America’s Secret Sauce: Self-determination

The last five years have produced what forbearing historians, muttering their observations from the comfort of overstuffed club chairs, might call a generational setback, even while it may feel more like a catastrophic collapse in the moment. Between the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of violent authoritarianism, the health and the general welfare of our civilization have suffered tremendous blows. Recovery will be slow and arduous. Globalization, which had been underway for thirty years, has come to an abrupt halt. Its principal benefits—economic growth and peaceful coexistence—were interrupted by the pandemic, then dismembered by Putin’s war. Meanwhile, addressing climate change, which can only be mitigated by a combination of cooperation, sacrifice, and extraordinary investment in energy innovation and infrastructure, now appears headed for a fully realized nightmare. Once differential population and economic growth rates collide with mandatory climate migration affecting not millions, but hundreds of millions of people, an apocalyptic ending to civilization is highly plausible. This is all enough to make even the strongest among us throw up our hands and walk off the nearest cliff.

But we haven’t and we won’t.

The thing about periods of both dramatic growth and sudden decline is they end in whiplash. We surge, we collapse, we purge, and we rise again. In one sentence, this is the pulse of humanity that has repeated for thousands of years. The purge, which includes casting aside old ways for new ones and is essential to renewal, is underway. History suggests that the invincibility of the human spirit will shine through the darkness to light a new path. The vast majority of us have suffered loss. The range of loss is wide, from lives to opportunities forgone. What we are now beginning to experience, however, is the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. The sun still rises and sets, and between these events we forge new paths to pursue our dreams, from the grandiose to the sublime to those as simple as sweet peace. As bleak as our prospects appear today, we are learning and purging to reinvent our future. We have been awakened and humbled by our losses. We are beginning to appreciate what we had taken for granted and we are now deploying the knowledge we gained during the whiplash of collapse to prevent future tragedies.

New knowledge gained during the pandemic is being applied to all manner of public health issues that will not only serve us well when the next super-virus unloads its wrath upon the world, but will also mitigate a number of endemic diseases that have ravaged humankind for decades, even centuries. In addition, authoritarianism, whose first victim is human liberty, has peaked. In a foolish fit of overreach (which always signals the end of authoritarian regimes), Putin is now showing the world, and especially his own people and other wannabe fascists, what happens when you attempt to crush human liberties. Will he gain land in the end? Yes. But the cost of the acquisition far outweighs the benefits of his gain. The bleak days of Stalin are coming back. Putin the Great is a fading fantasy. In time, the Russian people will suffer as much or more as the people of Ukraine and Putin will succumb to the darkness of his delusions. In Xi’s case, China is also now experiencing what happens when you crush human liberties in his authoritarian attempt to assert his zero-Covid policy. Ineffective and insufficient vaccinations are no match for Mother Nature. She can humble even the largest iron fist. Lockdowns have also prevented native immunity from taking hold. Burying your head in the sand is a highly ineffective strategy for dealing with crises. Today, the people of China are suffering the dark side of authoritarianism after years of believing they had cracked the code of blending open markets with closed politics.

As Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times,

In short, both Moscow and Beijing find themselves suddenly contending with much more powerful and relentless forces and systems than they ever anticipated. And the battles are exposing—to the whole world and to their own people—the weaknesses of their own systems. So much so that the world now has to worry about instability in both countries.

Historically in America, we have watched these regimes come and go while standing proudly on our own commitment to democracy and human rights. But this time is different. We have work to do, too. We have allowed quasi-authoritarianism to poison our own government and society. The executive branch under Trump did everything in its power to destroy democratic norms and crush human liberty, and the legal branch—principally the Supreme Court—is set up to continue pursuing this theme of limited rights and concentration of power. Standing in their way will be, as in Russia and China, the will of the people.

The good news is while we haven’t suffered the same losses coming to the people of Russia and China, I hope we have been sufficiently aroused by our own loss of liberty to rein in those who masquerade as patriots while offending the fundamental spirit of Americans who believe their future should be—now and forever—in their own hands. At its most basic level, our founders went to great lengths to assure skeptical colonists—most of whom arrived here to escape tyranny in their homelands—that its government would limit the assertion of power at both the federal and state level. Alexis de Tocqueville scratched his head over what he called “self-interest rightly understood,” concluding that American’s enlightened self-determination served both the individual and government. Chiseled into the chest of the American soul is the inalienable right to be who we want to be—on our own terms. Self-determination is the basis of our founding documents and it underpins our conception of the American Dream. It is the reason we will, eventually, restore our democratic principles.

In a post-pandemic and post-Trump world, I expect the right to self-determination will be aggressively asserted; perhaps even more so than at the founding. It is kryptonite to authoritarianism and it is in full bloom in the United States today. We saw it manifested in the battles over mask and vaccine mandates, and we have also seen it in movements to protect women’s rights, gender and sexual preference rights, and to defeat racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination. Self-determination is the common thread to movements on both the left and the right; it permeates the entire American political spectrum. Those seeking common ground take note: self-determination is America’s binding epoxy of unity. It is the essence of libertarianism, which has driven Americans for nearly two-hundred fifty years. Of course, its assertion is often quickly compromised by hypocrisy when rights are asserted in an attempt to control others—to rob them of their own self-determination—but, on the whole, it prevails. Moreover, it is essential to the American experiment. My on-going beef with Republicans is their twisted desire to tell others what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Meanwhile, I often cringe when Democrats attempt to assert similar controls over people’s wealth and property. Both parties need an occasional smack upside the head. What we must realize today is that our liberties are the source of our attraction and power. And, they are the principal pathway to move from purge to renewal—to rising again.

So, what does this mean for each of us, as individuals?

In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated four freedoms: the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. I grew up in an era when the freedom froms were largely mitigated, which left my generation to concentrate on the freedom ofs. We were the first generation to extend freedom ofs beyond speech and worship. We enjoyed the freedom of the American Dream: to become whatever we wanted to be. The results were nothing short of astonishing: the greatest expansion of human welfare in the history of humankind. Our needs were met; we had the luxury of pursuing our wants. What we lost sight of was the danger of escalating wants which, in the last few years, has cost us many of our freedoms. Our success compromised our liberty.

Eastern traditions of spirituality explain this conundrum best. The ultimate key to liberation (and power) is the suppression—not the escalation—of our wants. Every time we look at the world before us and decide we want something that isn’t there, we render ourselves vulnerable to manipulation and suffering. In addition, we foster complex regimes that increase risk when simple regimes are often more than sufficient to assure our well-being. Among other things, escalating wants and the economic growth necessary to realize them produced enormous increases in the consumption of fossil fuels, which is the fundamental cause of climate change. Instead of moving seamlessly up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from safety and security to actualization and, ultimately, transcendence, we got stuck on a treadmill of chasing extravagant lifestyles under the false hope of finding peace and tranquility. Instead, we left ourselves highly vulnerable to those intent on manipulating us for their own benefit; to trading our liberties for the empty promises of people like Trump, Putin, and Xi. Escalating wants has left us physically, emotionally, and mentally ill. Literally, ill.

Rising again requires we learn, purge, and return to regard America’s secret sauce: self-determination, as both a humble and essential human right. Further, we must respect each of our particular interpretations of what that means on our own terms. Finally, we must realize that escalating wants is killing both our individual prospects for tranquility and the very future of humanity. Enough must indeed be, enough. The maxim, “Less is more” must, once again, become fashionable. As Thomas Paine suggested at the time of our declaration of independence, “We have it within our power to begin the world over again.” It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to both grasp the gravity of our current circumstances and to summon the will to make what difference we can to, individually and collectively, rise again. Feel free to look over the edge of the cliff, but only to realize why you should step back and try, try, again.

By |2022-11-20T14:53:23+00:00April 29th, 2022|General|0 Comments
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The Dynamic Duo: Empathy and Dignity

Years ago, when I worked in the corporate world, the most valued executives were the turnaround artists. Those who could see things as they were, and then as they should be, without being blinded by entrenched legacy thinking. This skill-set enabled them to strip out the anchors—both big and small—that were causing the enterprise to drift, or worse, sink. Clarity, both in terms of vision and focus—coupled with simplicity—were often all that was needed to set a new path to victory. The most rewarding thing for me, when I filled the turnaround role, was not the subsequent organizational victories or even my own compensation. It was watching those team members who had been there, both before and after the reset, have their outlook on life transformed as well. To see them regain their sense of dignity. It was as close as I have come to witnessing people being born again. Helping people believe in themselves is the highest calling of any leader.

I have been around since the Soviets launched Sputnik which, among other things, popped America’s balloon of esteem and sanguinity that had prevailed since World War II. It made Americans doubt themselves and their leadership. The Soviet message: “We are coming for you. Yes, we helped you beat the Nazis, but we, not you (America), will be the world’s next superpower.” That history has now been written. The doubts instilled by Sputnik were met by Americans with resolve and ingenuity. We won. The United States responded not just with a superior ideology founded in capitalism and democracy, but with a sense of fortitude based in responsible individualism, perfectibility (making things better than the way they were found), and the guiding light of exemplar exceptionalism (setting the example for others to follow). These values resided in our collective commitment to humanism; in the dynamic duo of empathy and dignity.

To be clear, as many scholars and pundits and detractors have argued throughout the period of America’s ascension to the role of lone superpower, we didn’t come close to getting everything right, and many people were left out of the fruits of success. Women and people of color shared much less of the spotlight or bounty. However, on the whole, a rising tide did lift all boats. Until, of course, intoxicated by success early in the twenty-first century, responsible individualism morphed into narcissism; perfectibility was sacrificed for an adolescent sense of entitlement; and, exemplar exceptionalism gave way to hubris. The turnaround artist in me, tasked with describing what had happened in a particular company to its board of directors, would ascribe these shifts to tactical drift; an admittedly genial assessment. A more accurate characterization might be that like drunken sailors we fell into the bay of stupidity. The core strategic cause of America’s current decline resides deep inside our moral conscience. We have abdicated our commitment to empathy and dignity, which are (surprisingly) relative newcomers to the lexicon of humanity.

The word empathy has only been with us in the English language since 1903. It came to us from the German word, Einfühlung, which means “in feeling with.” Initially, it meant projecting one’s own sense of aesthetics into another object—especially in contemplating art. It wasn’t until psychologists co-opted it to mean our capacity to understand the thoughts and emotions of other human beings in the 1930s that empathy came into its current meaning. That doesn’t mean we did not have, or practice, empathy prior to 1903, we just didn’t know what to call it. However, when you don’t know what to call something it is very difficult to understand it, let alone teach it, or develop it within a society. Until the early twentieth century, the notion of empathy was like an orphan: no one knew its name and few would take responsibility for it. When people were “in feeling with” something or somebody it was often by accident.

Dignity is also a relatively new word, at least in how we apply it today. In “A History of Human Dignity” (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/a-history-of-human-dignity/), Remy Debes illustrates how dignity, which today means the “inherent or unearned worth that all humans share equally” meant something quite different until after World War II. Until then, dignity was earned as a matter of merit; it was bestowed to describe social status “of a kind associated with nobility, power, gentlemanly comportment, or preferment in the church.” As in “dignified” or “dignitary.” It is understandable, then, why dignity does not appear anywhere in our Declaration of Independence, nor in the Constitution. Perhaps if we had embraced its current meaning at the founding, the phrase “all men are created equal” might have been applied across gender, race, and religion. But, no. Its first meaningful application in establishing itself in the moral conscience of America did not come until 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations.

The relative youth of these terms does not, however, diminish their power as essential considerations in the manner which we conduct our lives or, for that matter, in how our country contemplates its role in the world. Standards of behavior and the words that describe them do evolve. Empathy and dignity are fundamental values we must re-embrace if we are going to heal the division in our own country and wage a moral vision that is, once again, how we will win against authoritarianism that is on the march in more of the world every day, and in the Trumplican Party here in the United States. The capacity to walk in another person’s shoes and grant them the same respect we expect for ourselves is today’s keystone in the proverbial arch of humanity. Without it, there is no humanity. When the keystone falls out, other stones/values crumble into a pile of rubble. Which, today, is sadly and regrettably the honest state of affairs at home and abroad.

The good news is that during the twentieth century in America we exercised empathy and assured the dignity of others when we were forced to compete with those who wished to destroy the sanctity of civil society for their own nefarious aims, placing humanity itself in great peril. To a large degree, that is what World War II and the Cold War that followed were all about. Today, we must understand that Trump was the warning shot across our bow of morality, and Putin is the missile of devastation attempting to take our world back to the Hobbesian days where morals do not exist and the currency of life is coercive power. When you observe those who are angry about their lot in life, like the Trump supporter who fears they are losing their social/economic/political position in America, or the young black man being targeted by cops, or women who see their reproductive rights being stripped away, they have this in common: they believe that their dignity—their fundamental sense of self-worth—is under assault.

Although the state of humanity was indeed consistent with Thomas Hobbes brutish view of man for centuries, I would like to believe we have it in ourselves to do better. We can debate whether morality is innate or learned, but this much is clear: the moral foundations of empathy and dignity, as historically expressed in America as a commitment to responsible individualism, perfectibility, and exemplar exceptionalism, must be restored if we are to remain a free and prosperous people. In the end, whether you are a turnaround artist or the leader of the free world, transforming people’s lives is about winning in a manner consistent with cultural dispositions and with due care for people’s sense of dignity. Peaceful communities will only be sustained when people are seen, heard, appreciated, and respected on their own terms. The urgency of this calling—by leaders of all stripes and responsibilities—must not be ignored.

By |2022-04-29T14:20:34+00:00April 12th, 2022|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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The Zen of the Irish

Ireland has produced some of the greatest poets, novelists, songwriters and musicians in the history of the world. It is a culture guided by simple phrases and smiling limericks. A lyric here and there explains everything from the great mysteries of the universe to what to expect in the afternoon; more often than not a “soft rain.” Not “drizzle” as it was known where I grew up near Seattle that suggests a relentless canopy of depression, rather a more elegant and humane rendering that fosters a sense of well-being enveloped by a nurturing lifeforce. Therefore: “soft rain.” The Irish know how to keep a wall between joy and suffering. Suffering is always lurking, why give it a perch upon which to prosper? Perspective is everything.

The Irish are known for their perseverance founded in perspective. Whether at the hands of British oppressors, the despair of a relentless famine, or the sadistic perversions of wayward nuns and priests, the Irish have endured. “Irish luck” may be the greatest oxymoron in the world, giving rise to the old saying, “if I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.” The contemplation of luck in Ireland is actually their whimsical way of mocking reality. Alas, only tourists kiss the Blarney Stone and wish on shamrocks. The Irish are often seen by Americans as though they expect to be punished—that they deserve to suffer. When I was a student at University College Cork in Ireland, I misunderstood their sense of fate as weakness, which I now understand as extraordinary strength and timeless wisdom.

In part, the Irish come to accept their fate as a product of their Catholic indoctrinations. After all, sinners (meaning everyone) deserve their suffering and punishment. Unlike Protestantism, Catholicism doesn’t allow the prospect of direct relations with a merciful God. Martin Luther’s sixteenth century concept of disintermediation—reducing the role of the church between man and God—which runs as a thread through his ninety-five theses (and later came to mark the period of Protestant Reformation), were never adopted by the papal collectors of simony who preserved their right to forgive indulgences (for a price) as a way to fill church coffers. Money (then as now) remained a prerequisite to mercy. The pope, and through him, the parish priests, are God’s only earthly authority in the Catholic version of Christianity. Irish Catholics accept the word of God from the robed ones in funny hats; any attempt at theological interpretation by parishioners is considered a fool’s errand. However, accepting sacrifice and anguish is more than a cultural condition promoted from the pulpit on Sundays. It also gave rise to the Irish secret weapon in forging a meaningful life: rethinking the relationship between life and reality.

Rather than fight with reality as most Americans do, the Irish aim is to simply manage their relationship—through the power of reflection—with a reality they see as mostly immutable. We Americans are taught to regard perseverance as something we are forced to do if we neglect the imperative to bend reality in our favor. We believe in our ability to be masters of our destiny (the facts be damned). Unlike Christians in America who pray to change circumstances and outcomes, the Irish pray as a matter of resolve to deal with things as they are. Americans grieve about what isn’t so, while the Irish deal with what is so. Whereas Americans regard acceptance of circumstance as a character flaw, the Irish know it is a sign of strength as resilience. The Irish take the world before them and accommodate it in a manner that minimizes suffering while preserving their dignity. That is how drizzle becomes a soft rain, hunger fortifies the soul, and humility (and confession) fill and smooth the cracks of transgression. It is their relationship with reality that is important, not reality itself. That is their secret weapon.

The key that opens the door to this relationship management skill—a cultural asset of the Irish—is reflection. While perspective is the foundation of perseverance, it is only possible through reflection. The basis of reflection is time and thoughtfulness, also known as deliberation. It not only allows better decision making, it fosters a creative process to support their wordcraft and music. Considering all aspects of every challenge from every angle and in consideration of both costs and (often hidden) benefits, the Irish create the opportunity for making lemonade when life hands them lemons, rather than the American proclivity for making mountains out of mole hills. Some might argue they have no choice while our American life is advantaged by greater leeway to satisfy our needs and avoid unwelcome consequences. Fair enough. Americans do have many advantages over the Irish (and most of the rest of the world). But how often do we Americans successfully bend reality to meet our desires, when we (and those around us) might have been better off simply adjusting our relationship with that same reality? Incessantly pounding square pegs into round holes has its own subtle, yet grinding, consequences.

Desire is, as both Buddha and Christ held, a sure pathway to suffering. Desire inherently demands change from the actual to the preferred. Americans often waste desire on superficial materialism that comes with lots and lots of packaging to satisfy mostly transient wants, while the Irish save desire for more moderate elements of life: a pint of stout, freshly baked soda bread, a warm heart, and a tune to weave them all together. Behind that Irish preternatural calm—that expressionless resolve—lies not the weakness of resignation; rather, the enduring resilience of timeless wisdom. As the Serenity Prayer intones, wisdom lies in knowing the difference between what can and cannot be changed. Ignoring such wisdom nearly assures suffering.

The key to happiness and fulfillment in the Irish life is sitting on the top of the wall between joy and suffering without falling to either side. This is the balance, or harmony, of equanimity—the calm state in the middle of the maelstrom that is the reality of life. They take life as it comes without chasing elements they do not control. They call it the Serenity Prayer for a reason. Can you imagine how much time this frees up for them? Without trying to twist and bend reality to their will, they have time to write, to laugh, to sing, and to care for all those children the church requires to keep its theological (and economic) Ponzi scheme alive.

It is argued that the path to transcendence is getting rid of the stuff—from material wants to our emotional and psychological hang-ups—that block one’s liberation to realize an open and fulfilling life. Spiritually constipated Americans take note: sit down with your eyes wide open, shut your mouth, let your ears get some playing time, breathe deeply through your nose, and let life come to you on its own terms. Foster a healthier relationship with reality. And, when you are ready, sip a Guinness. Do not chug it, sip it. It is not a Big Gulp, it is nourishment. It enables reflection and soothes the soul. After a couple, you may even sing like an Irishman. Or, write a piece titled “The Luck Zen of the Irish.”

Cheers.

By |2023-12-01T15:46:50+00:00April 5th, 2022|General, Spiritual|0 Comments
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Unbelievable! WTF?! Insane!

How many times in the last few years have you asked, “Can it get any crazier than this?” It has become the refrain of the times.

The study of how we know what we know—epistemology—has always fascinated me. In these crazy days, epistemologists must be scratching their heads with a pick axe trying to alleviate the itch of bewilderment. In my doctoral research, I journeyed through the world of epistemology to examine the influence of the religious beliefs of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan on foreign policy that resulted in my monograph, Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy. I was faced with reckoning the squishy world of faith-based beliefs on presidential decision making. The model I developed to assess these impacts is called cognetic profiling. It considers and weighs what we know as a matter of empiricism and experience with what we believe as a matter of faith gained through socialization and indoctrination on our decision making. It allows us to explain, and (with due humility) predict, the behaviors of world leaders. (Putin’s recent decisions were entirely predictable based on his cognetic profile.)

One of the greatest ironies of today is that with all the amazing advances in information technology we have seen in the last two-plus decades, our capacity to make better more rational decisions appears to have plummeted. Rational models in epistemology have, no doubt, been found wholly deficient in explaining why on earth we are making such bizarre decisions. What is missing in my model of cognetic profiling is a research pathway that includes stupidity, which seems to be ascendant in America today. When faced with incontrovertible facts, many Americans decided to embrace what Trump advisor, Kellyanne Conway, infamously titled, “alternative facts”; heretofore known as falsehoods, or lies. Even with our lives on the line during the pandemic, nearly half of Americans chose to ignore empiricism forcing policymakers to offer a combination of incentives and disincentives to coax us to get the jab. Our fantasy world, founded in magical thinking, has apparently become more precious to us than reality.

The twentieth century in America was an era of what I have called “the scientification of everything.” As we applied scientific method to all aspects of our lives, we attempted to assert the rational will of humans in all of our decision making. Mastery of anything and everything was simply considered a matter of data processing. If it could be quantified and fit in an equation, it was considered relevant. There was little room left, in any of our decision models, for narrative, impulse, or faith-based beliefs. And, there was no room for “alternative facts.” In this new century, we have decided to rebel against reality—against facts—and elevate things like meme-based whims over empiricism. The “scientification of everything” certainly had its faults, but today we live in a world that would make Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter blush with envy. Crazy? Yes, it is.

So, why is this happening and what can we do about it?

The first thing I will point to, in a constellation of culprits, is that we are overwhelmed with information sources that arrive at the speed of a click or, more recently, are pushed in our face whether we like it or not, as in “banner notifications.” The promise of information technology has morphed into the nightmare of disinformation technology. We are faced with what the psychologist, Barry Schwartz, has identified as the “paradox of choice.” Like the three-hundred or so choices of cereal in the grocery aisle, we would much prefer ten. Abundance breeds anxiety, which has dramatically increased our error rate when making decisions.

The second culprit is the media—both traditional and online/social. In the twentieth century, media was, for the most part, a reliable source of information. The processes and ethics that journalists subscribed to assured the reader/listener/viewer that what they were consuming was likely true. Deceit bore consequences; today it bears benefits. The problem that arose is that as new sources proliferated—as quantity increased—reliability/quality decreased. Instead of a moderate flow of reliable information that was easy to consider and digest, we got a firehose level of (largely) bullshit that hit us in the face 24/7, producing a disorientation that would make Kanye West appear sane. In the same manner as Eisenhower warned us in his farewell address of the “military industrial complex,” perhaps Obama should have warned us of the disinformation complex. Trump’s advisor, Steve Bannon, codified the strategy of our 45th president when he proclaimed, “The real enemy is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” The result? Regardless of how many times we scrub and wash, the stain fades but the stench remains as the flow of crap continues at firehose rates.

In response to being overwhelmed by a flow of disinformation, our coping response has been to seek simplification through association with groups, organizations, and political tribes, which naturally provide us with a set of filters in the form of prescriptions and proscriptions—what to believe and think or not to believe and think. In the history of humankind this function was the exclusive domain of religion. Today, every group of any orientation or function seeks to affect our decisions. In other words, we have abdicated both the consideration of information and its use in decision making to those we wish (for whatever reason) to associate with. Every group or organization has its own norms and rules that we are, either implicitly or explicitly, required to follow. Call it the hidden cost of membership. This is the most insidious of all the factors in the constellation of culprits that have degraded our decision making. It is through our choices of associations that we have become lazy and, frankly, stupid. In effect, we have taken a vast complex world made possible from our success and allowed its walls, ceiling, and floor to collapse in on us in order to affect simplicity.

Among other things, this explains the proliferation and acceptance of conspiracy theories in spite of empirical evidence that easily disproves many conspiracist’s claims. At the heart of conspiracies is simplicity, which is why they have become so popular. It is easier to accept a claim from a Facebook group that Ivermectin paste—something used to de-worm horses—might prevent or cure Covid-19, rather than wade through epidemiologist’s reports and seek the advice of medical professionals, let alone endure the public health gauntlet to be vaccinated. And, Ivermectin now comes in mint flavor! (Kidding. I think.) It may seem ironic that opposites—the far right and the far left—were those most resistant to Covid vaccines, but they are also those who are the most ardent subscribers to group-think. Their identities—their personal brand—are closely tied to their associations. They claim to be independent free-thinkers since they live at the margins of the socio-political spectrum, and yet, in reality, they are some of the most zealous close-minded people among us.

As the risk essayist, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan and Antifragile) once told me, as the world grows more complex, events compound such that outliers (black swans) become more prevalent. For those of you who are statistics junkies, the effect of this is to flatten the bell-shaped curve of normal distribution; more like a cymbal than a bell. This condition implies higher risk and is naturally disorienting. It requires much greater and more sophisticated capacities for decision making. Reliability of information is paramount. Unfortunately, the disinformation complex has come around to bite us in the ass.

The solution resides in adopting three new practices: slow down, discard and disassociate, and recommit ourselves to a sense of personal responsibility to be accountable for our own unique and discrete decisions. Just because technology moves information faster does not mean we need to make decisions faster. Deliberation is a choice. Just because everyone else belongs to a group and accepts edicts without inquiry, does not mean you have to. Be unique; be independent. Finally, don’t let others tell you what to think or do. The consequences are your own, the decision should be too. Our destiny—individually and collectively—depends on our willingness and capacity to regain control of our lives. No more delegating or abdicating. The biggest culprit in the constellation of the disinformation complex is us.

It is your mind, use it (again). Zombies may be entertaining in movies, but it is no way to live.

By |2022-04-05T14:47:11+00:00March 29th, 2022|General, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Evil Sits Alone and Dies in the Darkness of Delusion

The provenance of wisdom is a gathered life. Yes, education and experience are elements of wisdom, but time must pass for them to be properly gathered in a manner that conveys truth and understanding which manifest power. The poet, David Whyte, reckons that “a summation of previous intuitions” might be the binding agent of wisdom—of a gathered life. Out of these connections between seemingly disconnected experiences and observations come patterns that provide the structure of visions about the world that inevitably rhyme with another time.

One of wisdom’s ironies, of course, is that the more wisdom we have the less we share it. Perhaps because those of us with enough gathered life, which is to say, old, know that youth must, as we certainly did, live their own life that will then be gathered. Perhaps it is also true that the old and wise keep to themselves once they have received the inevitable eye-roll dismissal from those most in need of wisdom. In many cultures, wisdom from gathered lives is highly regarded—even sought with reverence. Unfortunately, ours is not one of those cultures. Also, as we age—as our gathered life comes into fruition—we become less fearful even while we are less strong (at least physically). Something in our past says, “Fear not, we have seen this movie before.”

Putin is not the first, nor will he be the last, agent of evil. Once we have lived long enough, we know, even as we watch evil take the lives of so many innocents today, that it will be overcome by truth, love, and justice. Evil is simply unsustainable. As I watch Putin sit alone at the end of his long hideous table, dispensing his many admonitions and instructions to those he subjugates with fear, I wonder if anyone there yearn for truth that might set them free. Embracing deceit as a modality is uncomfortable for a reason: it is incompatible with inner peace. Truth is the backbone of solace. If you need a more immediate example, look at Trump. His life is so completely denominated in deceit that he has likely never even experienced a sense of inner peace. Rather, he is consumed by inner rage. The only time he smiles are photo-ops when he is liberating a donor of the cash in their pocket.

At his essence, Putin is a very scared little man. It appears that no one can stop him, but my wisdom—my gathered life —knows he will be stopped by the beauty and durability of truth, which will cascade down upon him regardless of where he hides, or what other despot(s) might come forward to support him. It is no coincidence that Hitler, Mussolini, and eventually Stalin, were also very much alone as justice found them. In the name of power, he kills. But, also in the name of power—mitigated by love—he shall face justice. This was the American theologian, Paul Tillich’s, greatest contribution to the contemplation of power: that love is what turns power into justice. We must, therefore, have faith in our own collective moral moorings. In the midst of horror, we must do what we can to accelerate the arrival of justice. And yet, regardless of these efforts, I am quite certain that power, mitigated by love, will be visited upon Mr. Putin in time, manifested as justice. To put it more simply, truth has no expiration date and love for the innocents lost will prevail over the evil of Mr. Putin. It is just a matter of time.

In the meantime, we must recommit ourselves, as Americans, to the prospect of a society built on truth where we can, in spite of the many deceits cast our way, commit to the shared realities that are critical to advance the causes to which we aspire. Putin has provided an abject lesson on why this is so important. Russia is what happens when fear and deceit conspire to form delusions, which are the sustenance of evil. In America, we have been flirting with turning our backs on truth for some time now; it was arguably the foundation of the last administration. W. B. Yeats’ “rough beast” did indeed arrive in Moscow; Washington D.C. let one visit, which must never happen again. Clear eyes and full hearts are required to correct our course. It may be too late for Russia, but it is not for us.

As I wrote in “Of Culture, Civilization, and Chaos” (February 27, 2022), the promise of a peaceful world enabled by global economic interdependencies was a bet that is now “collapsing before our eyes.” We are, once again, where we were thirty years ago, devolving into two worlds on one planet. To cite another David Whyte observation, one world is conversational while the other is not. One world speaks its mind while the other is gagged by coercive fear. The difference this time is that we know how it ends. In my youth, we thought we should win, but weren’t sure until the competing model—the Soviet Union—collapsed. The conversational world, marked by liberal democracies will, no doubt, (as another rhyme from another time) prevail again.

Putin’s wager is to bend the reality of history to his grand delusion of a new Russian empire. The problem for him, as it is for any fascist who is intoxicated by the idea of a retrotopia, like “Make America Great Again,” is that it is impossible to reverse the rotation of the earth, let alone turn back the hands of time. Progress marches forward in fits and starts—two steps forward and one back—but forward always wins. George Kennan’s strategy of containment that was used to isolate the ambitions of the Soviets after World War II is, once again, being deployed by the West. The difference this time is that Russians have tasted (however diluted) open markets and free speech. Educated Russians of means are fleeing to join the West as Putin’s bombs crush hospitals in Ukraine. Russia’s brain-drain is underway. The other substantial difference is that the Russian economy, unlike the late 1940s, is completely entangled with the West. Today, they do not have the means to run an isolated economy, and their only hope—China—will exploit that reality at every ask Putin sends Xi’s way. Putin’s weapons—conventional, cyber, chemical, and nuclear—will become the bars of his imprisonment and, eventually, assure his dark lonely death.

The iron curtain will rise again and will probably include portions of today’s Ukraine. But walls do not foster innovation or progress; they strangle those on the wrong side of history. It is people, not walls, that matter. (America, take note.) And, walls will be scaled by those with the will to find their way out, and eventually fall by the invisible but all-powerful hand of truth.

America’s wake-up call resides in the stone-eyed face of Putin’s glare. Let’s not ignore the wisdom in that.

By |2022-03-29T16:04:50+00:00March 21st, 2022|General|0 Comments
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America’s Golden Opportunity

With barely more than one-fifth of the 21st century gone, we Americans have endured four crises—three of our own and one global—each of which have changed the course of history. 9/11, the Great Recession, the Trump presidency, and the Covid-19 pandemic were highly damaging events after years of relative calm. Now, we face a fifth crisis—Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—which could tip from regional conflict to world war.

Interesting—way too interesting—times.

Crises, however, present opportunities to change our ways, much more than periods of stability. Periods of stability naturally tend to protect and preserve the status quo. However, positive change depends upon how we respond to each crisis. As the Stoics remind us: it’s not what happens to you that is important, it is how you respond to it.

After 9/11, we responded in a manner that cost us trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and much of our credibility as the steward of pax Americana around the world. We did somewhat better in addressing the Great Recession, but still made plenty of mistakes (although some of those lessons were applied during the pandemic). The Trump presidency was little more than a self-inflicted wound. The fourth crisis—the pandemic—was an outlier crisis inasmuch as it offered little opportunity for positive change as we were, in effect, frozen in place like a doe in the headlights. Lockdowns and isolation are simply not conducive to positive change. Alas, today’s crisis—Putin’s War—offers an array of opportunities for America.

My sense of Putin’s War is that both he and his Russia will be the biggest losers after Ukraine. It will be a long painful slog for all. The only question is how much more damage will be done to Ukraine before Putin and Russia implode. There remains an extraordinarily high risk of nuclear confrontation and an expanding war including other areas in Eastern Europe, but I do not think Putin will receive meaningful support from other nations, most especially China. Yes, Xi will buy Russian oil and alleviate some of the effects of sanctions, but I expect he sees this as an opportunity to subsume Russia as a quasi-client state rather than elevate Putin and enable him to succeed in his empire fantasies. And, Xi needs his military to enforce the edicts of his regime in-country and to pursue his own ambitions in Asia. His preference will be to have Putin under his thumb much in the same manner as is North Korea’s Kim.

Meanwhile, President Biden is doing a masterful job of threading a very difficult needle of containing Putin and preventing that war from becoming a world war. All presidents prefer foreign policy to domestic as it is where their greatest power lies. Few presidents, however, come into office with foreign policy experience. Biden is a fortunate (for us) exception. The escalation maps (a tool used by national security analysts to model multiple-round effects of military actions) all point to an expanded conflict if his efforts and those of European allies fail, or if Putin decides to unilaterally launch a nuclear weapon. To me, the most remarkable thing has been to watch the sanctions gain immediate support across the free world and for self-sanctioning by the private sector to take off like Omicron in a crowded bar. Apparently, there are severe consequences when you kill innocent women and children in broad daylight. So, besides the opportunity to rescue the Biden presidency from rather awful poll numbers, what are the opportunities for the rest of us, and what should we do to bring them to fruition?

The first opportunity comes in the form of a wake-up call to reinvigorating the values that made America great. If I were king, I would have one more inoculation waiting for the arm of every American: inject each of us with the spirit of responsibility and patriotism shown by the Ukrainian people. But here is the uncomfortable truth: the Ukrainians are just behaving the way we used to behave when we upheld the value of responsible individualism. Hopefully, the images of Ukrainians protecting their homeland can be a model for all Americans.

Second, let’s take a lesson from the Poles on how to treat refugees and immigrants. For some reason, we lost our value of being a beacon of hope for the rest of the world; of being an exemplar as a caretaker of human dignity. Our disdain for refugees and immigrants, while most pronounced during the Trump presidency, actually began many years before in the now very blue state of California—aimed at Mexican immigrants. It then became a lever of political attraction across the south—spreading west to east—until we looked like a nation of fearful cruel zealots. The most powerful nation in the world should never behave like a scared bully.

Next, the world, but especially Americans, need to realize that unity and democracies matter. America may, once again, be the world’s “last best hope for earth.” As Americans, our immediate obligation is to drop the petty grievances that have animated our domestic political lives since the inauguration of Trump and realize that we are all on a more important team than mask lovers or mask haters. We must realize that our unity is essential to protecting the world from disaster. Quit shaking fists and start shaking hands. Our enemies are not our neighbors—regardless of political party. They are people like Putin and Xi and Kim and Khamenei. Got it?

To punctuate the value of unity further, we must also actively put down those politicians intent on stoking division within our country. Trump and his clown-like jesters including Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, et al, have had their day, but that day must end. As for Trump, who has been and continues to be Putin’s apologist and cheerleader, and who advocates defunding NATO, he must never see the inside of the Oval Office again. Since his campaign in 2015-16, I have called him a wannabe fascist. Let’s make sure his status remains: wannabe.

In addition, so-called news networks like FOX and MSNBC who prefer animus-driven ratings to unity (or journalistic integrity), must be confronted for their contributions to misinformation and malice toward their obligation to serve the public interest—an historical obligation of every broadcast journalist in America. What can you do? Tune them out. Your attention is their life-blood. Starve them into compliance with their obligations to our country. Their First Amendment rights do not extend to the destruction of our unity—of our democracy. It is time they stopped yelling “Fire!” in the proverbial crowded movie theatre.

Finally, if we were unconvinced prior to the Putin War crisis, perhaps $6, or $8, or $10 per gallon gas will convince us that fossil fuels are dangerous beyond their impact on climate change; they are now the currency of war. For all the right reasons, it is time to reduce, then eliminate, our use of fossil fuels.  This realization—this silver lining—may be just what we need to unify and accelerate our efforts toward a clean-green existence. If high-dollar gas will get Bubba to move to the Ford F-150 Lightning EV, maybe we can also get Patty Prius drivers to drop their intransigent orthodoxy of “nature is good and man is bad” and form a peaceful coexistence between the two that supports clean energy, commerce, and independence from absolutist dictums that have proven completely ineffective in addressing the issue of climate change. The only way we solve this and our many other challenges is together.

Putin’s War, our fifth crisis this century, is a golden opportunity for Americans to be Americans again. To set an example that the free world wants to follow. To make the Statue of Liberty mean something again. To assure every fascist and wannabe fascist that they, too, will receive the Putin punishment.

Let’s not mess this crisis up.

By |2022-03-21T22:57:04+00:00March 10th, 2022|General|0 Comments
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Buck Up, Bucko. (What Biden might have said.)

Yes, you are special. Yes, your rights have been violated. Yes, I hear your grievances. Yes, you most certainly are a victim who deserves recompense. Poor you.

Now, buck up, Bucko.

You also have responsibilities, much to be grateful for, and you owe your community, country, and the world more than your whining. And, that person seated next to you? They may even be more special than you are. Who knew?

The world is a mess, but this condition is also not special—not new. Human civilization has been more often a mess than not in its long history. Variables outside of our control—exogenous variables—will forever conspire to challenge our aspirations. What matters is how we deal with variables we can affect—endogenous variables—to turn chaos and threats into order and opportunities.

This is the lesson Ukrainians are teaching the world today. Against all odds, they knew that if they did not stand up for themselves and their country the life left over would not be worth living. Chaos and threats did not break them. They know that life as a Putin pawn means a bleak future living in a world like their Russian neighbors where the color spectrum of life ranges from gray to black and liberty is as rare as truth. Ukrainians prefer their bright blue and yellow, and while their flag may be stained by their own red blood, they are forty-four million souls who will fight for their home long after their buildings are felled and oligarchs lose their yachts.

There is not enough Botox in the world to fix what Senator Romney called Putin’s “feral eyes.” Putin’s destiny is assured as just another evil madman whose pasty reptilian skin will blister and fester under the blaze of damnation. Unlike many other political leaders, especially those in America, Putin is in many ways more forthright—more predictable. Yes, he deploys subterfuge, distraction, and deflection as a tactical effort at confusing and disorienting his foes, but his evil aims are pursued in an obvious and direct manner while barely feigning morality or decency.

Meanwhile, we Americans melt down if our barista puts butterscotch syrup in our latte instead of hazelnut. “I’ve been violated!” “Who will save me?” “Someone must pay!” “You will hear from my attorneys!” As children in every city in America go to bed hungry every night.

Performative activism on social media, which has become an acceptable yet meaningless expression of American character, must be replaced by redirecting our energy from rights to responsibilities; from grievances to gratitude; from condemnation to empowerment; from passivity to action. Posting a borrowed meme on Facebook while chewing your corn syrup-laced red licorice does not qualify you as a candidate for citizen of the year. We must stand up, speak up, and act in a manner that honors our past, provides stewardship of the present, and secures the future for those who follow. The challenges of our time are not insurmountable. We must simply decide to trade victimhood for victory.

We know the difference between right and wrong, or at least we did when we were in kindergarten; before we lost ourselves to the imperative of entitlement. In the age of abundance, we have been confused by a lack of consequences. Rather than raise our hands in service, we stretch them to grab our unfair share. We conjure enemies as anyone who doesn’t affirm our fragile egos or satisfy our limitless desires. How special we aren’t.

To be clear, Ukrainians are not superheroes; they are humans too. They are not better people than Americans, they just behave better. There is something about the prospect of losing everything—especially your freedom—that is both sobering and empowering. It stiffens the spine. In America, we are losing our democracy and the values of world stewardship—of exemplar exceptionalism—that should have made us leaders in the fight against climate change. We now stare at our dumbphones, while chewing our licorice, oblivious to our self-inflicted impending doom. As long as the next Amazon parcel arrives, what could possibly go wrong?

I write to you as one of those Americans. I don’t care for red licorice, but my dumbphone is always on and my Amazon shopping cart usually has something ready to “buy now.” However, I am also an historian who knows that American power was not won from the comfort of a couch. That the brilliance of our founding documents has more meaning than a Kardashian tweet. That those same documents gain their meaning not from their scrolled parchment; rather, from the behaviors of Americans who honor their aims with a duty of service.

Name one great American living today. Time is up. Stumped? Me too. Although it is true that greatness may not be obvious in real time—that it reveals itself after the fact—we should be able to name a number of prospects for the accolade. And yet, crickets. Leadership in our society is hard to find. Selflessness is a quaint notion hidden in the pages of books gathering dust in the library. Courage means more than surviving being unfollowed. Duty means putting down Wordle and getting to work.

There is greatness in every human being. Ukrainians are finding it the hard way—while staring down a murderous madman. It is time for Americans to put away their dumbphones and get off the couch. Self-pity will not change the course of history. We must renew our commitment of care for each other and the spaces we call home. We must re-engage in the spirit of perfectibility: to leave things better than we found them.  We must, once again, endeavor to set the example for others to follow. This is the American story of our past when unity and determination led the world. It is time for the sequel.

By |2022-03-10T15:45:34+00:00March 4th, 2022|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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Of Culture, Civilization & Chaos

The promise of globalism—of open trade and a common currency of exchange—that would obviate the need for borders and establish world peace is slipping back into the theoretical realm. Adjectives like “open” and “common” are being discarded in favor of a quasi-nostalgic preference for cultural handholds that provide a sense of comfort, security and, moreover, a compelling and clear answer to the question: “Who am I?”

This phenomenon—this new reality—explains much of what is going on in America and the world. From the perplexing so-called “great resignation” that attempts to explain why people did not run back to their old pre-pandemic jobs, to Putin’s attempt to put the Soviet band back together again.

It turns out that we do not favor being commoditized and homogenized. The pandemic inflamed this condition. We want our own particular identity founded in a sense of purpose defined not by market forces or dehumanizing algorithms, and especially not by government mandates. Rather, born from cultural subscriptions that represent a personal heritage of values we have decided—on our own—to make our own. We want our agency back.

Culture is a complex set of ideas and beliefs that define who we are and bind us together, or keep us apart. As powerful as our needs for safety, security, love, sex, self-esteem and self-actualization are (the Maslow hierarchy of needs), culture is the superstructure upon which we travel to express our reason for being.

Globalism was supposed to wash that structure away in the belief that rational economic forces and efficiencies would be preferred to the seemingly irrational subscriptions to cultural heritage including aspects of race, ethnicity, religion, gender roles, nationality, and even language. In short, the bet was that we would give up meaning for money.

That bet—once considered a sure thing by scholars of all disciplines—is collapsing before our eyes.

Putin is the current poster boy (however insane and evil) of this phenomenon. He represents the trend recently identified by Ross Douthat in the New York Times, based on the earlier work of the late Samuel Huntington, of “civilizationalism” that holds that people will fight to protect their particular cultural subscriptions over the liberal pull of openness and common interests even when it may not be in their political or economic interest.

Indeed, the model of the economically rational man that had driven so much of our policymaking in the 20th century now appears to be headed for obsolescence. I expect Putin will fail as he realizes that Ukrainians have moved on from the vestiges of Soviet culture. The power of Ukrainian identity—their hearts—will not yield to the power of his missiles—his muscle. He is motivated by a nostalgia for mother Russia, but forgot to check if this feeling still exists in Ukraine (if it ever did).

Trump recognized this trend before any other American politician. Perhaps less from any intellectual basis than his innate sense of human exploitation. Nonetheless, he pulled, tweaked, and occasionally yanked these cultural threads to stoke fear, anger, and above all, allegiance by those who saw their cultural identity in peril to support him even when it was contrary to their personal well-being. He knew that the things that defined who they thought they were—their sense of identity—was more important to them that the idealism of an open and inclusive America with liberty and justice for all.

This also explains why economists and especially our Federal Reserve Board of Governors are so perplexed about the employment decisions Americans are making today. Lo and behold: people are tired of carrots and sticks; they want the rich broth of meaning to guide their lives. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, came closest to identifying this false premise of the economically rational man in his attempt to explain the phenomenon of market “bubbles” late in his term. His observations are now coming into full fruition.

Culture trumping economics has some profound and worrisome implications. Conflicts between states and within them will compound as the deck of identity parameters is reshuffled to accommodate a world that desires division over unity; exclusion over inclusion. Nationalist impulses will continue to rise, as will regional and local preferences and dispositions.

Yes, there will be blood. And, not just in Ukraine.

Economics be damned. In an age of abundance, we have the luxury of caring about other things. People want to live their lives in association with those who identify as they do. The commoditization and homogenization of globalism is dead. Huntington’s arguments in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) are upon us, both at home and abroad.

In spite of rising conflict, there is, however, a silver lining. People are beginning to think for themselves again. They are listening to their hearts instead of their wallets. They are holding out for meaning over marginal economic benefits. They are showing a willingness to do the work of safeguarding their spirit rather than accept the products, services, and ideas as prescribed to them by unseen algorithms. They are reclaiming their humanity on their own terms. They have decided to be true to themselves (however they define that).

It will take years to move back to a model of purpose and meaning from the model of the economically rational man. But that is now underway. For the moment, most of our leaders and policymakers are perplexed and confused; living in their own myopic bubbles. Economic forces will remain, which to a certain degree is as it should be. However, culture is returning as the superstructure we embrace to guide our lives—for both better and worse.

This phenomenon will shake out eventually establishing a new equilibrium—a new understanding of how the world works. In the meantime, a lot of things will get broken.

It is time to hang loose and keep your head down while doing your own deep dive into what your life means to you. Yes, that’s okay again. You be you. But, keep your head on a swivel. The Putins and Trumps of the world will continue to search for angles of exploitation. Chaos is their friend.

By |2022-03-04T13:52:42+00:00February 27th, 2022|The New Realities|0 Comments
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The Tragedy of Abundance

Who doesn’t like success? It is a wonderful thing. Especially the stories of those who, against all odds, somehow prevail. Success is worthy of celebration and, as the saying goes, “success breeds success,” even though our road to success is often paved by failures. Perhaps that is why it feels so damn good once we arrive.

The twentieth century, often described as the “American Century,” ended with a largely overlooked but profoundly important development—one that explains a great deal about our current challenges. In the late 1990s, America and much of the world made an historical transition from the prevailing condition of scarcity, that had been with us throughout human history, to the prevailing condition of abundance.

For the first time ever, humans had access to everything they needed to sustain their well-being without fear of running out of either necessities or comforts. An enormous success by any calculation. And while it is true that such abundance was, and remains, unequally and perhaps inequitably distributed, the fact is that—in aggregate—humans have succeeded in achieving something that eluded them for centuries. This is what strategists call a paradigm shift.

As it is with life lived in real time we did not, however, realize our success. There were no fireworks or new holidays taken or proclaimed. We simply indulged ourselves in the comfort of abundance. The prescriptions and proscriptions of life lived in prior generations like straightening and reusing every nail, and abstaining from public preening, were suspended in favor of casual indifference to the constraints of scarcity. When prudence and humility lose favor, decline is a certainty. This is when things started to go off the rails.

Now, nearly twenty-five years later, the tragedy of abundance is revealing itself in all manner of emerging malignancies that have driven our collective character into the dumpster of hubris, narcissism, greed, and sloth. It is no wonder we have entered an era of chaos and destruction that risks our well-being even while we remain awash in the fruits of abundance. Perhaps we should call it the paradox of plenty. However, while we would have benefited from maintaining historical American values, a shift in strategy was, in hindsight, urgently required.

In my last post, “Our Time Has Come,” https://ameritecture.com/our-time-has-come/,  I argued that a subscription to a zero-sum perspective manifested as a win-loss mentality was one of the reasons we were unable to successfully address the Covid-19 crisis. That it was a remnant-disposition of people like me—old white men—who were the product of a different era. That era was the era of scarcity, when zero-sum/win-loss was indeed an appropriate modality. In reality, the only viable way to compete in a world of scarcity.

Once the dynamics of abundance finally arrived, a shift in strategy should have also occurred. Yet, we stubbornly held close to the strategy that had served us well during the age of scarcity since, well, it had worked! Nothing could have been more natural or, as time now reveals, more foolish. As the then solo superpower in the world, America made the same mistake the victors made after World War I: we treated the conquered as losers who owed the winners due compensation and acknowledgment of their greatness, which (as we know from the post-World War I era) nearly assured World War II.

What we should have done in the late 1990s, was shift form the win/lose contemplation of power as a lever of coercion to a win/win contemplation of power as an opportunity to empower others to achieve their objectives as well as those we all share. In an age of abundance, empowering others does not diminish your own power, it actually enhances and sustains it. Call it the principle of enlightened altruism. And this shift would not, as it would have been criticized in the era of scarcity, been an expression of reckless idealism. Rather, it would have properly found residence in the school of realism. That is what paradigm shifts both allow and require.

Unfortunately, this missed strategic opportunity was not just realized in America’s international relations, it permeated all aspects of our society creating the fear, anger, and violence we see now at home every day. Those who stood to gain the most from the age of abundance sought more for themselves without regard for others. Those who were natural beneficiaries—especially the white privileged class—remained in a coercive win/lose posture and became vulnerable to those promoting the fear of inclusion rather than the plus-sum benefits of enlightened altruism.

In the last twenty-five years, had we viewed the world and our own country through the lens of empowerment rather than coercion, I have no doubt we would have responded much differently and more successfully to the attacks of 9/11, the Great Recession, Covid-19, and climate change. Moreover, we would have rejected the fear-based appeals of politicians like Donald Trump and the many condemnations that continue unabated from the woke-left. We would be unified in the spirit of abundance rather than perpetuating inequities that have broken our spirit of unity, liberty, and justice for all.

We could have erased the poverty of dignity that cause people to embrace the life of a terrorist. We could have kept families in their homes during the Great Recession rather than kicking them to the curb. We could have spent the $50 billion it cost to vaccinate the entire world and be its hero rather than seen as a selfish nation of charlatans. And, we would be well on our way to the innovations and policies required to affect saving ourselves and the world from the effects of climate change.

But, most of our leaders still believe that for every winner there must be a loser. (Visualize McConnell, Pelosi, et al, here.) When and until we encourage and support enlightened leadership who understand this paradigm shift afforded by abundance, and its implications for the power dynamics of humankind, we will continue on our current path of destruction. The now multi-power international system will continue to flirt with conflict that could, at any moment, produce World War III. Covid-19 will be the first, not last, of twenty-first century pandemics. Inequities will continue to make us vulnerable to fascists and perpetuate suffering at home. And, temperatures will continue to rise.

Most often, I feel as if I am screaming into a deep dark void. But, hey, at least you read this. Maybe others will too. If you know someone in a position of leadership—at any level of our society—please pass this on to them. Hopefully, the tenet “it’s never too late to do the right thing” will hold.

By |2022-02-27T21:44:18+00:00February 16th, 2022|Leadership, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Our Time Has Come

The splitting of the chrysalis is underway; soon enough our wings will wriggle free and demand flight.

We now have permission to ask the question, “Now what?”

It is time to put our drama of trauma away. Set our claims of victimhood aside. Straighten our backs and turn our faces, once again, into the wind. From this point forward, if we are feeling oppressed or depressed it is no one’s fault but our own. The urgency of suffering and pining for “normal” has slipped from fashionable to just boring.

Two years into the pandemic we have learned a great deal about ourselves as Americans. While we can point to failures of political leadership, our scientists and healthcare providers—doctors, nurses, technicians, and public health officials—performed extraordinarily well; arguably the best in the world. Our failure to successfully quash the pandemic resides within ourselves as individuals. We neither trust each other, nor can be trusted to do the right things. Ignorance is no excuse; it is our uniquely American character that failed us—individually and collectively. The responsible independence that launched an empire of freedom, creating the greatest superpower in the history of the world, morphed into a toxic narcissism that directly resulted in extraordinary suffering and thousands of avoidable deaths.

But, at some time, all the analyses and debates—political, epidemiological, and cultural—do little, if anything, to advance our lives in a meaningful manner. That time is now.

Regardless of our age, race, gender, or ethnicity we are now emerging into our new post-pandemic selves. We have all struggled and experienced loss in different ways and to different degrees. In the same manner as “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” pain flows through hearts without a predictable trajectory or outcome. Scar tissue is a certainty, but it is our burden as humans to reconcile these events in our own time and fashion—largely on our own. The best we can do now is to allow space and time and be there for each other when our wings wriggle free.

As many of you know, for me, Nature is god. I never took to the rituals and parables and especially not to the judgments and condemnations of organized religions. While many weep at the sanctity of the divine as sunlight streams through stained glass on the glowing altar of devotion accompanied by the harmony of hymns, my tears are shed with joy in my heart as I rest on a fallen log deep within the forest that shelters its inhabitants under a canopy of life. My sweet peace is found in the eyes of a fox who carefully studies me with the intention of a brother in the realm equanimity. We aren’t just of one world; we are of one heart.

Unlike traditional religions, my Nature-as-god contemplation of spirituality actually has a scientific basis. Quantum Field Theory holds that we are all inescapably linked to one another. As the electromagnetic field and electron field interact, all manner of energy and influence are conveyed by and between all of us, whether animals or plants. Albert Einstein called this “spooky action.” Physicists call it quantum entanglement. I accept it as life. Among other things, it provides the foundation for a concept I first put forward in a graduate school seminar in international relations now more than a dozen years ago: coopetition—competing to cooperate. Win-win rather than win-lose.

Like many of you, I grew up schooled in the ethic of win-lose. It took most of my life to unwind my mind from the needless perniciousness of this paradigm. Unfortunately, the pandemic was addressed principally by old white men like me who can’t let go of this win-lose ethic.  The results speak for themselves. And, until and when we can get past this, we have little, if any, hope of succeeding in addressing the more profoundly existential threat of climate change.

Our failure has been literally baked into our future thanks to everything from religions that espouse their particular God as the only legitimate god, to political parties that spend all their time shaming and condemning the other side. We deserve our fate. In the next era (if we are granted one) perhaps we will realize that “spooky action” holds that hurting one another only hurts ourselves resulting in a spiral of collapse. I acknowledge that Jesus Christ would agree with me, but am perplexed and saddened to observe self-proclaimed committed Christians in America acting otherwise every day.

At this point, finding our way (Now what?) is more important than a destination we may never—likely will never—reach. Sweet peace is not the prize at the end of the rainbow, it is the rainbow. Rest assured, in the fog of deceit, given time, truth will prevail. We must remember that life is full of both success and failure, but our learnings come principally from failure. We must keep our hearts and minds open to revelation; add patience and deliberation and the answers will reveal themselves.

Grasping at easy answers and forcing fruition is a fool’s game. Let life reveal itself in a manner that assures durable enhancements to our lives. Likes, clicks, and memes are trash that clutters the gutters of our souls. To know something “by heart” means more than memorization; it means we have learned from the heart, with our hearts, which provide the great mitigators to calm our frenetic minds. Knowledge emanating from our minds and beliefs from our hearts must be carefully balanced; curated with our eyes set on a distant horizon.

Our time has come to live in silent jubilation for being spared during the worst of the pandemic.  We must accept what we owe ourselves and each other: an acknowledgment of our obligations and dependencies to the spiritual realm of being that does not differentiate humans from other animals, or even other organisms. This is the only path forward. The destination may not be within our control, but our intentions and direction of travel are. As Mary Oliver wrote in her poem, “The Journey”:

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Welcome back, everyone. Your life is yours again.

Please express it with due humility and care.

By |2023-12-01T15:47:35+00:00February 7th, 2022|General, Spiritual, The New Realities|0 Comments
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