Gross

GNP, GDP, "Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm, nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."  ~Bobby Kennedy 

Success can be the enemy of a good life.  Too much focus on work and wealth can and will deprive us and others of the things that truly matter.  It may be years before we spot the damage.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course.  There are so many things that make up a meaningful life ... and all of them involve doing, usually for others.

Disagree?

My two-minute list; probably a hundred more if we thought about it.

Absolutely.
 You disagree with him.
   He disagrees with them.
     They disagree with me.
        Big deal. 

How many issues are there for us to disagree about?  

Plenty, obviously. Some are important, some not, and opinions vary about that too.

The important part of it all is sitting down with friends or family or with the community and graciously talking things through to a workable solution.

Some perhaps useful pieces:

Reaching for wisdom is not the same as reaching to win.
Having an opinion is not the same as knowing.
Attributing some rotten motive to another doesn't help.  Ever.

Doctrine is not the same as knowledge.
Justice is not the same as law.
'Equal' doesn't mean 'alike'.

Anyone's worldview and the real world will disagree.

A free market and a fair market are different.
Communism, socialism, capitalism, collectivism, and egalitarianism are all pretty much okay ideas, but the players can be a problem.

And, anyone's worldview will disagree with the real world.

Plenty to disagree about; true?

     In her office briefly on a business matter, I asked what she'd been doing lately. With just a little prodding, I got updates on her volunteer work with returning disabled veterans.  She'd arranged to completely furnish a home for this one fellow.  Furniture for the living room and dining room and kitchenware and curtains and a bedroom, a table and chairs with tablecloth and dishes ...  He'd come home to nothing at all, no home, no family, and she'd pulled donors together to make a welcoming place for him.   

     She lit up as she talked about it, and about the difference it had made.  She eventually admitted with some annoyance that she'd been nominated for 'woman of the year'.  The recognition wasn't what she wanted.  And none of the things we might disagree about came up in the conversation.  It's been like that for twenty years now.   (Connie, from my short list of  gutsy heros who understand what's important and what isn't.) 

Magic Words

How do you explain love to an infant?

At eleven months, little Ruby Marie discovered how to cover her eyes with her little hands and then emerge excitedly with a big smile and giggle.  Her mom laughs and applauds, "peek-a-boo!"  They both giggle and laugh and clap their hands, and then do it again.  And again and again.

Conversation with a preverbal infant ranks up among the most enjoyable of activities available.

There is an element of learning by mimicry, of course.  Children learn by doing with their parents.  From reading National Geographic and tieing shoes to cooking meals and car repairs, children learn by observation and participation alongside their mentors.

Beyond the manual skills arena, children learn the elements of interpersonal relationship and communication in precisely the same manner.  How to get along, how to discuss, how to negotiate, how to compromise, how to make rational decisions, ... all are initially learned by observation and participation.

Only 7% of what we communicate is in the words.  True? 

 True enough.

See Content and Context: 

It's worth remembering, there's much more than just the words.  What a child receives and gives in these entertaining exchanges is largely nonverbal, but it is hugely meaningful and richly complex.

Little Ruby may be pre-verbal, yet with no words at all, both mom and baby can express ...

• interest in the other, 
• enjoyment of their company, 
• pleasure in engagement, 
• happiness in being able to amuse each other, 
• affection, appreciation, affirmation,
• focused encouragement, directed interest,
• preferential differentiation (i.e., I like your company, this book, that window), 
• and an encompassing love.

Plowing through our adult lives with words and intellectual labors, struggling to explain or describe or quantify ... it's worth remembering that the difference between us and a server farm full of information machines is precisely illustrated by the smallest folks among us.

Conversation with a preverbal infant ranks up among the most instructive activities available.

Humanomics 101

This is the great battle.

You might appreciate The 'Why' of In-group Thinking

Grand Larceny

 

Thieves break through and steal.  Guess who!

Common theft costs us each about $38 a year. That's all the stolen cars, picked pockets, home break-ins, etc, averaged out across the U.S. population.

Employers steal more than that from their employees.  The ones most affected, the lower and minimum wage earners, illegally deprived of overtime pay for hours actually worked, denied benefits.  It's called 'wage theft'.

Wall Street is the really impressive winner among thieves.  In the 2007-08 grandiose theft, they took about $47,000 from every man, woman, and child in the U.S.  More damage done than 1,000 years worth of regular thievery by all those thieves we work so hard to prosecute and punish.

And guess how many Wall Streeters were prosecuted ... zero.
Of the 160,000+ Wall Street players, ... zero.
Of the CEOs and managers who knew precisely what they were doing, ... zero.

No prosecutions.
No firings.
Not so much as an apology.

CEOs who were in on the deal got mega-million dollar salaries.
Traders who made the transactions got multi-million dollar bonuses.
The companies that provided A+ ratings for junk got their payoff and went unpunished.

More than a million died from starvation in the first year, we're told, as the world marketplace took the hit.  Another 10,000 committed suicide.

• Steal a bag of groceries, go to jail.
• Steal billions from everybody in the country, get a bonus.
• Cause the deaths of a million people ...
• Maybe the bonuses were for ethic-less efficiency.

Senator Levin notes, “The overwhelming evidence is that those institutions deceived their clients and deceived the public, and they were aided and abetted by deferential regulators and credit ratings agencies who had conflicts of interest.”

The masterminds and executioners are unlikely to face immediate penalties. Eventually, certainly.  The death and loss were somewhat unintended, so the charges might be reduced to manslaughter (a million counts) and grand larceny (318 million counts).

Thanks and a hat tip to the U.S. Congress for legalizing Wall Street's play.  It used to be illegal gambling, but things changed at the insistence of big business.  No point in passing up those campaign contributions, and anyway, Greenspan promised it couldn't fail.  The troubling part, they were foolish (lacking in basic intelligence) enough to drink the kool-aid.  The fraud and carnage continue unabated.

It's perhaps not surprising that Congress can't even discuss economic inequality.  They apparently haven't a clue.

Happy Life

Curious where happy comes from?

The Middle East has long been a clash of ideologies.  There was this Turkish radical who made his way to Syria, Greece, and beyond, campaigning hard for individual and cultural change.

Among the elements of his liberal agenda, backfilling the gap for the poor and famine relief.  He would fundraise rather aggressively and oversee the assistance efforts personally or via trusted associates.

He spent 18 months in a city about halfway between Sparta and Athens.  Although it was years after the historical conflict, it was still an interesting place, I'm sure.

Like reformers before and since, he was fairly well received by common folks, but found himself in trouble with governments and the elite.  In Italy years later, it finally cost him his life, but he had a large audience by then.  He was passionate about his message, and many were caught up and changed by it.

His thoughts on happy living?  He quotes his mentor on the subject, that you'll be a lot happier if you give than if you don't, and perhaps even happier than those you help.  Kindness is priceless.

A  world-changer and help-bringer, he's made an impact on us and on our cultural values.  Today, his message is as relevant as it was when he first offered it to the first century church.  There's much more, of course.

Thanks, and a hat tip to Saul (aka, Paul) from Tarsus, Turkey.
Acts 20:35 is perhaps a place to start, if you're curious about the fellow.

Others have understood the importance of caring for those in need. Six centuries later, we hear, "The one who looks after a widow or a poor person is like a warrior who fights for God's cause, or like him who performs prayers all the night and fasts all the day."