Anderson, South Carolina
Throughout history the value of trading mediums was assured by making them exchangeable for something of great beauty and scarcity. For centuries the worth of money was insured by making it of gold or silver. Oak chests overflowing with gold doubloons have fired imaginations for half a millennium. We have compelling images of treasure seekers finding mountains of gold at the bottom of tropical oceans. Spanish galleons laden with pirated treasure create instant multi-millionaires.
With the invention of reliable printing presses and fine papers, paper currency came into vogue, allowing for the concentration and transport of great wealth without the necessity of hauling oak chests weighing hundreds of pounds. Countless nations, city-states, provinces, and even individual banks set up their own mints, printing this paper that suddenly had everyone’s attention. The value of currency was insured by agreement it could be swapped at anytime for an agreed amount of gold. Those issuing paper currencies ostensibly maintained enough gold reserves to support a run on it. Issuers made reasonable efforts to prevent counterfeiting as many nefarious individuals found printing currency much easier than opening up gold mines and digging for the yellow wonder themselves.
In the summer of 1971, the head of the world’s largest economy made an inconceivable decision. Nixon declared United States currency would no longer be linked to gold. No longer could bearers of dollars swap them for gold. As Paul Volker, the infamous head of the Federal Reserved recalled, “We were running out of gold. There was threat of a run on the dollar. Eventually there would be a crisis.” The U.S. mint had issued so many dollars there was a likelihood the U.S. would default on its agreement to swap currency for gold. By the summer of 1971 foreign governments held three times as many dollars as the U.S. had in gold. In pre-emptive fashion everyone was told, “No more gold!”
With baited breath, policy makers in America waited for the world’s response. “Ok.” “Ok?” Life went on. Jettisoning the historic Bretton Woods agreement, which linked gold and a basket of currencies to each other, resulted in the now ‘worthless’ American currency becoming the ascendant currency and store of wealth throughout the world. Foreign nations have so trusted this ‘worthless’ currency as to unilaterally abandon their own currencies and adopt the American dollar as their own. The most valuable thing on earth is so simply because we all agreed it would be so. Dollars have no inherent value whatever.
With the invention of computers and their ubiquitous adoption throughout modern life, even paper currency has taken a back seat. Money has become binary, being little more than magnetic spots on hard drives in bank computers. No longer does one even have to carry relatively compact paper currency. Money no longer has any mass whatever. I can click on my lap top computer and move fortunes with ease, it taking no more effort to move a million dollars than it does fifty cents. With electronic wire transfers it’s possible to move billions of dollars in seconds, leaving no trace whatever, not even on the sea bottom.
In the binary world of computers there are no shades of gray. Everything is black or white, on or off, zero or one. Using a mathematical symbology with only zeroes and ones, computer machine language is able to keep track of virtually all wealth and knowledge in the world. Money is nothing but a series of zeros and ones arrayed on magnetized surfaces of platters in a hard drive. Frenetic trading taking place on stock exchanges is nothing more than light speed manipulation of zeroes and ones in a million computers across the globe. By consensus we agree to relational value of symbolic forms of wealth. We have a binary sort of Bretton Woods agreement as to the value of patterns of zeroes and ones.
Alas, we do not extend a rational consensus of value into our physical worlds, losing sight of reality. We’ve somehow lost track of the true value of objects or people. Consensus easily runs amuck. As early as the 17th century, consensus got out of control and tulip bulbs were valued at millions, ultimately devastating the fortunes of millions of individuals and several national economies. Finally, someone in a pub said out loud, “It’s just a tulip bulb, stupid.” No one came to tulip auctions anymore and their value evaporated. Little need be said about what happened when buyers quit buying houses in America.
It’s very possible foreign investors will one day stop coming to weekly American T-bill auctions with the same result. One highly-placed Chinese bureaucrat, charged with buying T-bills at auction, could hobble the American economy merely by mouthing out loud dollars are worth about as much as tulip bulbs or houses in south Florida. The economic and social costs to hundreds of millions of people would be catastrophic. Conversely, comments from a single highly placed official can drive financial markets upward with irrational exuberance. In one recent day comments from several European officials created hundreds of billions in ‘wealth’, at least on paper.
In a cyber-era where life success is scored by the array of zeroes and ones on magnetized platters in bank computers, by how many zeroes we have after a leading one, life can seem precarious at best. For the 9.8% percent of us no longer having employer bank tapes altering our checking accounts on a weekly or monthly basis, living is potentially fragile.
An enduring imperative for our times would be to explore ways to live off the economic grid, finding experiences, relationships, and life purpose not demanding of gold, paper, or zeroes in the right place. In a consumer-driven world so highly dependent on what others think things are worth, it might be most profitable to consider what our Creator thinks things are worth.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal, for where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Is This the Year Christmas Finally Sticks? 11-30-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Throughout the world each year many of us become the least bit hopeful; wondering if this is the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, if animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. Epic tales abound from the harsh winter of 1914 in which trench warfare was set aside in the conflict devastating Europe. Soldiers tentatively emerged from their fox holes, wondering if this was going to be the year. Alas, command powers demanded soldiers return to the trenches, retake their arms, and continue killing those with whom they so recently celebrated Christmas. Some refused. Each year millions of churches try to add their tiny bit of polish to the luster of Christmas’ evanescent patina on our world.
Throughout chronicles of church history we find countless disquieting examples of violence being exacted upon others for the sin of thinking differently, for having different values. Great ‘heroes’ of the faith did everything from killing Irish women and children in the pillages of Cromwell to the gross betrayal and extirpation of the Aztec culture by Cortez, all in the name of some form of higher purer religion. Alas, one can easily second guess if religious practice in any form has positive net effect on our troubled world. There’s an ever-growing number of Westerners who doubt it. Plenty of Easterners are certain violent eradication of Western infidels will bring world peace, once everyone thinks and believes alike. Bifurcation of thought is rending the world into shreds of violence.
Here on the first day of the liturgical New Year, I again wondered, tentatively, if this is the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, if animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. On the first Sunday of Advent I wonder if Christmas is mostly myth, a hoped for re-emergence of Brigadoon from the dust of time. Will we move past the insane frenetic liturgical retailing of Jesus, instead granting the gifts of peace and serenity to one another? Will we embrace diversity of thought and sing carols of good will to each other, in the trenches of secular consumer life? At the end of the day, my optimism is feeling oxidized by strong whiffs of skepticism.
The powers that be in my church decided to celebrate the Advent season with a small exhibition of artwork created by parishioners. This montage of photographs, paintings, and drawings depicts The Peaceable Kingdom. In the ancient writings of Isaiah one finds in the ninth chapter a captivating image of life when Christmas finally ‘sticks’, when animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul are set aside for a better way. The world is described as a place of ever increasing peace, justice and righteousness. Given what current events tell us this seems more the stuff of fantasy writers than crafters of inspired scriptures.
On this first day of Advent I made it my plan to contribute several bucolic images to the admixture hanging in the parish hall. While there I was to learn this is probably not the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, when animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. In the midst of casual conversation with parishioners pre-occupied with building advent wreaths, I was hanging my contributions to The Peaceable Kingdom. In the midst of this benign activity, violence was exacted upon me for the sin of thinking differently, for having different values. A casual comment from me about the folly of using legalized gambling as a way of supplying the public purse in the midst of declining tax revenues brought about a vitriolic outburst on the part of a parishioner that was stupefying in its spiritual and emotional violence. Was this really happening here in the parish hall of my little church on the first Sunday of Advent? Alas, it really was.
In a year’s time I’ve been in some of the most violent places on earth, including three cities cited by the State Department as ten places to avoid. The chaos that is the ruined capitol of Haiti, Port Au Prince is among these. Yet, in Port au Prince or in other precarious environments, I never felt violence of soul or person as I experienced this morning in our little parish hall, decorated with grand images of Peace. I was shaking like a leaf, close to meltdown. In my work this summer in at risk-environments I never once felt insecure or challenged. Is the violence exacted for my independent thinking any different than the violence exacted against Western infidels or the Aztecs? I am not thinking so.
Violence takes on many forms, some subtle, perhaps fertile ground for some of the more volcanic manifestations I seem to encounter. As one involved in community theater for years I know the dreadful feeling that comes when patrons get up and walk out on a performance, repudiating the talent and craft of those who dare to perform differently than they. It feels like an ultimate shunning, an act of violence, repudiation of everything we are about. Is it violent to walk out of a church service, leaving behind invited guests because the ‘performers’ don’t do it our way? Does legalistic adherence to one’s forms of religious practice supersede the warm accepting hospitality that might convince tentative inquirers this might be the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, to embrace One called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God? Does insistence that others think, believe, and practice like me bring luster to Advent? I think not.
For thou shalt break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian. For every boot of the booted soldier in the battle tumult, and cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders.
Throughout the world each year many of us become the least bit hopeful; wondering if this is the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, if animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. Epic tales abound from the harsh winter of 1914 in which trench warfare was set aside in the conflict devastating Europe. Soldiers tentatively emerged from their fox holes, wondering if this was going to be the year. Alas, command powers demanded soldiers return to the trenches, retake their arms, and continue killing those with whom they so recently celebrated Christmas. Some refused. Each year millions of churches try to add their tiny bit of polish to the luster of Christmas’ evanescent patina on our world.
Throughout chronicles of church history we find countless disquieting examples of violence being exacted upon others for the sin of thinking differently, for having different values. Great ‘heroes’ of the faith did everything from killing Irish women and children in the pillages of Cromwell to the gross betrayal and extirpation of the Aztec culture by Cortez, all in the name of some form of higher purer religion. Alas, one can easily second guess if religious practice in any form has positive net effect on our troubled world. There’s an ever-growing number of Westerners who doubt it. Plenty of Easterners are certain violent eradication of Western infidels will bring world peace, once everyone thinks and believes alike. Bifurcation of thought is rending the world into shreds of violence.
Here on the first day of the liturgical New Year, I again wondered, tentatively, if this is the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, if animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. On the first Sunday of Advent I wonder if Christmas is mostly myth, a hoped for re-emergence of Brigadoon from the dust of time. Will we move past the insane frenetic liturgical retailing of Jesus, instead granting the gifts of peace and serenity to one another? Will we embrace diversity of thought and sing carols of good will to each other, in the trenches of secular consumer life? At the end of the day, my optimism is feeling oxidized by strong whiffs of skepticism.
The powers that be in my church decided to celebrate the Advent season with a small exhibition of artwork created by parishioners. This montage of photographs, paintings, and drawings depicts The Peaceable Kingdom. In the ancient writings of Isaiah one finds in the ninth chapter a captivating image of life when Christmas finally ‘sticks’, when animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul are set aside for a better way. The world is described as a place of ever increasing peace, justice and righteousness. Given what current events tell us this seems more the stuff of fantasy writers than crafters of inspired scriptures.
On this first day of Advent I made it my plan to contribute several bucolic images to the admixture hanging in the parish hall. While there I was to learn this is probably not the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, when animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. In the midst of casual conversation with parishioners pre-occupied with building advent wreaths, I was hanging my contributions to The Peaceable Kingdom. In the midst of this benign activity, violence was exacted upon me for the sin of thinking differently, for having different values. A casual comment from me about the folly of using legalized gambling as a way of supplying the public purse in the midst of declining tax revenues brought about a vitriolic outburst on the part of a parishioner that was stupefying in its spiritual and emotional violence. Was this really happening here in the parish hall of my little church on the first Sunday of Advent? Alas, it really was.
In a year’s time I’ve been in some of the most violent places on earth, including three cities cited by the State Department as ten places to avoid. The chaos that is the ruined capitol of Haiti, Port Au Prince is among these. Yet, in Port au Prince or in other precarious environments, I never felt violence of soul or person as I experienced this morning in our little parish hall, decorated with grand images of Peace. I was shaking like a leaf, close to meltdown. In my work this summer in at risk-environments I never once felt insecure or challenged. Is the violence exacted for my independent thinking any different than the violence exacted against Western infidels or the Aztecs? I am not thinking so.
Violence takes on many forms, some subtle, perhaps fertile ground for some of the more volcanic manifestations I seem to encounter. As one involved in community theater for years I know the dreadful feeling that comes when patrons get up and walk out on a performance, repudiating the talent and craft of those who dare to perform differently than they. It feels like an ultimate shunning, an act of violence, repudiation of everything we are about. Is it violent to walk out of a church service, leaving behind invited guests because the ‘performers’ don’t do it our way? Does legalistic adherence to one’s forms of religious practice supersede the warm accepting hospitality that might convince tentative inquirers this might be the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, to embrace One called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God? Does insistence that others think, believe, and practice like me bring luster to Advent? I think not.
For thou shalt break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian. For every boot of the booted soldier in the battle tumult, and cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders.
Coming Soon 11-26-10
Roper Mountain, South Carolina
As a child living in an unstable alcoholic home, we were always looking for something new, something different than drab stucco apartments to keep out the tsunami of nocturnal fears that wash over those caught up in addictions. Too many times night was ripped asunder and the revere of childhood dreams obliterated by realities of adult torments. Night time slumber still eludes me most of the time.
A bright spot in childhood was the fantasy that came with seeing a large sign declaring “Coming Soon” As a kid, not schooled in concepts of urban planning, environmental sustainability, ad infinitum, I clung to the idea something new, big, and bright was about to change my world, eclipsing our bleak stucco landscape with something epic. I still have clear recollections of stores being built near one of our non-descript apartments. Utterly entranced, I could hardly wait to walk to and from school, climbing about construction sites en route. In those days no one expressed paranoia about public liability or lawsuits. I was not taken to school in a fear-filled mini-van. No fences kept my brother and me from walking on top of sixteen-foot cinder block walls and cavorting on scaffolding. It was better than any tree house. Amazing is how much fun we had doing this and that we survived. Only once did I end up going to the hospital in a code three ambulance as a consequence of nefarious activity on the way to school.
“Coming Soon” is a declarative that something transformative is about to happen. Grocery stores, hardware stores, movie theaters, malls, most anything of a retail nature tell us life will be better and richer for their arrival in the landscape of our daily experiences. Retail anthropologists and sociologists can decide if “Coming Soon” fulfills expectation or constitutes empty promise.
One of the most powerful laments ever put to paper is King David’s Psalm 55, some three thousand years ago. In his testament to the toxic power of betrayal, he describes in vivid language premeditated efforts of his dearest friend to bring him emotional injury of the highest order. David wonders aloud how it could be that one he once held sweet conversation with, walked within God’s house in sweet fellowship with, could wage war in his heart, make his words as drawn swords, and do this evil thing to him. In the depths of despair, David wonders if life is even worth living. Those of us experiencing betrayal resonate with David’s pain. We find it surreal to think those once holding us in great affection would actually embark on a course of mutually-assured destruction. They know “Coming Soon” is about something coming our way, something anything but new, big, and bright. There is little more bitter in the human experience than betrayal. Premeditated pain is a difficult pill to swallow.
Recently I was informed of a church member’s intent to cause me premeditated pain, someone who once offered to take an important place in my life. I was told something was “Coming Soon.” I could expect verbal assault in a public meeting that would cause me emotional injury in front of my friends. As it happened I was not in the place of the intended attack and did not get waylaid. “Coming Soon” hasn’t happened, yet. Premeditation is often fired by incendiary emotions that don’t damp easily over time. It’s only a matter of time before a random encounter will allow me to experience this “Coming Soon” I’ve been promised. I have become an avid student of Psalm 55. Suddenly an ancient lament has become part of my post-atomic life. Some things never change under the sun; the nature of evil being one of them.
New Testament writers tell us of One who will be “Coming Soon”. The Apostle Paul tells us Jesus will come in the twinkling of an eye to catch us up in the air, even as a thief in the night. With no warning, no announcement board, those having placed their trust in One who can deliver shall find themselves caught up in the clouds, in a place clearly new, big, and bright.
In his dream visions on the Island of Patmos, John describes this new place in astounding terms, a city with streets of transparent gold, gates made of precious stones, a place where there’s no night, no gnashing of teeth, no tears, no death, no pain. David’s powerful lament will no longer have relevance to my life. Old things will have passed away and all things become new.
A most controversial theme in Christendom is the concept of the Rapture, of the possibility of avoiding the Tribulation. Conservative scholars interpret scriptures as foretelling a “Coming Soon” that makes my church member’s threat pale in significance. The Tribulation is described as a seven-year period during which the world will be struck with warfare and natural disasters, leaving the earth little more than a depopulated cinder, Some denominations obsess on divining the signs, attempting to deduce when this tribulation is going to take place, when the Rapture of the Saints is to occur. Many fear the Rapture will catch saintly believers in the air and leave the rest of us nefarious souls behind to suffer the agonies of the Tribulation. Countless scholars argue ‘pre’ and ‘post’ Tribulation scenarios. Some want to believe we can avoid Tribulation’s torments by right living and enjoying immediate Rapture. Others suggest we all have to go along for the ride. Others pay no attention to any of it. Many are agreed Jesus is coming soon, yet, after twenty centuries of waiting, it’s hard to know exactly what “Coming Soon” means.
What one can deduce from any interpretation of the Revelation of John or Daniel’s prophetic writings from Babylon is being circumspect about how we live our lives and how we treat those around us is of highest import. There’s simply nothing more compelling than living our lives in such a way that if “Coming Soon” happens before lunch today, we would be ready. Virtually all interpreters of scripture, of any ilk, agree these are powerful imperatives to right living. The urgency placed upon the idea of “Coming Soon” compels us to get our spiritual and relational affairs in order.
The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth suggest the non-negotiable nature of this imperative in stark language. He says, paraphrased, “If I do not have love, nothing else whatever counts.” There’s simply no room whatever for pre-meditated injury to others. If He’s really “Coming Soon”, I really want to be ready. Really.
Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
As a child living in an unstable alcoholic home, we were always looking for something new, something different than drab stucco apartments to keep out the tsunami of nocturnal fears that wash over those caught up in addictions. Too many times night was ripped asunder and the revere of childhood dreams obliterated by realities of adult torments. Night time slumber still eludes me most of the time.
A bright spot in childhood was the fantasy that came with seeing a large sign declaring “Coming Soon” As a kid, not schooled in concepts of urban planning, environmental sustainability, ad infinitum, I clung to the idea something new, big, and bright was about to change my world, eclipsing our bleak stucco landscape with something epic. I still have clear recollections of stores being built near one of our non-descript apartments. Utterly entranced, I could hardly wait to walk to and from school, climbing about construction sites en route. In those days no one expressed paranoia about public liability or lawsuits. I was not taken to school in a fear-filled mini-van. No fences kept my brother and me from walking on top of sixteen-foot cinder block walls and cavorting on scaffolding. It was better than any tree house. Amazing is how much fun we had doing this and that we survived. Only once did I end up going to the hospital in a code three ambulance as a consequence of nefarious activity on the way to school.
“Coming Soon” is a declarative that something transformative is about to happen. Grocery stores, hardware stores, movie theaters, malls, most anything of a retail nature tell us life will be better and richer for their arrival in the landscape of our daily experiences. Retail anthropologists and sociologists can decide if “Coming Soon” fulfills expectation or constitutes empty promise.
One of the most powerful laments ever put to paper is King David’s Psalm 55, some three thousand years ago. In his testament to the toxic power of betrayal, he describes in vivid language premeditated efforts of his dearest friend to bring him emotional injury of the highest order. David wonders aloud how it could be that one he once held sweet conversation with, walked within God’s house in sweet fellowship with, could wage war in his heart, make his words as drawn swords, and do this evil thing to him. In the depths of despair, David wonders if life is even worth living. Those of us experiencing betrayal resonate with David’s pain. We find it surreal to think those once holding us in great affection would actually embark on a course of mutually-assured destruction. They know “Coming Soon” is about something coming our way, something anything but new, big, and bright. There is little more bitter in the human experience than betrayal. Premeditated pain is a difficult pill to swallow.
Recently I was informed of a church member’s intent to cause me premeditated pain, someone who once offered to take an important place in my life. I was told something was “Coming Soon.” I could expect verbal assault in a public meeting that would cause me emotional injury in front of my friends. As it happened I was not in the place of the intended attack and did not get waylaid. “Coming Soon” hasn’t happened, yet. Premeditation is often fired by incendiary emotions that don’t damp easily over time. It’s only a matter of time before a random encounter will allow me to experience this “Coming Soon” I’ve been promised. I have become an avid student of Psalm 55. Suddenly an ancient lament has become part of my post-atomic life. Some things never change under the sun; the nature of evil being one of them.
New Testament writers tell us of One who will be “Coming Soon”. The Apostle Paul tells us Jesus will come in the twinkling of an eye to catch us up in the air, even as a thief in the night. With no warning, no announcement board, those having placed their trust in One who can deliver shall find themselves caught up in the clouds, in a place clearly new, big, and bright.
In his dream visions on the Island of Patmos, John describes this new place in astounding terms, a city with streets of transparent gold, gates made of precious stones, a place where there’s no night, no gnashing of teeth, no tears, no death, no pain. David’s powerful lament will no longer have relevance to my life. Old things will have passed away and all things become new.
A most controversial theme in Christendom is the concept of the Rapture, of the possibility of avoiding the Tribulation. Conservative scholars interpret scriptures as foretelling a “Coming Soon” that makes my church member’s threat pale in significance. The Tribulation is described as a seven-year period during which the world will be struck with warfare and natural disasters, leaving the earth little more than a depopulated cinder, Some denominations obsess on divining the signs, attempting to deduce when this tribulation is going to take place, when the Rapture of the Saints is to occur. Many fear the Rapture will catch saintly believers in the air and leave the rest of us nefarious souls behind to suffer the agonies of the Tribulation. Countless scholars argue ‘pre’ and ‘post’ Tribulation scenarios. Some want to believe we can avoid Tribulation’s torments by right living and enjoying immediate Rapture. Others suggest we all have to go along for the ride. Others pay no attention to any of it. Many are agreed Jesus is coming soon, yet, after twenty centuries of waiting, it’s hard to know exactly what “Coming Soon” means.
What one can deduce from any interpretation of the Revelation of John or Daniel’s prophetic writings from Babylon is being circumspect about how we live our lives and how we treat those around us is of highest import. There’s simply nothing more compelling than living our lives in such a way that if “Coming Soon” happens before lunch today, we would be ready. Virtually all interpreters of scripture, of any ilk, agree these are powerful imperatives to right living. The urgency placed upon the idea of “Coming Soon” compels us to get our spiritual and relational affairs in order.
The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth suggest the non-negotiable nature of this imperative in stark language. He says, paraphrased, “If I do not have love, nothing else whatever counts.” There’s simply no room whatever for pre-meditated injury to others. If He’s really “Coming Soon”, I really want to be ready. Really.
Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
Going Viral With the News 11-22-18
Anderson, South Carolina
One of the most compelling and challenging tasks facing ambassadors and Secretaries of State is consensus building; the formation of alliances of nations to accomplish mutually beneficial objectives. Across the spectrum of political domains robust alliances have formed to promote shared causes. Western Allies were forged into military alliances to combat the scourge of Nazi fervor overtaking Europe. NATO protected Western European interests in the Cold War era. The Warsaw Pact advanced Eastern Bloc causes during the same period. NAFTA is a more recent attempt to promote economic interests of North American states. Conceptually, alliances are good, providing a coherent voice to participating members; insuring all are reading from the same page.
Individuals also develop alliances, often immature, to promote self interest, to justify their actions. My childhood was replete with ephemeral alliances in which the kids next door would ‘be on my side,’ perhaps for a mere few hours. Fleeting were the moments of empowerment when I had alliances against the likes of my brothers. For so many of us socially marginalized nerds, childhood was a protracted season of facing alliances, often aligned against us.
Tragically these same childish behaviors often manifest in exaggerated forms in adulthood. Toy guns and pretend forts are exchanged for plutonium and battalions of real soldiers. Wars of words between children who never grew up have the ability to ravage the lives of millions. The 20th century saw the deaths of hundreds of millions of good people caught in the cross fire of people taking sides.
On a lower geo-political level I have been caught in the cross fire of people for several years, people who find conflict resolution in divorce, bankruptcy, reactivity, sarcasm, addiction, duplicity, ad infinitum. Thermodynamic disruptions as described by James Gleick in his classic 1991 work, Chaos, are easily portrayed by group dynamics seen in a group of perhaps two dozen people. Relationships form, relationships fail, alliances form, they collapse; individuals are ejected from the group. At any one time or another I found individuals in my group attempting to draw me into alliances of opinion, wanting me to be on their side. Alas, there was no effective ambassador or Secretary of State to mediate conflicts. I’m no longer connected to any of these individuals, ejected from the group. Nearly as important to ambassadors as building consensus is defusing misunderstandings and tempering explosive emotions. Without mediators, discord often escalates into open hostility and worse. Groups fracture.
Those with some sort of perceived injury or insult are inclined to broadcast their misfortunes with great animation to those around them. It’s an unfortunate quirk of human behavior that they are often believed. Years of prior positive experience with someone is often completely overwritten by reports of a single negative episode. Another reality is negative experiences are eventually reported to more than a hundred and twenty individuals, if academics are right about such matters. Positive reports travel much less extensively, perhaps a dozen listeners getting the message. In journalism, a long standing quip states, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Bad news goes viral in the human experience. We don’t hear about planes landing safely after a routine flight.
Today I found a voice message in my phone that was staggering in its venomous nature and the breadth of allegations it contained. The purpose of the message was to strongly encourage me to give up my loyalty to people I have known and worked with for twenty years. The impassioned imperative of the message is that it’s far more important for me to honor the offense of one individual by abdicating long-standing working relationships and loyalties with dozens of other individuals. False accusations were used freely to gain my mutiny of spirit. In a very real sense I was being asked to participate in a mutiny that could easily cause the collapse of an important volunteer community organization.
A friend of mine was recently accused of all manner of sexual misconduct, something inconceivable for a man with his high ethical standards. Today a long-standing friend reported being accused of using her sexuality repeatedly to gain favor in her workplace, again something simply inconceivable. While visiting a church recently for dinner, a member conveyed to me reports of my supposed sexual recreations with others in the room!
During my precarious attempts to survive childhood I would often remind myself that ‘stick or stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The fallacy of this sound byte was borne out too soon in my alcoholic childhood. Words would prove more destructive to me than any kind of stick, and I had some pretty big sticks and rocks thrown at me, literally. Over the years devastating evidence would prove again and again their destructive potential. Only this week I am reminded again of the toxic power of misplaced words.
The Epistle of James describes the tongue as perhaps the deadliest thing on earth. It’s described as “a fire, the very world of inequity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.” It would be difficult to imagine a more impassioned declaration as to the dangers of running loose with one’s mouth.
In recent weeks I estimate several dozen acquaintances and friendships have disrupted because of the loosed tongues about me. Fires do burn up many fine forests, and so often hundreds of homes with them. There is no chaos described in the annals of thermodynamics or quantum physics that compares to that which detonates when a malicious chain reaction is set off by venomous slander.
Nuclear reactions can only safely proceed in the presence of control rods, which sop up excess nuclear particles. In the absence of control rods in our mouths we will continue to set of cascade reactions destroying the character and spirit of millions.
If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
One of the most compelling and challenging tasks facing ambassadors and Secretaries of State is consensus building; the formation of alliances of nations to accomplish mutually beneficial objectives. Across the spectrum of political domains robust alliances have formed to promote shared causes. Western Allies were forged into military alliances to combat the scourge of Nazi fervor overtaking Europe. NATO protected Western European interests in the Cold War era. The Warsaw Pact advanced Eastern Bloc causes during the same period. NAFTA is a more recent attempt to promote economic interests of North American states. Conceptually, alliances are good, providing a coherent voice to participating members; insuring all are reading from the same page.
Individuals also develop alliances, often immature, to promote self interest, to justify their actions. My childhood was replete with ephemeral alliances in which the kids next door would ‘be on my side,’ perhaps for a mere few hours. Fleeting were the moments of empowerment when I had alliances against the likes of my brothers. For so many of us socially marginalized nerds, childhood was a protracted season of facing alliances, often aligned against us.
Tragically these same childish behaviors often manifest in exaggerated forms in adulthood. Toy guns and pretend forts are exchanged for plutonium and battalions of real soldiers. Wars of words between children who never grew up have the ability to ravage the lives of millions. The 20th century saw the deaths of hundreds of millions of good people caught in the cross fire of people taking sides.
On a lower geo-political level I have been caught in the cross fire of people for several years, people who find conflict resolution in divorce, bankruptcy, reactivity, sarcasm, addiction, duplicity, ad infinitum. Thermodynamic disruptions as described by James Gleick in his classic 1991 work, Chaos, are easily portrayed by group dynamics seen in a group of perhaps two dozen people. Relationships form, relationships fail, alliances form, they collapse; individuals are ejected from the group. At any one time or another I found individuals in my group attempting to draw me into alliances of opinion, wanting me to be on their side. Alas, there was no effective ambassador or Secretary of State to mediate conflicts. I’m no longer connected to any of these individuals, ejected from the group. Nearly as important to ambassadors as building consensus is defusing misunderstandings and tempering explosive emotions. Without mediators, discord often escalates into open hostility and worse. Groups fracture.
Those with some sort of perceived injury or insult are inclined to broadcast their misfortunes with great animation to those around them. It’s an unfortunate quirk of human behavior that they are often believed. Years of prior positive experience with someone is often completely overwritten by reports of a single negative episode. Another reality is negative experiences are eventually reported to more than a hundred and twenty individuals, if academics are right about such matters. Positive reports travel much less extensively, perhaps a dozen listeners getting the message. In journalism, a long standing quip states, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Bad news goes viral in the human experience. We don’t hear about planes landing safely after a routine flight.
Today I found a voice message in my phone that was staggering in its venomous nature and the breadth of allegations it contained. The purpose of the message was to strongly encourage me to give up my loyalty to people I have known and worked with for twenty years. The impassioned imperative of the message is that it’s far more important for me to honor the offense of one individual by abdicating long-standing working relationships and loyalties with dozens of other individuals. False accusations were used freely to gain my mutiny of spirit. In a very real sense I was being asked to participate in a mutiny that could easily cause the collapse of an important volunteer community organization.
A friend of mine was recently accused of all manner of sexual misconduct, something inconceivable for a man with his high ethical standards. Today a long-standing friend reported being accused of using her sexuality repeatedly to gain favor in her workplace, again something simply inconceivable. While visiting a church recently for dinner, a member conveyed to me reports of my supposed sexual recreations with others in the room!
During my precarious attempts to survive childhood I would often remind myself that ‘stick or stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The fallacy of this sound byte was borne out too soon in my alcoholic childhood. Words would prove more destructive to me than any kind of stick, and I had some pretty big sticks and rocks thrown at me, literally. Over the years devastating evidence would prove again and again their destructive potential. Only this week I am reminded again of the toxic power of misplaced words.
The Epistle of James describes the tongue as perhaps the deadliest thing on earth. It’s described as “a fire, the very world of inequity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.” It would be difficult to imagine a more impassioned declaration as to the dangers of running loose with one’s mouth.
In recent weeks I estimate several dozen acquaintances and friendships have disrupted because of the loosed tongues about me. Fires do burn up many fine forests, and so often hundreds of homes with them. There is no chaos described in the annals of thermodynamics or quantum physics that compares to that which detonates when a malicious chain reaction is set off by venomous slander.
Nuclear reactions can only safely proceed in the presence of control rods, which sop up excess nuclear particles. In the absence of control rods in our mouths we will continue to set of cascade reactions destroying the character and spirit of millions.
If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Like, Unlike 11-18-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In Roman arenas spectators of gruesome gladiatorial contests were granted rights to pass judgment on the merits of contestants’ performance. Thumbs up and fighters would be granted their lives. Thumbs down and gladiators would not make it off the field. Spectators, voyeurs of violence if you may, were granted life and death powers over combatants in the guise of enhancing the entertainment value of these grisly games.
During the past couple of years a curious phenomenon has swept the cyber world. Little blue ‘LIKE’ and “UNLIKE’ buttons are showing up all over cyberspace. We flat-screen observers are increasingly granted the ability to give a thumb’s up or down on most anything we encounter. Our friends ask us to view a U-Tube video of their children playing violin and vote for them. Scholarships are gained or lost in these public straw polls. Somehow our viewing a two-minute video clip is supposed to make us expert judges of musical ability. Studio audiences and TV viewers are granted rights of judgment over contestants in wide-ranging talent and reality shows. Careers and fortunes are made or lost according to the mercurial whims of the audience at hand. Increasingly, holders of high political office are subject to escalating levels of judgment by the rank and file.
We like or unlike everyone and everything around us. We move further into a behavioral dynamic where we are ever busy judging and critiquing everything. This has become so intense as to allow opinion to be more powerful than ethics or morals at guiding our lives. The opinion of a single person will make or break virtually every entertainer or author in the world, especially if her name is Oprah. Obscure authors are made into best seller millionaires in ninety seconds of ‘O’ time, even if by objective measures their work should remain obscure. One author sold millions of books because a copy of one of his works unwittingly ended up on Oprah’s night stand at the right time. Courses are offered, teaching wishful authors how to get their books noticed by Oprah.
Those of us teaching courses in universities are regularly subjected to student evaluations; often resembling little more than popularity score cards. Compiled results frequently demonstrate an amazing level of harshness among those given this sudden sense of power over authority figures. It’s most fortunate we are not gladiators.
Computer users pass judgment on the veracity of heartfelt comments made by people about events occurring around the world. Forums, chat rooms, social networks, and news sites provide opportunities to give thumbs up or down on content, reactions to content, and reactions to reactions. The venomous acerbic responses often rendered to perfectly reasonable comments are dumb founding. Have we really become this heartless, brazen in the anonymity granted us in cyber space? Is this any different than the increasing road rage than emerges as collective anonymity increases on the road?
Social networks have recently added the ability of users to declare their like or unlike for anything added, embedded, inserted, created or otherwise placed in the ethos of the cyber world. The ability for me to ‘like’ or ‘unlike’ your photographs, words, music, or your person is instantly available. Embedded links make it possible for users to declare their like or unlike your place of business. Enough ‘unlikes’ on a social network and a struggling restaurant will close its doors. Enough low user ratings and films will fail to regain their production costs; legendary studios will close. Delightful motels I’ve stayed in have been excoriated in cyber-space. Magnificent films that enthralled me have melted into obscurity.
Perhaps most sobering is what happens when people are “UNLIKED”. Recently a number of high school and college students have been subject to being unliked in the most extreme ways. Webcams, streaming, social networks, chat rooms, texting, and e-mail have been used to disparage the character and values of these victims; bullying so intense as to cause these targets to opt out of life via suicide. In America we now have a high school known as the bully school. An epidemic of large-scale school shootings suggest we have far more than one of these.
A young man living next door to me was much like a recent Rutgers University bully victim, profoundly gifted in music and visual arts, gentle and compassionate. For years Harold called me his ‘chosen father.’ Bullied in his governor’s school by faculty, he was wounded profoundly in his soul. Ultimately he opted for relief with a shotgun he bought at Wal-Mart. I saw up close what shotguns do to people at point blank range. I was on an assortment of psychotropic drugs for years.
I again find myself an unwitting victim of this LIKE UNLIKE culture I’m immersed in. Last night I was told I was on a “do not invite” list, a list being maintained by one who was once an important part of my life. A few weeks ago I was told publically by another I was now on such a list. As much as I want to tell myself it doesn’t matter at all to me, it matters a whole lot. Opportunities to spend time with people who have been important to me have been lost because I committed some perceived faux pas. This is pathognomonic of a throw-away culture in which we throw away our spouses, neighborhoods, friends, employers, churches, and our consumer goods, simply because they don’t behave and perform as we demand. It hurts. A lot.
Psychiatric disorders are catalogued in what is known as DSM-IV, a huge clinical book containing thousands of diagnoses along with descriptions and methods for diagnosing patients with these. Recently, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) have emerged as an objective diagnoses. Individuals with these are prone to explosive, even violent outbursts, when others do not behave as expected. RAD and IED are simply powerful ways to unlike someone in an extreme manner.
In the worlds of addiction and alcoholism I encounter these frequently. Alas, they crop up with regularity throughout the social landscape, in volunteer groups, churches, social clubs, work places, at birthday parties, and most recently in cyber space. Outbursts have been made socially acceptable in the cyber world with the advent of ‘unlike’, ‘un-friend’, and ‘delete’ buttons. It’s too easy to simply click and move on; leaving behind a contrail of bewildered wounded individuals and shuttered businesses.
For some, the emotional cost of living in a judging culture, devoid of loyalty or compassion, is too much. They go to ‘Sporting Goods’ in Wal-Mart and make their last purchase. They carry out the ultimate UNLIKE on themselves. When my neighbor ended his life he left behind an oil painting he had been working on. In the middle of the chaotic image was the phrase, “I hate myself.”
During the Cold War, the collective ‘we’ often wondered about who had his finger over the button that could cause a white flash to occur 8,000 miles away, immolating millions in atomic holocaust. Today I wonder who they are with their fingers over the UNLIKE button that can unleash emotional and financial holocaust in our lives.
It might be a good idea to shut down your computer and go visit your lonely neighbors across the street. They probably need you to LIKE them.
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Not even the UNLIKE button.
In Roman arenas spectators of gruesome gladiatorial contests were granted rights to pass judgment on the merits of contestants’ performance. Thumbs up and fighters would be granted their lives. Thumbs down and gladiators would not make it off the field. Spectators, voyeurs of violence if you may, were granted life and death powers over combatants in the guise of enhancing the entertainment value of these grisly games.
During the past couple of years a curious phenomenon has swept the cyber world. Little blue ‘LIKE’ and “UNLIKE’ buttons are showing up all over cyberspace. We flat-screen observers are increasingly granted the ability to give a thumb’s up or down on most anything we encounter. Our friends ask us to view a U-Tube video of their children playing violin and vote for them. Scholarships are gained or lost in these public straw polls. Somehow our viewing a two-minute video clip is supposed to make us expert judges of musical ability. Studio audiences and TV viewers are granted rights of judgment over contestants in wide-ranging talent and reality shows. Careers and fortunes are made or lost according to the mercurial whims of the audience at hand. Increasingly, holders of high political office are subject to escalating levels of judgment by the rank and file.
We like or unlike everyone and everything around us. We move further into a behavioral dynamic where we are ever busy judging and critiquing everything. This has become so intense as to allow opinion to be more powerful than ethics or morals at guiding our lives. The opinion of a single person will make or break virtually every entertainer or author in the world, especially if her name is Oprah. Obscure authors are made into best seller millionaires in ninety seconds of ‘O’ time, even if by objective measures their work should remain obscure. One author sold millions of books because a copy of one of his works unwittingly ended up on Oprah’s night stand at the right time. Courses are offered, teaching wishful authors how to get their books noticed by Oprah.
Those of us teaching courses in universities are regularly subjected to student evaluations; often resembling little more than popularity score cards. Compiled results frequently demonstrate an amazing level of harshness among those given this sudden sense of power over authority figures. It’s most fortunate we are not gladiators.
Computer users pass judgment on the veracity of heartfelt comments made by people about events occurring around the world. Forums, chat rooms, social networks, and news sites provide opportunities to give thumbs up or down on content, reactions to content, and reactions to reactions. The venomous acerbic responses often rendered to perfectly reasonable comments are dumb founding. Have we really become this heartless, brazen in the anonymity granted us in cyber space? Is this any different than the increasing road rage than emerges as collective anonymity increases on the road?
Social networks have recently added the ability of users to declare their like or unlike for anything added, embedded, inserted, created or otherwise placed in the ethos of the cyber world. The ability for me to ‘like’ or ‘unlike’ your photographs, words, music, or your person is instantly available. Embedded links make it possible for users to declare their like or unlike your place of business. Enough ‘unlikes’ on a social network and a struggling restaurant will close its doors. Enough low user ratings and films will fail to regain their production costs; legendary studios will close. Delightful motels I’ve stayed in have been excoriated in cyber-space. Magnificent films that enthralled me have melted into obscurity.
Perhaps most sobering is what happens when people are “UNLIKED”. Recently a number of high school and college students have been subject to being unliked in the most extreme ways. Webcams, streaming, social networks, chat rooms, texting, and e-mail have been used to disparage the character and values of these victims; bullying so intense as to cause these targets to opt out of life via suicide. In America we now have a high school known as the bully school. An epidemic of large-scale school shootings suggest we have far more than one of these.
A young man living next door to me was much like a recent Rutgers University bully victim, profoundly gifted in music and visual arts, gentle and compassionate. For years Harold called me his ‘chosen father.’ Bullied in his governor’s school by faculty, he was wounded profoundly in his soul. Ultimately he opted for relief with a shotgun he bought at Wal-Mart. I saw up close what shotguns do to people at point blank range. I was on an assortment of psychotropic drugs for years.
I again find myself an unwitting victim of this LIKE UNLIKE culture I’m immersed in. Last night I was told I was on a “do not invite” list, a list being maintained by one who was once an important part of my life. A few weeks ago I was told publically by another I was now on such a list. As much as I want to tell myself it doesn’t matter at all to me, it matters a whole lot. Opportunities to spend time with people who have been important to me have been lost because I committed some perceived faux pas. This is pathognomonic of a throw-away culture in which we throw away our spouses, neighborhoods, friends, employers, churches, and our consumer goods, simply because they don’t behave and perform as we demand. It hurts. A lot.
Psychiatric disorders are catalogued in what is known as DSM-IV, a huge clinical book containing thousands of diagnoses along with descriptions and methods for diagnosing patients with these. Recently, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) have emerged as an objective diagnoses. Individuals with these are prone to explosive, even violent outbursts, when others do not behave as expected. RAD and IED are simply powerful ways to unlike someone in an extreme manner.
In the worlds of addiction and alcoholism I encounter these frequently. Alas, they crop up with regularity throughout the social landscape, in volunteer groups, churches, social clubs, work places, at birthday parties, and most recently in cyber space. Outbursts have been made socially acceptable in the cyber world with the advent of ‘unlike’, ‘un-friend’, and ‘delete’ buttons. It’s too easy to simply click and move on; leaving behind a contrail of bewildered wounded individuals and shuttered businesses.
For some, the emotional cost of living in a judging culture, devoid of loyalty or compassion, is too much. They go to ‘Sporting Goods’ in Wal-Mart and make their last purchase. They carry out the ultimate UNLIKE on themselves. When my neighbor ended his life he left behind an oil painting he had been working on. In the middle of the chaotic image was the phrase, “I hate myself.”
During the Cold War, the collective ‘we’ often wondered about who had his finger over the button that could cause a white flash to occur 8,000 miles away, immolating millions in atomic holocaust. Today I wonder who they are with their fingers over the UNLIKE button that can unleash emotional and financial holocaust in our lives.
It might be a good idea to shut down your computer and go visit your lonely neighbors across the street. They probably need you to LIKE them.
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Not even the UNLIKE button.
Monday, November 15, 2010
A Strange New World 11-15-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Recently an elaborate survey completed by Forbes determined who the sixty-eight most powerful people on earth are, the one in a hundred million people who make the biggest difference in our lives. “The people on this list were chosen because, in various ways, they bend the world to their will. They are heads of state, major religious figures, entrepreneurs and outlaws.” Four criteria were used to evaluate potential candidates for the list. 1) Individuals must have influence over large numbers of people. 2) They should have substantial financial resources relative to their peers. 3) These leaders should be able to project their power in multiple ways. 4) Candidates should be actively wielding their power. Incredulously, a completely unknown twenty year old college drop-out went from obscurity to number 40 on this list by virtue of figuring out a way to connect his friends together with an obscure program he called Facebook. In six years his Facebook program went from connecting eight people to nearly six hundred million.
The influence of Facebook is staggering. The posting of comments by teenagers and young adults, berating others in cyber space, has provoked a rash of suicides. Employers nix job applicants because of things found in their Facebook news feeds. Friendships disrupt because users of Facebook forget the whole world is watching. It’s as if the whole world has turned into an audience of cyber-voyeurs. Personal material posted for 580 million users to see is stunning. Every non-profit agency and community organization is falling over itself to establish a clear Facebook presence. Most of us who write or do creative visual work would not have a possibility of success without a clear Facebook presence. Facebook is used as a screening tool by those considering relational involvements.
In the past year or so, a year in which a couple hundred million people have been added to the Facebook database, a number of my friends have been lost to the embedded games in the Facebook operating system. I once had vibrant daily interactions with individuals in the gym, over dinner, in church, in the community playhouse, even by phone and e-mail. A number of these have been lost to Farmville, Priestville, Lexulous, and other cyber-based games. Curiously, these very people lament not having time to keep up with life and friends.
The level of connectivity possible with Facebook has a sinister downside. Professional counselors are now often speaking of compromised marriages resulting from the ease of finding long-lost high school flames or other individuals at great distance in time or space. In my own experience I see married persons seriously jeopardizing the well being of their marriages and the security of their children by maintaining clandestine text threads with others in the cyber world. More than a few long-term marriages have been lost via Ethernet. It’s as if it’s too easy to get up close and personal in this strange new world without borders or rules.
Alas, it’s also a strangely impersonal way to find out about milestones in the lives of people we thought ourselves close to. More than once I’ve learned of deaths and funerals through ransom encounters with news feeds in Facebook. Only today did I learn of a good friend’s journey out of state for a funeral, through a FB newsfeed not intended for me. I discover the birth of grandchildren by following news feeds in this detached cyber world. Vacations and walks in the park with one’s dog seem to be celebrated on Facebook. The private, inane, and often crass doings of daily life seem to be celebrated here as well, often provoking an amazingly intense thread of commentary. I can put up a heartfelt missive about something and am rewarded with utter silence. Often I have published photo collections of the most sublime places on earth and not heard from a single individual. Recently a FB user commented about a crass personal toileting activity, spawning a thread of more than twenty comments. I no longer know what’s important to people in life.
My phone rarely rings any more. Even the amount of personal e-mail I receive has plunged; group forwards of jokes and PowerPoint shows don’t count. Individuals once part of my physical world have faded into one of hundreds of so-called FB friends.
In this strange new world, one also experiences the painful reality of exclusion; that one has been disenfranchised from parts of one’s community. A social group, once vibrant and important to me, has developed inner circles excluding some of us, marginalizing us to the ranks of the ostensibly uninformed. Before Zuckerman invented Facebook it was easy to have a party and not invite once-favored individuals, now cut from the short list. Ignorance was bliss. With Facebook I find out in real time of parties celebrated by people who no longer welcome me. Groups once playing into my decisions to stay put in my town take happy voyages and journeys to far flung places, without me. How strange it is to be working on publications, only to find on a news feed I’ve been delisted from another part of my world. More and more, people are exteriorizing their cyber lives and we unwitting voyeurs of these lives find our physical worlds shrinking, a birthday party at a time.
Ancient writings of the Apostles tell us of a time when people shared their worldly goods, meals, dreams, even their fears. Individuals were truly part of community, living mindful in the present in time and space. “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
A recent AT&T ad proclaims, “Finally, a phone to save us from our phones.” It’s not likely the Apostles were speaking of people being saved from their phones, but there might be some merit in being saved from a murky cyber world devoid of rules and admitted into a world devoid of delete keys. It’s our choice to embrace a way of living where our life is recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life rather than the archives of Zuckerman’s Facebook.
Recently an elaborate survey completed by Forbes determined who the sixty-eight most powerful people on earth are, the one in a hundred million people who make the biggest difference in our lives. “The people on this list were chosen because, in various ways, they bend the world to their will. They are heads of state, major religious figures, entrepreneurs and outlaws.” Four criteria were used to evaluate potential candidates for the list. 1) Individuals must have influence over large numbers of people. 2) They should have substantial financial resources relative to their peers. 3) These leaders should be able to project their power in multiple ways. 4) Candidates should be actively wielding their power. Incredulously, a completely unknown twenty year old college drop-out went from obscurity to number 40 on this list by virtue of figuring out a way to connect his friends together with an obscure program he called Facebook. In six years his Facebook program went from connecting eight people to nearly six hundred million.
The influence of Facebook is staggering. The posting of comments by teenagers and young adults, berating others in cyber space, has provoked a rash of suicides. Employers nix job applicants because of things found in their Facebook news feeds. Friendships disrupt because users of Facebook forget the whole world is watching. It’s as if the whole world has turned into an audience of cyber-voyeurs. Personal material posted for 580 million users to see is stunning. Every non-profit agency and community organization is falling over itself to establish a clear Facebook presence. Most of us who write or do creative visual work would not have a possibility of success without a clear Facebook presence. Facebook is used as a screening tool by those considering relational involvements.
In the past year or so, a year in which a couple hundred million people have been added to the Facebook database, a number of my friends have been lost to the embedded games in the Facebook operating system. I once had vibrant daily interactions with individuals in the gym, over dinner, in church, in the community playhouse, even by phone and e-mail. A number of these have been lost to Farmville, Priestville, Lexulous, and other cyber-based games. Curiously, these very people lament not having time to keep up with life and friends.
The level of connectivity possible with Facebook has a sinister downside. Professional counselors are now often speaking of compromised marriages resulting from the ease of finding long-lost high school flames or other individuals at great distance in time or space. In my own experience I see married persons seriously jeopardizing the well being of their marriages and the security of their children by maintaining clandestine text threads with others in the cyber world. More than a few long-term marriages have been lost via Ethernet. It’s as if it’s too easy to get up close and personal in this strange new world without borders or rules.
Alas, it’s also a strangely impersonal way to find out about milestones in the lives of people we thought ourselves close to. More than once I’ve learned of deaths and funerals through ransom encounters with news feeds in Facebook. Only today did I learn of a good friend’s journey out of state for a funeral, through a FB newsfeed not intended for me. I discover the birth of grandchildren by following news feeds in this detached cyber world. Vacations and walks in the park with one’s dog seem to be celebrated on Facebook. The private, inane, and often crass doings of daily life seem to be celebrated here as well, often provoking an amazingly intense thread of commentary. I can put up a heartfelt missive about something and am rewarded with utter silence. Often I have published photo collections of the most sublime places on earth and not heard from a single individual. Recently a FB user commented about a crass personal toileting activity, spawning a thread of more than twenty comments. I no longer know what’s important to people in life.
My phone rarely rings any more. Even the amount of personal e-mail I receive has plunged; group forwards of jokes and PowerPoint shows don’t count. Individuals once part of my physical world have faded into one of hundreds of so-called FB friends.
In this strange new world, one also experiences the painful reality of exclusion; that one has been disenfranchised from parts of one’s community. A social group, once vibrant and important to me, has developed inner circles excluding some of us, marginalizing us to the ranks of the ostensibly uninformed. Before Zuckerman invented Facebook it was easy to have a party and not invite once-favored individuals, now cut from the short list. Ignorance was bliss. With Facebook I find out in real time of parties celebrated by people who no longer welcome me. Groups once playing into my decisions to stay put in my town take happy voyages and journeys to far flung places, without me. How strange it is to be working on publications, only to find on a news feed I’ve been delisted from another part of my world. More and more, people are exteriorizing their cyber lives and we unwitting voyeurs of these lives find our physical worlds shrinking, a birthday party at a time.
Ancient writings of the Apostles tell us of a time when people shared their worldly goods, meals, dreams, even their fears. Individuals were truly part of community, living mindful in the present in time and space. “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
A recent AT&T ad proclaims, “Finally, a phone to save us from our phones.” It’s not likely the Apostles were speaking of people being saved from their phones, but there might be some merit in being saved from a murky cyber world devoid of rules and admitted into a world devoid of delete keys. It’s our choice to embrace a way of living where our life is recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life rather than the archives of Zuckerman’s Facebook.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Since 1984 - 10-7-10
Anderson, South Carolina
As a high school student in the 1960s I was enthralled by the mythos surrounding a small paperback assigned in English class. For sixty years, George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, has haunted literature students with its portrayal of totalitarian society, where even autonomy of one’s own thoughts is an affront to the State. In the end, the protagonist is arrested, tortured, and converted to the State’s way of thinking. Is it possible society could advance to this level of control over the individual? Has it? In the context of upper class white society in 1960s America, it seemed farfetched we could ever experience such quantum change. Having read the book first in 1965, two decades were given to wondering if Orwell would prove prophetic; 1984 seemed so far in the distant future.
From the vantage point of 2010, the year 1984 seems consigned to the dustbins of ancient history. So much water has passed under our collective bridges as to occlude clear memory of what occurred in those distant days. Quantum change occurred in ways Orwell barely imagined. What remains to be seen is whether individuals can retain autonomy of their own thoughts. In some parts of the world this freedom appears to have been lost. In North America the jury has yet to return a verdict.
A large granite marker fronting a vacant lot near our local hospital declares simply, “Since 1984.” Is culture changing so fast that “Since 1984” constitutes some sort of moniker of timeless stability and durability? Since 1984, two different buildings have occupied this land, now filled with nothing but weeds, piles of waste rock, broken cement, and this marker of time. This land once contained a medical arts building. Ten years later the building was completely reconstructed into an opulent facility for physical rehabilitation. This facility too failed to pass muster. Some years ago a broad spectrum of weeds emerged from the red clay where people once rebuilt their strength.
Robert Ornstein wrote his ambitious book, New World, New Mind, only five years after Orwell’s date of infamy. The thesis of Ornstein’s work is human minds are hard-wired to be responsive to fast-acting stimuli and refractory to slowly-occurring ones. Throughout biological history, excepting the near present, natural dangers were by nature fast acting: bears looking for dinner, flash floods, lightning strikes, earthquakes. Virtually no slowly developing phenomenon with significant danger existed. Ornstein has proposed in his on-going work that slow phenomenon such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, national debt burdens, rising crime rates, urban sprawl, and population increase constitute far greater risk to the human collective than occasional bear attacks, isolated flash floods, or lightning strikes. He proposes we need to develop a new consciousness giving us awareness of our contributions to slow phenomenon that may well put us all in great peril.
The more recent work of Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization, describes cultural laws or memes embedded in group think, which in themselves exert powerful influence over the thinking of individuals. Unwritten social rules and preferences can exert as much or more influence over individuals as totalitarian state policy. Slowly changing cultural rules can easily move us to a precipice, unnoticed.
What was enough in 1949 when Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four is now considered spartan, even indicative of near-poverty. In 1950 the average American house was 950 square feet, most likely sans garage or car. Families of six to eight members successfully achieved adulthood in tiny three bedroom one bath houses on an eighth of an acre. Slowly increasing sizes of American houses has resulted in a deadly state of affairs, with many houses exceeding ten thousand square feet, millions of them suddenly in foreclosure. In the span of a few hours this slow phenomenon resulted in near collapse of the American banking system. Consumers bought into ever-increasing demands for environmentally and economically unsustainable standards for house size. Millions now have no house. Economic flash floods washed over the land; the waters have yet to recede.
Churches, hospitals, schools, and even operators of medical arts buildings bought into cultural memes declaring, “Bigger is better.” Since Ornstein wrote his seminal work, the local medical community has emigrated from modest brick offices into structures not unlike the Taj Mahal. Hospitals have become the largest landlords in some counties. Structures built on this vacant lot near the hospital failed to conform to ever more demanding cultural memes about size and glitz. Perfectly serviceable structures have been lost to cultural memes demanding ever more from us. Virtually every school in my county is undergoing some kind of major rebuilding, despite fiscal realities causing loss of teaching staff and academic ratings placing school performance near the bottom for all fifty states.
The nearly mythic city of Dubai in the United Arabs Emirates has only recently learned than even copious oil money cannot maintain demands of a cultural meme mandating ever higher building into the sky. A recently completed Dubai reflection pond with fountains cost over $250 million. Failure of the state financing agency has caused major perturbations throughout world security markets.
Slow phenomenon described by Ornstein seem to be subject to rapidly unfolding economic and social consequences. Dubai is having to stop building its towers to heaven. Americans are confronting a new realty of renting rather than owning. Rates of residential abandonment in American cities are more surreal than anything Orwell might have alluded to in his haunting images of oligarchical society. Widespread abandonment of Mayan cities a thousand years ago suddenly seems more understandable.
As an amateur archeologist it’s haunting to realize many great civilizations have left little behind except potsherds or stone rubble. Virtually all written history of the Aztecs, Incas, and Maya has been lost. What we know of these civilizations derives mostly from scratchings found on some of those stones. Ancient writings in Ecclesiasticus offer sobering reminders of great civilizations that are lost entirely to the human memory; it is as if they simply never existed; not even a potsherd is to be found. Perhaps one of the most sobering images of a lost city is that of Jerusalem as found in the ancient writings of Lamentations, dating from the sixth century BC. This once vibrant center of the ancient world was reduced to piles of rock in the desert in the great destruction of 586 BC.
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer. Jerusalem remembers, in the days of her affliction and wandering, all the precious things that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was no one to help her, the foe looked on mocking over her downfall.
In AD 79 Roman legions swarmed the city, reducing it to dust. Jerusalem tragically experienced quantum change far exceeding those of Orwell’s predictions. It simply ceased to exist, barely a blemish on the desert. Embedded cultural laws and attitudes as articulated by Quinn led to slowly developing phenomenon as described by Ornstein; leading to the destruction of Jerusalem, twice.
Embedded cultural laws and attitudes have led to the destruction of an increasing number of American cities, from within. The catastrophic collapse of Detroit, once American’s industrial powerhouse, is not unlike the ancient collapse of Jerusalem. The collapse of community in a thousand thousand American neighborhoods has been precipitated by long standing buy-in to the belief that disconnected McMansions are better than vibrant neighborhoods where our kids play with the neighbor’s. Social accountability and safety were frayed by armies of investors flipping houses to achieve the Holy Grail of their own McMansions.
Is it really going to matter how big our houses are if memories of our cities are little more than a blemish on the sands of the desert?
I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers and a harem as well—the delights of the heart of man. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
As a high school student in the 1960s I was enthralled by the mythos surrounding a small paperback assigned in English class. For sixty years, George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, has haunted literature students with its portrayal of totalitarian society, where even autonomy of one’s own thoughts is an affront to the State. In the end, the protagonist is arrested, tortured, and converted to the State’s way of thinking. Is it possible society could advance to this level of control over the individual? Has it? In the context of upper class white society in 1960s America, it seemed farfetched we could ever experience such quantum change. Having read the book first in 1965, two decades were given to wondering if Orwell would prove prophetic; 1984 seemed so far in the distant future.
From the vantage point of 2010, the year 1984 seems consigned to the dustbins of ancient history. So much water has passed under our collective bridges as to occlude clear memory of what occurred in those distant days. Quantum change occurred in ways Orwell barely imagined. What remains to be seen is whether individuals can retain autonomy of their own thoughts. In some parts of the world this freedom appears to have been lost. In North America the jury has yet to return a verdict.
A large granite marker fronting a vacant lot near our local hospital declares simply, “Since 1984.” Is culture changing so fast that “Since 1984” constitutes some sort of moniker of timeless stability and durability? Since 1984, two different buildings have occupied this land, now filled with nothing but weeds, piles of waste rock, broken cement, and this marker of time. This land once contained a medical arts building. Ten years later the building was completely reconstructed into an opulent facility for physical rehabilitation. This facility too failed to pass muster. Some years ago a broad spectrum of weeds emerged from the red clay where people once rebuilt their strength.
Robert Ornstein wrote his ambitious book, New World, New Mind, only five years after Orwell’s date of infamy. The thesis of Ornstein’s work is human minds are hard-wired to be responsive to fast-acting stimuli and refractory to slowly-occurring ones. Throughout biological history, excepting the near present, natural dangers were by nature fast acting: bears looking for dinner, flash floods, lightning strikes, earthquakes. Virtually no slowly developing phenomenon with significant danger existed. Ornstein has proposed in his on-going work that slow phenomenon such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, national debt burdens, rising crime rates, urban sprawl, and population increase constitute far greater risk to the human collective than occasional bear attacks, isolated flash floods, or lightning strikes. He proposes we need to develop a new consciousness giving us awareness of our contributions to slow phenomenon that may well put us all in great peril.
The more recent work of Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization, describes cultural laws or memes embedded in group think, which in themselves exert powerful influence over the thinking of individuals. Unwritten social rules and preferences can exert as much or more influence over individuals as totalitarian state policy. Slowly changing cultural rules can easily move us to a precipice, unnoticed.
What was enough in 1949 when Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four is now considered spartan, even indicative of near-poverty. In 1950 the average American house was 950 square feet, most likely sans garage or car. Families of six to eight members successfully achieved adulthood in tiny three bedroom one bath houses on an eighth of an acre. Slowly increasing sizes of American houses has resulted in a deadly state of affairs, with many houses exceeding ten thousand square feet, millions of them suddenly in foreclosure. In the span of a few hours this slow phenomenon resulted in near collapse of the American banking system. Consumers bought into ever-increasing demands for environmentally and economically unsustainable standards for house size. Millions now have no house. Economic flash floods washed over the land; the waters have yet to recede.
Churches, hospitals, schools, and even operators of medical arts buildings bought into cultural memes declaring, “Bigger is better.” Since Ornstein wrote his seminal work, the local medical community has emigrated from modest brick offices into structures not unlike the Taj Mahal. Hospitals have become the largest landlords in some counties. Structures built on this vacant lot near the hospital failed to conform to ever more demanding cultural memes about size and glitz. Perfectly serviceable structures have been lost to cultural memes demanding ever more from us. Virtually every school in my county is undergoing some kind of major rebuilding, despite fiscal realities causing loss of teaching staff and academic ratings placing school performance near the bottom for all fifty states.
The nearly mythic city of Dubai in the United Arabs Emirates has only recently learned than even copious oil money cannot maintain demands of a cultural meme mandating ever higher building into the sky. A recently completed Dubai reflection pond with fountains cost over $250 million. Failure of the state financing agency has caused major perturbations throughout world security markets.
Slow phenomenon described by Ornstein seem to be subject to rapidly unfolding economic and social consequences. Dubai is having to stop building its towers to heaven. Americans are confronting a new realty of renting rather than owning. Rates of residential abandonment in American cities are more surreal than anything Orwell might have alluded to in his haunting images of oligarchical society. Widespread abandonment of Mayan cities a thousand years ago suddenly seems more understandable.
As an amateur archeologist it’s haunting to realize many great civilizations have left little behind except potsherds or stone rubble. Virtually all written history of the Aztecs, Incas, and Maya has been lost. What we know of these civilizations derives mostly from scratchings found on some of those stones. Ancient writings in Ecclesiasticus offer sobering reminders of great civilizations that are lost entirely to the human memory; it is as if they simply never existed; not even a potsherd is to be found. Perhaps one of the most sobering images of a lost city is that of Jerusalem as found in the ancient writings of Lamentations, dating from the sixth century BC. This once vibrant center of the ancient world was reduced to piles of rock in the desert in the great destruction of 586 BC.
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer. Jerusalem remembers, in the days of her affliction and wandering, all the precious things that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was no one to help her, the foe looked on mocking over her downfall.
In AD 79 Roman legions swarmed the city, reducing it to dust. Jerusalem tragically experienced quantum change far exceeding those of Orwell’s predictions. It simply ceased to exist, barely a blemish on the desert. Embedded cultural laws and attitudes as articulated by Quinn led to slowly developing phenomenon as described by Ornstein; leading to the destruction of Jerusalem, twice.
Embedded cultural laws and attitudes have led to the destruction of an increasing number of American cities, from within. The catastrophic collapse of Detroit, once American’s industrial powerhouse, is not unlike the ancient collapse of Jerusalem. The collapse of community in a thousand thousand American neighborhoods has been precipitated by long standing buy-in to the belief that disconnected McMansions are better than vibrant neighborhoods where our kids play with the neighbor’s. Social accountability and safety were frayed by armies of investors flipping houses to achieve the Holy Grail of their own McMansions.
Is it really going to matter how big our houses are if memories of our cities are little more than a blemish on the sands of the desert?
I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers and a harem as well—the delights of the heart of man. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
The Next Right Thing – Building Dreams 10-1-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder has written incredible books about lives lived largely. In Mountains beyond Mountains, he describes how a physician, Paul Farmer, makes a difference in the lives of thousands of the disenfranchised in Haiti. Farmer’s model of empowered development is becoming a model around the world. My journey to Farmer’s mountains beyond mountains left me dumbfounded at the difference one life could make. In his Among School Children Kidder describes the wonders that happen when a committed teacher reaches into lives of ghetto children. Kidder wrote a book, House, which describes the emotional and engineering challenges that come from building a new house. Irwin Winkler directed a magnificently crafted film in 2001, “Life as a House”, depicting the healing process that takes places between a terminally-ill architect and his misanthropic son. This architect learned the value of time in vivid ways; ways only terminal illness can teach.
In recovery, those struggling to find their bearings in life have very short time horizons; having learned something very different about time as well. Those of us doing well in our lives have the luxury of planning next year’s vacation, committing to dinner with friends four days from now, agreeing to walk the neighbor’s dog tonight, planning an epic project overseas. In recovery, one often allocates every bit of emotional and physical resource to simply getting through the next five minutes without imploding or resorting to those chemical adjuncts that caused our lives to disintegrate in the first place. As one hears often in recovery, ‘there is no drug or drink that makes a life challenge any better.’
Those in recovery often hear the sound bite, ‘just do the next right thing.’ A series of ‘the next right thing’ might even lead to a whole hour of good decisions and success at staying clean and sober. An hour might turn into a day. Eventually days turn into weeks and months, even years for those who take life and recovery seriously. As is often said in recovery, ’Half measures availed us nothing.” One has to go all the way in working a good program of recovery. With the aid of a Higher Power, life can indeed become miraculous and filled with wonder once again.
One of the great miracles of recovery is one’s ability to have long time horizons, to commit to obligations progressively further out on a time horizon. At one time committing to something past a few minutes seemed impossible. One also learns to take on progressively greater responsibility – even to building a house for someone. Like Winkler’s fictional architect or Kidder’s real one, building houses for me is therapeutic.
In building Habitat for Humanity houses I came up with a personal life mantra, ‘Helping to build dreams for those who have forgotten how to dream.” A series of life choices and circumstances have led many to find themselves in substandard housing, even homeless. In Habitat we make it our mission to help rebuild lives by building affordable houses with volunteer labor.
In recovery one learns to sustain recovery by taking the message to others who still suffer. An effective sustainable life in recovery requires one to live a life of service. For certain, one always gets back more than one gives. So it is with building houses for those who have forgotten how to dream.
Some six months ago I learned through a mutual friend in another country of a woman in a distant state who faced a set of life decisions and circumstances that left her in a precarious state emotionally and financially, at risk for having no place to live. For me the next right thing was to drive a couple thousand miles and go build a house for her. There was nothing to think about, to ponder. It was black and white for me – this was my next right thing. I think of how other people extended a hand to me when I so desperately needed it. Living sustainably requires me to always do the next right thing. So it was that I spent a lot of very long hot days in June, July and August during the hottest summer on record gutting a seventy-three year old house and attempting to make it habitable; my salary consisting of a daily run to Burger King for buck burgers. With no central heat or air, no running water, and open to the weather, others wanted to tear it down. This old forlorn house that used to house cocaine addicts had possibilities, just like our ship-wrecked lives.
It became a personal challenge to make this little 668 square foot house into someone’s Taj Mahal. This small cockroach-guano infested splinter pile had possibilities, just as every life, no matter how beaten down has possibilities. Every one is worth saving. This house built of full dimension lumber, had the most amazing exterior siding of clear hardwoods, materials one can barely find at any price in an era of vinyl and particle board. Like our lives, we sometimes have to reach bottom before we can begin to live a new way. Hammers and wonder bars were used to remove everything from that house than didn’t need to be part of it anymore, termite damage, piles of cockroach dung, rusted pipes, frayed wires, things that don’t need to be in any house or any life. As in recovery, one removes things gently,
Over a couple months, insulation, wiring, plumbing, and structural changes were made. Holes in the outer walls were filled with rebuilt historic window sashes. All the original door casings, window casings, base boards, ad infinitum were carefully removed, re-milled and reinstalled. Joists strengthened sagging floors; new oak planks made the floor fit for a waltz. New walls, ceilings, light fixtures, cabinets, counters, plumbing, and buckets of paint were transformative for this little house. Far more important, this little house was transformative for a life that was almost torn down.
Perhaps one more homeowner will be reminded every day that the universe is a friendly place, if we choose to see it that way. Beauty is an infinitely renewable resource. The odds are 100% you will find it, if you but look for it. It might just be inside your neighbor’s front door.
Are you doing the next right thing with your life?
Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder has written incredible books about lives lived largely. In Mountains beyond Mountains, he describes how a physician, Paul Farmer, makes a difference in the lives of thousands of the disenfranchised in Haiti. Farmer’s model of empowered development is becoming a model around the world. My journey to Farmer’s mountains beyond mountains left me dumbfounded at the difference one life could make. In his Among School Children Kidder describes the wonders that happen when a committed teacher reaches into lives of ghetto children. Kidder wrote a book, House, which describes the emotional and engineering challenges that come from building a new house. Irwin Winkler directed a magnificently crafted film in 2001, “Life as a House”, depicting the healing process that takes places between a terminally-ill architect and his misanthropic son. This architect learned the value of time in vivid ways; ways only terminal illness can teach.
In recovery, those struggling to find their bearings in life have very short time horizons; having learned something very different about time as well. Those of us doing well in our lives have the luxury of planning next year’s vacation, committing to dinner with friends four days from now, agreeing to walk the neighbor’s dog tonight, planning an epic project overseas. In recovery, one often allocates every bit of emotional and physical resource to simply getting through the next five minutes without imploding or resorting to those chemical adjuncts that caused our lives to disintegrate in the first place. As one hears often in recovery, ‘there is no drug or drink that makes a life challenge any better.’
Those in recovery often hear the sound bite, ‘just do the next right thing.’ A series of ‘the next right thing’ might even lead to a whole hour of good decisions and success at staying clean and sober. An hour might turn into a day. Eventually days turn into weeks and months, even years for those who take life and recovery seriously. As is often said in recovery, ’Half measures availed us nothing.” One has to go all the way in working a good program of recovery. With the aid of a Higher Power, life can indeed become miraculous and filled with wonder once again.
One of the great miracles of recovery is one’s ability to have long time horizons, to commit to obligations progressively further out on a time horizon. At one time committing to something past a few minutes seemed impossible. One also learns to take on progressively greater responsibility – even to building a house for someone. Like Winkler’s fictional architect or Kidder’s real one, building houses for me is therapeutic.
In building Habitat for Humanity houses I came up with a personal life mantra, ‘Helping to build dreams for those who have forgotten how to dream.” A series of life choices and circumstances have led many to find themselves in substandard housing, even homeless. In Habitat we make it our mission to help rebuild lives by building affordable houses with volunteer labor.
In recovery one learns to sustain recovery by taking the message to others who still suffer. An effective sustainable life in recovery requires one to live a life of service. For certain, one always gets back more than one gives. So it is with building houses for those who have forgotten how to dream.
Some six months ago I learned through a mutual friend in another country of a woman in a distant state who faced a set of life decisions and circumstances that left her in a precarious state emotionally and financially, at risk for having no place to live. For me the next right thing was to drive a couple thousand miles and go build a house for her. There was nothing to think about, to ponder. It was black and white for me – this was my next right thing. I think of how other people extended a hand to me when I so desperately needed it. Living sustainably requires me to always do the next right thing. So it was that I spent a lot of very long hot days in June, July and August during the hottest summer on record gutting a seventy-three year old house and attempting to make it habitable; my salary consisting of a daily run to Burger King for buck burgers. With no central heat or air, no running water, and open to the weather, others wanted to tear it down. This old forlorn house that used to house cocaine addicts had possibilities, just like our ship-wrecked lives.
It became a personal challenge to make this little 668 square foot house into someone’s Taj Mahal. This small cockroach-guano infested splinter pile had possibilities, just as every life, no matter how beaten down has possibilities. Every one is worth saving. This house built of full dimension lumber, had the most amazing exterior siding of clear hardwoods, materials one can barely find at any price in an era of vinyl and particle board. Like our lives, we sometimes have to reach bottom before we can begin to live a new way. Hammers and wonder bars were used to remove everything from that house than didn’t need to be part of it anymore, termite damage, piles of cockroach dung, rusted pipes, frayed wires, things that don’t need to be in any house or any life. As in recovery, one removes things gently,
Over a couple months, insulation, wiring, plumbing, and structural changes were made. Holes in the outer walls were filled with rebuilt historic window sashes. All the original door casings, window casings, base boards, ad infinitum were carefully removed, re-milled and reinstalled. Joists strengthened sagging floors; new oak planks made the floor fit for a waltz. New walls, ceilings, light fixtures, cabinets, counters, plumbing, and buckets of paint were transformative for this little house. Far more important, this little house was transformative for a life that was almost torn down.
Perhaps one more homeowner will be reminded every day that the universe is a friendly place, if we choose to see it that way. Beauty is an infinitely renewable resource. The odds are 100% you will find it, if you but look for it. It might just be inside your neighbor’s front door.
Are you doing the next right thing with your life?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Newly Poor – The New Normal 9-28-10
Anderson, South Carolina
The American national psyche has long obtained some sort of self-satisfaction from believing America is the richest most powerful nation in human history. That may have once been objectively true, in terms of per capital income, military throw-power, ad infinitum. There is growing evidence to suggest this may be a belief in need of tweaking. Throughout Western civilization there may be increasing need of self evaluation and assessment –are we really heading where we want to be going?
A new reality in America suggests many of us are simply never going to have gainful employment again. Those of us over age fifty are being marginalized at an astounding rate. At the very same time more people are being forced to extend their working years into old age, many seniors are facing the prospect of permanent unemployment. For ten years I,ve been unemployed, having crossed the age ceiling a decade ago. For five years my applications for jobs in many disciplines across the land and a willingness to work almost for free never yielded a single interview. Seventeen years of education and thirty years of experience is yielding no financial return for me. There’s hardly a person on my street in a conventional full-time job with benefits. Many of those finding new jobs are taking pay at a third to half of what they once earned; sans benefits. In 2009 a fifth of Americans suffered a 25% drop in household income. Competition with cheap overseas labor has become a daily reality in the home land.
For two decades the media and so-called experts have used a sound bite to described structural changes in American culture – ‘the new normal.’ Two-parent households unaffected by divorce became an anomaly. Children born outside of marriage have become the rule in many areas. College graduates used to graduate with degrees. They now graduate with a mountain of debt.
The phenomenon of permanently unemployed people has been fodder for national debates about the merits of welfare programs. Structural changes in the global economy make the phenomenon much ominous. Estimates are of 250,000 households existing in England where no adult has ever held a paid job. Even with its long-standing national policy of providing robust social safety nets, The United Kingdom is facing something bigger than it can handle. On this side of the Atlantic it has been easy as the most prosperous and powerful nation ever to smugly point fingers at socialist policies as deservedly failing. On this side of the Atlantic increasing numbers of families have never had a working adult in them. Three fingers are pointing back at ourselves.
A new sound bite has come on the American horizon in the past year – the newly poor. Individuals once settled into full-time jobs with benefits, driving their minivans and European sedans between downtown and the suburbs, are losing their houses, jobs, and any sense of personal security. People long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come. They are the newly poor – admitted to a harsh form of life education that is daunting at best. Individuals who once worked and want to work are now being sidelined, perhaps permanently.
Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession — might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives. Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.
In a culture where self-worth and identity have long derived from what we do to earn money, from what we own, permanent unemployment is a gateway to a broad spectrum of social challenges – exacerbation of mental health issues, increasing domestic violence, rising prevalence of substance abuse, disruption of neighborhoods, unintended mobility, a general malaise and despair of the soul. In a rapidly secularizing culture with declining participation in religious communities concurrent with ever-increasing materialistic focus, many individuals are finding themselves wanting for effective coping mechanisms to deal with deep and broad paradigm shifts in their daily lives.
According to the Ontario Consultants on Religious tolerance the percentage of American adults who identify themselves as Christians dropped from 86% in 1990 to 77% in 2001; an unprecedented drop of almost 1 percentage point per year. American adults who identify themselves as Protestants dropped below 50% about the year 2005. Ever increasing numbers of people identify themselves as agnostics, atheists, or secularists. From 1992 to 2003, average attendance at a typical church service has dropped by 13% whereas the population of America has increased by 9%. In subsequent years declines in participation have continued unabated.
A 2006 online Harris Poll of 2,010 U.S. adults (18 and older) found only 26% of those surveyed attended religious services "every week or more often", 9% went "once or twice a month", 21% went "a few times a year", 3% went "once a year", 22% went "less than once a year", and 18% never attend religious services. If valid, this suggests little more that quarter of the population is benefiting from the accountability, socialization, sense of inclusion, and security that can accrue from regular involvement with like-minded people. Such context is highly beneficial for those struggling with major structural changes in their lives. Seventy-five years ago, even the writings of the nascent twelve-step recovery programs suggested regular participation in ‘religious bodies’ was a most helpful adjunct to getting one’s life back on course.
We might be getting poorer in ways that really matter and they have nothing to do with money. Just where are we putting our time and treasures?
The American national psyche has long obtained some sort of self-satisfaction from believing America is the richest most powerful nation in human history. That may have once been objectively true, in terms of per capital income, military throw-power, ad infinitum. There is growing evidence to suggest this may be a belief in need of tweaking. Throughout Western civilization there may be increasing need of self evaluation and assessment –are we really heading where we want to be going?
A new reality in America suggests many of us are simply never going to have gainful employment again. Those of us over age fifty are being marginalized at an astounding rate. At the very same time more people are being forced to extend their working years into old age, many seniors are facing the prospect of permanent unemployment. For ten years I,ve been unemployed, having crossed the age ceiling a decade ago. For five years my applications for jobs in many disciplines across the land and a willingness to work almost for free never yielded a single interview. Seventeen years of education and thirty years of experience is yielding no financial return for me. There’s hardly a person on my street in a conventional full-time job with benefits. Many of those finding new jobs are taking pay at a third to half of what they once earned; sans benefits. In 2009 a fifth of Americans suffered a 25% drop in household income. Competition with cheap overseas labor has become a daily reality in the home land.
For two decades the media and so-called experts have used a sound bite to described structural changes in American culture – ‘the new normal.’ Two-parent households unaffected by divorce became an anomaly. Children born outside of marriage have become the rule in many areas. College graduates used to graduate with degrees. They now graduate with a mountain of debt.
The phenomenon of permanently unemployed people has been fodder for national debates about the merits of welfare programs. Structural changes in the global economy make the phenomenon much ominous. Estimates are of 250,000 households existing in England where no adult has ever held a paid job. Even with its long-standing national policy of providing robust social safety nets, The United Kingdom is facing something bigger than it can handle. On this side of the Atlantic it has been easy as the most prosperous and powerful nation ever to smugly point fingers at socialist policies as deservedly failing. On this side of the Atlantic increasing numbers of families have never had a working adult in them. Three fingers are pointing back at ourselves.
A new sound bite has come on the American horizon in the past year – the newly poor. Individuals once settled into full-time jobs with benefits, driving their minivans and European sedans between downtown and the suburbs, are losing their houses, jobs, and any sense of personal security. People long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come. They are the newly poor – admitted to a harsh form of life education that is daunting at best. Individuals who once worked and want to work are now being sidelined, perhaps permanently.
Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession — might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives. Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.
In a culture where self-worth and identity have long derived from what we do to earn money, from what we own, permanent unemployment is a gateway to a broad spectrum of social challenges – exacerbation of mental health issues, increasing domestic violence, rising prevalence of substance abuse, disruption of neighborhoods, unintended mobility, a general malaise and despair of the soul. In a rapidly secularizing culture with declining participation in religious communities concurrent with ever-increasing materialistic focus, many individuals are finding themselves wanting for effective coping mechanisms to deal with deep and broad paradigm shifts in their daily lives.
According to the Ontario Consultants on Religious tolerance the percentage of American adults who identify themselves as Christians dropped from 86% in 1990 to 77% in 2001; an unprecedented drop of almost 1 percentage point per year. American adults who identify themselves as Protestants dropped below 50% about the year 2005. Ever increasing numbers of people identify themselves as agnostics, atheists, or secularists. From 1992 to 2003, average attendance at a typical church service has dropped by 13% whereas the population of America has increased by 9%. In subsequent years declines in participation have continued unabated.
A 2006 online Harris Poll of 2,010 U.S. adults (18 and older) found only 26% of those surveyed attended religious services "every week or more often", 9% went "once or twice a month", 21% went "a few times a year", 3% went "once a year", 22% went "less than once a year", and 18% never attend religious services. If valid, this suggests little more that quarter of the population is benefiting from the accountability, socialization, sense of inclusion, and security that can accrue from regular involvement with like-minded people. Such context is highly beneficial for those struggling with major structural changes in their lives. Seventy-five years ago, even the writings of the nascent twelve-step recovery programs suggested regular participation in ‘religious bodies’ was a most helpful adjunct to getting one’s life back on course.
We might be getting poorer in ways that really matter and they have nothing to do with money. Just where are we putting our time and treasures?
Are You Paying Too Much? 9-26-10
Anderson, South Carolina
The first thing I’m usually asked by people new to me is, “What do you do.” I generally answer, “About what?” The response this draws is sometimes amazing, ranging from queries about my work to a more blatant, ‘how do you make money?’ It has been as extreme as being queried pointedly about my net worth. My interpretation of the question is that people are generally far more interested in making a very fast efficient assay of my social standing, educational status, and capacity to generate cash flow than about my world view or ethical/moral bearings. The vagueness of my responses sometimes produces an amazing level of dissonance – intentionally. It only escalates when I reveal I have not worked in ten years, for money that is. Difficulty arises for many when a different life accounting system is presented to them.
In Western secular consumer cultures score is kept financially. One’s ability to obtain funding for a vast house, a high performance car, and $850 seats at the Super Bowl is held in high esteem. An obnoxious man here in town, who has amazingly deep pockets, is being actively courted by local non-profits for the possible magnitude of largesse this man can generate on their behalf. This ill-mannered individual would not get the time of day from most people, if he did not have multiple millions of zeros and ones stashed on bank binary data storage devices; money being little more than patterns of ones and zeroes on magnetic platters, no longer backed by anything of substance.
There has been a long-standing cultural value in post-WWII Japan that embraces the idea of paying too much for something, as evidence of one’s financial wherewithal. Many Japanese pride themselves on the cost paid for sushi bites. Many sushi restaurants advertise select sushi on the internet at $174 for a dozen bites. Some establishments in Tokyo have been reported to serve bites wrapped in gold leaf at $40 a bite. For the uninitiated, sushi is little more than seaweed wrapped around a spoonful of sticky rice with assorted fish and vegetables placed in the center. Rice, seaweed, and vegetables, even most fish, cost little of nothing in the microgram quantities found in small sushi bites – constituting pure profit.
In May of 2010 six bottles of wine were bought by a buyer in Asia for $98,591 - $608 per ounce, more than half the price of gold bullion. The highest price paid to date for a single bottle of wine was $265,000. A bottle of 1789 Chateau Margaux surviving from the private collection of Thomas Jefferson was auctioned at Christie's in London in 1989; at $10,351 per ounce. Applying a bit of crass thinking to this one realizes these ‘investments’ will result in little more than extraordinarily expensive journeys down the hall to the smallest room in the house. Eventually someone with an inflated ego is going to open the stuff and drink it.
Perhaps this irrational speculation is little different than the incredible tulip mania that nearly ruined several national economies in the early 17th century; an era when single tulip bulbs were selling for the equivalent of two years’ income for well-endowed merchants. Individuals traded off their family farms for a single bulb. More recently someone traded the value of a couple of very good houses for a single bottle of red wine. Eventually, we might realize we are just talking about very old grape juice that fermented in a damp cellar someplace in Virginia. Tulip bulbs were never worth millions. Wine is not worth $10,351 an ounce. Most of our houses are not worth what we think they are. Our national economy has been torpedoed by our own suburban version of tulip mania. One wonders how rational behavior and common sense can be restored to our collective thinking without the exquisite pain that comes from massive economic adjustments.
A friend of mine recently bought some of my photos in an exhibition. I was selling these for the mundane sum of $35, framed and matted. She could not get my price tags off quickly enough. We too embrace a cultural value that places value on a gift by virtue of how much cash flow the transaction created between buyer and seller. Blind studies have convincingly demonstrated that consumers believe a product to be of better value and durability if they are told it costs more than a competitor’s far cheaper product, despite the reality of identical product being put in two bottles, one with a high price and the other labeled as generic. I wonder what would happen to that bottle of 1789 Chateau Margaux if a Winkling Owl label was put on it and then placed for sale in the grocery store at $2.79. I speculate it would be returned for having turned to acid and being undrinkable.
We do the exact thing with the product that has the ability to ruin most of us financially – cars. Americans buy about 16 million new ones every year, despite long standing knowledge that new cars are perhaps the worst possible ‘investment’ short of the tables in ‘Vegas. Even in the depths of the Great Recession, almost eleven million people made the worst investment of their lives, buying new cars. Federal policy was re-engineered to entice, even actively coerce, millions into cashing out perfectly good cars in order to jump start the collapsed automotive industry. Automobiles are the most powerful monikers of success. No one need ever know that we have draconian lease agreements that enable us to drive $85,000 sedans known to have poor crash and reliability histories. Many of the most prestigious cars available in the world are notorious for being full of vinegar when it comes to reliability and cost-effective ownership. They too can result in very expensive journeys down the hall – to a bankruptcy court.
We seem to derive a lot of our self esteem from our capacity to spend too much for something. Reckless cash flow appears to be part of our validation from others. What would happen if instead we derived some of our esteem from the ability to shop powerfully instead, deriving a sense of empowerment from being a victor rather than a victim of cultural mantras about consumer spending?
Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions.
The first thing I’m usually asked by people new to me is, “What do you do.” I generally answer, “About what?” The response this draws is sometimes amazing, ranging from queries about my work to a more blatant, ‘how do you make money?’ It has been as extreme as being queried pointedly about my net worth. My interpretation of the question is that people are generally far more interested in making a very fast efficient assay of my social standing, educational status, and capacity to generate cash flow than about my world view or ethical/moral bearings. The vagueness of my responses sometimes produces an amazing level of dissonance – intentionally. It only escalates when I reveal I have not worked in ten years, for money that is. Difficulty arises for many when a different life accounting system is presented to them.
In Western secular consumer cultures score is kept financially. One’s ability to obtain funding for a vast house, a high performance car, and $850 seats at the Super Bowl is held in high esteem. An obnoxious man here in town, who has amazingly deep pockets, is being actively courted by local non-profits for the possible magnitude of largesse this man can generate on their behalf. This ill-mannered individual would not get the time of day from most people, if he did not have multiple millions of zeros and ones stashed on bank binary data storage devices; money being little more than patterns of ones and zeroes on magnetic platters, no longer backed by anything of substance.
There has been a long-standing cultural value in post-WWII Japan that embraces the idea of paying too much for something, as evidence of one’s financial wherewithal. Many Japanese pride themselves on the cost paid for sushi bites. Many sushi restaurants advertise select sushi on the internet at $174 for a dozen bites. Some establishments in Tokyo have been reported to serve bites wrapped in gold leaf at $40 a bite. For the uninitiated, sushi is little more than seaweed wrapped around a spoonful of sticky rice with assorted fish and vegetables placed in the center. Rice, seaweed, and vegetables, even most fish, cost little of nothing in the microgram quantities found in small sushi bites – constituting pure profit.
In May of 2010 six bottles of wine were bought by a buyer in Asia for $98,591 - $608 per ounce, more than half the price of gold bullion. The highest price paid to date for a single bottle of wine was $265,000. A bottle of 1789 Chateau Margaux surviving from the private collection of Thomas Jefferson was auctioned at Christie's in London in 1989; at $10,351 per ounce. Applying a bit of crass thinking to this one realizes these ‘investments’ will result in little more than extraordinarily expensive journeys down the hall to the smallest room in the house. Eventually someone with an inflated ego is going to open the stuff and drink it.
Perhaps this irrational speculation is little different than the incredible tulip mania that nearly ruined several national economies in the early 17th century; an era when single tulip bulbs were selling for the equivalent of two years’ income for well-endowed merchants. Individuals traded off their family farms for a single bulb. More recently someone traded the value of a couple of very good houses for a single bottle of red wine. Eventually, we might realize we are just talking about very old grape juice that fermented in a damp cellar someplace in Virginia. Tulip bulbs were never worth millions. Wine is not worth $10,351 an ounce. Most of our houses are not worth what we think they are. Our national economy has been torpedoed by our own suburban version of tulip mania. One wonders how rational behavior and common sense can be restored to our collective thinking without the exquisite pain that comes from massive economic adjustments.
A friend of mine recently bought some of my photos in an exhibition. I was selling these for the mundane sum of $35, framed and matted. She could not get my price tags off quickly enough. We too embrace a cultural value that places value on a gift by virtue of how much cash flow the transaction created between buyer and seller. Blind studies have convincingly demonstrated that consumers believe a product to be of better value and durability if they are told it costs more than a competitor’s far cheaper product, despite the reality of identical product being put in two bottles, one with a high price and the other labeled as generic. I wonder what would happen to that bottle of 1789 Chateau Margaux if a Winkling Owl label was put on it and then placed for sale in the grocery store at $2.79. I speculate it would be returned for having turned to acid and being undrinkable.
We do the exact thing with the product that has the ability to ruin most of us financially – cars. Americans buy about 16 million new ones every year, despite long standing knowledge that new cars are perhaps the worst possible ‘investment’ short of the tables in ‘Vegas. Even in the depths of the Great Recession, almost eleven million people made the worst investment of their lives, buying new cars. Federal policy was re-engineered to entice, even actively coerce, millions into cashing out perfectly good cars in order to jump start the collapsed automotive industry. Automobiles are the most powerful monikers of success. No one need ever know that we have draconian lease agreements that enable us to drive $85,000 sedans known to have poor crash and reliability histories. Many of the most prestigious cars available in the world are notorious for being full of vinegar when it comes to reliability and cost-effective ownership. They too can result in very expensive journeys down the hall – to a bankruptcy court.
We seem to derive a lot of our self esteem from our capacity to spend too much for something. Reckless cash flow appears to be part of our validation from others. What would happen if instead we derived some of our esteem from the ability to shop powerfully instead, deriving a sense of empowerment from being a victor rather than a victim of cultural mantras about consumer spending?
Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving 9-24-10
Anderson, South Carolina
A friend of mine was telling me yesterday of the vast legacy his grandfather had given him – the presence of mind to evaluate every financial decision, even the most trivial, as a cost/benefit problem. My friend gives abundant credibility to his grandfather’s gift in that Benjamin is perhaps one of the most financially powerful people I have ever known, perhaps the most so. I don’t say he has a lot of money, he just knows how to do a whole lot with the little money he does have; thanks to the mentoring of his grandfather. My best guess is he and his family would be classified as living at poverty level or below, based on what I know of his income and recently stated Federal guidelines for being officially poor in America. Benjamin runs around town in a Mercedes and I last saw his ‘non-working’ wife in a Lexus.
Benjamin has recently been able to buy a second house for less than many people pay for a HDTV at Best Buy. He can completely rebuild a house with complete environmental awareness for less than most people pay for a two-week vacation. In his role as the director of one of our community non-profits, what he has been able to do containing costs while expanding programming has been surreal. For one who spent years doing cost engineering, this has been a true delight to observe.
The take-home message from Benjamin’s life and the work of people like Joe Dominguez with his ground breaking work, Your Money or Your Life in 1992 or Thomas Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door in 1996, is that financial affluence really derives from empowerment over money rather than enslavement to hoarding more of it or the stuff it can buy. Alas, both of these books were probably ahead of their time. America was in the midst of the technology craze, the Internet was just giving birth, the dot com boom was still conceiving, the housing myth yet untarnished. With the advent of economic reality one night in September of 2008, the message of these visionaries is perhaps timely. I’m suddenly finding audience for my own two cents on the matter. Perhaps new work such as Jeff Yeager’s The Cheapskate Next Door will gain wider attention with fiscally challenged consumers.
Despite economic tsunami washing over our economic shores, a disquieting phenomenon persists strongly, the failure to consider the true cost of one’s economic behavior over time. Years ago I attempted to present week-long workshops on financial empowerment. Initial enthusiasm was strong but lasted little longer than morning dew at sunrise. In those lectures I presented engineering economic principles showing the average person achieving financial affluence was absolutely a reasonable goal, if one but paid attention to the details of one’s small financial decisions every day. Alas, many of those individuals have since been economically plundered because they failed to pay attention in economic environments that are designed entirely to separate consumers from their largesse. I nearly despair over dear people who have bought into a life time of fiscal bondage by believing cultural myths about money, self worth, and empowerment. It is stunning how quickly personal financial infrastructures can collapse.
I was in a retail shop a couple days ago, one rather clogged with inventory and the detritus that accretes after fifteen years of commerce. The daughter of the owner took a deep sigh and proclaimed out loud, almost despairing, ‘the abundance of our success is overwhelming.’ I was instantly reminded of the aphorism of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist sage who declared something to the effect, “It is better to love a few things well than to resent a life filled with too many of them.” The retail shop I visited is precarious at best.
Despite economic challenge, self storage lockers proliferate across the land. People continue to acquire and accumulate so much stuff; their ever-larger houses can no longer contain it. Others horde things, believing vast sums of money are to be made by doing so. Vast sums of money are being made, not by those who horde, instead by those who cash monthly rent checks for storage lockers. The ex-husband of a friend collected computer parts for years and ultimately paid to store them in a storage locker. For twelve years he paid rent on this locker, nearly $12,000 for storing materials considered of so little value as to ultimately be landfilled. My experience going to locker sales put on by managers of such facilities revel many of these lockers contain little of sentimental or economic value. In some cases I could not be coerced into taking the contents for free. Apparently, there are deep emotional drivers that compel people to horde worthless consumer detritus. Grandfathers and parents did not pass down the wisdom of considering financial decisions carefully. One man wrote nearly one hundred fifty rent checks rather than making deposits into good mutual funds. He would have amassed perhaps $300,000 in fast rising funds in the late twentieth century instead of a mountain of worthless dusty computer parts.
Corporate America is making billions providing access to assorted communication resources. A family well known to me has been paying for high speed Internet access since it was invented. Most of that time there was no computer in the house. A year and a half ago I was asked to buy and configure a computer. I did so and provided initial training in its simple use. It has never been used a single time. The warranty on the computer lapsed without it ever being powered up. This family has often lamented about financial matters. My best guess is something on the order of $5,000 has been paid for a service never once used. The lost investment opportunity costs would easily double this amount. They continue to pay the piper.
Another friend with catastrophic medical conditions and precarious employment has a state of the art computer with very expensive high-speed access. She makes almost no use of it and has acquired virtually no knowledge of its use.
Several friends with permanent disabilities are paying close to $2000 a year for video access on their TVs. To the best of my knowledge, one has not used her access in the last year and my queries as to why she does not cancel it are disregarded. Another admits to watching nothing on her TV. All of them are writing checks every month to support the profits of corporate America. Despite talk of a deep recession, aggregate corporate profits in America are staggering. The employed ninety percent still fulfill their main mission in life: spending.
What people spend on cell phone and data access is surreal. It’s nearly a badge of honor to own a so-called smart phone. New aficionados declare how wonderful their phones are. My query “Don’t you have to pay nearly $100 a month for a call plan and data services to get that to work?” is disconcerting. Suddenly enthusiasm wanes when I point out pre-tax income required to keep them surfing on the fly is about $1,800 a year. Many individuals are anteing up $250 a month or close to $4,500 pre-tax income to stay connected to Facebook. What happened to black desk phones for $10 a month? One can acquire robust cell phone service for $12 a month and get the phone free. One can use ambient community Wi-Fi for free. Listen to your grandfather.
A most compelling scripture from the New Testament is nearly acerbic in its brevity and directness. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Is yours in the storage locker down the road? In your attic? In your garage? In corporate Accounts Receivable?
Listen to your grandfather? He was probably wiser than any of us.
A friend of mine was telling me yesterday of the vast legacy his grandfather had given him – the presence of mind to evaluate every financial decision, even the most trivial, as a cost/benefit problem. My friend gives abundant credibility to his grandfather’s gift in that Benjamin is perhaps one of the most financially powerful people I have ever known, perhaps the most so. I don’t say he has a lot of money, he just knows how to do a whole lot with the little money he does have; thanks to the mentoring of his grandfather. My best guess is he and his family would be classified as living at poverty level or below, based on what I know of his income and recently stated Federal guidelines for being officially poor in America. Benjamin runs around town in a Mercedes and I last saw his ‘non-working’ wife in a Lexus.
Benjamin has recently been able to buy a second house for less than many people pay for a HDTV at Best Buy. He can completely rebuild a house with complete environmental awareness for less than most people pay for a two-week vacation. In his role as the director of one of our community non-profits, what he has been able to do containing costs while expanding programming has been surreal. For one who spent years doing cost engineering, this has been a true delight to observe.
The take-home message from Benjamin’s life and the work of people like Joe Dominguez with his ground breaking work, Your Money or Your Life in 1992 or Thomas Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door in 1996, is that financial affluence really derives from empowerment over money rather than enslavement to hoarding more of it or the stuff it can buy. Alas, both of these books were probably ahead of their time. America was in the midst of the technology craze, the Internet was just giving birth, the dot com boom was still conceiving, the housing myth yet untarnished. With the advent of economic reality one night in September of 2008, the message of these visionaries is perhaps timely. I’m suddenly finding audience for my own two cents on the matter. Perhaps new work such as Jeff Yeager’s The Cheapskate Next Door will gain wider attention with fiscally challenged consumers.
Despite economic tsunami washing over our economic shores, a disquieting phenomenon persists strongly, the failure to consider the true cost of one’s economic behavior over time. Years ago I attempted to present week-long workshops on financial empowerment. Initial enthusiasm was strong but lasted little longer than morning dew at sunrise. In those lectures I presented engineering economic principles showing the average person achieving financial affluence was absolutely a reasonable goal, if one but paid attention to the details of one’s small financial decisions every day. Alas, many of those individuals have since been economically plundered because they failed to pay attention in economic environments that are designed entirely to separate consumers from their largesse. I nearly despair over dear people who have bought into a life time of fiscal bondage by believing cultural myths about money, self worth, and empowerment. It is stunning how quickly personal financial infrastructures can collapse.
I was in a retail shop a couple days ago, one rather clogged with inventory and the detritus that accretes after fifteen years of commerce. The daughter of the owner took a deep sigh and proclaimed out loud, almost despairing, ‘the abundance of our success is overwhelming.’ I was instantly reminded of the aphorism of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist sage who declared something to the effect, “It is better to love a few things well than to resent a life filled with too many of them.” The retail shop I visited is precarious at best.
Despite economic challenge, self storage lockers proliferate across the land. People continue to acquire and accumulate so much stuff; their ever-larger houses can no longer contain it. Others horde things, believing vast sums of money are to be made by doing so. Vast sums of money are being made, not by those who horde, instead by those who cash monthly rent checks for storage lockers. The ex-husband of a friend collected computer parts for years and ultimately paid to store them in a storage locker. For twelve years he paid rent on this locker, nearly $12,000 for storing materials considered of so little value as to ultimately be landfilled. My experience going to locker sales put on by managers of such facilities revel many of these lockers contain little of sentimental or economic value. In some cases I could not be coerced into taking the contents for free. Apparently, there are deep emotional drivers that compel people to horde worthless consumer detritus. Grandfathers and parents did not pass down the wisdom of considering financial decisions carefully. One man wrote nearly one hundred fifty rent checks rather than making deposits into good mutual funds. He would have amassed perhaps $300,000 in fast rising funds in the late twentieth century instead of a mountain of worthless dusty computer parts.
Corporate America is making billions providing access to assorted communication resources. A family well known to me has been paying for high speed Internet access since it was invented. Most of that time there was no computer in the house. A year and a half ago I was asked to buy and configure a computer. I did so and provided initial training in its simple use. It has never been used a single time. The warranty on the computer lapsed without it ever being powered up. This family has often lamented about financial matters. My best guess is something on the order of $5,000 has been paid for a service never once used. The lost investment opportunity costs would easily double this amount. They continue to pay the piper.
Another friend with catastrophic medical conditions and precarious employment has a state of the art computer with very expensive high-speed access. She makes almost no use of it and has acquired virtually no knowledge of its use.
Several friends with permanent disabilities are paying close to $2000 a year for video access on their TVs. To the best of my knowledge, one has not used her access in the last year and my queries as to why she does not cancel it are disregarded. Another admits to watching nothing on her TV. All of them are writing checks every month to support the profits of corporate America. Despite talk of a deep recession, aggregate corporate profits in America are staggering. The employed ninety percent still fulfill their main mission in life: spending.
What people spend on cell phone and data access is surreal. It’s nearly a badge of honor to own a so-called smart phone. New aficionados declare how wonderful their phones are. My query “Don’t you have to pay nearly $100 a month for a call plan and data services to get that to work?” is disconcerting. Suddenly enthusiasm wanes when I point out pre-tax income required to keep them surfing on the fly is about $1,800 a year. Many individuals are anteing up $250 a month or close to $4,500 pre-tax income to stay connected to Facebook. What happened to black desk phones for $10 a month? One can acquire robust cell phone service for $12 a month and get the phone free. One can use ambient community Wi-Fi for free. Listen to your grandfather.
A most compelling scripture from the New Testament is nearly acerbic in its brevity and directness. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Is yours in the storage locker down the road? In your attic? In your garage? In corporate Accounts Receivable?
Listen to your grandfather? He was probably wiser than any of us.
Think for Yourself
Anderson, South Carolina
For more than four centuries Euro-Americans have prided themselves on their individualism, autonomy, and independent thinking. Many made austere dangerous journeys risking life and limb to cross the North Atlantic in the name of freedom of thought and religious practice. In reality, Americans have been as entrapped in collective group think as any culture throughout history. The American collective has been victimized by conflicted group think which encourages independence of thought, word, and deed at the same time promoting almost draconian adherence to group norms of fashion, beauty standards, social behavior, and religious belief and practice, the very things promoting a modern era exodus from the old country.
Daniel Quinn has developed quite a following for those interested in understanding how culture actually programs collective group think. In his disquieting Beyond Civilization, one gets the idea we really are products of our culture and not the independent progressive thinkers we think we are. Almost none of our thoughts are original.
One of our fundamental cultural beliefs is this - that civilization must continue at any cost and must not be abandoned under any circumstances. Implicit in this belief is another: that civilization is humanity's ultimate invention and can never be surpassed. Both of these beliefs exemplify the cultural fallacy that one's beliefs are not merely expressions of one's culture but are intrinsic to the human mind. The effect of this fallacy is that it's almost impossible for the people of our culture to entertain the idea that there could be any invention beyond civilization. Civilization is the end, the very last and unsurpassable human social development.
There are deeply embedded beliefs (memes) that color our experience, attitudes, and behaviors. Our culture believes dark burnt skin is beautiful and fashionable – an icon of prosperous lives of leisure. Five centuries ago, dark skin was seen as a stigma of hard life lived working the fields. Today millions willingly risk highly-lethal melanoma in order to get deep tans, causing extreme premature aging; melanoma has become epidemic. Tanning beds and tanning oil are as much part of American culture as drive-through pharmacies.
For most of the twentieth century we have believed owning new cars essential to one’s sense of well being and station in life. Automobile manufacturing was America’s largest industrial sector, only recently replaced by the medical/industrial complex. Millions of individuals put themselves in financial bondage, believing new car ownership essential to self worth. The realities are net worth for these individuals was severely compromised by capital purchases of expensive automobiles, notorious for their rapid depreciation. It’s an easy exercise to buy high-end car for ten cents on the dollar or even less.
A powerful cultural meme says new cars are far superior in every way to ones a couple years old, even if they lead to bankruptcy. An acquaintance bought a Mercedes with 8,800 miles on it for less than 10% of its value, because it had clock time on it. It violated a powerful cultural meme about why things have economic value. The car was absolutely as new. The meme declared it nearly worthless. Bankruptcy judges are now declaring millions of us to be worthless.
As America continues radical adjustment to macro-economic reality, cultural memes have proven powerful means to maintain economic enslavement of millions. A profoundly powerful economic meme is that it absolutely takes two incomes to maintain an American standard of living. Only two days ago I received a letter declaring the strength of this meme. Mothers stayed home rather than work, and family vacations were to the nearby river or mountain campground. Now it takes two incomes to raise a family. There is no such thing as affordable housing on one income... you know the rest.
The rest of the story is this – it simply is not true. If one wishes to live in 5,000 square foot Georgian brick palace with Palladian windows, keep a couple of BMW’s and an SUV, and a plasma screen HDTV in every room, and pay $250 a month for unlimited data access on smart phones for every member of the family, travel overseas every six months, it might take two incomes to maintain the requisite cash flow. Those around me complaining most about money have cell phones, cigarettes, cable TV service, subscription Internet access, new cars, ad infinitum. They also have jobs. Despite what the media says, ninety percent of people still have jobs.
There are families about me proving the fallacy of the two-income myth. Men earning ordinary incomes in ordinary jobs living in ordinary middle class houses have proven it possible to achieve spectacular financial independence and freedom on one income. Their wives stay at home, participate in community volunteerism, make afternoon snacks for their children, performing many of the services normally hired out by two-income families. At one time I provided financial counseling to hospital employees. Using a spreadsheet, I demonstrated to a woman she would actually gain economic ground if she resigned at once and stayed home, quit paying $650 for day care, maintenance of a second vehicle, dry cleaning for business suits, lunches, ad infinitum. She laughed in my face. She still works there and has since gone through divorce, partly provoked by financial issues. In my work with the county depression task force and those in recovery, financial issues are always near the epicenter of adjustment issues for these victims of unwritten cultural rules defining self worth.
These cultural memes are so powerful as to bring us, who are ostensibly individualistic, autonomous, and independent in our thinking, to believe it a better ‘investment’ to pay athletes and entertainers millions, to trap our mothers and wives into working jobs they loathe in order to pay for smart phone subscriptions, cable service, 1080 plasma HDTV, bonus rooms above the three-car garage, internet access, and RVs for tail gaiting, so we can watch those athletes and entertainers ‘earn’ their millions. Look at the salary scale of any of our institutions of higher learning; we will see what matters to us most - $22,000 for a masters prepared lecturer and $2 million for a coach without a degree.
Most mothers really would rather be in the park with their children than windowless cubicles in corporate towers. Cultural memes now put a powerful pejorative spin on being ‘just a house wife.’ Many of these women would never say out loud what they are really thinking. I wish they would.
To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity; To give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise.
Anderson, South Carolina
For more than four centuries Euro-Americans have prided themselves on their individualism, autonomy, and independent thinking. Many made austere dangerous journeys risking life and limb to cross the North Atlantic in the name of freedom of thought and religious practice. In reality, Americans have been as entrapped in collective group think as any culture throughout history. The American collective has been victimized by conflicted group think which encourages independence of thought, word, and deed at the same time promoting almost draconian adherence to group norms of fashion, beauty standards, social behavior, and religious belief and practice, the very things promoting a modern era exodus from the old country.
Daniel Quinn has developed quite a following for those interested in understanding how culture actually programs collective group think. In his disquieting Beyond Civilization, one gets the idea we really are products of our culture and not the independent progressive thinkers we think we are. Almost none of our thoughts are original.
One of our fundamental cultural beliefs is this - that civilization must continue at any cost and must not be abandoned under any circumstances. Implicit in this belief is another: that civilization is humanity's ultimate invention and can never be surpassed. Both of these beliefs exemplify the cultural fallacy that one's beliefs are not merely expressions of one's culture but are intrinsic to the human mind. The effect of this fallacy is that it's almost impossible for the people of our culture to entertain the idea that there could be any invention beyond civilization. Civilization is the end, the very last and unsurpassable human social development.
There are deeply embedded beliefs (memes) that color our experience, attitudes, and behaviors. Our culture believes dark burnt skin is beautiful and fashionable – an icon of prosperous lives of leisure. Five centuries ago, dark skin was seen as a stigma of hard life lived working the fields. Today millions willingly risk highly-lethal melanoma in order to get deep tans, causing extreme premature aging; melanoma has become epidemic. Tanning beds and tanning oil are as much part of American culture as drive-through pharmacies.
For most of the twentieth century we have believed owning new cars essential to one’s sense of well being and station in life. Automobile manufacturing was America’s largest industrial sector, only recently replaced by the medical/industrial complex. Millions of individuals put themselves in financial bondage, believing new car ownership essential to self worth. The realities are net worth for these individuals was severely compromised by capital purchases of expensive automobiles, notorious for their rapid depreciation. It’s an easy exercise to buy high-end car for ten cents on the dollar or even less.
A powerful cultural meme says new cars are far superior in every way to ones a couple years old, even if they lead to bankruptcy. An acquaintance bought a Mercedes with 8,800 miles on it for less than 10% of its value, because it had clock time on it. It violated a powerful cultural meme about why things have economic value. The car was absolutely as new. The meme declared it nearly worthless. Bankruptcy judges are now declaring millions of us to be worthless.
As America continues radical adjustment to macro-economic reality, cultural memes have proven powerful means to maintain economic enslavement of millions. A profoundly powerful economic meme is that it absolutely takes two incomes to maintain an American standard of living. Only two days ago I received a letter declaring the strength of this meme. Mothers stayed home rather than work, and family vacations were to the nearby river or mountain campground. Now it takes two incomes to raise a family. There is no such thing as affordable housing on one income... you know the rest.
The rest of the story is this – it simply is not true. If one wishes to live in 5,000 square foot Georgian brick palace with Palladian windows, keep a couple of BMW’s and an SUV, and a plasma screen HDTV in every room, and pay $250 a month for unlimited data access on smart phones for every member of the family, travel overseas every six months, it might take two incomes to maintain the requisite cash flow. Those around me complaining most about money have cell phones, cigarettes, cable TV service, subscription Internet access, new cars, ad infinitum. They also have jobs. Despite what the media says, ninety percent of people still have jobs.
There are families about me proving the fallacy of the two-income myth. Men earning ordinary incomes in ordinary jobs living in ordinary middle class houses have proven it possible to achieve spectacular financial independence and freedom on one income. Their wives stay at home, participate in community volunteerism, make afternoon snacks for their children, performing many of the services normally hired out by two-income families. At one time I provided financial counseling to hospital employees. Using a spreadsheet, I demonstrated to a woman she would actually gain economic ground if she resigned at once and stayed home, quit paying $650 for day care, maintenance of a second vehicle, dry cleaning for business suits, lunches, ad infinitum. She laughed in my face. She still works there and has since gone through divorce, partly provoked by financial issues. In my work with the county depression task force and those in recovery, financial issues are always near the epicenter of adjustment issues for these victims of unwritten cultural rules defining self worth.
These cultural memes are so powerful as to bring us, who are ostensibly individualistic, autonomous, and independent in our thinking, to believe it a better ‘investment’ to pay athletes and entertainers millions, to trap our mothers and wives into working jobs they loathe in order to pay for smart phone subscriptions, cable service, 1080 plasma HDTV, bonus rooms above the three-car garage, internet access, and RVs for tail gaiting, so we can watch those athletes and entertainers ‘earn’ their millions. Look at the salary scale of any of our institutions of higher learning; we will see what matters to us most - $22,000 for a masters prepared lecturer and $2 million for a coach without a degree.
Most mothers really would rather be in the park with their children than windowless cubicles in corporate towers. Cultural memes now put a powerful pejorative spin on being ‘just a house wife.’ Many of these women would never say out loud what they are really thinking. I wish they would.
To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity; To give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise.
Toadstools 9-19-10
Anderson, South Carolina
One of life’s great delights is experiencing intense temporary community. While working as a lecturer/photographer on a cruise ship, long voyages provided opportunities to spend weeks with delightful travelers in undistracted fearless environments. By their nature, ocean liners were free of distractions such as phones, e-mail, to-do lists, or competing interests for one’s attentions; the world at sea is small, secure, and intimate. Mindfulness and presence to one’s surroundings and fellow passengers was profoundly satisfying, even cathartic.
There was always a surprisingly strong sense of dismay on the final night of long voyages, seeing everyone suddenly pre-occupied with their next destination. Passageways were instantly clogged with mountains of luggage. Minds were no longer focused on the safe intense community we enjoyed for weeks. Disembarkation became a contest to see who could get off the ship first, scattering our sense of community forever. Temporary vibrant community one finds in retreat experiences also generates a good bit of disquiet at its dissolution after a final shared meal.
Yesterday an e-mail came from a fellow traveller, lamenting dispersion of our recent intense experience of travelling in several countries together. For weeks nine of us shared our meals, journeys, delights, and discoveries together. Rarely has a group been so congenial. My traveller lamented how we have all become too busy in our own lives, going our separate ways. Alas, geography does conspire against community. Hundreds of miles between us, sometimes thousands of miles, do make it difficult to meet for breakfast or to mix the other delicious ingredients of community. Presently our little community of travelers is spread across about five hundred miles. We plan to meet this week in a single place for a meal. The logistics of getting us together for two hours proves mind numbing. One would think we were deploying a battalion to a theater of operations.
The saddle of a bike gives opportunity to see the world in much greater detail than high-speed transit in a car. At twelve miles an hour one notices things like newly emerged toadstools on dewy lawns at sunrise. One also notices things like “For Sale” signs that were conspicuously absent the day before. All around me I see a forest of toad stools erupting; red, white and blue ones, black and yellow ones, and even the occasional green one; evidence that neighbors are packing it in and disembarking the neighborhood. Another “For Sale by Owner” sprouted during the night, three doors down.
America is the most mobile society the world has ever seen. Some 20% of Americans move in any one year, perhaps sixty million or more. Each time this happens another tear in the fabric of community occurs, another bit of continuity and history is lost. For decades people moved because they wanted a bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out. Some moved for the plum job that would allow them to have a bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out. Gardens here have reverted to weed encrusted patches of neglect. A third of the housing on my street is no longer ‘home’. Increasing dissonance arises for me; knowing people who were points of reference and connection for me in the neighborhood are no longer here. Some of those still physically here are already thinking of the next destination, no longer present to those of us still calling the place home.
It’s stunning to see how far this whole phenomenon of mobility and urban flight has gone. Detroit is being held up as an example of what could happen to many American cities. This once highly-prosperous industrial manufacturing city has been functionally abandoned and many observers draw comparisons between it and third world failed states. Those in leadership in this dying metropolis have concluded the best option is to simply run a battalion of bulldozers across the city, razing much of it, letting land revert to its natural state. It’s not unlike the bewildering abandonment of hundreds of truly magnificent cities by the Mayan; taken over by a dense cloak of tropical jungle. How haunting it is to wander in dozens of these cities, wondering what could provoke such decisions. I question decisions that led to the destruction and abandonment of Detroit.
A recent analysis by Moody Analytics presents evidence of twenty-two American cities and towns at particular risk for financial collapse and implosion. The seemingly intact town I call home made this ominous short list. Law enforcement officials refer to our town as “Little Chicago” because of law enforcement issues plaguing us; issues once found only in large urban centers. I wonder if ignorance really is bliss, not knowing the specifics that put home at risk.
As I hold fast in my neighborhood, seeing change daily, I wonder if this is how it felt for those uprooted by Katrina. Even five years later I still meet refugees from the natural disaster that washed away so much community along the Gulf Coast. These unwilling wanderers drift through other states, many feeling rootless, having lost their history and sense of place. A bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out, will never give back what has been lost.
Collective insanity is deriving from millions who for decades have shredded the fabric of community because they wanted a bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out. Like Katrina victims, becoming mobile refuges is no longer optional for many. Divorce, foreclosure, unemployment, illness, fiscal mismanagement and discontent conspire to turn our streets into empty, fearful uncertain places. Glenn’s magnificent rose garden no longer blooms, encrusted by a thick cloak of weed. Steve’s yard has reverted to a non-descript turf of mixed broad-leaf weeds. Others are reverting to ‘natural’ states – quickly in our humid southern summers.
Being the new kid in school more than dozen times made for a fragmented and unpleasant childhood, never having opportunity to build lasting friendships and histories. I was never given consideration or choice in the matter. Being the new kid on the block is a choice, most of the time. Despite what we hear about unemployment, foreclosure, disaster, and fiscal mismanagement, ninety percent of us are employed and ninety percent of us are not in foreclosure. The glass is more than half full for most of us. Most of us do not have to become refugees of economic or natural disaster.
Do we want to stay put; finding on our side of the fence that we can enjoy fragrant blossoms of share history, community, watching each other and our children progress through milestones of life; even giving life anew to Glenn’s rose garden? Perhaps we can till the soil where we are and tomorrow harvest the fruits of long standing friendships and shared histories.
I’ll leave the light on. The door’s unlocked.
One of life’s great delights is experiencing intense temporary community. While working as a lecturer/photographer on a cruise ship, long voyages provided opportunities to spend weeks with delightful travelers in undistracted fearless environments. By their nature, ocean liners were free of distractions such as phones, e-mail, to-do lists, or competing interests for one’s attentions; the world at sea is small, secure, and intimate. Mindfulness and presence to one’s surroundings and fellow passengers was profoundly satisfying, even cathartic.
There was always a surprisingly strong sense of dismay on the final night of long voyages, seeing everyone suddenly pre-occupied with their next destination. Passageways were instantly clogged with mountains of luggage. Minds were no longer focused on the safe intense community we enjoyed for weeks. Disembarkation became a contest to see who could get off the ship first, scattering our sense of community forever. Temporary vibrant community one finds in retreat experiences also generates a good bit of disquiet at its dissolution after a final shared meal.
Yesterday an e-mail came from a fellow traveller, lamenting dispersion of our recent intense experience of travelling in several countries together. For weeks nine of us shared our meals, journeys, delights, and discoveries together. Rarely has a group been so congenial. My traveller lamented how we have all become too busy in our own lives, going our separate ways. Alas, geography does conspire against community. Hundreds of miles between us, sometimes thousands of miles, do make it difficult to meet for breakfast or to mix the other delicious ingredients of community. Presently our little community of travelers is spread across about five hundred miles. We plan to meet this week in a single place for a meal. The logistics of getting us together for two hours proves mind numbing. One would think we were deploying a battalion to a theater of operations.
The saddle of a bike gives opportunity to see the world in much greater detail than high-speed transit in a car. At twelve miles an hour one notices things like newly emerged toadstools on dewy lawns at sunrise. One also notices things like “For Sale” signs that were conspicuously absent the day before. All around me I see a forest of toad stools erupting; red, white and blue ones, black and yellow ones, and even the occasional green one; evidence that neighbors are packing it in and disembarking the neighborhood. Another “For Sale by Owner” sprouted during the night, three doors down.
America is the most mobile society the world has ever seen. Some 20% of Americans move in any one year, perhaps sixty million or more. Each time this happens another tear in the fabric of community occurs, another bit of continuity and history is lost. For decades people moved because they wanted a bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out. Some moved for the plum job that would allow them to have a bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out. Gardens here have reverted to weed encrusted patches of neglect. A third of the housing on my street is no longer ‘home’. Increasing dissonance arises for me; knowing people who were points of reference and connection for me in the neighborhood are no longer here. Some of those still physically here are already thinking of the next destination, no longer present to those of us still calling the place home.
It’s stunning to see how far this whole phenomenon of mobility and urban flight has gone. Detroit is being held up as an example of what could happen to many American cities. This once highly-prosperous industrial manufacturing city has been functionally abandoned and many observers draw comparisons between it and third world failed states. Those in leadership in this dying metropolis have concluded the best option is to simply run a battalion of bulldozers across the city, razing much of it, letting land revert to its natural state. It’s not unlike the bewildering abandonment of hundreds of truly magnificent cities by the Mayan; taken over by a dense cloak of tropical jungle. How haunting it is to wander in dozens of these cities, wondering what could provoke such decisions. I question decisions that led to the destruction and abandonment of Detroit.
A recent analysis by Moody Analytics presents evidence of twenty-two American cities and towns at particular risk for financial collapse and implosion. The seemingly intact town I call home made this ominous short list. Law enforcement officials refer to our town as “Little Chicago” because of law enforcement issues plaguing us; issues once found only in large urban centers. I wonder if ignorance really is bliss, not knowing the specifics that put home at risk.
As I hold fast in my neighborhood, seeing change daily, I wonder if this is how it felt for those uprooted by Katrina. Even five years later I still meet refugees from the natural disaster that washed away so much community along the Gulf Coast. These unwilling wanderers drift through other states, many feeling rootless, having lost their history and sense of place. A bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out, will never give back what has been lost.
Collective insanity is deriving from millions who for decades have shredded the fabric of community because they wanted a bigger house, more land, lake front views, more prestige, further out. Like Katrina victims, becoming mobile refuges is no longer optional for many. Divorce, foreclosure, unemployment, illness, fiscal mismanagement and discontent conspire to turn our streets into empty, fearful uncertain places. Glenn’s magnificent rose garden no longer blooms, encrusted by a thick cloak of weed. Steve’s yard has reverted to a non-descript turf of mixed broad-leaf weeds. Others are reverting to ‘natural’ states – quickly in our humid southern summers.
Being the new kid in school more than dozen times made for a fragmented and unpleasant childhood, never having opportunity to build lasting friendships and histories. I was never given consideration or choice in the matter. Being the new kid on the block is a choice, most of the time. Despite what we hear about unemployment, foreclosure, disaster, and fiscal mismanagement, ninety percent of us are employed and ninety percent of us are not in foreclosure. The glass is more than half full for most of us. Most of us do not have to become refugees of economic or natural disaster.
Do we want to stay put; finding on our side of the fence that we can enjoy fragrant blossoms of share history, community, watching each other and our children progress through milestones of life; even giving life anew to Glenn’s rose garden? Perhaps we can till the soil where we are and tomorrow harvest the fruits of long standing friendships and shared histories.
I’ll leave the light on. The door’s unlocked.
True Heroes 9-16-10
Anderson, South Carolina
The individuals a culture holds near and dear; those placed on pedestals of reverence, are suggestive of traits of character highly valued by the larger collective. An objective look at modern day heroes is sobering, to say the least. Last year a Japanese man known as Sal9000 legally married Nene Anegasaki, a popular cartoon character in a video game “Love Plus”, played on Nintendo DS gaming console. Sixty people showed up to witness this man do something I cannot quite conceptually wrap my head around. Sal9000 admits to be an "otaku," a breed of Japanese youth obsessed with video games, computers and fantasy worlds.
Spectator sports and Hollywood have become the primary source of American heroes in recent decades. Actors receive inconceivable compensation for their efforts. Some actors have standard performance fees of $20 million. Others have figured they will gain even more for taking ‘back-end’ profits rather than up-front fees; boosting compensation to $30 million or more in some cases. In his role as a mascara-challenged pirate, Johnny Depp has generated about $2.2 billion at the box office for his last three films; an astronomical return on his $20 million actor salary.
Alex Rodriguez catches and throws baseballs for the New York Yankees as a third baseman. His most recent negotiations netted him a $252 million contract. Some pitchers earn five figures for each baseball they throw to home plate. David Beckham was enticed to run around on an LA Galaxy soccer pitch for $50 million per year. The accumulated annual purse for horse racing in America exceeds a billon dollars. A high-profile golfer caught up in moral controversy has a net worth exceeding a billion dollars, just for pounding little white balls into holes in the ground. News outlets around the world could not let go of the story. Does it take heroic strength of character to do what one loves to do and is good at; to be paid untold millions to do it, to the accolades of millions of adoring fans? Does it take heroic strength of character to commit moral turpitude?
Horatio Alger gained legendary status as an author who promoted the idea that one could go from rags to riches by doing plain old hard work, consistently. Hard work was the way out of poverty. Alger captured the mythology of the American dream in his captivating writings. John Avildsen’s film “Rocky” became the largest grossing film of 1976, featuring Sylvester Stallone as an uneducated debt collector for a Philadelphia loan shark who had a meteoric rise to prominence by good fortune and impossibly hard work. With great commitment he is able to train and go the distance against the reigning world heavyweight champion. At the final bell the fighters are locked in each other arms, the defending champion declaring, “Ain't gonna be no re-match.” Stallone’s “Italian Stallion” was like many Horatio Alger characters, proving commitment and hard work could accomplish the seemingly impossible. Does it take heroic strength of character to stretch beyond one’s known limits?
Simply living a day is hard heroic work for some people. Gracie Rosenberger is a name little known to the larger world. To those calling her friend or family she is truly a legend in her own time. Suffering through a catastrophic auto accident at age seventeen, she’s endured no less that seventy-five major surgeries, including multiple amputations of her limbs. She has lived a life in constant severe pain, yet has managed to marry well, mother fine children, and carry on with a successful singing career. Even more astounding is her commitment to travelling to Africa and overseeing efforts to fit artificial limbs on those ravaged by war – despite having lost her own limbs decades earlier. Does it take heroic strength of character to go beyond one’s own pain and loss so that others on the far side of the world can simply walk to school?
One recent Saturday while driving to meet others for a hike in the mountains I saw a jogger off in the distance with a rather strange gait. Coming closer to him I saw he had but one leg and an adapted prosthesis with a spring leaf in place of any kind of foot. I was mesmerized by his commitment to his own mobility and athletic accomplishment. The look in his face as he ran down the side of the state highway reminded me of the exultant look in Sylvester Stallone’s face, when he reached important milestones in his training. For certain he was moving faster than I ever could on two ‘good’ legs. I was quite enthralled and inspired by this heroic overcoming of life’s misfortunes.
Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, died at age 98 on May 12, 2008. Fox News did not break into regular programming to tell us. During WWII, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto as a Nurse; with an 'ulterior motive'. Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried in the back of her truck. She had a dog in the back she trained to bark when Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog; the barking covered noises made by the infants and small children. During her time doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 of them. She was caught. The Nazi's broke both her legs and arms and beat her severely. She escaped execution only by others bribing Nazi soldiers.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar buried under a tree in her back yard; to reunite them with families after the war. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and not selected. An American politician received the Peace Prize for putting together a PowerPoint show based on the work of others. In July 2010, the words 'Jews out' were sprayed on her grave. Does it take heroic strength of character to assume the gravest possible risks to enable the reviled and persecuted to have a chance at life?
Baseballs or babies? You decide.
The individuals a culture holds near and dear; those placed on pedestals of reverence, are suggestive of traits of character highly valued by the larger collective. An objective look at modern day heroes is sobering, to say the least. Last year a Japanese man known as Sal9000 legally married Nene Anegasaki, a popular cartoon character in a video game “Love Plus”, played on Nintendo DS gaming console. Sixty people showed up to witness this man do something I cannot quite conceptually wrap my head around. Sal9000 admits to be an "otaku," a breed of Japanese youth obsessed with video games, computers and fantasy worlds.
Spectator sports and Hollywood have become the primary source of American heroes in recent decades. Actors receive inconceivable compensation for their efforts. Some actors have standard performance fees of $20 million. Others have figured they will gain even more for taking ‘back-end’ profits rather than up-front fees; boosting compensation to $30 million or more in some cases. In his role as a mascara-challenged pirate, Johnny Depp has generated about $2.2 billion at the box office for his last three films; an astronomical return on his $20 million actor salary.
Alex Rodriguez catches and throws baseballs for the New York Yankees as a third baseman. His most recent negotiations netted him a $252 million contract. Some pitchers earn five figures for each baseball they throw to home plate. David Beckham was enticed to run around on an LA Galaxy soccer pitch for $50 million per year. The accumulated annual purse for horse racing in America exceeds a billon dollars. A high-profile golfer caught up in moral controversy has a net worth exceeding a billion dollars, just for pounding little white balls into holes in the ground. News outlets around the world could not let go of the story. Does it take heroic strength of character to do what one loves to do and is good at; to be paid untold millions to do it, to the accolades of millions of adoring fans? Does it take heroic strength of character to commit moral turpitude?
Horatio Alger gained legendary status as an author who promoted the idea that one could go from rags to riches by doing plain old hard work, consistently. Hard work was the way out of poverty. Alger captured the mythology of the American dream in his captivating writings. John Avildsen’s film “Rocky” became the largest grossing film of 1976, featuring Sylvester Stallone as an uneducated debt collector for a Philadelphia loan shark who had a meteoric rise to prominence by good fortune and impossibly hard work. With great commitment he is able to train and go the distance against the reigning world heavyweight champion. At the final bell the fighters are locked in each other arms, the defending champion declaring, “Ain't gonna be no re-match.” Stallone’s “Italian Stallion” was like many Horatio Alger characters, proving commitment and hard work could accomplish the seemingly impossible. Does it take heroic strength of character to stretch beyond one’s known limits?
Simply living a day is hard heroic work for some people. Gracie Rosenberger is a name little known to the larger world. To those calling her friend or family she is truly a legend in her own time. Suffering through a catastrophic auto accident at age seventeen, she’s endured no less that seventy-five major surgeries, including multiple amputations of her limbs. She has lived a life in constant severe pain, yet has managed to marry well, mother fine children, and carry on with a successful singing career. Even more astounding is her commitment to travelling to Africa and overseeing efforts to fit artificial limbs on those ravaged by war – despite having lost her own limbs decades earlier. Does it take heroic strength of character to go beyond one’s own pain and loss so that others on the far side of the world can simply walk to school?
One recent Saturday while driving to meet others for a hike in the mountains I saw a jogger off in the distance with a rather strange gait. Coming closer to him I saw he had but one leg and an adapted prosthesis with a spring leaf in place of any kind of foot. I was mesmerized by his commitment to his own mobility and athletic accomplishment. The look in his face as he ran down the side of the state highway reminded me of the exultant look in Sylvester Stallone’s face, when he reached important milestones in his training. For certain he was moving faster than I ever could on two ‘good’ legs. I was quite enthralled and inspired by this heroic overcoming of life’s misfortunes.
Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, died at age 98 on May 12, 2008. Fox News did not break into regular programming to tell us. During WWII, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto as a Nurse; with an 'ulterior motive'. Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried in the back of her truck. She had a dog in the back she trained to bark when Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog; the barking covered noises made by the infants and small children. During her time doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 of them. She was caught. The Nazi's broke both her legs and arms and beat her severely. She escaped execution only by others bribing Nazi soldiers.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar buried under a tree in her back yard; to reunite them with families after the war. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and not selected. An American politician received the Peace Prize for putting together a PowerPoint show based on the work of others. In July 2010, the words 'Jews out' were sprayed on her grave. Does it take heroic strength of character to assume the gravest possible risks to enable the reviled and persecuted to have a chance at life?
Baseballs or babies? You decide.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
The Ultimate Line of Credit 8-31-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Long embedded in the American psyche has been the idea that property values would rise in perpetuity. Collective group-think embraced the idea we could buy most anything ‘real’ and resell it for a vast profit. Flipping houses was seen as the way to get rich quick. It was not long before banks and lenders of every ilk were stumbling over themselves to make 125% cash out thirty-year mortgages. By clicking on the right ad we could repaper our houses for thirty years and get 25% of their value back as cash. Home Depot and Detroit, here we come. Americans were suddenly building $100,000 kitchens with granite slabs and driving $70,000 sedans like we once drove Ford Comets. Using equity access lines of credit made the whole process even easier. Many banks provided buyers with check books allowing drafts against current home equity. For decades Americans used their houses as piggy banks and ATMs, believing in the mantras of rising property values and secure employment.
Something went bump in the night in late 2008 and we all uttered a collective, “oops.” Eight million people lost their jobs. Millions more lost their houses. Most of us lost our serenity. The collapse of equity and housing markets is old news. What’s not old news is the newly emerging possibility that housing might have just begun its collapse. Economists and financial pundits alike are now starting to say things like housing values may drop another 75% from their August 2009 levels. The national myth of ever-rising property values has turned into a waking nightmare. In some areas housing values have dropped 78%. In some metro areas the market value of more than half the housing stock is less than the mortgage balances on those same houses. Owners are considered ‘under water.’
For certain, it has never made sense that houses or stocks or most anything would rise in value in perpetuity. In 1920 the typical mortgage required 50% down and repayment in seven years. Obviously, this precluded any kind of senseless price speculation. 125% cash out mortgages for thirty years changed that. Now two generations get to give it all back. Twenty years of property value increases in Florida have been erased. Now we see multi-million dollars houses in Detroit being bulldozed because 93,000 properties there have been abandoned. The median home value in Detroit is less that the MSRP of my car. A grand house in Pennsylvania from the Gilded Industrial contains about 100,000 square feet in 100 rooms. Replacement cost is estimated at $212 million. It is rotting and has been cannibalized. Our decks are certainly listing.
The legendary mobility of Americans has been incited to a new frenzy by vast numbers of foreclosures and millions of others simply walking away from their houses, having decided it makes no sense to pay scarce dollars on a property worth less than the loan balance and losing even more value daily. I am starting to think the stern of our country might just stand up soon. We are not going to like this one bit. In the past three days I have been in places within twenty five miles of here that feel truly third world in spirit, infrastructure, and morality. It’s hard to imagine these are the same wholesome places I first saw twenty years ago when moving here.
A third of the housing stock on my street is either empty, for rent, or sale. There is hardly an intact nuclear family on my street, not to mention the half dozen suicides, attempted homicides, and all that which I do not know about. There is virtually no residual fabric of community here now. I can put up ceiling fans for women on disability, install curtain rods for widows, ad infinitum; it won’t repair ruptures in the hull of our economy. It’s not going to put responsible people back in these empty houses. It certainly does not seem to have any effect whatever on making community and neighborhood a more compelling alternative to the powerful urge to ‘flip’ houses, buy bigger, move up; to an oppressively desolate gated sub-division without sidewalks or front porches. Want to guess how much community there is in those subdivisions with 75 percent of houses now empty?
There is some sort of collective insanity that prevails with respect to housing. I see families sell paid-for houses and end up with a far inferior house in a more prestigious location. Others sell paid off houses and buy more house than they can conceivably afford. Granite counter-tops have become a strange litmus test of one’s success in life, even if they are installed on cardboard or particle board cabinets. Hardwood floors, once a relic of the 1950s, have again become markers of one’s life success.
An acquaintance bought a house a few months ago. Despite life and finance threatening illness, a bank was willing to give her a thirty-year mortgage which is schedule to pay off when she is in her mid-nineties, if she lives that long. Walking through her house I was taken with how pleasing the interior and exterior look. She revealed wanting to replace the windows, flooring, roof, gutters, and some other things. If she proceeds with this, it could easily add $25,000 to the cost of the house and actually reduce the quality of the house. With careful attention, the needed repairs could be accomplished for about $20.00. Does it make sense to tear out perfectly good insulated windows in a house; pull up flooring that at first glance I thought was new, replace a roof that looks better than mine?
I see daily evidence of people tearing apart their houses; gaining little of nothing in the end, except more debt and bondage to high-stress jobs they detest. Emotions and cultural mantras are hard to overcome. The ‘new normal’ for our culture is proving to be anything but new, normal, or sustainable.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Long embedded in the American psyche has been the idea that property values would rise in perpetuity. Collective group-think embraced the idea we could buy most anything ‘real’ and resell it for a vast profit. Flipping houses was seen as the way to get rich quick. It was not long before banks and lenders of every ilk were stumbling over themselves to make 125% cash out thirty-year mortgages. By clicking on the right ad we could repaper our houses for thirty years and get 25% of their value back as cash. Home Depot and Detroit, here we come. Americans were suddenly building $100,000 kitchens with granite slabs and driving $70,000 sedans like we once drove Ford Comets. Using equity access lines of credit made the whole process even easier. Many banks provided buyers with check books allowing drafts against current home equity. For decades Americans used their houses as piggy banks and ATMs, believing in the mantras of rising property values and secure employment.
Something went bump in the night in late 2008 and we all uttered a collective, “oops.” Eight million people lost their jobs. Millions more lost their houses. Most of us lost our serenity. The collapse of equity and housing markets is old news. What’s not old news is the newly emerging possibility that housing might have just begun its collapse. Economists and financial pundits alike are now starting to say things like housing values may drop another 75% from their August 2009 levels. The national myth of ever-rising property values has turned into a waking nightmare. In some areas housing values have dropped 78%. In some metro areas the market value of more than half the housing stock is less than the mortgage balances on those same houses. Owners are considered ‘under water.’
For certain, it has never made sense that houses or stocks or most anything would rise in value in perpetuity. In 1920 the typical mortgage required 50% down and repayment in seven years. Obviously, this precluded any kind of senseless price speculation. 125% cash out mortgages for thirty years changed that. Now two generations get to give it all back. Twenty years of property value increases in Florida have been erased. Now we see multi-million dollars houses in Detroit being bulldozed because 93,000 properties there have been abandoned. The median home value in Detroit is less that the MSRP of my car. A grand house in Pennsylvania from the Gilded Industrial contains about 100,000 square feet in 100 rooms. Replacement cost is estimated at $212 million. It is rotting and has been cannibalized. Our decks are certainly listing.
The legendary mobility of Americans has been incited to a new frenzy by vast numbers of foreclosures and millions of others simply walking away from their houses, having decided it makes no sense to pay scarce dollars on a property worth less than the loan balance and losing even more value daily. I am starting to think the stern of our country might just stand up soon. We are not going to like this one bit. In the past three days I have been in places within twenty five miles of here that feel truly third world in spirit, infrastructure, and morality. It’s hard to imagine these are the same wholesome places I first saw twenty years ago when moving here.
A third of the housing stock on my street is either empty, for rent, or sale. There is hardly an intact nuclear family on my street, not to mention the half dozen suicides, attempted homicides, and all that which I do not know about. There is virtually no residual fabric of community here now. I can put up ceiling fans for women on disability, install curtain rods for widows, ad infinitum; it won’t repair ruptures in the hull of our economy. It’s not going to put responsible people back in these empty houses. It certainly does not seem to have any effect whatever on making community and neighborhood a more compelling alternative to the powerful urge to ‘flip’ houses, buy bigger, move up; to an oppressively desolate gated sub-division without sidewalks or front porches. Want to guess how much community there is in those subdivisions with 75 percent of houses now empty?
There is some sort of collective insanity that prevails with respect to housing. I see families sell paid-for houses and end up with a far inferior house in a more prestigious location. Others sell paid off houses and buy more house than they can conceivably afford. Granite counter-tops have become a strange litmus test of one’s success in life, even if they are installed on cardboard or particle board cabinets. Hardwood floors, once a relic of the 1950s, have again become markers of one’s life success.
An acquaintance bought a house a few months ago. Despite life and finance threatening illness, a bank was willing to give her a thirty-year mortgage which is schedule to pay off when she is in her mid-nineties, if she lives that long. Walking through her house I was taken with how pleasing the interior and exterior look. She revealed wanting to replace the windows, flooring, roof, gutters, and some other things. If she proceeds with this, it could easily add $25,000 to the cost of the house and actually reduce the quality of the house. With careful attention, the needed repairs could be accomplished for about $20.00. Does it make sense to tear out perfectly good insulated windows in a house; pull up flooring that at first glance I thought was new, replace a roof that looks better than mine?
I see daily evidence of people tearing apart their houses; gaining little of nothing in the end, except more debt and bondage to high-stress jobs they detest. Emotions and cultural mantras are hard to overcome. The ‘new normal’ for our culture is proving to be anything but new, normal, or sustainable.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
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