Easier

Life issues.  It's easier to let the government manage them.  Or perhaps it's easier to let our favorite political party decide them.  Neither has proven worthy of such trust.

The purpose of government is to serve all the people well in accordance with the vision and principles laid down.  I don't envy them the task, of course, despite the fact that my mother insists I should run for president.  I honor those men and women who serve in government, hoping to do well by the country and its citizens, but they've little chance of being genuinely and fully successful.

So, how shall we then live?  That's the question Francis Schaeffer asked a few decades ago.  Among his comments, he warned about our increasing dependence on government for our formation.  Government rules touching schools and churches, humanistic reshaping of the common media, the leveling of values, of noble purpose, and the advance of materialism.  He was right, of course.

There's an infantilism in each of us that perhaps wants someone else to take care of everything, like when we were children and our parents sheltered us from the world. We want to leave it all to them and focus on ourselves. There's never been a time when an individual of conscience could actually do so.

It will be a bit of a lonely road, and certainly not an easy one.
(Photo:  the far side of Djibouti, 2011; friends live down by the shore in the distance.
Precious friends.)

If now you attempt to think for yourself and make your own way forward with a good conscience, you'll be a radical. You'll be the oddball, the nonconformist, the fringe person.  You won't fit the community norms, the church norms, or the political party norms, will you.

We could just let it all happen and be carried along by it.  Most will.  A few I know will not.

An interesting subject for a new year's bucket list, no?  What shall we then do differently?
Happy New Year.  :)

Homosexuality

"... homosexuality affects far fewer of us than gluttony, materialism, or divorce. And as Jesus pointed out so often in his ministry, we like to focus on the biblical violations (real or perceived) of the minority rather than our own.

In short, we like to gang up."

... "And when we make separate categories for the “real sinners,” when we reduce our fellow human beings to theological issues up for constant debate who cannot even be told they are loved without qualifiers, when our (thinking) conveniently renders others the problem and us the heroes, maybe it’s time to sit across a table and get to know one another a little better, to break up some categories and make some new friends. Maybe it’s time to drop our stones for a while and pass the bread.

…healthy, whole grain, organic bread, of course."

The above are snippets from Rachel Held Evans' blog.



She's right.  Today's furious condemnation of same-sex marriage often comes from folks who have little to say about the deadly effects of things like materialism ...
... or selfishness
... or anger
... or greed
... or ...

So these uppity church leaders came to Jesus bringing a woman who had been unfaithful.  They wanted to stone her, and they tried to get Jesus to agree with them.  "What do you say?"  After drawing on the ground, he finally answered, but what he said wasn't about her adultry.  It was about their hearts, and one by one they left, deeply convicted by what he'd helped them see.

It's so easy to think we're the good ones and others are bad when the truth is that there are none righteous.  Not one.  So now what do we do?

Golden Years

Got fun plans?  A little travel perhaps; a warm place where you can enjoy some days off?  Of course.

   80% of the world never thinks about the things that occupy our days.

• They don't make a list for when they go to the grocery store.
• They don't wonder when the car insurance is due.
• They don't wonder where their kids will go to college.
• They don't worry about their IRA or 401k.
• They couldn't care less about a Coach purse or a Gucci blouse.
• Traffic doesn't make them crabby on the way home from shopping.
• They don't look forward to vacations.

No stores, no cars, no college, no vacations, ... and no golden years.

Being rich or poor isn't a statement of motivation or willingness to work.  We're not well off because we worked and succeeded while they loafed.  It isn't because we have more natural resources or smarter people.  We don't and we're not, but the difference persists.  Curious isn't it?

Poverty isn't something you choose.  It's something that's done to you and to your family or clan or race or class.  True?

I met one young man in eastern Africa; bright, well-mannered and quite well spoken.  We've worked for a few years on his education and helping his family get healthy.  His biggest obstacle?  Wrong tribe.  He's Mijikenda. There's not a lot of opportunity for him.  If he was Kikuyu however, doors would open automatically.

School kids in western Africa celebrate Children's Day in early June. They're a little
surprised to hear that we don't do the same.  For these, making it past the 6th grade
 is a big deal.  Many do not. The costs are more than many families can afford.

Jesus made a big deal about caring for the poor, the disenfranchised.  It's not because they're pitiable and make us sad with their suffering; at least that's not my take on his teachings.  I think it's because they're the same as us, and it's just not right. He sees us all as pretty much the same, and he knows how screwed up we'll be if we just leave them beside the road.

When we look forward to our vacation or our new home or our ... golden years, that's not the real world, is it.  So, what do we do with what we know?  Change makers and help bringers, they have more fun and they live in the real world.

Feel like sharing a bit of the opportunity and resources you have?  :)

Cities Without Citadels

Vertically! That's the way life distributes us. Civilizations past were pretty much the same. Power, prestige, wealth placed you up the ladder. The poor always occupied the bottom rung of history's record. Inconsequential, peasants, working class.

Centuries past tell us of the ruling class and the innumerable thousands of poor. The few lived at the expense of all the rest. It was as though they somehow deserved the best of everything even if it meant deprivation for others. Inevitable in every culture?

Not true!  It's neither inevitable nor needed; and not every civilization was vertically arranged. There have been interesting times and cultures where the play for dominance wasn't a part. Curious?

Centuries ago along Africa's Niger River, rainfall varied greatly from year to year. One year in six was near the region's average; other years were at the extremes for rainfall on the plains and in the upper regions where the river's source was fed.  So to a greater or lesser extent, the plains flooded a little or a lot and crops did or didn't do well.  There wasn't any way to predict how a year's growing season would turn out, so the residents adapted.  It's instructive for us to see their approach.

The river's inland delta, as it's called, is almost level and the Niger river descends just a few millimeters per kilometer over much of its 4000 km length. When the rains come, the flood moves broadly across the region. The amount of rain determines how far from the river the floods will carry, and it's rarely the same two years in a row.  Folks learned that they couldn't master all the skills and manage all the resources needed for every opportunity.  Fishing was varied from year to year and tremendously labor intensive. Farming was even more so with a requirement to understand which crops would do well in which water depths.  The pastoralists managed their flocks by moving significant distances regularly.  Out beyond the edge of the floodplain that was waist deep for six months of the year, then rapidly inward as the land and vegetation dried up.

Communities specialized and cooperated, and they did so without one specialization or community being at the top. Some years the farmers did better than the fishermen and vice versa. Some years, the herds survived well; others, not so well. They needed each other in order to survive, so they shared more or less graciously. Ancient stories persist of conflicts being resolved generously.

Communities grew into cities around the specializations, and they persisted successfully for more than a thousand years.  It was hard, of course, but they did it without an upper class and without a central government and without Wall Street leeches. Interesting.  More than a thousand years without war or sequestration or ... well, you get the idea.

Our present competition and consumption model is unsustainable, we've discovered, and it brings suffering and death to others.  We're all at risk, but there are many alternatives.

Consider ...  the complex society of the inland Niger River Delta.  Bambara millet farmers, the Fulani and Tuareg herders, and the Bozo and Somono fishermen lived together there for 1600 years – on the basis of peaceful and reciprocal relations.  These were acephalous societies, based on complexification of settlement, rather than centralization.  

See: John READER (1999): Africa, A biography of the Continent. Vintage. London; Chpt. 23 – Cities without citadels.

Snowden

Edward Snowden knew things that he couldn't leave unaddressed.  He weighed the consequences and made his choice.  Like him, we each make decisions about our culture, our country, our acceptance of the norms.

It appears that he wasn't after fame and fortune.  If fact, he sacrificed everything because he couldn't live with what he knew unless he did something about it. He forfeited career and perhaps much more.

With no wife or kids, he could risk it all. He carefully unveiled what he knew, not risking lives, but he clearly laid out his protest against government actions.

Those of us who remember the upheaval of Vietnam and the anti-war era understand all too well.  There were so many lies and misrepresentations to justify that war.  Those who saw it tried to tell us, to warn us while hundreds of thousands were sent off as cannon fodder in the government's power play.

58,000 U.S. servicemen died.
50,000-65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died in the war.
155,000 refugees were killed or abducted on the Tuy Hoa road, fleeing the NVA Spring Offensive in 1975.
165,000 South Vietnamese died in the re-education camps out of 1-2.5 million sent.
195,000-430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war.
153,000 U.S. servicemen were sent home wounded.

Here at home, we did our best to understand, and we tried to be OK about what was happening.  Those who couldn't ... joined the protest.  Or not.

For decades, we've lived with having sent our servicemen off to do what cannot be justified.  It shouldn't have happened that way.  It was done to us without our informed consent.  It warps your thinking until you face it.  Neither our country nor our government can be proud of those years.  While most of our servicemen who served did so with honor and noble purpose, all came home wounded.

One cannot be part of that which leads to the slaughter of innocents without being scarred, even those who stayed at home and trusted their government to do the right thing.

This year, Snowden faced what only a few knew about.  It was well past the limits of law and the rights of citizens.  He struggled until conscience and clarity of thought prevailed.  He launched his own protest.

He could have let it pass.  As we often do with actions by government, by financial institutions, by influencers and decision makers; he could have said, "Somebody else's problem."

He might have thought of all the people in authority above him and just let it go, but he didn't.  For the rest of his life, he'll live with the consequences of his choice, but at least he won't have to live with the wounds of having turned a blind eye to what was just wrong.

To some degree, such things hammer us all in an imperfect world.  The hope we have is in a good conscience and clear thinking.  And the choices we make.

Snowden's Christmas message this morning, “Together we can find a better balance. End mass surveillance. Remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel asking is always cheaper than spying.”

... for the people.
Merry Christmas

Politics is Puppet Theater

We're all persuaded or at least influenced by those voices that speak powerfully.  Well financed, well polished voices.

Unfortunately there are fully valid arguments on both sides of most issues, but the powerful voice is often the winner in the battle for agreement and cooperation.  It's a rare person who is wise enough to withhold concurrence until all sides are considered.

I hate it when I listen and agree only to discover soon afterward that the presentation had been one-sided and, as it turned out, just wrong.  Motivated by the 'win' mentality, the presenter had offered all the good they could muster and deliberately ignored all the bad.

Welcome to the lobbyist's world.  Polished, primed, and well paid,  the powerful voices of industry.

There are less than 150 corporations that control more than 40% of the world's economy.  They're tightly interconnected and interrelated; each owns a significant portion of many of the others.  They breathe in sync.  And they campaign (lobby) in the world's governments for regulatory favor.

It's not a conspiracy, at least not formally.  They don't collectively intend to rule the world; perhaps just the world's economy.

What they've persuaded our legislators to do in the last couple of decades has given us a degree of 'globalization' that was unforeseen.  The U.S. economy and others are intimately interconnected.  A hiccup in the the U.S. or the EU can affect the developing world catastrophically.  It did, and it will again.

In Belize City, local Rotarians labor to build a fair marketplace, 

a fair and helpful business world for their country.

Wandering the edge of  Belize city, I see that Rotary International has put up the 4-way test questions on signs along the way.  These have been the Rotary's endorsed and adopted standard for business ethics for almost a century.

Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Curious how many of the worlds financial behemoths are led by Rotarians? Or better yet, how many would pass the four way test?  Zero and zero, of course. Since the 80's, we've raised a breed of business folks whose only goal is winning, regardless of the cost to others. Millions have suffered as a result. The market crash of 07/08 killed more than a half million in eastern Africa alone, we're told.  AIG and JP Morgan did that along with a few others.  

Zip, zero, not a one would pass the Rotary's four way test or any other reasonable test of ethics.

Despite being within the boundaries of the law, these banking barons have passed from the realm of 'participant' in the human saga to 'predator'. Relatively new on the historical scene, they are considered invasive and detrimental to all the world and to all the people.

Curious what comes next?  Yup, me too.

Tunnel Vision!

These are not stars!

If you looked through a soda straw 8 foot long, this is the tiny part of the sky you could see, and these are galaxies there; about 10,000 of them.

Tunnel vision, like looking through a soda straw  ... looking at such a tiny part of what is.  You could spend a lifetime focused on this 1/1000000000000th of the available view.

We do that.  It's a semi-survival mechanism.  We can't keep it all in view all the time.

In a small town where we lived, folk's lives were often filled with local concerns.  Some perhaps had a larger view, but the time spent talking about the traffic accident involving a garbage truck and a college employee wasn't as profitably spent as it might have been.  There are more important things than that about which one might be concerned.

For natural reasons we focus on our own lives, and rather narrowly.  What we have and what we want to have occupy most of our time.  Our narrow view excludes most of what is available to see and know and experience.

Mayan tunnel window at
Altun Ha ruins.

Tunnel Vision and the Narrow View: can it be set aside?

Our humanity gives us opportunity to see more than just our own wants, of course.  Do we?  Do we care about those outside of our own circle?  Would we sacrifice a bit for someone we didn't know?  Would we take action for the disenfranchised, the castoffs, the poor?

Mayan window is a t-shaped tunnel ...  not much of a view;
perhaps a bit like ours as we focus on just ourselves?

Can we choose?  Can we move into caring broadly and deeply?  It is a stunning life changer, we're told.  There is nothing that compares to love given without expecting anything in return.  And in being loved.  Interestingly, such a choice changes everything, up to and including our understanding of God himself.



Religion can focus us narrowly on small issues, just one small aspect of something which is immeasurably larger and grander than the greatest expanse of space.  Walking the ridge above the Grand Canyon or standing beside Victoria Falls can be breath-taking, but just skirting the presence of the God Who Is can be ... reconstructive!  All good.  I want to see it all.

Teach the children well ...

Children should obey. ... but is there more?  More than we teach by rules and penalties?

Do this!  Don't do that!  You'll get in trouble, you'll get grounded, you'll lose your privileges  . . .

and later,

Do this!  Don't do that!  They'll put you in jail, you'll lose your job, your property . . .

Do, or . . .  It's fear-based, of course.  If there's a loophole or a chance of escape, the threatened penalty is no longer a deterrent.  Street gangs, Wall Street gangs, a gang of thieves or a gang of congressmen and their lobbyists, if they can get away with it, they'll likely do as they please.  When the standard is a rule (law), it can dull and weaken.

The way of rules is lamented among all civilizations, generation after generation.  Rules reach for that which they cannot embody; right thinking and a good conscience.  Those who walk the path of rules fall short of even the least laudable of goals.

Children learn most by our example.
The exasperated father spanks his complaining child.  ...
The fearful mother shakes her rambunctious toddler.  ...
The teen's exhausted parent shouts down the offered answer.  ...   What did they teach?

Conflict and violence, the power play, the heavy hand ... fear!  And escalation in response to resistance.

But our great hope is to raise up our children to be men and women of courage and strength, nobility and clarity, with hearts for truth and compassion, justice and mercy.  None of those qualities are engendered by the 'rules and punishments' way, are they.

What can we do? 

He's a gracious father, uncle, and grandfather.
I watched as he worked through difficult
issues with his family, and was instructed
 by his calm and thoughtful manner.
It's the far side of the world in a culture where
family is perhaps more important than is
common in western culture.

Encourage them every day.  Tell them in practical ways that you love them unconditionally. Notice everything they do well, from table manners to helping to homework, and speak appreciatively.  Compliment them for their choices that reflect good character.

When they misbehave, try grieving instead of getting angry.  Or anything instead of anger.  Anything.

When they complain at the top of their lungs that, "You said 'no' just because you don't want me to have any fun," try responding tenderly to their frustration, and perhaps walk them through the decision they've asked you to make.  Let them inquire, listen honestly to their thoughts about this and that.  It may or may not change your decision, but it won't teach them fear.  It won't leave them unloved and alone.

A conflict with your child is not for the moment only.  How you respond will determine if there are more head-on conflicts in the future or fewer.

There's a great gulf between discipline and punishment, isn't there.  One shapes character, the other may cripple it, especially if you're angry.  Never conclude an occasion of reproof without genuine love and understanding between you.  In the years to come, they'll remember little of what you said compared to their memories of how you loved them. 

Sheep or Goat? Is that fair?

He wasn't talking about sheep and goats, you know.  He was just using the shepherd's illustration because it would be familiar.  Everybody had the visual to go with it; the end of a dusty day, a crowd of tired animals, and the shepherd sorting them out for their pens.

I was hungry and you fed me . . .

No religion here; just illustration. Individual by individual, some to the right, some to the left, and it's not about membership. He explains that it's about how we lived; was it for ourselves alone, or did we include others. Maybe it's whether we cared or not, too.

He himself was well-off and comfortable, comparatively speaking, when he set it all aside and came to us. All of us were the needy ones. He could have just sent everybody money, I suppose, but he gave himself. We needed something, a different heart maybe, and he made a way for us. He gave everything, until he had nothing left.

About the giving thing; I doubt he means the $20 here or there to make a sad feeling go away. He probably has a larger context in mind; caring deeply, to the point where we'll forgo some comfort, maybe.

Pretty straightforward, isn't it. We care; we cover the cost, we do what it takes to make a difference. When we do those things, we do it to him, he says. Or, we don't.

So if we learn, and we share his heart, that suggests perhaps we've become a bit like him. And if we didn't learn and we didn't live it out, it's because we didn't know his heart. Or him. At least that's what it sounds like. Like we never knew him at all.

It's maybe too familiar; we've heard it so many times, but didn't know what to do with it. Perhaps now?

... and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Welcome, you who are blessed by my Father! Take your place in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why-

You saw me when I was hungry; you stopped and fed me,
You saw that I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
You saw that I was homeless and you gave me a room,
You saw I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
You saw when I was sick and you stopped to visit,
You saw me in prison; you made time and came to me.’

They'll exclaim wonderingly, ‘But sir, what are you saying? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will answer, ‘I'll tell you; when you did these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me - you did it to me. You didn't pass me by.’

Then he will turn to the ones on his left and say, ‘Get out, cursed ones! Your place is with those rebels who tore themselves away from my father's house. And why? Because -

You saw me hungry and turned away; you gave me no meal,
You saw when I was thirsty and turned away; you gave me no drink,
You saw that I was homeless and passed me by; you gave me no bed,
You saw me shivering and went on to your own affairs; you gave me no clothes,
You saw me when I was sick and in prison, and you were busy; you never visited.’

Then those on the left will say, ‘But sir! When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and not help?’

He will answer them, ‘I'm telling the truth; when you failed to do those things for someone like that, that was me - you failed to do it for me. You turned away.’"

Don't look at me; I'm not the one that said all that.  He says kingdom, but does that mean heaven?  Or something in this life?  Or what?  Is the kingdom he referred to here and now and inside us?  He had a lot more to say than just this, of course, but I get the idea that we're supposed to be changed, somehow, and the change will redefine the way we live. And perhaps the reason as well.

S.E.P. - Someone Elese's Problem

Someone Else's Problem or SEP is a mental process where individuals or populations choose to dissociate themselves from an issue that may be in critical need of attention.

Not my problem, man!

We're besieged by pictures of children in need, famine, drought, and poverty. The only sane response is to push it all aside. If you don't, you'll be overwhelmed by the needs of others. You'll be sad, depressed, and helpless. NOT!

It's not hard to connect with organizations that really help. World Vision is at the top of the list of dozens of worthy programs. The hard task is choosing to actually care, perhaps.

Marilyn with a couple of our scholars ...

If you go and see for yourself, you'll probably be undone. My wife was pretty much shattered when I took her to meet my friends in Africa. It took her about a year to recover enough to see things clearly. Now, when we get a call or a text from friends in Africa, it's a pleasure. Helping out, keeping kids in school, helping a family through difficult times, stuff like that is a real joy.

They own their family home now.

My daughter helped a family buy their house. She used her tax refund to make up the difference they needed; both she and they are tickled by the event. When I last visited them, they were so proud of the progress they'd made in the previous year, and they named me as godfather for their new baby! Dad's a fisherman, mom raises rabbits, and the kids are all in school, working hard and doing well. They've got pictures of us in their main room, and we have pictures of them on the wall, too.

Making a difference can cost as little as a lunch at Ruby Tuesday's.

My buddy Anderson is six this month; his mom and I were on the phone
just a few minutes ago singing happy birthday together.  He struggles a bit
with reoccurring malaria, but it's controlled for now.

We're connected to efforts in east and west Africa, if you'd like a recommendation for where to start. Lots of friends have chipped in. Tuition and such for more than a hundred children now, salary for three teachers, assistance for a church group serving community orphans, building a community center/preschool, and several family projects. If you want to go and see for yourself, I'll introduce you. It's more fun than any vacation you've ever had.

Who's left behind?

Change doesn't happen at a uniform pace.   

Things change, and it's hard to keep up.  A sudden blip in this field or that can spill down into unexpected change.  (Data mining and the NSA come to mind.)

Laggards when it comes to change,
governments and churches are
often the last to know and adapt.

Governments historically lag far behind key change points.  Laws and law makers scramble to understand.  Privacy disappeared before the overseers could rein in the abusers with their advanced capabilities.  Microsoft and Twitter ramp up protections against NSA hacking.  The SEC is scrambling to find out how the world economy was taken to the brink by 'bankers'.

As change rushes by, teachers scramble to understand the culture they serve.  Married couples are now less than half of our households, businesses scramble to catch up with the new process models. Amazon swept up a huge constituency before mainstream retailers caught on. No contest; yet.  Local retailers scramble to join the broad-based competition for customers. Now you can shop online at a dozen car dealerships and have them compete against each other for pricing.

Information proliferation and social change have reshaped the meaning of community and relationship.  High school students live in a world their parents don't understand.

'Google time' is what they call those interludes when you're thinking your way through from this task to that.  Open source, open forum, open information on any subject is at our fingertips.  Wikipedia outstripped Britannica long ago.

The traditional church sings old hymns and follows an order of service unchanged in half a century.  Modernization attempts, putting songs up on a screen and tweeting members, seem lame to the under 40 folks.

Hillsong United

... a rather off-the-wall leap into
non-traditional church.

So what are they, the emerging culture, doing with their faith and time?  A group of young mothers gather to encourage each other through the furor of raising children today.  They talk about what works, what they're aiming for in their children's lives.  And they pray fervently for grace and wisdom.  It's real for them.

Hillsong explodes; “Our singular, all-consuming passion is to build God's Church and Kingdom on the earth, and see everyday people released into their purpose and calling."

A twenty-something girl invites a couple of guys from work to go to her non-standard but semi-mainline church; green-o-maximo guys.  They had a ball; it wasn't a typical service; more of a 'meet God and see what he has to say' sort of occasion.  They were bubbling with enthusiasm as they got introduced around, and they left encouraged.

In eastern Africa with skipped-step changes, folks I know live in handmade huts of stone and clay with straw roofing.  They have cell phones.  And MPESA accounts to pay with.  They've skipped the intervening steps of telephone lines and poles, of bank cards, and they chat with friends ... anywhere in the world.

Fellowship in Kenya, it's the real thing.

In the developing world, church is real for many families and their young people; not a club or a meeting or a box being checked as it has become for much of the developed world.  If it doesn't make a difference, they don't have time or energy to waste pretending.  They work together and help each other.

Western Africa in the mountains, a Catholic
youth group helps the community rebuild
their crop areas.

On an African mountainside, I met a group of young folks from the local church.  They were renovating the garden areas for a small community.  They wanted to make a difference.

As I drove up to a friends home in a remote village in western Africa, in the shade under the house-on-stilts, two ladies sat and read the bible together and prayed for their children.  Give us today, bread, and deliver us from the evil we see every day.  It's real for them.  Is it real for us?  Tell the truth.

Time for us to change?  We change continually, or what we do becomes perhaps less relevant, less useful, or just ... less.

Skip a step or two?  Dump the process?  Start over from scratch?  Got a vision?
Leap out there, froggie!

The Adult Mind - Part III: The Vampire

The Vampire Mind

 - Blood-sucking as a lifestyle ...

How much blood can you suck out of an entire country?

University of Missouri economic historian and former Wall Street economist Michael Hudson explains, his job on Wall Street was to be the balance and payments economist for Chase Manhattan bank in the 1960s. His first job there was to calculate how much debt third world countries could pay, and the answer was, "‘Well, how much do they earn?’ And whatever they earned, that’s what they could afford to pay in interest. And our objective was to take the entire earnings of a third world country and say ‘Ideally, that would be all paid as interest to us.’”

In terms of magnitude of effect and the raw number of people harmed, finance leads the battle force.  Federal sanctions are bought by wealthy influencers for marketplace behavior that spills over onto the world.  The result?  The widening gap between rich and poor, the disappearance of a middle class, the decline of income for the majority ... and thousands die in the third world as a direct and attributable result of specific decisions made on Wall Street by less than 50 executives and in Washington by a few dozen more.

Question: how could a human being be so dull about their own choice to take from others?  In Part II, we saw a stage in preadolescence where the mind sees nothing but its own needs, feelings, desires, ....  Is that where these have stalled?  Arrested development, willing to take the food out of the hands of millions so they can themselves be rich and comfortable far beyond any reasonable measure?  Incredible.

The troubling corollary, that same self-centeredness is in us all.  Each of us has the opportunity early on to love ourselves alone or to love others as well.  If what we do is the measure of our success, it's perhaps clear to us and others if we understand at least that much.  Is there more?

Money problems:  In this morning's commercials, AIG says they've paid back everything they took from the American people.  And Merry Christmas.  Not true, of course. 

• We've recouped a portion of the bail-out costs, but the multi-trillion dollar loss in the U.S. marketplace came out of our collective savings.  The break-even timeline of six years to recover the losses only points out that we've lost six years of returns on investment.  
• The impact on the developing world was larger.  Those without savings to lose lost the ability to participate in the marketplace.  Wildly fluctuating prices moved wealth to the monied players while the working class lost ground, options, access, and ability to feed their families.

Does knowing such things require a different behavior from us?

The Adult Mind - Part I
The Adult Mind - Part II
The Adult Mind - Part IV

The Adult Mind - Part II

The centerpiece of understanding our self and others

Our Minds -- Until recently, we thought our minds were solidified early in childhood.  Now we recognize that brain and mind development must be understood in terms that reach far beyond the brain's structural changes and early stimulus.  Despite our variations of form and culture, we humans seem to walk an interestingly common pathway.

Curious what milestones we might watch for?   Our children begin with a beautifully innocent but narrow focus (1st order) that moves quickly, we're told, through impulse and self-interests (2nd) to the strange world of more people.

(3rd order) 
The 'Socialized Mind':  You're drawn to aligning yourself with others, living within the available roles, strongly influenced by what you believe others want to hear.  You trust the preferred authority, unlikely to question.   The great fear of the socialized mind is being disapproved by the group, perhaps especially by those whose approval we feel we need.

Not everyone moves on. Approximately half of the adult population settles down in that third order arrangement and rise no further. 

Moving onward though, we enter 4th order thinking, the self-authoring mind.  This is perhaps the destination we were reaching for when we talked about trying to 'find ourselves'. With our identity submerged in a culture of family and classmates and friends, it's difficult to see ourselves distinctly or with any clarity.  I remember; the self-awareness I had envisioned in college took a couple of decades, and everything changed yet again.

(4th order) 
The Self-Authoring Mind: You're able to objectively evaluate the opinions of others against your own.  The result is an independent self-authored identity.  

"Guided by their own internal compass, such a person then becomes subject to his or her own ideology.  These individuals tend to be self-directed, independent thinkers."  

This is where you legitimize yourself, your philosophy, your theology, your reason for being. You've reached for it for so many years; arrival is a peaceful descent into clarity on so many fronts. You find yourself quite comfortable with folks who think differently.

In the course of life, you'll hold the surrounding social context at a distance.   Your concerns will include falling short of your own standards or being managed by others’ expectations.  This is perhaps a return to the clarity of a child's mind.

Approximately 35% of the adult population reach this plateau of development.
  
(5th order) 
The Self-Transforming Mind: This is the highest or perhaps last level of consciousness in Kegan's model, self-aware and able to regard multiple contexts simultaneously and compare them, being wary of any single one.  Your questions would include, “What am I missing?”, “How can my outlook be more inclusive?”

Your concerns would include complacency regarding your own identity or thinking you'd finally “learned it all”.

Less than perhaps 1% of the adult population is at this level of development.  

It's worth noting that Dr. Kegan's model defines stages of mental complexity.  These sequentially mastered stages are not about higher intelligence or IQ, nor are the more complex stages intrinsically “better”.  What they represent are five levels, distinguished by progressively more complex ways of thinking.  The milestones are arbitrary, change is irregular, nonlinear, and multivariate.  Children are often observed running back and forth across these boundaries, as though reaching for something more.  And it is a theory, of course.  

This offers us a fascinating theoretical perspective; perhaps helpful in our efforts to understand one another and ourselves.  

 What have you noticed along the way? 

• The question concluding The Adult Mind - Part I was, "If we weren't worried about profits and wealth, and about coming out on top, would we be different?"  It suggest the common business context is pre-stage-3; and perhaps our business and government leaders alike are just poorly developed preadolescents.  

• So what might it suggest to us as adults when we're told, "except you become like a little child ...."?  
• Is there something we can actually grasp and do with that?  
• Ever heard a 4th order plan and conclusion being laid out by a five year old?  
• I have; it is stunning.  :)
• Essential takeaway: progress is triggered by continued learning!  Study for the rest of your life.  There is so much we don't yet understand.  The greatest hurdle is caring enough about the goal.

Thanks and a hat-tip to psychologist Dr. Robert Kegan.  Building on the work of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, William Perry, and others, Kegan gives us at least a partial view of cognitive development that defines these five stages of mental complexity or “orders of mind”.   

The Adult Mind - Part I

A young boy sees his grandpa-friend, seated on the couch across the crowded room. Eye-contact and smiles are immediate, and he runs excitedly through the obstacle course of people-legs and furniture and throws himself into the waiting arms, laughing and bubbling with stories of his recent bug encounters and preschool adventures.

In western Africa, my friend and his son enjoy a simpler world
than most; love and happiness despite difficult circumstances.

Love and affection, trust and acceptance, sparkling delight in sharing his life; all illustrate for us the child's mind and heart.

Adults have learned that there are more pressing matters. Have I dressed appropriately? Am I interrupting something? Did I remember to lock the car? Will I be received among these folks? I need to go to the grocery store later, and I need to get the leaves raked, and tomorrow is a work day, and I still have Christmas shopping to finish, and the sequester has really messed up my office; I hope I have a job at the end of the year. I need to greet those folks; it's been too long, and it's not comfortable ... and ...

There's perhaps a balance between the freedom of a child's heart and the weight of responsibility an adult carries. The common constraints of adulthood, however, are not the solution. The accumulation of concerns we take upon ourselves far exceed our personal capacity, and anxiety follows along with discouragement, and perhaps despair. We are neither the solution nor the responsible agent as adults. There is a larger world filled with more than we know.

It might be helpful to take advantage of the instruction we're given, even as adults. Don't be anxious over things, we're told. Consider the lilies who don't plant crops or harvest them. The birds too; they model a different thinking. Is there a practical, realistic way to make use of that? Is contentment available?

It's worth our notice; of all the creatures on earth, only one consumes more than it needs. Only one seems obsessed with 'more'.

C.S. Lewis was an interesting fellow as much for himself as for his writings.

Pastor Tim Keller of New York says his wife had always been a huge Lewis fan, “beating me over the head with his books.” At age 12 she wrote to Lewis to tell him she was one of his few fans, and he responded — four times. The last letter from him arrived 11 days before he died.

“I wrote thinking I would console the man and tell him he had at least a few admirers, not knowing he was huge,” she said. “He was so gracious.” 

As with many authors, Lewis’ fame came after his death. But even while he was alive, an estimated 90 percent of his income went to charity.

From his publisher; “There was a level of authenticity. He wasn't flying in jets, or showed signs of getting rich off of his books,” said Mickey Maudlin, senior vice president of HarperOne, who became a Christian by reading Lewis’ “Surprised by Joy” at 21 years old. “I wonder what he might have been tempted to say if he was worried about profits.”

... which brings us back to the child's perspective. If we weren't worried about profits and wealth and coming out on top, would we be different? Would we do our part differently. Can we take the instruction of a loving father and be blessed by living out our lives as he offers?

I tell you the truth, except you change and become like a child, you will not be able to enter that realm for which you search so fervently.