Post No. 186: Why We’re So Anxious in America, Debate the Role of Government, and Ministers Suggest God’s Pissed

© 2012, the Institute for Applied Common Sense

There are two things we do religiously, neither of which has anything to do with religion.

First, we watch Turner Classic Movies daily. By doing so, particularly those out of the 1920s through the 1950s, we re-visit many societal issues. (And you thought we were simply entertaining ourselves.)

Second, we read two books simultaneously. One is invariably a school textbook, circa 1960s or 1970s, and the other is a book which students were forced to read, and which might be termed classics from other eras, such as Don Quixote, Death of a Salesman, Wuthering Heights, Bulfinch’s Mythology, etc.

By engaging in these exercises, we’ve come to appreciate the meaning of the phrase, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

The textbook we've been reading here recently is Technology in Western Civilization. What we’ve taken away from our re-reading of this book is that the most powerful forces in society affecting individuals are forces over which individual citizens have the least control. Individuals respond to movements and do the best they can to survive.

The movie which caught our attention featured Barbara Stanwyck as a mail order bride. (Imagine that!) In The Purchase Price (1932), Stanwyck is on the run from her mobster boyfriend. She heads to North Dakota during the Depression to marry a struggling farmer. Months later, she visits a neighbor’s home to lend a helping hand, only to find the woman on the floor with a new born baby. Stanwyck takes charge of the situation.

The next couple of minutes dazzled us. Our former big city girl unleashes an arsenal of survival skills, and sets about wrapping up the delivery, cooking, sewing, milking, repairing, hammering, and doing anything necessary, followed by trekking home in a blinding snowstorm.

And then it hit us - why we’re so anxious, debate the role of government, and ministers daily suggest that we’ve pissed God off.

Except for our families, and perhaps fellow parishioners, we’re pretty much out here all alone. We don’t mean to suggest that government should do anything for its citizens other than defend our borders, and provide police, and maybe fire services. However, after reading Technology, we have a better appreciation of how government stepped in to assist people, long before the New Deal, after throngs left (by choice?), their rural, agrarian roots for major industrial cities during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Few of us can do the things that Barbara did. Instead, we “want to be like Mike.” We’ve reached a point where most of us are totally dependent on cash revenue from some source to pay others to do things for us. Also, we’re generally not that talented in basic survival skills (like sucking rattlesnake venom out of a wound), although we might be great computer people, electricians, ad execs, doctors, or truck drivers.

We all get compensated with cash for our services. According to Technology, currency was one of the great inventions of humankind. But it came with a price.

What we came to realize by the end of the movie is that we are far less capable, at least as individuals, of helping one another because we are not sure whether we can help ourselves. We’ve become dependent on employers, customers, clients, or worse yet, the government. Very few voluntarily chose the route of the 47%.

King Kong ain’t got nothin' on insecurity.

A half-way decent job in a manufacturing plant, enabling one to take care of one’s self and one’s family (and develop a little self-esteem along the way), was a big deal at one time. And then they shipped trinket making to cheaper real estate, and warned us [via Toffler’s Future Shock (1970), and The Third Wave (1980)] that we were transitioning to a service economy. But the provision of services and the assembly of information don’t amount to much if no one is willing to pay for those services.

As a wise man once said, “Something only has as much value as someone is willing to pay.” And connecting what one has to offer with someone willing to pay became far more difficult in the global economic expansion.

There’s little question that we are anxious, and even some are angry. And that debate about the extent government should be involved in our lives is a legitimate one, because there aren’t any other obvious options. And while it is true that families aren’t as large, connected, and based in the same field as they used to be, it’s not God doing it to us because he’s pissed off.

We’re doing it to ourselves. And only we individual citizens have the solutions.

And that’s only common sense.

Post No. 183: My News Station is Red Hot; Your News Station Ain’t Doodly Squat

© 2012, the Institute for Applied Common Sense

In response to our post-election piece, Douglas commented about public perception of sitting presidents. He pointed to instances where “the media” did not treat past presidents as kindly as Obama following storm-related disasters.

While he did not actually attack the media or indicate which media outlet he preferred, we recalled that some have complained about bias in news reporting.

A few days ago, we watched Network on TCM. When released in 1976, some questioned the role of corporations in the reporting of news. A week before, TCM aired Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, with an Andy Griffith so far removed from Mayberry, it will make you gasp. The 1957 masterpiece foresaw the growing influence of TV.

In response to Douglas we noted:

1) "The media" at the times referenced (1992, 2005, and 2012) was different due to the state of technology and the number of outlets;

2) Although "the media" has always consisted of citizens, the role of lay citizens is more pronounced than in the past when we essentially had "professional" journalists;

3) We used to think of "news" as distinct from "entertainment." That line (if ever it existed, Charlie Brown) is blurrier than ever. We have more entertainment types weighing in today, be they Eva Longoria, Chuck Norris, Al Sharpton, Rush Limbaugh, or Eevva Longorrrria;

4) There are intangibles which people feel about others, especially when bombarded with images (in this case Presidents), but can't quite, or choose not to, articulate. Bill Cosby could give money for school kids, and most would say it was a gracious gift. Oprah Winfrey could do the same, and many would swear it was a tax deduction motivated gesture;

5) Everything is about timing and context. The social, political, economic, and technological situations 6-12 months prior to each reference date should be factored into how people perceived the respective presidents;

6) We strongly suspect the vast majority of Americans visit the "media outlets" which smell the best to them, and remind them of their more idyllic youth. Douglas often reminds us that everyone has a bias. Although some work hard to reduce it, others let it all hang out. At this point in our information evolution, people legitimately do not know who or what to objectively believe, and so they believe what they want to believe;

7) We have become a nation which dissects the hourly conduct of our presidents, including trips to the bidet. Imagine watching a basketball game where the coach is rated each time a flush is made, instead of waiting until the end of the game, or the end of the season. Plus, every interest group has 27 different factors by which they evaluate the president.

Had Romney won, within 18 months folks would have been calling for his head for his failure to provide quick enough assistance to Hurricane Sandy states and revive our sluggish economy. What’s frightening is that the same folks will criticize Obama 18 months from now.

We're on an exponential path of increasingly unreasonable expectations (substantially due to communications technology). No elected president will ever be able to truly satisfy 50% of the citizens again, UNTIL (a) the global economy comes roaring back and the benefits trickle down to the common citizen (something over which the president has little control), or (b) there is a war of major consequence. That president will ride that wave of prosperity, or wave of patriotism, for which a cause and effect relationship cannot be honestly established.

Since the beginning, engineers, scientists, inventors, and new thinkers have spurred new technology. It is technology that drives prosperity. The use of that technology drives industry, and trade and industry create jobs and drive tax revenues. When all is humming, an economy is strong enough to keep enough people employed, and fewer folks bitching about basics. The have-not voices are drowned out, or there are enough crumbs for the haves to toss to convert their screams to mumbles.

8) That's what this last election should have been about: how to ignite an explosion of creativity, inventiveness, and innovation. The reality is that government action, or inaction, may encourage but does not drive that.

So here’s the deal, college students. Too many Baby Boomers (Institute Fellows included) abdicated our responsibilities and became fat and complacent as the size of the prosperous middle class grew. We developed an unrealistic expectation that things would always get better and America would continue to be No.1, without a sufficient number of us putting in the effort required to stay No. 1. (What the muck made us think the children of each succeeding generation would live better lives than their parents? Hope?)

With each passing year, we expect more of our elected officials (who are not in a position to deliver) and for government to do “something,” more or less. It’s neither the fault of government, nor our elected leaders.

It is the logical result of human societal evolution once we started removing the food generation burden from individuals, and figured out that a few could generate excess food permitting most the “luxury” to pursue other pursuits of choice. Once we created “jobs,” people became dependent on them, and on receiving currency from some source. Additionally, we failed to recognize the challenges presented by leisure time.

Only individual citizens can pull us out of this mess. We cannot rely on government or corporations (including those owning major media outlets) seeking less regulation and favorable tax treatment. They are the last folks to whom we should be listening, no matter what the nature of the message.

Neither my, nor your, news station is red hot; both of our stations are doodly squat.

Post No. 93: “Every Issue Has Two, Three, Possibly 27 Sides”

© 2009, the Institute for Applied Common Sense

The Logistician often just stops people on the street, and starts a conversation.

He asks them to visit our blog, and they always respond with laughter when he says, “We believe that there are more than two or three ways to look at any issue; on occasion we've seen as many as 27.”

In an earlier post, we spoke of the propensity, because of their genetic coding, of a colleague’s 29 Dobermans to bark, snarl, and attack whenever we approach his house.

We focused on the tone of social discourse today, and our concerns about the negative effects of unadulterated nastiness.

We suggested that humans are blessed with the ability to think and reason, and to learn and practice Common Sense, and that we must be guided, in Lincoln’s words, “by the better angels of our nature.”

The 27 points of view which greeted the Doberman piece were wide-ranging. We won't revisit the comments posted, other than to say that the piece revolved entirely around the concept of Personal Responsibility.

Here's a small example.

Earlier today, someone on our staff agreed to go to a local fried chicken franchise restaurant, to pick up “breakfast biscuits,” with fried eggs, smoked sausage, bacon, and such.

When he returned with the bounty, it occurred to us that there was nothing but slow death spread on the table. We wondered, “Who wants to consume these artery clogging products?”

As the aroma of the food drew those in our office to the table - man, did it smell good! - we thought of how much finger-pointing goes on these days, and how little responsibility is taken for our choices.

We later heard a news report about Bernard Madoff, and his alleged 50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, and for which he pled guilty in federal court. He was promptly sent off to jail and will be sentenced for his crimes in mid-June.

One of our colleagues asked, “What does it say about us as a society, other than that some of us are tremendously gullible and greedy? I mean, not doing due diligence? Shouldn’t those investing in his fund have been at least a little suspicious of Madoff's claims about his fund's steady growth?”

(Some - die-hard conservatives, we think - have even suggested that Madoff has not done anything different than what our federal government has done with its administration of Social Security funds, and yet no government official will serve any time for the government's sleight of hand.)

As we prepare to throw Bernie into the Dobermans’ den of another sort, we should ask ourselves, “Why are we so quick to point the finger at others for our own failings?”

One possible explanation: we’re uncomfortable with the image we see when we look in a mirror. Not the image itself, of course, but of what we know has resulted from the decisions we've made in our lives.

There’s a story which the Logistician often tells during his motivational workshops.

It’s Riverside, California several years ago. The clubs are closed and two teenage girls have been partying. One of the girls has difficulty rousing her cousin, and ultimately calls 911.

The authorities arrive to find the other teenager slumped in a stupor behind the wheel of the car after 2 a.m. In her lap is a weapon.

At some point, there is some movement which makes the officers think their lives may be at risk. In excess of 42 bullets are spent.

Civil rights advocates immediately start screaming about the use of “excessive force,” and “police brutality.”

We viewed the situation differently. We asked, “What was the girl doing there in that condition in the first place?”

One committing an irresponsible act can’t control the response of others, or expect the response to be one acceptable to the actor. What we need to do, as Barney Fife would say, is “nip it in the bud” early on in the sequence of events.

Be diligent. Be pro-active.

There is a poem, “You’re the Result of Yourself,” by Pablo Neruda which we posted some months ago. At the time, we noted that the poem embodies many of the principles central to the concepts we discuss, and promoted by the Institute for Applied Common Sense.

It’s appropriate to revisit it at this time. After all, “You’re the Result of Yourself.”

The next time that you bitch about your health, think about all of those breakfast biscuits you’ve consumed over the years.

© 2009, the Institute for Applied Common Sense