our will, including nature and its many diverse ecosystems. We were wrong then and we are wrong now. Climate change is Mother Nature’s way of disabusing us of our arrogance. We must not only learn to live with each other through our service (#3, above), we must learn to similarly learn to respect and to serve our natural world so that we all (including all organisms both animate and inanimate) may thrive. “Drill, baby, drill,” which Trump promised in his nomination acceptance speech to achieve again on “day one” is just plain stupid. The evidence of our arrogance is overwhelming. The good news is that we are absolutely smart enough to correct our course, but time is quickly slipping away to save ourselves from ourselves. Come on, folks. Wake the f*ck up.

When we look in the mirror in the morning, we must summon courage to conquer fear, we must select love over anger and understand that power comes to those who serve others. We must reject the zero-sum, us vs. them mentality of scarcity, and realize we can all be better off if we compete to cooperate with each other, rather than compete to defeat each other. We must seek to lift each other up rather than being mean to demean.

In America, we still have the capacity (and more means than ever) to remake our communities, country, and world. We must simply demand better of ourselves, our leaders, and each other.

By William Steding|2024-08-11T12:17:40+00:00July 28th, 2024|General, Recent, The New Realities|0 Comments

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