8/8/11
8/7/11
8/5/11
8/4/11
8/3/11
8/2/11
Living Life Creatively
The upside of a downturn...
Point of view is essential in thriving during difficult circumstances. In his book Man's Searching For Meaning Viktor Frankl made a crucial observation about the psychology of those who survived the Holocaust and those who didn't. It was in the art of living. While in concentration camp he was determining that if there was meaning in life, then suffering had some meaning and mental attitude towards it determined the outcome of having suffered. This lead him to the conclusion that inner strength and refusal to surrender to the horrors of the concentration camp and instead looking to the future made the difference in who made it and who didn't.
While we live in an economic downturn that means a long term recovery period is ahead it cannot be compared to the horrors of a concentration camp. It means difficult times and the need to readjust standards of living but it is not the tragedy some people will take it as. Those are the people who will not do well because they are not looking toward the future down the road to better times but are living in the past and not accepting the present. Those of us who look across a barren empty lot and see the one flower blooming will flourish and see the future as blossoming into something better.
Yesterday I was driving through the high desert of dry grassland and off in the distance I could see the one large hardy tree that had drilled a taproot deep into the earth and was drawing water to live. I saw beauty in that landscape and that tree. It was a marvelous thing and had nothing to do with economic indicators being all down, whether the debt ceiling was raised by Congress, whether Obama settled for "The Deal." There was only one person who had any beauty in the questionable politics of the vote in Congress, although she may not match the political beliefs of some of us, in the ceremony of mockery our politicians made of our country she stood out.
It was Gabrielle Giffords who exemplified someone who tragically suffered at the hands of someone else and saw the future and fought not only to survive but thrive and come back from the calamity that struck her.
If we are to not only live and survive through the next decade in rebuilding our lives and our country we must adopt a vantage point of survival that is conducive to thriving and conquering arduous times. My suggestion is not only to live creatively, but devise ways to make what appears at first to be ugly, turning them beautiful. You do not need to be an artist to do this. You don't have to be able to paint, draw, take photographs or create videos, do crafts, lathe fine furniture, grow a beautiful garden. You simply have to find the aesthetic out of even the bleakest of scenes.
When I was growing up my father did work that took him to third and fourth world countries, some are now emerging economies but at the time they were not. Although we had to be mindful of our safety it was not as dangerous as today and we went to far flung places. The education I received was more than I could learn in any school. I will share one story that has stuck with me my entire life. It was in a place quite close to the US and under the most deplorable conditions we went to visit a family that he had come to know. They treasured knowledge and were especially grateful to him because he would bring them books. All over the walls of the shack they lived in a shantytown were cutouts from magazines or any source they could find of pictures of things of beauty. They might have come from advertisements that depicted something unique or a work of fine art. Outside the home was ugly, inside they were surrounded by pictorial items to inspire and comfort them.
There is a lot we can learn from that.
Point of view is essential in thriving during difficult circumstances. In his book Man's Searching For Meaning Viktor Frankl made a crucial observation about the psychology of those who survived the Holocaust and those who didn't. It was in the art of living. While in concentration camp he was determining that if there was meaning in life, then suffering had some meaning and mental attitude towards it determined the outcome of having suffered. This lead him to the conclusion that inner strength and refusal to surrender to the horrors of the concentration camp and instead looking to the future made the difference in who made it and who didn't.While we live in an economic downturn that means a long term recovery period is ahead it cannot be compared to the horrors of a concentration camp. It means difficult times and the need to readjust standards of living but it is not the tragedy some people will take it as. Those are the people who will not do well because they are not looking toward the future down the road to better times but are living in the past and not accepting the present. Those of us who look across a barren empty lot and see the one flower blooming will flourish and see the future as blossoming into something better.
Yesterday I was driving through the high desert of dry grassland and off in the distance I could see the one large hardy tree that had drilled a taproot deep into the earth and was drawing water to live. I saw beauty in that landscape and that tree. It was a marvelous thing and had nothing to do with economic indicators being all down, whether the debt ceiling was raised by Congress, whether Obama settled for "The Deal." There was only one person who had any beauty in the questionable politics of the vote in Congress, although she may not match the political beliefs of some of us, in the ceremony of mockery our politicians made of our country she stood out.It was Gabrielle Giffords who exemplified someone who tragically suffered at the hands of someone else and saw the future and fought not only to survive but thrive and come back from the calamity that struck her.
If we are to not only live and survive through the next decade in rebuilding our lives and our country we must adopt a vantage point of survival that is conducive to thriving and conquering arduous times. My suggestion is not only to live creatively, but devise ways to make what appears at first to be ugly, turning them beautiful. You do not need to be an artist to do this. You don't have to be able to paint, draw, take photographs or create videos, do crafts, lathe fine furniture, grow a beautiful garden. You simply have to find the aesthetic out of even the bleakest of scenes.
When I was growing up my father did work that took him to third and fourth world countries, some are now emerging economies but at the time they were not. Although we had to be mindful of our safety it was not as dangerous as today and we went to far flung places. The education I received was more than I could learn in any school. I will share one story that has stuck with me my entire life. It was in a place quite close to the US and under the most deplorable conditions we went to visit a family that he had come to know. They treasured knowledge and were especially grateful to him because he would bring them books. All over the walls of the shack they lived in a shantytown were cutouts from magazines or any source they could find of pictures of things of beauty. They might have come from advertisements that depicted something unique or a work of fine art. Outside the home was ugly, inside they were surrounded by pictorial items to inspire and comfort them.There is a lot we can learn from that.
8/1/11
7/31/11
Of Great Social and Political Import
A stopped clock is right twice a day...
American Exceptionalism, Individualism, Mutual Help will restore us.
The progressive peddlers of programs and tea party tinkerers of taxes are locking horns in Washington DC and personally I don't subscribe to either major political party's agenda. My belief is neither side is acting in the best interest of the American people but merely serving their own purposes. I keep hearing a variation on the statement "they are trying to drive us back to the pre-Depression era." 'They' being I suppose that enigmatic collaboration of tea party, Republicans and conservatives and the complaint coming from liberals who have redressed themselves as progressives. My first thought is I wonder if anyone has considered that the programs of the Great Depression may be what got us into the Disruption Depression we are in today? That and consumerism.
There is a ridiculous headline in the Wall Street Journal "Slow Growth Stirs Recession Fears." Recession? What!? A recession implies a bump in the road and what we're experiencing is far larger than a recession. Statistics can be manipulated anyway someone wants but the reality is our credit rating will be downgraded regardless of any machinations of the Administration, US Treasury, Congress or Wall Street. There are two systemic problems that cannot be ignored by printing money. We are overleveraged as individuals and so is our government and additionally unemployment has become structural. Therefore if people are not able to productively earn money then debt cannot be paid off and will be repudiated.
We never pulled out of the recession in 2009 as some economists would have us believe, merely suspended it. Paul Krugman of the New York Times can rename this the "Little Depression," after all the damage he has done promoting the excessive printing of money, but the bottom line is we are heading for a long decade of economic restructuring and rebuilding. We will have both stagnation and hyper-inflation more endemic than the US in the seventies and Japan in the nineties. If you take the political and bureaucratic classes in DC and the financiers in New York seriously and rely on them for a solution then the joke is on you. They don't have a clue or care about anything west of I-95 and are concerned only with protecting their own self-interests.
In the long term I believe American Exceptionalism and Individualism is alive and well, although buried just beneath the surface, it is burgeoning resurrection. That ideal will be the ultimate resolution to the death of consumerism by technological and economic disruption and is a great thing. We will relearn and return to what it means to be innovative and creative and produce unique and valuable goods that are useful for the new era. It will take time and hard work. The sooner people recognize that reality we will be prepared to move forward. What our government is doing now is pure folly and nonsensical and you can't make sense out of a nonsensical situation. They are postponing the inevitable by trying to revive a dead concept, the old economy.
The American people must relearn to work for themselves. If it is for an employer they need to embrace the concept of being a free agent and not love an employer because they won't love you back. Americans should accept we are not entitled to anything except what we create by reinventing our lives and subsequently recreating the country. It is about our individual responsibility to take care of ourselves and mutual help with each other. The government cannot simulate or stimulate real people doing real things only real Americans can do that.
American Exceptionalism, Individualism, Mutual Help will restore us.
The progressive peddlers of programs and tea party tinkerers of taxes are locking horns in Washington DC and personally I don't subscribe to either major political party's agenda. My belief is neither side is acting in the best interest of the American people but merely serving their own purposes. I keep hearing a variation on the statement "they are trying to drive us back to the pre-Depression era." 'They' being I suppose that enigmatic collaboration of tea party, Republicans and conservatives and the complaint coming from liberals who have redressed themselves as progressives. My first thought is I wonder if anyone has considered that the programs of the Great Depression may be what got us into the Disruption Depression we are in today? That and consumerism.
There is a ridiculous headline in the Wall Street Journal "Slow Growth Stirs Recession Fears." Recession? What!? A recession implies a bump in the road and what we're experiencing is far larger than a recession. Statistics can be manipulated anyway someone wants but the reality is our credit rating will be downgraded regardless of any machinations of the Administration, US Treasury, Congress or Wall Street. There are two systemic problems that cannot be ignored by printing money. We are overleveraged as individuals and so is our government and additionally unemployment has become structural. Therefore if people are not able to productively earn money then debt cannot be paid off and will be repudiated.We never pulled out of the recession in 2009 as some economists would have us believe, merely suspended it. Paul Krugman of the New York Times can rename this the "Little Depression," after all the damage he has done promoting the excessive printing of money, but the bottom line is we are heading for a long decade of economic restructuring and rebuilding. We will have both stagnation and hyper-inflation more endemic than the US in the seventies and Japan in the nineties. If you take the political and bureaucratic classes in DC and the financiers in New York seriously and rely on them for a solution then the joke is on you. They don't have a clue or care about anything west of I-95 and are concerned only with protecting their own self-interests.
In the long term I believe American Exceptionalism and Individualism is alive and well, although buried just beneath the surface, it is burgeoning resurrection. That ideal will be the ultimate resolution to the death of consumerism by technological and economic disruption and is a great thing. We will relearn and return to what it means to be innovative and creative and produce unique and valuable goods that are useful for the new era. It will take time and hard work. The sooner people recognize that reality we will be prepared to move forward. What our government is doing now is pure folly and nonsensical and you can't make sense out of a nonsensical situation. They are postponing the inevitable by trying to revive a dead concept, the old economy.The American people must relearn to work for themselves. If it is for an employer they need to embrace the concept of being a free agent and not love an employer because they won't love you back. Americans should accept we are not entitled to anything except what we create by reinventing our lives and subsequently recreating the country. It is about our individual responsibility to take care of ourselves and mutual help with each other. The government cannot simulate or stimulate real people doing real things only real Americans can do that.
7/30/11
7/29/11
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