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?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
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.
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