Common Threads

No matter how far back we turn the pages of history, we find that human beings have remained essentially the same over the centuries. Though each generation has felt itself to be unique in some way, the sum of all these differences has not changed or evolved us as individuals any more than putting on a new shirt changes our blood type. Throughout the centuries we have loved and hated for the same reasons, been driven by the same lusts, feared the same unknowns and aspired to the same truths.

There have been a few in every generation who have recognized the common threads of humanity that run through the historical tapestry; fewer who recognized that these commonalities not only bridge the centuries, but they bind us together in the present as well. Today we have a clearer view of more history than any generation before us, but we still suffer the same prejudices, still fear what we do not understand and often hate what we fear.

The Anasazi cliff dweller of 500 AD and the urban cliff dweller in today’s megalopolis both share the same range of human possibilities. Both love their children and wish for them a better future. Both see themselves as part of something larger than the individual. Both attempt to peer across the gulf between life and afterlife for some sign of God, some promise of hope. 

Across the years we all share the same strengths and weaknesses of character that allow the wide range of human conditions between sheep and goats, grasshoppers and ants, saints and sinners. Whether we prefer Shakespeare or Sun Tzu, study the Hindu, the Hopi or the Hapsburgs, we hear the same stories and see the same archetypes. Some generations learn from the past and build on what has gone before, while some, through circumstance or bad judgment, become rubble for the building blocks of future construction. Civilizations rise and civilizations fall in patterns that, if they do not exactly repeat, very often rhyme.

I often look to the ancient Romans for lessons of history. For good or for ill, we resemble them in many ways. Rome began humbly and grew into a great republic. The reins of the republic were seized by greedy hands grasping for empire and the seeds of Rome’s destruction were planted along the imperial road to world power. As Roman military and political power concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, Rome prospered or declined according to the vagaries of personality bound to a long succession of despots. As it is with our own dear nation, Rome was cursed with some of the most corrupt, and incompetent leadership of all time.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in 3 BC and lived during a time when Rome was greatly debased by a succession of bad emperors. Roman culture was not so much different than our own. The Romans were economically, technologically and socially advanced and prosperity gave them a wide range of choices for education, career and leisure as well as a wide range of possibilities for dissolution and decay. As a tutor to the mad emperor, Nero, Seneca was able to hold Nero’s madness in check for a time, but a solitary voice willing to speak truth to power is not enough to keep a nation from decline when good people, out of distraction or despair, fail to act.

Seneca the playwright touched on themes that are as alive today as they were 2000 years ago.  Seneca the philosopher wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, but the power of his intellect shines brightly on his discourses on the intents and purposes of life itself. The success of his efforts to illuminate life can perhaps best be judged by the bravery and sobriety with which he faced his own imminent demise when his life, like so many others, was also made forfeit by the madness of Nero.

I leave you this week with an excerpt from Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life.” Though it was written 2000 years ago, it mirrors our own lives as clearly as if it had been written this morning.

“Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: ‘The part of life we really live is small.’ For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.”

Sea Change

                 In the fall of the year my wife and I make our annual “mountains to the sea” journey. The sea calls out to many of us. It is a primal urging from somewhere just beyond the area illuminated by rational thought. Before Man, there was the Deep. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Or perhaps the urging is entirely rational. Our blood is remarkably similar to sea water. Whatever the reason, when we feel that urge and respond to it, we can find peace and renewal. We can rediscover things we had forgotten were lost.  On a recent trip to the coast, I made just such a discovery.

                The root of the word “recreation” is “create.” When we vacation, we vacate our routines and responsibilities to re-create something that was lost. Many things can be lost in the never ending search for financial security. Time is the most precious thing lost. Health, peace of mind, sense of self, sense of purpose, not to mention plain old “fun,” these can all be lost in the treadmills and sweatshops which we find crowded under the umbrella we call “work.”

                Americans are funny about work, but no one is laughing. We have a strange macho attitude that work must equate to suffering in order for our “sacrifice” to be valid. Work must be hard to be of value. Work must be long for anything worthwhile to be accomplished. We are tough, and we like to talk about how tough our jobs and our lives are. We were tailor made for those managers seeking to increase productivity without increasing costs.

                During tough economic times, work actually does become harder. There are fewer of us doing it, so our share of it increases. The people paid more to do less tell us that we are lucky to have a job. That reminder often comes when a benefit has been eliminated or cut or we are asked to do more for the same pay. We are “lucky” to be on our feet all day feeding the rude and the ungrateful, lucky to be on the phone all day listening to angry people complain, lucky to run a chain saw all day with snakes and yellow jackets, to hammer nails in the blistering heat, to have the job that “a hundred people would give their right arm to have.”

                When you hear “lucky to have that job” at work, chances are that you have one of those jobs which extracts time, health, peace of mind, sense of self and sense of purpose in exchange for your paycheck. There is also a pretty good chance that your company’s balance sheet is not a very pretty sight. Companies which prosper over time are the ones which support a sense of purpose and self, foster peace of mind, promote good health and give employees ownership of their time. Look it up for yourself. Check out the list of best companies to work for as rated by employees and then look at the balance sheets of those companies. There is a positive correlation between happy employees and profitability.

                Companies with happy employees tend to be generous with benefits and vacation time. They also tend to be structured differently than “Lucky to Have a Job Incorporated.”  After World War II there were millions of Americans entering the workplace who were comfortable with the hierarchical structure of the military and this chain of command paradigm moved seamlessly into the business world. This paradigm is still well established, but almost everything about our economy is different. Companies like Google, Motorola's Space and Systems Technology Group, and Ford Motor Company’s Customer Service Division, to name but a few, have moved to a more horizontal organizational structure. They are profitable without the reliance on hierarchy and conformity which plagues many companies that are finding it harder to compete in today’s economy.

                For most of my working life I have been self-employed and I benefitted from that arrangement - I liked my boss, most of the time. It was never hard to get a day off when I really needed it. I was able to work 10 hours and come home with energy left over for the rest of my life. About eight years ago I entered the corporate world, and my balance shifted. The company I worked for was a small corporation with a vertically integrated management structure. Like many small companies it resembled a feudal system with a benevolent despot and feudal lords, some intent on increasing their personal domains. I worked for one manager who was a “visionary,” given to impulsive mid-course corrections and with no idea how his random turns of the rudder affected those in the bowels of the ship. Another manager was intent on building a personal empire within the company. Given to temper tantrums, he would bully employees and co-workers to promote his agenda, when he could get away with it.

After a relatively short time with this company, stress began to collect on my belly and my fitness level suffered. A good night’s sleep became a distant memory. At the end of the work day there was just enough energy left to operate a television remote and a recliner. In the standard hierarchical company structure, there is often little recourse for an employee with a problem or a grievance.  When employees feel that they are at the mercy of their bosses or that they have little influence over their working conditions, productivity will suffer. Innovation will be suppressed as well, when it is filtered through narrow channels occupied by managers who feel that their positions are threatened by other people’s good ideas. My wife and I are lucky. We had a choice, and at the end of the year I will be self-employed again.  Many people can choose only endurance or unemployment.

I hope that the company can survive. Many employees and their families depend on it, and our area is not known for its job opportunities. An employee in many different professions can relate to the frustrations touched upon here. For that reason, I speak mainly to the “bosses” out there. I challenge you to consider these ideas. I assert that your old vertical paradigm should be questioned, if for no other reason than the fact that it is not the most profitable. It is certainly not the most nurturing to the human spirit.  I have been a boss as well, and I know your pressures, but know this:  The best way to get what you want in life is to help other people get what they want. It is that simple. If you do not understand this truth, you will not be a “boss” for long, and your ship will eventually sail without you.

                

The Decade

                Over the last weekend we paused, as did much of the nation, to reflect on the decade since September 11, 2001.  There were many heroes on that day. There have been many since - and many sacrifices.

                In the flood of opinions that flowed through our information portals during the commemorative events of the weekend, we noticed one opinion in particular. The commentator compared the events of 2001 to the beginning days of World War I, when the peoples of the western world lost their innocence.

                We agree in principle, but only as far as our younger generation can now question whether they will be better off than their parents. There is indeed a loss of innocence in realizing that the affluence which Americans have enjoyed for two generations is now in jeopardy, but there is still a great deal of innocence to be found, and its first cousin, ignorance, is thriving. This is a danger inherent in a decade of war, when a generation comes of age during a time when conflict is the norm and enemies are lurking at the edges of every event, at every airport, in every bus terminal, train and subway station.

                At the Flight 93 Memorial, former president George W. Bush said, “One of the lessons of 9-11 is that evil is real and so is courage.” It was a fine speech, one of his best. But the invocation of evil speaks to the limited understanding of world events which governments ask their peoples to accept at face value. It is the kind of limited understanding necessary to perpetuate a conflict that has cost at least $1.3 trillion and over six thousand American lives, not to mention the lives of over one hundred thousand civilians. One wonders how much evil was eliminated through the deaths of all those men, women and children.

                We all understand the heroism and the sacrifice that grows out of the finest qualities of our people and our way of life. Our faith, our democratic principles, the stability of our republic, our free market economy and the freedoms which we enjoy are all worth defending. We understand that we have enemies bent on our destruction and willing to die in any effort to harm us. We need to understand how those enemies were created. If we do not gain this understanding, then the sacrifices we have made of democracy and our republic to the ever growing executive branch, the sacrifices we have made of the free market to an increasingly intrusive government and the sacrifices we have made of personal freedoms to the security state – will continue until there is nothing left that can be sacrificed.

                We can begin to expand our understanding of the current predicament with the knowledge that the United States maintains hundreds of military bases around the world. The DOD 2010 Base Structure Report lists 662 foreign sites in 38 countries. The reasons for these bases are varied and the history is detailed, but there are common themes. Maintaining national security is, in large part, an effort to maintain supply lines of natural resources and to safeguard economic zones, and this is where our personal ownership of the problem comes into play. The unfortunate fact is that our current energy affluence – our way of life centered on the automobile and marked by waste – is dependent on extracting oil from parts of the world where religion and social structure generate volatility.

                If there was no oil in the Middle East it is highly unlikely that our presence there would be so immense. Some strategic thinkers have recognized this and the awareness of our need to end our dependence on foreign energy has even appeared from time to time on the political stage. A Middle East without an imperial American presence would bring a peace dividend that would go a long way towards solving our financial problems. It would reduce the number of our enemies which exist solely because foreign troops are stationed on their soil.

Do we have an option to abandon oil from the Middle East? Not really. Not yet. As a people, we have been very reluctant to conserve, to save and to consider a lifestyle that does not include the frigid in the summer, balmy in the winter, maximum horsepower full-speed-ahead way of life of previous generations. As a government we have stifled innovation with intrusiveness and interference in the free market and we have strangled the economy with a ridiculous tax code and an insane monetary policy which will grow nothing but debt and the size of government.

Have we made progress in the last decade? Some. Alternative energy sources are beginning to take a bite out of our dependence on fossil fuels. Energy from domestic sources has steadily increased. Have we learned to conserve? Not really. In fact, any savings that we have gained is due more to our economic slowdown than to any voluntary efforts. We are approaching a nexus. Before this point, we can proactively take steps to become leaner, more efficient, more localized. Past this point and we will react to each new crisis as best we can. 

The Unforgiving Minute

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute, With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it..."

Those who have lost a loved one will tell you that the greatest regret is in the things left undone. The Christmas before my mother died, her illness had progressed to the point where she was spending more time in bed than out of it. On that special day, however, she had perked up for the holiday and we enjoyed a good visit. When the evening came she was tired and ready for bed again, and I went to her room to tell her good night. As she had done on so many other occasions, she asked me, “Are you going to spend the night.” Mothers love to have the whole family, or as much of it as possible, under the same roof. I had a busy schedule, or so I thought at the time, so I told her I would be leaving that night. I remember that she closed her eyes for a moment in disappointment before telling me goodbye, but for the life of me I cannot remember now what was so important that I chose that instead of the chance to spend one more Christmas night with my mother. I did not get another opportunity.

We do not know when our “lasts” will occur, but occur they will, and for everyone and everything that we hold dear. You will look into your cherished one’s eyes for a last time. There will be a last trip back home, a last reunion of old friends, a last sunrise, a last sunset and a last supper. Some opportunities will end suddenly; an accident or an illness will take away someone we love. Some last chances will fade away, lost in time and circumstance. I may never see another sunset off the coast of Oregon while whales pass slowly by in the distance. We are not guaranteed another single day of existence, or even a single breath, nor do those whom we cherish live with any such promise.

It is too easy, I think, to say, “Live each day as if it were your last.”  There is wisdom in that statement, but it is not enough. Clinging to the moments with an ever present awareness of death does not seem a good way to use the time we are given. Morbidity is bereft of creativity and passion. Living in future darkness one has a tendency to stumble over things in broad daylight, and to miss the journey while so intent on the destination. On the other hand, to live like a grasshopper in a June meadow is ecstatic – until November comes.

How then shall we live? It is this middle path that we must each find for ourselves, but there are some guideposts along the way. Ask someone who has been in combat; someone who has survived a catastrophic illness or a natural disaster; someone who has lost a loved one but has gone on to love again. Ask someone who walks in Faith. It is possible to do both – to cherish each step on the journey, and to be mindful that the journey leads inexorably into the Great Unknown.

Time flies when you are having fun, they say. Much has been written about that person who comes to the end of his life and regrets the swiftness with which life has rushed by. The implication is that this is inevitable for all of us, that we will come to the end of our road and despair that the journey has been so short. I disagree.  If we rush through life intent on our destination, and then the next, then perhaps the journey will seem brief. If, on the other hand, we find a way to cherish each moment, hold it gently, and then release it to grasp the next one, then the journey will be rich with memories and life, no matter how brief, will be long enough. 

Defending the Mindscape

                The ability of subliminal messages to affect our thoughts and attitudes has been known for decades. Our mindscape is coveted territory. Thoughts lead to actions, and when the desired action is a vote or the release of money from our bank accounts, we are the subject of much study.

                Some attempts at influencing our behavior are fairly easy to detect. For example, we are more likely to purchase items on the middle shelf at the grocery story, so the brands most profitable to the store are often placed at that position.

There are other ways that our thoughts are influenced which are more difficult to trace. Consider the information we receive that is loosely referred to as “news.” Many of us grew up watching the nightly news on television when there were only three networks from which to choose. Now that the world is online, competition for our attention is fierce and it takes place between myriad sources of information and entertainment. Perhaps this is why headlines so often seek to grab our attention with sensation. Thank goodness for small town newspapers and local radio stations, right?

Saturday night I decided to take a sampling of headlines from one of our Atlanta television stations. Like every media outlet that wishes to survive, WSBTV has an online presence which augments its television broadcasts. I chose the “Latest Headlines” section of their site. Like the middle shelf of the grocery store, this section is placed to grab our immediate attention. I picked one word from each headline which represented the main point of the story represented. This is the resulting list of words:  Dead, shooting, prostitute, HIV, injured, Feds, stolen, shoots and sponsored. Technically, “sponsored,” was not in the headlines section, but it immediately followed the last headline in the section.

Unfortunately my list of words is not atypical for this and many other media outlets, and while the subliminal message may be unintended, just what is that message for a growing number of people worried about the economy, worried about the condition of the world and worried about our continued march towards anarchy and apocalypse? How does the constant barrage of sensation and negativity affect us when it is presented at the beginning, the middle and the end of the day; a death for breakfast, a shooting for lunch and a theft for dinner, day after day after day? If sex and celebrity can influence us to purchase a particular brand, how are we being influenced by a steady diet of bad news? How will our behavior and our health be affected should media, intentionally or unintentionally, convince us that the world is a bad and wrong?

Bad things happen all time, every day, everywhere. Good things happen also, but they are not afforded equal status. Some would argue that media gives us exactly what we want , that our culture slows down to gape at an accident but never was there a traffic jam caused by motorists slowing down to gawk at a rainbow or a beautiful sunset. I would counter that argument by pointing out that our obsession with dancing celebrities and the popularity of other distracting entertainment results from our desire to escape from all the bad news.

What if we decide that we don’t want to believe that the world is rotten, that we are surrounded by violence and vice and disaster at every turn? Many people find it easier to escape, but what if we prefer to be aware and informed? The answer is, we discern. We choose. We filter what we allow to live in our consciousness, and most importantly for the mental health of future generations, we teach our children to do the same.

Business as Usual

Good government is a balance between anarchy and despotism, and the balance, if it is achieved at all, is made on such a razor’s edge that the times in human history when government might be considered to be enlightened, benevolent or even competent, are rare indeed. The problem is that human organizations such as governments and corporations, or even churches, little league teams and ice cream socials, become lenses which magnify human nature along with human effort. Human nature, along with all the compassionate and altruistic impulses of which it is capable, is also capable of greed, lust for power and a brilliant capacity for rationalization and the justification of one’s dubious deeds.

                Recent polls indicate the continuation of a longstanding dissatisfaction with government among the governed. We are generally unhappy with Washington and also with our state and local governments. Our unhappiness is exacerbated by the return of that traveling circus of politics and punditry which seems, like the hot weather now, to extend well beyond its appointed season. A President has about two years to get something accomplished before he has to start running for re-election; a Congresswoman, about six months. With a presidential election due next year, we will get to hear from our two perennial parties for the next year and a half just how miserable we are and why our misery is directly attributable to that other party.

                As voters we will likely do again what we have done so many times before. We will skim the surface of the speeches and the arguments looking for clues that our candidates are just like we are, and they will offer us ample material to convince us of just that fact via slogans and key words. If we voted for Coke in the last election and are dissatisfied with the results, many of us will vote for Pepsi this time around. If the polls indicate that the elections might be close, look for our tried and true polarizing issues to be hauled out and hoisted up the flag pole:  abortion, gun control, immigration reform. The candidates will make impassioned speeches and promise reforms that they have no means to deliver. Very little will change, but our anger will be assuaged for another few years while business as usual continues.

                The real issue behind our general dissatisfaction is, in fact, that “business as usual.” It is the business which, like a tapeworm, extracts wealth from the economy without producing wealth. It is the uber-bank borrowing money from the Fed at 1% interest and then purchasing treasury bonds that pay 4 percent rather than lending that money out. It is the continuing favoritism by the rule of law for the corporate rather than the individual as corporate profits soar to all-time highs. It is the continued disenfranchisement of labor in favor of management.

                Let me elaborate on that last statement. It was not a political endorsement of unions, although unions do serve a useful purpose in our economy when they are not, themselves, tapeworms feeding on productivity. The statement about labor and management is an attempt to illustrate the growing problem of the shrinking middle class. The problem with every democracy and with every society which attempts to be egalitarian is that, at some point, those who manage a society’s institutions learn how to use those institutions to leverage personal benefit. In a society such as ours where honor and morals have been replaced by relativism, it is easier to rationalize those benefits. Consider the local company where the managers have special privileges unrelated to productivity:  They come and go as they please while regular employees are chained to their cubicles.  Managers go to meetings and conferences at company expense, attend luncheons and benefits during working hours and they use company time to pursue interests unrelated to business under the guise of “reaching out to the community.”  Regular employees are monitored for productivity throughout the day. They are limited to strictly enforced break times and lunch breaks. They make the widgets, sell the widgets, provide the customer support for the widgets, but they make a fraction of the salary as the corner offices which may never have seen a widget – or a fraction of the money made by someone in an office a thousand miles away trading stock of the widget making company.

                If you want to understand Washington and what is wrong with our national government, look no further than your local institutions of business and government. The deck is stacked, legally, socially and systemically against those who produce wealth in favor of those who extract it. The system will not change until our dissatisfaction exceeds the ability of those who hold power to distract us from the real issues. Keep this in mind while you enjoy the political season.

This Memorial Day, And The Next

               Memorial Day of 2011 will soon be a rapidly fading memory. This is the seventh year I have sat at my desk to write on this Congressional Monday holiday while our nation was at war. It is the tenth year our young people have risked their lives in Afghanistan; the eighth year in Iraq.

               For some of us, the memory will not fade. A constant awareness of a son or daughter, a parent, a friend or relative in harm’s way will be with us during every waking hour, often intruding even into our dreams, our nightmares.

               Most of us, however, will not be so troubled. Some may pause to remember a parent or grandparent who fought in World War II, go to a parade and wave a little flag or post a word of gratitude and recognition on Facebook.  We will quickly return to our normal lives and our routines of working, commuting and collecting the materials of life.

               Those who fight would not deny us this luxury. The ability to pick up our normal lives and carry on, to allow our children to grow up unburdened by the fears and responsibilities they will face all too soon as adults – is indeed why soldiers fight.

               Nevertheless, with recognition comes responsibility, and we set aside that responsibility too easily.  The ascendance of materialism through media and our constant saturation in marketing has created a popular culture that is shallow and vapid; a culture which assumes without question that it is entitled to every largesse and every luxury, a culture which can pay occasional lip service to the sacrifices necessary to maintain our affluence, but which by and large is unconscious of the life and death struggles necessary to maintain what we take for granted.

               In World War II it was clear to every citizen what could and should be done to support the war effort. In Korea and Vietnam we fought ideologies with armies and during the Vietnam War we struggled as a nation with the concept of questioning the war but at the same time supporting the warrior. During all these conflicts we were very much aware as a nation of reasons and costs. Things have been different during our latest decade of war. We have a peripheral awareness of the conflict.  The enemy is a concept with a changing face and he does not wear a uniform.

The truth of the conflict is not that hard to understand, but it is very difficult to accept. Strip away the politics and the patriotism, the religion and the ideology and what is revealed is something much more fundamental.  Our lifestyle built on an economy of consumption and high energy use is supported by a delicate framework of technology that is dependent on maintaining supply lines from around the world of materials that we do not have or do not produce. Even a Chicken McNugget contains materials from at least 11 countries:  chicken from Brazil; bread crumbs from the UK; wheat from Canada, Pakistan, Paraguay and Australia; emulsifiers from Spain; dextrin from China and vegetable fat from the UAE. This entire supply chain is dependent on oil and the whole world knows under what countries the oil lies buried.

There are many among us who wish that they could do more to support our troops. We cannot all wear a uniform and put ourselves in harm’s way. We can lend our support to the many volunteer groups that exist to help our warriors. We can keep an awareness of the conflict alive in our thoughts, our prayers and our conversations. All of these are worthwhile efforts, but they address only the symptoms, not the disease of war. If we are truly weary of the disease, there is but one place to look for a cure, and that is in the consumption and the wastefulness of our entitlement.  Are we truly willing to send a son or daughter to fight for our right to sit idling in the drive-thru line in our huge gas burners, waiting for the McNuggets? Are we willing that someone should die so that we can keep the thermostat at a balmy 78 during the winter and a cool 70 during the summer? Unless we are able as a nation to make this connection, to acknowledge the true cost of our largesse, the price of our willful ignorance will continue to grow and one Memorial Day will bleed into the next, and the next…