The Great Reclamation Project

Would you like to have your life back? Your community? How about your country?

It seems as though the United States has entered a death-spiral of self-destruction. The conservative and always mild-mannered New York Times columnist, David Brooks, suggested America is “falling apart at the seams”; that it is “a society that is dissolving from the bottom up as much as from the top down.” What we need is a new vision of what life can be and the leadership to match. But we also need to make a commitment to ourselves and each other to change some fundamental behaviors to realize a new destiny through reclaiming what we know is true and good founded in a deep sense of personal responsibility.

When was the last time you sat on the edge of your bed before laying your head on the pillow and said to yourself, “If only all my tomorrows could be like today”? To then rise in the morning with a heart filled with aspirations. To find joy in each face you meet. To be overwhelmed by gratitude. To know that greatness—for yourself, your community, and country—were not just possible, they were probable. To feel like a winner living in the greatest nation in the world. This was once the shared prospect of every American and it can be again.

The Great Reclamation Project is our pathway to a new destiny. It requires a commitment to reclaiming our agency as individuals, strengthening the institutions—both formal and informal— that serve our collective interests, and caring for each other and the environment we inhabit in the same manner we wish to be cared for. It also requires a willful suspension of the long list of grievances, doubts, and animosities we all have collected in the dark days of deceit and peril we have endured over the last several years. To be reclaimed—to affect a new destiny—we must first unshackle ourselves from the anchors of fear and anger and hate. They are killing us. Bearing those burdens is no longer worthy of our attention; it is self-destructive. They must be vanquished to the currents of history.

The work begins at the first hint of dawn—when the sun breaks the horizon tomorrow. We must reclaim our individual lives, our communities, and our country.

Here is how.

Reclaiming Your Life

Step one is taking back our personal agency; to take responsibility again for our decisions and actions that define who we are. To regain our capacity for critical thinking that begins with knowledge gained from credible sources. To be honest with ourselves and truthful with others. Since the dawn of the digital age in the 1990s, we have, willingly and lazily, sacrificed our essential personhood to algorithms controlled by those who wish to exploit us like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. We are not algorithms, we are humans. Apps we downloaded to speed our access to news, products, and services to empower our lives have proven to be little more than a means of manipulation that have chipped away at our autonomy one click at a time. In extreme cases of immersion, which I witnessed personally with a former family member, they came to completely displace reality with a toxic and paradoxical mix of self-loathing and delusions of grandeur. Let’s be clear, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (now the Metaverse) could not care less about our welfare. Do not participate in his meta-ambitions. Click delete—forever. Take back your agency as a human being. Discard the fear of missing out (FOMO) in favor of the joy of missing out (JOMO).

As the editor in chief of Tablet, Alana Newhouse, recently argued, Americans are suffering from an ethic of “flatness” that arose through a combination of the progression of capitalist incentives dating to the 1970s, with the application of digital technologies in the 1990s, that have rendered American lives indistinguishable from each other—an epidemic of frictionless sameness. All round pegs and round holes. Our institutions have devolved into “forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators…strangling voice[s]…before they’ve ever had the chance to really sing.” The solution is to embrace, once again, what makes us human. Express your desires, ambitions, and truths regardless of pressures to conform to what the algorithms and apps command of you. Return to the richness of creativity and diversity that once was a hallmark attribute of Americans. As Newhouse concluded, “our lives should not be marked by ‘comps’ and metrics and filters and proofs of concept and virality but by tight circles and improvisation and adventure and lots and lots of creative waste.”

Next, engage with the world under the assumption that there is more good in each of us as than there is bad. History is loaded with examples of regular folks doing horrible things. But, by and large, humans are wired for goodness. From the beginning of humanity, doing right by each other was the key to survival. Today is no different. The key to unlocking the good is a matter of expectations. Humans love to meet the expectations of those who they wish to emulate—with whom they wish to share an identity. We must flip our lens of expectations from the darkness to the light. Reclaiming ourselves can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A change in moral perspective from bad to good—from desperation to aspiration—is essential to changing our personal and collective trajectory.

In hand with this commitment to the expectation of goodness is the rejection of personally held feelings of fear, anger, and hate. Yes, there are legitimate reasons to feel all of these emotions. I feel them—and fight them—every day. But here is the reality each of us must face. Negative emotions such as these provide those who wish us ill, or who wish to control us, with doors of weakness to exploit. Our fear, anger, and hate are weapons-against-us that produce self-inflicted wounds; that eventually cause us to lose our freedom and any hope of self-determination. This was, and is, the entire strategy of control and manipulation employed by our 45th (and perhaps 47th) president of the United States. It has been used by countless fascists who preceded him. Why provide the ammunition for our own executions?

Reclaiming our lives begins with reasserting our strength of individuality. Taking back our personal agency to create a human garden of beauty and diversity that once left the French philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, both amazed and perplexed as he toured a young America. We must live in the present with an eye on the future while expecting the good in each of us and capturing moments of beauty and success as fodder for gratitude. Know thyself and express thyself while safeguarding beliefs and values such that personal integrity is assured. Flourishing requires character and courage, neither of which emanate from algorithms, nor from apps.

Reclaiming Our Communities

If you have read my essays over the least few years, you know I am a fervent proponent of focusing on the development of what I call stronghold communities. And, specifically and urgently, turning our attention away from the shiny loud object that is our federal government. As David Brooks observed, cited at the head of this essay, our “society is dissolving from the bottom up.” That observation is easy to confirm as each of us have attempted to navigate the conflicts and animosities endemic in the communities we call home. Coupled with the ineptitude of our federal government, which has rendered itself little more than a resource-hoarding sloth, and is populated by those more interested in self-aggrandizement than the welfare of Americans, we face little choice but to fix-our-shit at home and envision a future with stronghold communities as the central actor in curing societal ills and enabling a future denominated in aspirations.

Stronghold communities can come in the form of counties, towns, neighborhoods, or any other organization—open to being defined by those who find themselves in any association to serve a common interest. Just as the reclamation of our individual lives requires rekindling our commitment to personal responsibility, we are similarly required to take responsibility for the communities in which we claim association. The principal focus of stronghold communities is for the production and maintenance of what economists call public goods. Public goods are the things that make our lives work—safely and productively—that we all need individually, but which are only achievable collectively. Schools; utilities; security; transportation, commerce and social infrastructure, are all examples of public goods. In America, we follow schemes of collective capitalism to affect the realization of public goods—a hybrid of socialism and capitalism. Even all types of insurance are schemes of collective capitalism even though they are usually dispensed by private companies. Yes, Mr. Allstate, you are (at least) half socialist!

Stronghold communities must see themselves as significantly more autonomous than they have in the past. They must reimagine themselves as the central actor in securing the welfare of their constituents. The three key skill sets of a stronghold community are: 1) a comprehensive knowledge of the needs and issues of the community; 2) the capacity to persuasively solicit and creatively apply resources to affect the objectives of the community; and, 3) the ability to network by and between other stronghold communities to pursue shared ambitions. Forget the hierarchy that places communities below state and federal institutions. In the future, stronghold communities are the hub of the wheel. We must take sole responsibility for whatever our common interest defines as the public goods of the community. Fortunately, technology is on our side that enables us to both network within the community and to forge alliances between communities to affect the capitalist benefits of division of labor and economies of scale. Traditionally, we have looked to the federal government to perform this networking function, but we must now flip that paradigm on its head.

It starts with fighting—tooth and nail—for the return of our financial resources from the federal government to the state and local level. Keep our tax dollars at home for application to locally controlled public goods. To accomplish this, we must also demand the dramatic reduction in the scope of public goods the federal government is (ostensibly) responsible for. Things like national security, central banking functions, and national transportation infrastructure should remain at the federal level. But things like education, public health, and commerce should be re-delegated to the state and local level. There is no question in my mind that my state, county, and town would have done a better job at protecting our public health during the pandemic than was accomplished by the executive and legislative branches of our federal government, let alone the FDA and the CDC. What a disaster. It is time to scale back the scope of burdens our federal government undertakes and return those obligations and attendant resources to the control of stronghold communities.

Some will argue this pits communities against one another right when we need to come together as a nation. Notwithstanding the fact that our national government cannot effectively produce and distribute many of the public goods we need anyway, competition between communities may produce (as competition often does) better solutions for us all. This scheme harnesses that capitalist ethic of competition that will, no doubt, create differential advantages between communities (and varied attractiveness for people considering relocation), but in the long run will force the unification of communities eager to capture those advantages for themselves through networked coopetition—competing to cooperate. And, unless you haven’t noticed, our well-intentioned national leaders have no chance of unifying the country while the malicious ones have no interest in doing so. As members of our respective stronghold communities, we will all still be Americans, but with a renewed sense of thriving rather than suffering. All, without raising taxes!

Reclaiming Our Country

As argued above, our federal government is irretrievably broken. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t reclaim our country from the bottom, up. The Trumplican Party has completely subsumed what was the GOP. Conservative ideals have been dismissed in favor of a naked power grab designed to protect white Christian nationalists who live in fear of losing their position in the hierarchy of socio-economic-political power. Our nation no longer looks like them and it terrifies them. Ideas are no longer their pathway to power; power expressed as coercion has become an end in itself. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is completely self-absorbed in intra-party bickering and shaming the opposition, all wrapped in a veneer of elite righteousness. As a result, the Biden agenda has collapsed and the American people have been left to struggle to remember why they ever formed a union. Currently, Biden is not just in danger of being a one-term president, he is looking more like a one-year president. This can certainly change, but the prospects look dim. In addition, while the executive and legislative branches seem like they are engaged in a middle school food fight, our Supreme Court in the judicial branch has become a political cudgel that has forgotten such sacred norms as the value and sanctity of precedent. To extend the metaphor of branches, I am reminded of Immanuel Kant’s warning that “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” Perhaps our founders didn’t read Kant.

As I read the many recent essays—some scholarly and others sloppy punditry—about the impending collapse of our democracy and the prospect of civil war, I am reminded of an old maxim in my study of international relations which holds that at the time the question has been asked, the eventuality is most likely underway, if not having already occurred. Today, we are indeed no longer a democracy. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people? We have drifted very far from that ideal. The political scientist, Barbara F. Walters, prefers the term “anocracy” which is somewhere between a struggling democracy and authoritarianism. In limbo, but headed in the wrong direction. The prospect of civil war is also well underway. Unless you have been asleep since 2016, we are engaged in a cold civil war that is becoming hotter (just look at the trends of violence) every day. And, the leaders of both major parties are fomenting further enmity at every opportunity they can find. Divide us to oppress us to keep power and money to feed their own illiberal ambitions.

I have heard the argument that other aspects of society—more specifically business, industry and the financial markets—will not allow our democracy to fail, or our cold civil war to become hot. However, the institution most cherished by these entities is capitalism, not democracy. We know, if we accept the highly persuasive research of the French economist, Thomas Piketty, that the endgame of capitalism is the destruction of democracy owing principally to capitalism’s effectiveness in producing concentrations of wealth (then power) among the very few, which is profoundly anti-democratic. Have you ever heard of the Koch brothers? Do you think they prefer democracy to capitalism? Further, unless the violence of civil war disrupts the processes of profit-driven businesses, do you think those executives will care? Their job is to serve shareholders, not the liberal ideals of Thomas Jefferson, or the unification ambitions of Abraham Lincoln.

There is a way to reclaim the spirit of America and the ideals of our founders—to reclaim our country. Like many of the challenges any human organization faces it comes down to charismatic and inspired leadership that is genuinely interested in serving constituent members. In our current circumstances, this means a completely new—even flipped—perspective by new leadership whose aim is to re-establish the prospect of the American Dream, including all the aspirations of every human being within the states and territories of the nation, as well as re-establishing the integrity of traditional American values and human dignity throughout the world. This is damn hard work, but no more difficult than that faced by prior generations.

It starts with candidates who aspire to not just restore a functioning government, but to empower the least powerful among us such that we may all rise to become our best selves. Not just better, best. Yes, we are absolutely stronger together. That has been proven over and over throughout the history of humankind. We need to be lifted up, to believe in ourselves again. New candidates must embrace the intoxicating power of winning; of the natural and contagious appeal of victory, which is among the most alluring attractors known in the constellation of human persuasion. Against all odds, FDR, Reagan, and Barack Obama prevailed over their rivals with one simple proposition: they made Americans feel good again; they made both citizens of the country and people around the world want to identify as Americans. FDR made “happy days are here again” a national mantra during the depths of the Great Depression. Regan claimed it was “morning in America” again. Obama promised the prospect of “hope and change.” Our next president must do much more than “Build Back Better.” They must convince all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, that our traditions of hard work, honesty, and creative innovation will, once again, provide a land of abundance and opportunity unrivaled anywhere in the world.

Last November, I proposed a way out of our mess when I published “MAFGA”: Make Americans Feel Good Again, https://ameritecture.com/mafga/. I argued that “lifting people up has always proven more powerful than putting them down.” That candidates who embraced this concept could save us from the doom of Trumplican-styled authoritarianism. I received feedback ranging from thumbs up to “you couldn’t be more naïve.” Many readers were hung up on a visceral need to bring justice to those (especially January 6th insurrectionists and Trump) who have done America wrong before any pivot to aspirational aims. To be clear, reclaiming America requires justice to be served. I fully endorse bringing the full weight of the law down upon the heads of those guilty of violating our laws, including sedition and treason.  But, I also believe that is the job of our justice system. Our job, as citizens, is correcting our personal behaviors by reclaiming our personal agency, strengthening our communities, and supporting those who are willing to do the hard work of re-establishing the American Dream. We must focus on what is within our control. Absent these efforts, the shaming, prosecution, and punishment of those who we believe have done us wrong may amount to little more than a Pyrrhic victory.

We must flip our focus and intentions to advocating for aspiration, hope, success, and winning, assured and secured in the hand of sincere responsibility for ourselves and each other. If we remain where we are, addled by fear, anger, and hate—divided in the sinister trap of us vs. them—we will seal a fate none of us desires. We will fail ourselves and every generation that succeeds us.

It is time to shift our eyes toward the light of dawn. To rise again in the embrace of hope. To know that our strength and our future are in our hands. It is time to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and, before we lay our heads on the pillow of our dreams, know that tomorrow is another opportunity to prevail in the game of life and maybe, just maybe, re-establish that beacon of hope—that city on a hill—conceived by John Winthrop at the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630.

By |2022-02-07T21:46:32+00:00January 17th, 2022|General, Leadership, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Hope’s Betrayal ~ Place Your Bets

In his 1732 “An Essay on Man,” the poet, Alexander Pope, wrote “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” which has been adopted over the years as its shorter version: “Hope springs eternal.” As our own hopes were dashed that 2021 would be a year of rebirth and renewal—as 2021 became a groundhog year to 2020—it is very difficult to breathe hope into our breast yet again. It feels as though hope betrayed us.

We all look to Covid data to gauge when we can lift our gaze from the ground to the sky, but those who study deeper socio-economic and political issues know, Covid (more particularly our response to it) is just the manifestation of much more significant issues now embedded in the American character.

There is a rule that has served me well throughout my life—in all aspects of my life. Does the opportunity, company, organization, person, or other relevant entity respond to intelligence? If it does, proceed with engagement. If it does not, abort. Unfortunately, too many people who call themselves Americans do not—will not—respond to intelligence. The very concept of learning—of taking in new facts about the realities we face and applying this knowledge to guide our decisions and behaviors—has, like masks, become politicized.

Many Americans have chosen ignorance over enlightenment as their stubborn modality to defy progress in the twisted hope of protecting their position in whatever they perceive to be the social, economic, and political hierarchy they prefer. And, of course, there are plenty of political charlatans who promote such politicization to serve their aim of gaining or preserving power. This profound deficiency—the rejection of knowledge—is at the root of our pernicious American character.

Before you read the balance of this post, I feel the need to share my perspective on my commitment to myself as a writer and to you as a reader. Occasionally, I am asked, what is the key to writing well, moreover, to keep writing day after day? The answer is to be selfish; to write for yourself first and always. The writer receives few, if any, accolades or positive feedback, and certainly little or no financial remuneration. If you write for any form of positive feedback, you won’t write for very long.  I write to process the world I see before me; to make sense of it and maybe make a small contribution to the improvement of our collective welfare by sharing what I write.

As for you, the reader, I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate you. Although I do not expect feedback of any kind, you provide what every writer needs: an audience to aim at when making all the little decisions a writer must make. Every writer needs a muse. You are mine. You are the backboard against which I hurl my thoughts to observe the imaginary rebound: hit or miss? You are my necessary and highly useful mirage. At times, however, my truth must trump what I perceive as your preferences to honor my sense of reality; to meet my commitment to see things as they are. This post is one of those times.

I know you want hope in a New Year’s message. I, too, want hope. I want someone to come grab my hand and guide me from the state of languishing that swirls around me toward the sunshine of flourishing that has defined the American condition for decades. And, to be clear, I can point to many things that could break in our favor, but there are harder realities we must address in order for any of those lucky outcomes to produce durable benefits to American society—to change our course in a meaningful manner.

What follows now is a message of realism (combined of prose and verse) rather than puffery. Regardless of what luck may come, character issues continue to beset our path to renewal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Place Your Bets

As the carousel of threats continues to turn, will we be spared?

In the crush of uncertainty, narcissism has overrun unity as the principal distinguishing factor of American identity. Narcissism’s first victim is love; when combined with the perplexing popularity of ignorance and alternative facts, its endgame may be the destruction of humanity. Can it be stopped? Who will save us?

 

 E Pluribus Unum, rest in peace.

Our myths crumble, jarring and disorienting.

We face tomorrow before we understand what happened today.

Staring into a kaleidoscope of fractal unknowns.

 

Nature and our planet will be fine once we are gone.

 

The planet doesn’t care.

We’ve had our chance to prove our virtue.

Creatures, both great and small have no more tears.

Earth turns toward the next epoch, slowly cleansing.

 

We hold on tight to our sense of entitlement—a comfortable delusion.

 

We believe we are so special.

Then tumble down like pinballs striking out.

Surely, we will be recognized as deserving and great.

While empathy is hung from an oak tree at noon.

 

We beg for grace as we double-down on our sins.

 

The glory of God come forth!

Sacrifice (by others) to assure our redemption.

The light grows longer now to reveal what we have wrought.

The ringing from the belfry clangs discordant.

 

We lean on the warm shoulder of optimism to deceive our desperation.

 

Falsely saved to celebrate ourselves.

We sing our songs of self-exaltation.

Our tribal subscriptions weaken under the weight of hypocrisy.

The flag of humanity bleached of its brilliance.

 

The path forward grows narrow now as we slouch toward Bethlehem.

(We are the beast.)

 

Alas, the bell of reckoning tolls for thee.

Hands reaching to grasp the emptiness.

Striding past crumbling statues and rusting magnitudes.

The road, the road, the road.

 

Deliverance or desolation, is the choice still ours?

 

Who will carry the fire?

Place your bets, or turn in your chips.

The House doesn’t care.

Is it you? Is it me? Is it us?

 

The wheel of a new year churns.

 

Note: With a tip of the hat to John Donne, W.B. Yeats, and Cormac McCarthy who each knew we would get here.
By |2022-01-17T20:08:56+00:00December 30th, 2021|American Identity, General, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Sweet Peace: the Strength of Equanimity

Neither you, nor I, nor anybody knows what the future holds. In the last two years we have all learned this lesson. It seems like the uncertainty of the future, which heretofore lay comfortably beyond the next month or year, came crashing back to the present. Today, let alone tomorrow, has become very difficult to predict. At times, it feels like the flames are lapping at our feet. This immediacy of uncertainty has caused tremendous anxiety that has manifested as depression and pain compromising both our mental and physical health. When we add isolation to the mix, necessary to protect ourselves from Covid-19, we have, in effect, created a pressure cooker with no apparent relief valve.

Yet, by most headline measures Americans are doing well today. The stock market is up, jobs are plentiful, wages are increasing, vaccines are working (if only everyone participated), American’s savings accounts are at historical highs, our military is not involved in any hot wars, and billions of dollars in infrastructure development are being deployed to improve our communities and lives. But, anger, violence, and suicide are at epidemic levels. Despair is at an all-time high. The surgeon general is sounding the alarm about anxiety, depression, and suicide among our children and adolescents. The truth is adults are faring no better. Forget the American Dream, the American experience—our daily interactions that comprise all of those things we do to make our lives work—are, at best, strained and unreliable.

In my now six decades of being an American, I have never seen so many things that just don’t work. The simple things in life can no longer be taken for granted. It is both frustrating and exhausting. Pre-pandemic, if a water main broke there were both the workers and the pipe available to fix it. Christmas shopping did not require an advanced degree in supply chain logistics, not to mention less gift for more money. When a flight attendant accidentally bumped a passenger’s arm while performing their duties they didn’t get punched in the face. People didn’t scream at you at the Post Office for wearing a mask. And, the mail you went to pick up showed up when it was supposed to—undamaged!

The painful paradox of the American experience today is that it is counter to a culture based on striving. As Americans, we believe we cannot only perform the simple things; we can accomplish the unimaginable. We strive to pursue success and happiness on whatever terms we choose. In the midst of all the striving we eventually realize—after both victories and tribulations—that life is more about thriving than striving. At the core of thriving lies sweet peace, which is that strength of equanimity that enables each of us to thwart the effects of people and events that may harm us with a calm sense of resolve. It is also that metaphorical soft pillow we lay our soul upon when we grab a moment to express a sigh of contentment—if only to ourselves—for the blessings of our life.

Sweet peace is, however, by no means a given. Although it is foundational to thriving and resides at the center of it, it is both an essential and fragile asset. For those of us with other issues—who have been dealt an additional blow to their mental or physical health—it can result in catastrophic consequences for the individual and their family. Instability and fragility are now the norm. At times, it seems the only available coping strategies are apathy and resignation: giving up. Meanwhile, there is a large segment of America who are cheering on the destruction of our democratic institutions and reveling in the suffering of their fellow Americans to gain power for themselves, or to just satisfy their sadistic impulses. These are the demons among us.

So, what do we do?

Perhaps we should just keep our heads down and have faith in the old maxim “this too shall pass.” That feels to me, however, like the 2017 hope that the office of the presidency would change the man who held it. How do we keep our chins up and marshal on while our sweet peace shrivels like a raisin in the sun? This is a challenge many Americans wrestle with every day. Demons of despondency seem to lurk in the shadowy vestibules of the house of despair that aim to destroy sweet peace.

Here are a dozen suggestions to preserve our sweet peace; some are mine and others from people smarter than I. To build and maintain what the Stoics called our “inner citadel.” To harness the intensity of today’s pressure cooker to make us stronger.

  1. Hold fast to the memories of better days. Find comfort in the historical fact that we have faced worse and prevailed; that we know how to do things well—to make them work again. My maternal grandfather survived World War I in France and the Spanish flu of 1918-20, then persevered through the Great Depression and World War II to have a family, build many businesses and become a leader in his community. Yes, we can prevail.
  2. Practice self-care and self-love. If you don’t sincerely love yourself—first and always—who will? In an age of isolation, your own love may be the only love available to you. If that fails, it is a slippery slope into despondency. Give yourself permission to be selfish in this manner. You first.
  3. For this moment in time, mental health is more important than physical health. I am fortunate to have the skills and discipline (instilled through competitive athletics) to capably maintain my physical well-being. But, I don’t know diddly-squat about maintaining my mental health. Based on emerging data, few of us do. Making this a new priority has been essential to securing my sweet peace—to preserving my sanity and my life.
  4. As the Stoics (and later Viktor Frankl) argued, we may not be able to control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to it. And, don’t forget, sometimes the best response is no response, especially when dealing with bullies—the aforementioned demons.
  5. Honor your purpose; your reason for being. Do not give up on who you are and, more importantly, why you are. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how [or what, or where, or who].”
  6. Let those close to you who are struggling know you are there for them. David Brooks wrote in the New York Times recently that a pastor advised him to support those who are suffering with the personal commitment that “I want more for you.” Then, strive to make the “more” happen. Words are nice; deeds are better.
  7. Practice gratitude. As the Dalai Lama suggested, “Let us try to recognize the precious nature of each day.” Express gratitude for what is right with our life; embrace the blessings of the good. Another meditation instructor I follow, Jeff Warren, suggested to take a moment when things go right, or when you see something beautiful to “let the good land.” Savor the good things rather than just letting them pass.
  8. Know that in the long run honesty and virtue are more durable than deceit and iniquity. Selfish cowards and evil-doers tend to meet their demise sooner rather than later. Those who have hurt you will, in the end, hurt themselves such that they can no longer harm you. Karma, baby, karma.
  9. Learn to identify toxic individuals and shun them from your life. It is easy to identify and avoid obvious scoundrels, but the lighter versions—the ones who are all take and no give and who criticize you behind your back—can be obsequious in disguise, but can suck the sweet peace right out of you. They are also those who are often wrong but never uncertain. These are the parasites who find little value in their own lives so they attempt to diminish you to inflate their own fragile egos.
  10. Seek truth and live in concert with Nature. One of Stoicism’s most basic subscriptions is the pursuit of reason and truth, which also means practicing the corollary: rejecting magical thinking and deceit in all of its forms. Do not tolerate bullshit; it is poison and will afflict you both mentally and physically. Live in concert with Nature; it never lies.
  11. Learn, learn, learn. Knowledge is power and lights the path to a better life and a better world. Take care to vet your sources of knowledge. Question the givens. Similarly, avoid or discard those in your life who suffer from close-minded intellectual sclerosis. They are a close cousin of the toxic individuals in #9, above.
  12. Know your own particular deceits and blindspots and work to subdue them. Self-deception is the greatest source of pain and suffering I have endured in my life. Knowing thyself is a prerequisite to steeling thyself. These self-deceptions come in many forms, but the most dangerous one for me has been believing someone else has my best interests at heart. I have learned (the hard way) to trust others to do what they believe is in their best interest (rather than mine) to avoid what can be excruciating anguish.

The most celebrated and followed historical figures in our world are those like Jesus Christ and the Buddha who are believed to have been divinely inspired and bestowed with an inviolable sweet peace. In the face of extraordinary threats (even death) equanimity never left them. They met every circumstance, however grave, with supernatural calm.

Oh, to be like them.

In the modern era, we have witnessed similar strength from people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama. Unlike Christ and the Buddha, we know the humanity of these three; they had no special access to the divine or other resources that are not also available to us. It is our challenge, in light of the immediacy of uncertainty and threats we face today, to summon all of our perseverance and love to protect our sweet peace.

I wish sweet peace for each and every one of you during this holiday season.

By |2023-12-01T15:48:13+00:00December 16th, 2021|General, Spiritual, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Hard Truths

I expect things are going to get better in the new year. Especially (if you read my last post about entrepreneurism), for folks who seize the opportunity to start new businesses. However, things may only get better for those who embrace a clear-eyed view of hard truths and who exhibit a toughness of resolve even greater than we were forced to muster during the first two years of the pandemic. In other words, things can get better, but they will not be easier. The years of sleepwalking our way to success provided by the abundance created by prior generations is over.

Our arrival in this world and our departure from it are moments that, for the vast majority of us, are solo events. No one comes with us and no one leaves with us. In the intervening years, we struggle to forge relationships to form families, businesses, organizations, and communities to sate the innate urge to procreate and to enjoy the benefits of belonging. If we are honest with ourselves, of the many effects of the last two years of the pandemic we have realized that the old feel-good trope, “we are all in this together” has proven to be a bell ringing in the wilderness of anxiety, loss, and grief that usually goes unheard. The hard truth is that regardless of how much we extol the virtues of human connection, these last two years have delivered the harsh reality of how frail those connections really are; of how the promise of humanity has been impaled on the rocks of selfish cowardice.

The American myth of “We the people” forming a more perfect union has entered a downward spiral from which it may never recover. Virtuous individualism that binds us as a community has given way to malignant narcissism that is eating the flesh of magnanimity at a voracious rate. Our nation’s political leaders have pursued this carnivorous practice with reckless abandon. There exists a tenet in all world religions that holds we must fall into the abyss before we can summon the courage to support hope in a manner which manifests the promise of a better life. Perhaps that is what is at hand here. However, today we continue to choose hate and shame and violence over the common good. Our better angels have swapped their wings for devil’s horns. If this continues, before too long we will all be, as the image above depicts, dancing alone.

I am fortunate to have built a big life, or at least big enough. That is the socially acceptable version—anchored by humility—of the description of my life; ascribing my success to good fortune. But the truth for me (as surely it is for you), is that I have had both good fortune and bad. In fact, bad fortune is assured for all of us. Suffering is a certainty. Good fortune is created by our persistence to live our life on our own terms. It is born more from willpower than circumstance. Joy is hard won. The honest version of my claim of a “big life” is that I am the reason I built a big life. I tell people I have been lucky to convey a sense of humility, but to a greater extent the truth is I made my luck happen. Acknowledging this truth is critical to surviving and prospering in the new year and the next years. As the Latin proverb, Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat, reminds us: fortune favors the brave.

Our safety, security, and success in the future will only be assured by our individual strength of character, our intelligence, and our willingness to do hard work. The kumbaya “we’re all in this together” trope is just happy horseshit. I recognize that sounds harsh, but hard truths are often hard to take.

Personal thriving—of body, mind, and spirit—begins with accepting the certainty of suffering then taking the risk to summon all your will and resources to endure the consequences with the aim of turning those consequences into benefits that produce fulfillment and joy. No other person or entity will make this happen for you. We can hope for the love and support of others along the way, but we are truly lucky if we receive it. If you have had such support, count your blessings.

In my experience, love and support was promised as a silent quid pro quo to achieve the concealed aim of the faux supporter: to steal away a piece of my winnings. To dine and dash and then claim they were chased from the restaurant by a villainous chef. Claiming victimhood as a path to vindication for bad behavior is as popular today as it is immoral. It is a twisted remnant of the age of abundance we are now departing. It is the essence of selfish cowardice. It is the practice of losers. Betrayal by those who pledged their love and support is the hardest truth I have had to endure in my life. I wish it on no one.

A related hard truth is that once you do achieve success, very few people (if any) will be happy for you. Many, many will claim they are happy and offer you high-fives. Then, they will work to undermine your future success once they fail to take a piece of your success for their own account. These are the silent parasites in our midst and will visit you in many forms from family members to friends to those offering professional support (attorneys, accountants, etc.) to every charitable organization you have never heard of. You will be very popular, and the adulation you receive (with the exception of those who genuinely love you) will be as phony as a Trump tan.

Cynical? Perhaps. But, as one who prides himself on seeing things as they are rather than as I might wish them to be, I cannot allow myself to ignore a mountain of evidence. To be clear, the deceits I have endured in my life are probably no greater than yours, although a big life does also make you a big target. Denying the occurrence of such deceits, or allowing them to be styled as benign events devoid of malicious intent (rather than calling them out for what they are) produces a festering bile that will eat you from the inside, out. This is the poison of injustice. And, denying or ignoring these events allows the offender to offend again, which creates new victims and accelerates societal decline. One must be brave with hard truths if virtue is to be retained, which is the most foundational asset of all.

In 2022 and beyond, we must grant ourselves the arrogance of confidence in our hard truths if we are to survive and prosper. We must be cautious—on the edge of miserly—with whom we convey our trust. I acknowledge the popular argument that vulnerability equates to bravery, but it can also be just foolish. It can leave you violated beyond repair by those who would rather steal your big life than do the hard work of building their own. Today, a preponderance of deceits has caused betrayal to become its own pandemic; more insidious than any viral variant known to humankind.

Pick your music and dance—alone or together. But, be careful where you step. And, always know where every exit is in the dancehall. We have entered an era where our prosperity and well-being will be subject to threats heretofore considered unimaginable in recent history. This trend is well underway. We must meet those challenges with our eyes wide open to the light of hard truths and meet the world with a sense of steely fortitude. Our descent into the abyss may be a necessary prerequisite to the re-birth of hope, but the ladder of hard truths is most certainly our only way out.

By |2023-04-09T13:31:50+00:00December 5th, 2021|General, The New Realities|0 Comments
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The E-Boom of 2022

The bad crazies have dominated America for the last several years; it is time for the good crazies to take the stage.

I expect 2022 will be similar to the entrepreneur-boom (E-Boom) years of 1983 and 1998. Those were years when business—not politics—catapulted the American spirit to new heights. They were years when the most asked question was simply, “Why not?”

George Gilder’s 1984 book, The Spirit of Enterprise captured the energy of the early 80s best as he celebrated the birth of widespread entrepreneurship when he described entrepreneurs as those who “In their own afflicted lives, they discover the hard predicament of all human life, threatened always by the encroachments of jungle and sand. From their knowledge of failure, they forge success. In accepting risk, they achieve security for all. In embracing change, they ensure social and economic stability.” These are the good crazies.

In the late 1990s, it was technology that drove businesses to transform our lives and renew the American spirit. Once again, entrepreneurs provided stewardship of the digitization of everything that drove productivity and economic development to levels unseen in American history. Don Tapscott’s, The Digital Economy (1994) foretold what we have now all experienced: a world in the palm of our hand. First there was fire, then the wheel, then the Gutenberg Press and next the combustion engine and, in the late 90s, a life reduced and (paradoxically) accelerated by 1s and 0s.

A more beautiful insurrection than the bad crazies provided on January 6, 2021is on our doorstep. I am not into numerology, but 2-0-2-2 with three deuces and a one-eyed Jack has to be a good omen. Pick your Jack—the heart or the spade—love or power. Combine it with three deuces and it looks like a good time to go all in. People will be considering decisions that would have never been on their radar a few years ago. No subtlety, no nuance. Big bold moves. A chance to live life on your own terms again, or maybe for the first time? Crises always provide the opportunity to make the world new again. While most sit back licking their wounds or remain imprisoned by their fear and loathing, a few—the entrepreneurs—dive headfirst into the void.

After years of fear and uncertainty, which began with the Trump presidency and ended with COVID-19, we are in transition from a wannabe fascist and a life-threatening pandemic to a rational White House and an endemic annoyance. Home tests, anti-viral drugs and the availability of monoclonal antibodies are game changers. The fundamental shift this allows is removing the threat of the unvaccinated from ending the lives of the vaccinated. Our healthcare system can recover and meet the needs of non-Covid emergencies again. Researchers can take what we’ve learned from the mRNA platform and apply it to other endemic diseases like the common cold and influenzas and, yes, maybe even the eradication of many types of cancer. There are entrepreneurs in the healthcare industry, too.

Our democracy remains under threat and our politicians, who remain trapped in their own shame games and petty grievances are unlikely to save the day by themselves. Addled by anger, which is simply the manifestation of fear, and stuck in a modality of condemnation, which is actually evidence of self-loathing, our well-intentioned politicians may spiral into irrelevance. Especially since most Americans have lost their appetite for listening to their many promises and proclamations. However, an expanding economy driven by non-institutional entrepreneurs has the natural and powerful effect of dispersing power across new centers of influence that are impossible to corral by authoritarianism. Why do you think Xi Jingping is cancelling entrepreneur-cum-tycoons in China like Jack Ma? A broad dispersed economy driven by entrepreneurs is inherently democratic and anti-authoritarian.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of cash in the hands of Americans providing seed capital for startups and funds to support high levels of demand for new products and services. Private and venture capital equity funds are flush. The cost of money will rise but, for now, remains at historic lows. Supply chain issues will be unwinding in the new year. Dispositionally, people are ready to go it alone, away from traditional employment in favor of lifestyle flexibility and abundant generational opportunities to make their own mark on the world. Business startups are already accelerating well above pre-pandemic levels. The IPO market is deal-horny providing a vehicle to realize the economic value created by entrepreneurs and support the long-term capital needs of growth companies.

Finally, breakthrough innovations only occur when entrepreneurship is in full bloom, which is our last hope of dealing with climate change. Our weak-willed politicians and our own selfish intransigence means we will have to rely on transformative innovation in the creation, storage, and distribution of energy. The only other thing that can reverse climate change is catastrophic economic collapse, and nobody wants that. The rebirth of entrepreneurship may prove a just-in-time solution to our greatest existential threat.

As the E-Boom of 2022 approaches, these are my words for my 20- to 40-year-old readers:

  • Avoid complexity. It confuses, confines, and compounds risk.
  • Blow away rules and boundaries.
  • Hitch a ride on a comet—destination unknown.
  • Lose the shackles and throw away the key.
  • Suspend that long search for meaning; let it find you.
  • Those who fail succeed the best.
  • Ask, over and over again, why not?

For my readers 40 to 60 years old:

  • The people at your dinner table should be your principal focus.
  • Balance stability with dynamism; perfect the art of the pivot.
  • Forget about being first, be the best.
  • Segue from accumulation to thoughtful discernment; discard!
  • Be assertive with your hard-won knowledge.
  • Engage with completely new areas of learning.
  • Craft a financial plan to serve you in later life.

For my 60+ readers:

  • Extinguish the fire of anger; avoid the trap of judgement and condemnation.
  • Focus on pace rather than distance; steady now.
  • Seek inspiration in simplicity.
  • Stand ready to lift up those younger than you.
  • Focus on the light of transcendence—rise above the rabble.
  • Allow Nature to define your path.
  • Listen, learn, love; your relevance depends on it.

Sit up tall at the table, folks. Those deuces and that one-eyed Jack are ready to be played.

By |2021-12-05T14:47:30+00:00November 24th, 2021|Leadership, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Tune Out to Tune In

Avert your eyes and cover your ears. A nose-clip, or essential oil diffuser, might be in order as well. Turn the channel away from the din of political dishonor. Swipe left. Refocus your efforts on yourself, your loved ones, on friends, on family, and on community. The charlatans who pledge their allegiance to our best interests no longer deserve our attention. They have failed us and embarrassed their grandchildren. In an effort to have things both ways, Mitch McConnell has turned himself inside out so many times what is left is a sack of mottled death-pallor skin inflated by putrid bloat. Shame is his pathetic legacy.

Meanwhile, Team Joe are working their butts off to reverse our national descent into the abyss while the SARS CoV-2 mutates to save itself from our many interventions. Spring, come soon. For our part, we must ignore the shiny distractions members of Congress jangle before the lenses of their media enablers to loosen our wallets in their favor. Our resources don’t need to go to Washington DC in hopes they may someday return to serve us; they need to be directly applied at home. I implore once again: building stronghold communities is our path to a better future. (See chapter 8 in Saving America in the Age of Deceit.)

There are glimpses of brilliance on the horizon. A certain byproduct of crisis is innovation. Forced to think differently and enabled by norm-crashing consequences, new powers based in new beauty are revealed. New technologies are an obvious place of innovation. As David Brooks pointed out in The New York Times recently, “life altering breakthroughs … are fewer than they once were,” which is to say: it is now time for many more. The half-full glass mindset suggests the current massive public health, economic, and political crises we face will, paradoxically, create the necessary space for an acceleration of opportunity to redesign our world.

Coronavirus vaccines have broken all the legacy rules of vaccine development and distribution. As clumsy as we appear today in our attempt to conquer Covid-19, tomorrow we may have a one-shot coronavirus vaccine that will knock out a spectrum of deadly viruses and maybe even the common cold. In energy, everything from harnessing deep-earth heat to brand new safe, small, and efficient nuclear reactors may assure that efforts in renewables—well underway already—have complementary sources of clean energy to assure our lifestyle, health and safety for generations to come while breathing new life into the planet.  As Brooks surmised, “one could go on: artificial intelligence; space exploration seems to be heating up; a variety of anti-aging technologies are being pursued; … an anti-obesity drug. There is even lab-grown meat.”

Our souls must, however, be cleansed as well. The folks in lab coats can give us new tools, but we need to reboot our hearts and minds. For example, the hyper-individualism my generation bestowed upon America that was amplified to levels of selfie-based narcissism by our children, must be set aside for new regimes of collective action that utilize the efficiencies of capitalism as a means rather than an end. The world has become an interconnected and highly dependent field of energy that transcends borders, walls, language, and currencies while honoring the beauty of cultural heritage. Honesty and respect must replace fear and greed as differentiators to affect persuasion. The butterfly effect is real. What was once seen as chaos will be recognized as rational fluidity once enlightenment is realized. (It only appears chaotic when we don’t understand what is going on.)

Achieving this is the Holy Grail of a thousand years.  It can only happen if we start with ourselves and our communities. This is a bottom-up process. One person, one soul at a time. A virtue-based life has been recognized by philosophers for thousands of years as the key to transcendence and tranquility; as the pathway to harmony with Nature, writ large. The opportunity today has been established by a lack of choice born from crisis. We may feel pinned down in the moment, but there is a better way coming into view.

Unclench your fists. Turn your screams into song. Avert your eyes but don’t close them. Beyond suffering lies the prospect of transformation. Perhaps even a second age of enlightenment. It won’t be easy; it will be damn hard. Many among us won’t get there, but those of us who do may just change the whole world. Tune out, take a huge breath, then tune in, again.

By |2021-02-28T19:47:29+00:00February 16th, 2021|General, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Flipping the Script

As the country grinds to a Covid-induced halt, and President Trump descends from existential threat, to absurd clown, to likely defendant, the rest of us are tasked with our personal survival through spring, or longer.  Hibernation is natural for many mammals during winter’s darkness and cold, yet we humans are better at romanticizing hibernation than practicing prolonged seclusion.  Distractions conceived to ward off anxiety and depression are, I have learned, a simple enough concept, but soon fall victim to the banality of repetition.  And, while I embrace the theory of the “present moment” as the only one that matters, when desperation takes up residency in the now, as it has for too many Americans, breathing deeply can slide into hyperventilation.

Watching the news as a go-to distraction is of little help when the message is, we’re all gonna die.  Old movies turn out to be just that: old. Hallmark movies?  Little more than a sugar high. Reminisce about lost freedoms and good times?  I don’t recommend going down that rabbit hole.  And, our spouses, partners, family members, and even pets (if they haven’t bailed on us already) look askance at us with that gaze of simmering contempt as their eyes speak without words: “Oh, you again? You’re still here?”  Do you think “stay-at-home” comes with the permission to share your flatulence as loudly as you can?  Winston Churchill gave the best advice: “When you are going through hell, keep going.”

Alas, the earth still spins its way, day by day, to a new tomorrow.

As for earth, I expect it is wishing for an asteroid to rid itself of humanity but, for the time being, we are stuck with each other in a fateful embrace of dual threats: nature’s virus to humans, and human’s toxic dependencies that are assuring the extinction of nature.  Oh, joy!  This is our centennial (perhaps millennial) test: can we come together to defeat a pandemic and leverage that new-found unity to halt, then reverse, climate change?  Can we save ourselves and nature too?  The pandemic is, in many respects, our audition—a training-wheels deal.  If we can’t defeat it, we have little hope of affecting climate change.  We may as well load up the Yukon and move there—to the Yukon.  (I hear new real estate brokerages are opening there every day.)

Dear reader, we need to flip the script, and soon. We need to summon our inner entrepreneur and reconceive threats as opportunities and work to morph our weaknesses into strengths.  We need to reimagine our world and the role(s) we play.  Lord knows we have the time, now we just need the will.  I used to teach budding entrepreneurs and aging executives the same thing: that success is based in intelligence, resources, and passion; that you can win with two of three as long as one of them is passion.  You can be smart or well-funded, but if you lack passion—intensity—you will not prevail.  To that end, I have some thoughts for America.

The recent election revealed an America at war with itself; a cold civil war, but a war nonetheless.  Biden won the presidency, but had no coattails down-ballot.  Trump lost (yes, Donald you are a LOSER), but voters down-ballot preferred Republicans.  So, Biden’s challenge is to largely ignore the 30 million voters on each of the far right and left—the core audiences of FOX and MSNBC—and try to satisfy the 90 million in the middle.  That is his only path forward.  Political provocateurs with absolutist exclusionary slogans need to take a holiday.  Self-righteous condemnation has no place in public discourse, whether it emanates from the right or left.  We can’t afford extremes; we must live in the middle lane.  Boldness? Certainly.  Win-lose certitude?  Absolutely not.

To that end, as we wish him well, we need to shift our focus from Biden’s challenges and reimagine how we can affect the production and distribution of public goods—without the Federal Government.  Public goods are things like healthcare, education, transportation, and communication systems.  Things better managed through collective interest than personal.  They are things that, if we all have access to them, make us both collectively and individually better off.  They are best considered through the lens I call collective capitalism: a hybrid of collectivism for the common good and the efficiency of capitalist regimes that reward the highest and best uses of available resources.

Let’s take healthcare as an example of a public good we might tackle on a regional basis.  What if states grouped themselves into like-minded affiliated networks?  Like networks of blue states and red states.  What if the governors of Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado got on the phone and formed a public-option based healthcare network?  What if those same governors demanded a return of tax dollars and authority from the Federal Government and tasked their brightest minds—from the public and private sectors—to design and implement a new healthcare system for the residences of their states?  Red states could form their own networks based on their own particular ideological preferences.  A healthcare system based on every person for themselves?  Abortion illegal? Defund Medicaid? Go for it. (And watch people flee.)

The reality is this: in a cold civil war, our Federal Government provides little hope for solving our problems.  To be clear, I am rooting for Joe.  However, reality is screaming in our faces; the Federal Government no longer serves our interests—even on life and death issues.  Perhaps seeking solutions through regional affiliations will exacerbate division, but affiliation may be more realistic than unification, and we need to solve some basic problems now.  Regional competition based in service to citizens rather than politicians may be just what we need to bring honesty back into the process.

People like Mitch McConnell should not be a factor in the health and welfare of children in South Central Los Angeles.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should not determine what crops a farmer plants in Iowa.  However, they exert their influence because we have placed these decisions in their hands.  Shame on us.  We have both asked and allowed all three branches of our Federal Government to take responsibility and assume authority for way too many issues.

Frankly, we need to get off our asses, get our proverbial shit together, and control our own destiny.  The Washington monument is just that—a monument.  It is not a beacon to light our path to the future.  That path begins at home.

By |2020-12-18T16:16:49+00:00December 3rd, 2020|General, The New Realities|0 Comments
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At the Edge: Survival Tips for Baby Boomers

For the remainder of the typical Baby Boomer’s life the United States will likely be in decline, which will put Boomers—much more than others—in a very precarious position.  But, that does not mean one cannot survive and prosper, although it may require re-defining your life and a whole lot of work.

Following the Federal debt debacle, the subsequent market sell-off, and the downgrade of U.S Treasuries by Standard & Poor’s, I received a Friday evening email from a financial consultant (to “Our Valued Clients”) that implored their valued ones to avoid panic.  They (all much younger than I) wrote: “We urge clients to take a deep breath, relax, and not react emotionally to what we are seeing in the market.”  While I was nowhere near panicking—perhaps because I have come to accept devaluation due to systemic risk (and because I’ve already changed my own investment strategy)—it struck me that if they were concerned enough to send out such an email after-hours on a Friday in August, then maybe I should panic.

The markets after all, like Mother Nature, are incapable of emotional irrationality.  They are the final arbiter of value and instantaneous purveyor of consequence.  They are the highest expression of our collective expectations.  They reveal the (stubborn) truth that is (finally) piercing the veil of denial embedded in the advisor’s call for calm. Panic may actually be a rational choice for a Boomer who is facing this truth.  After all, the timeframe for capitulation and recovery may exceed the Boomer’s lifespan.  Indeed, the market meltdown that followed on Monday suggests panic may be the new norm.  Of course, many financial analysts and pundits immediately rolled out their feel-better rhetoric claiming what we had seen was an aberration or “disconnect,” which is their unwitting acknowledgment that they have no idea what is happening.  One thing is certain, however:  leaving your money in their hands is in their best interest.

The truth the markets have expressed can be summed up as follows: while most of us know what the right thing to do is (setting aside those addled by ideology, misplaced faith, or engaged in modern-day piracy), we lack the will to do it.  This is and has always been the case for Americans. As Winston Churchill once observed, “The Americans will always do the right thing after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”  The most glaring historical example is slavery.  The Founding Fathers—evidenced by their own writings—knew that slavery was inherently wrong, yet they did nothing about it (notwithstanding presidential aspirant Michelle Bachman’s twisted historical interpretation).  It took nearly one hundred years to breach the legal threshold and emancipate slaves, then another hundred to leap the moral threshold and get rid of the racist work-arounds like the Jim Crow laws.

What is required to clean up the financial and political mess in the United States is relatively easy to identify, but impossible to execute.  There are four things that must be done.  We must make at least $4 trillion in expenditure cuts including restructuring Medicare and Social Security, endure increased taxes in the near term, overhaul/simplify the tax code, and redesign Congress (starting with term limits).  Failure to do all of these things will accelerate the precipitous decline of the United States as the wealthiest and most powerful state in the global system, but none of these things will be accomplished; at least not as a matter of will.  The consequences of this are dire and probably worth panicking about.

Today’s obvious and unbelievable stupidity displayed by our elected representatives is no different than the stubbornness that protected slavery and segregation, except this time we all—not just slaves—will suffer.[1]  It would be ahistorical and irrational to believe we will act better or more quickly in dealing with our financial woes than we did when committing prior sins or facing crises.  While democracies are arguably inherently good, they are not designed to exalt morality or pre-empt crises. Our lesser selves do not assure better governance via aggregation.  In open systems, the best one can hope for is that crises will produce creative destruction, which is what is happening now. There is, however, an alternative for Boomers to limit their exposure and preserve their long-term well-being.

Boomers must re-imagine and restructure their lives.  Succeeding generations have less baggage to shed and are (sigh) more attractive to employers.  The winning strategy since World War II has been to align one’s self with big companies, big governments with big militaries, and big markets.  Get a job with a large enterprise—public or private—and climb the ladder.  Invest in big money-center financial markets and count on a 7% after-tax return.  Expect the government to provide healthcare and a financial safety net beginning at age sixty-five.  That strategy is not only dead; it has become dangerous because of its exposure to systemic risk.  Now is the time to simplify, disconnect, and sustain.

Simplify.  Get small and remain flexible.  Reduce your footprint and keep your running shoes nearby.  Eliminate stuff; sell it or give it away.  Invest in yourself first, especially your mind and body.  Get things right in your head and heart: smart and content.  Next, invest in things you control.  Then, invest in companies that play at the edges—that rely on their own balance sheet to fund their future and which are highly adaptive.  Leverage wisdom.  Avoid the whiz-bang dreamers.  Boring companies make more money, longer.  But remember: it’s not about wealth; it’s about well-being.  Take time to appreciate nature, art, music, and literature.  From simplicity comes peace-of-mind and well-being.

Disconnect.  Minimize your exposure to systemic risk.  Focus on the quality of your connections and relationships, not the quantity.  Size and scale are no longer de facto advantages.  De-leverage your own balance sheet as much as possible.  If able, move to a town that has a history of self-reliance; where services are few but the basic stuff works, and Boomers are still employable.  If you must live in a large city, form small communities (actual or virtual) within the city or within your neighborhood, but do not be constrained by geography or borders. Whenever possible, leverage technology to create your own reliable world.  Alliances are still important, but choose your cohorts carefully.  Large collectives will be unable to avoid systemic risk.  Again, think small to evade collateral damage.

Sustain.  Within means and with respect.  Channel your inner hippie.  Feed your soul.  Embrace an ethos of sustainability.  Ask yourself when making large and small decisions: is this option sustainable?  Am I using resources in a manner that respects their origin?  The so-called “permaculture movement” is worth exploring to identify ways to support sustainable agriculture and urban food gardening.  “The ethic of permaculture is the movement’s Nicene Creed … care of the earth; care of the people, and a return of surplus time, energy, and money, to the cause of bettering the earth and its people.”[2]  This may sound a bit squishy until you realize sustainability is essentially what our grandparents called self-reliance.

The foreseeable future in the United States is grim.  We lack the will to do the right thing.  Our system of collective action is broken.  But, we can always act on our own to re-imagine our lives, form new alliances, and make a new future for ourselves.

[1] While many deplore Congress but like their own representative, I am not among them.  My Congressman, Michael Burgess, stood with the Tea Party before he bowed to Boehner, and his most recent claim to fame is authoring an amendment to legislation to preserve the production and sale of 100-watt incandescent light bulbs.  I’m sure the electric company and both employees of Light Bulb World are thrilled.
[2] Michael Tortorello, “The Permaculture Movement Grows From the Underground,” The New York Times (July 27, 2011).
By |2017-05-27T18:26:15+00:00August 9th, 2011|General, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Technium Delititus

One of my favorite columnists, Roger Cohen of The New York Times, recently wrote a rant of lamentations regarding the velocity of change where he questioned if we are really better off with all that has occurred in the last fifty years; in other words, is progress really progress?  He argues,

Before identity theft, when nobody could steal you, before global positioning systems, when we were [often happily] lost, before 24/7 monitoring and alerts by text and email, when there was idleness, before spin doctors, when there was character, before e-readers, when pages turned, we did get by just the same.[1]

Personally, I love my digital conveniences, at least when they work.  However, I must also admit a growing concern I have for, among other things, our capacity for self-sufficiency when batteries fail or networks collapse.  Will we even be able to find our way across town, complete a transaction, or write a real letter in cursive?  Is our new digital economy sustainable on bits and bytes?  Should we be concerned that toddlers’ favorite toys are often an iPhone, or that Google is developing a car that drives itself?[2]  In 1995, techno-futurist Don Tapscott wrote about the dawn of networked intelligence and its impact on a “new world (dis)order”  and settled optimistically on the conclusion that while perils exist, technology  will likely end up “freeing us, stimulating us, and relaxing us” as long as we join the emerging digerati elite.[3]  Fifteen years later, I am willing to endorse his claim of stimulation, but freedom and relaxation are debatable, and the perils may be more insidious than expected.

The perils collectively contribute to a chronic condition I’ll call technium delititis: the slow but certain degradation of our capacity for self-sufficiency and, moreover, our sense of self.   The fundamental question is, as life gets better through advances in technology, are we better at life?  There are (at least) five deleterious effects of technium delititis I have observed in others and myself.  (I do not claim immunity.)

  1. Lack of presence.  The digitally enthralled are seldom mentally where they are physically.  While it’s unfair to call it digital daydreaming when our minds are elsewhere—we may be collaborating via a Google tool on the generation of new alternative fuels—we are nonetheless absent.  Those who are in our midst can count on us for nothing, whether companionship or warning us that our hair is on fire.  This can damage relationships upon which we rely for our own general well being.  Perhaps those of us who are digitally engaged should hang a sign around our neck that reads “Not Here.”
  2. Inability to self-edit.  This problem began with the fax machine.  As the speed of communication increased the requirement for getting our words right the first time decreased.  When it took days to get a letter across the country, we spent much more time with our words and sentences, editing and polishing them to perfection.  Today, we write in incomplete sentences and even incomplete words, and most of us think syntax is a government tax on cigarette and liquor purchases.  The result of speedy transmission is too often lousy communication.
  3. Rising narcissism.  There may be value in social networking, I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.  I really don’t care what hundreds of so-called friends had for dinner, or how a store clerk treated them.  Astonishingly, Facebook and Twitter operate on the assumption that we do care, and they are clearly winning the argument given the millions who participate.  The ether in their proposition is narcissism; we are led to believe by those who claim us as friends that such trivial mundane activities are indeed important to others—that we do matter.  Social networks, at least in their current form and use, are (at best) ego-smoothing pacifiers that foster self-delusion.  Worse, they take time away from developing real relationships that have depth and durability.  As sociologist Malcolm Gladwell recently claimed in The New Yorker, “social media are built around weak ties.”  It is unlikely that the next revolution or innovation will claim Twitter as its inspiration, notwithstanding the millions who are addicted to 140-character discourse.
  4. Decline in critical thinking.  Critical thinking begins with research—original research.  Google and Wiki don’t count.  They function as filters and organizers that may exclude better answers to important questions. They are clearly easier to use, but easier is not always better.  If we are going to deal effectively with the problems we face today—and they are enormous—we better get back to real research including the kind of basic research we did in the 1950s and 1960s (before all-things-digital).  Otherwise, we’re just re-stirring the same soup, even though it does arrive on our devices in .8 seconds.
  5. Speed isn’t always good.  We are a society hooked on speed.  We believe that faster is better, and it often is.  But, in many cases, using more time creates higher value.  Thinking a while longer—perhaps even overnight—can be better than clicking send. Taking one’s time allows improvement in quality of thought as well as precious moments for self-editing.  On this point, I reflect on a lesson I learned as a student at the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyoming.  The first lesson in wilderness first aid—when faced with a crisis—is to wait. Obviously, this seems counterintuitive until you learn that decisions made in the first few minutes are the most important ones and, therefore, must be made with careful analysis of all the variables.  This lesson from the wilderness applies to the digital world too.  After all, variables—whether digital, analog, physical, economic, environmental, scientific, political, etc.—are still just variables.  We don’t need to always go as fast as technology allows.

Our first challenge is to at least think about these effects.  Surely, the cavemen who started the first fires and later rolled the first wheels learned quickly about singed beards and the virtue of speed control.  The next challenge is to take control of our gadgets and their usage to assess if a life improved by technology makes us better at living life.  We have daunting challenges ahead of us in America and the world.  We must maintain our capacity for self-sufficiency, self-restraint, and thoughtful deliberation.  We need to keep the effects of technium delititis in-check.

[1] Roger Cohen, “Change or Perish,” The New York Times (October 4, 2010).
[2] See Hilary Stout, “Toddlers’ Favorite Toy: The iPhone,” The New York Times (October 15, 2010); and,  John Markoff,  “Google Cars Drive Themselves in Traffic,” The New York Times (October 9, 2010).
[3] Don Tapscott, The Digital Economy, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), p. 4, 34.
By |2017-05-27T18:31:50+00:00November 11th, 2010|General, The New Realities|0 Comments
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The New Realities Part V: Sovereignty, Anarchy, and Creative Destruction

If you are someone who enjoys chicanery, volatility, and a world without rules, the needle on your happy meter will remain pegged for the foreseeable future.  The world Daniel Suarez creates in his techno-thriller Daemon and its sequel Freedom seems to be more real than fantasy as unexplained flash crashes and debt-induced contagions threaten to destroy our many efforts to construct durable institutions to suppress endemic anarchy in the international system.  Suarez may prove to be as prescient as his predecessor of Americano angst, Tom Clancy.  Alas, anarchy appears to be gaining the upper hand—as Machiavelli’s adherents would argue it always has.  Our stubborn invocation of sovereignty ensures it.  Our rapacious leaders in both D.C. and Wall Street exploit it.  It is simply antithetical for humans to stick much more than a toe into the Rubicon’s waters of civil transformation before withdrawing; there are few Caesars among us.

However, while we wring our hands over the effects of market mayhem and cringe at the timidity of our political leaders who wilt under kliegs supplied by hyper-partisan (so-called) news bureaus, we can also find solace in the uncertainty and upheaval that allows creative destruction to do its thing: to purge the system of bad ideas and incompetent leaders.  Anarchy amps our turpitude but it also makes room for reinvention—for new ideas and leaders to take the stage. Many (relative) innocents will be hurt, but we must embrace this Darwinian moment and adapt our own behaviors and expectations to new realities.  We must avert our eyes from headlines crafted by Chicken Little hacks and dig deeper into human activity.  When we do, we realize that we are one major ah ha! away from an explosion of innovation.  For example, last week’s announcement of the proof-of-concept of synthetically driven cell production means creative destruction is underway.  Next-gen Edison’s remain busy while entitled malcontents who capture headlines hurl stones in Athens’ public square.

Moreover, predictions based on watersheds, contagions, and dominoes are seldom, if ever, realized.  More often, they are used to perpetrate a political slight of hand, like we must fight in Vietnam to stop the contagion of communism; or, if we establish a democracy in Iraq it will produce liberal domino effects throughout the Mid-east.  Or the latest: if Greece goes under the global financial system will collapse.  The reality is that factors that produce effects in one place at a point in time seldom propagate.  Variability of both factors and outcomes is much more probable.  And, we humans have a distinct advantage.  As Matt Ridley points out in The Rational Optimist, humans have mastered the practice of exchange and specialization allowing wealth and intelligence to metastasize across our global civilization.[1]  This means most of us will be okay—as we always have been—notwithstanding enduring the hue, cry, and anger of fear-mongering politicos, displaced non-adapters, and bigoted extremists.

Social order is changing, forced by crises, real or perceived. Sovereignty will become a personal claim, not just a claim of state.  Anarchy will prevail both inter, and intra state.  Eventually, new structures will emerge based on new norms and narratives.  Myths will be written anew.  Collective action based on intelligent exchange and specialization will prevail.  A new ‘normal’ will be revealed.  This dialectic phase will end and a higher truth will emerge, just as it has throughout the history of humankind.

[1] Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (Harper Collins, 2010).
By |2017-05-27T18:47:34+00:00May 24th, 2010|The New Realities|0 Comments
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