It was a great day for America

I want to talk about Jan 6th, 2021 and the storming of the capitol building in Washington.   But I'm going to start by telling you about my back pain.

I'm on the older side of being a young person, and as with many people, I wake up with a stiff back frequently.  I have to be careful in the morning not to push it too hard (bend deeply, twisting fast moves) lest I put it 'out'.  It's an annoyance and one I've grown used to.  But I don't do anything about it - I don't visit my doctor or a physiotherapist to address it, I just accept back pain and stiffness as a part of life.  I don't like it, but there you go - I've gotten used to it.

I was dealing with Trumpism the same way, I didn't like it, I knew it was wrong and damaging, but largely choose to ignore it versus tackling it head on. For what it's worth, I think there's a difference between conservative values traditionally embraced by US Republicans and Trumpism, he was an outlandish fringe and neither consistently conservative or stable.   Trumpism brought out the worst instincts and reactions in people like Cruz, McConnell and others with the lure of electability.

Life is funny though, anyone that plays the fool for too long, often becomes the fool.  You can't deny reality and expect no consequences, and so embracing the darker elements of his movement and instilling them to action for him was bound to turn out badly.  And it did on Jan 6th. 

Now, there are consequences.  Like the child that throws the tantrum, or the drinking binge that lands you in jail, this too crossed the line - that line that was pushed and stretched oh so very far over the past 5 years as society's norms and expectations were trodden over for attention grabbing stunts.   But it almost needed to happen, for the accountability due to this fool to actually occur.  If he'd gone quietly into the night, and behaved reasonably, then we'd have new thresholds for abuse of power in government.  This way the clarity around the idea he should never hold elected office again is in many people's minds, his foes and former supporters alike.  He crossed the line.   And the impeachment, the accountability isn't just about the Capitol, its about the last 4 years all-told, the sum of idiocy that the man brought down on the good name of his country for vanity, power, money or just attention.  I don't understand his 'why', and it'll be a feature of literature for years to come I suspect.

When I put my back out and am hobbled, I'm going to get medical attention and have it fixed.  Jan 6th was that day for America, the long needed final straw and thank goodness it finally arrived as the motivation for long needed action to happen.  It was a great day for America.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start your Engines

In Formula One auto racing the cars start from a grid layout while standing still, and as you can imagine it gets REALLY LOUD just before the final light turns green and all the racers set off.  Mayhem ensues.  There are full throttle cars manoeuvring, side-swiping (and avoiding side-swiping) and as a result crashing, and careening off one another.  All are jockeying for position.  It's a mess, performed under the guise of sports entertainment.  But it isn't unexpected.  It's a mess as you have all the cars and teams executing starting strategies differently.  

An orchestrated mess. And it reminds me of the economy.

Each car/team represents a market segment (the auto industry, natural resources, big-tech, and more -  insert the industry you work in here) and more often that not, they want consumers to do different things and act in different ways.  As a result they manoeuvre, side-swipe and react to competitive and market pressures to avoid side-swiping their target markets and as a result crash, and careen off one another.  All are jockeying for position.  

Governments provide the rules and paths and as there is rarely a holistic master plan, the rules usually don't account for other industries' situations well - which is why we have industrial pollution loopholes, and radio spectrum overlap (turn off your cell phones now, we're coming in for landing) amongst two overly simple examples.  Special interest groups emerge to push for their their aims first above others - drilling in wildlife reserve, or funding for charter schools.  Too many vested interests to list.

This is life as we were used to it.  Chaotic, and hard to track.  We have economists who try to make sense of it all and even they don't all agree on everything going on. More debt, less debt, high interest rates to stimulate growth, or lower to curb inflationary worries.  Clear as mud, right ?

Now, let's revisit the Formula One starting grid metaphor for a moment.  The real difference between the economy normally and this car racing phenomena is that standing start, as the economy is ongoing, perpetual and probably tracks closer to the cycle of lap times metaphorically than a start/stop moment in time.  

But.  (Go back to the previous paragraph and note the word "normal").

Our economy has been largely standing still due to the virus.  We are asking ourselves questions like - 'will life ever go back to the way it was?' Vast numbers of unemployed people, massive government stimulus packages put us in a tenuous position.

Truth is that this all will require strong economic growth engines and re-energizing economies for governments to re-charge their coffers.  My crystal ball says we are about to enter an economic period that parallels a 1950's era western post-war rebuilding effort.  And the beneficiaries of this will be those well positioned to get off the starting line quickly.  Those organizations that have fast plans to take the lead, and go green, go sustainable, and capture new customers.  The survivors of the long winter in commercial real-estate, aviation and tourism industries are poised for fantastic growth.  So, sell that Zoom stock, because ladies and gentlemen, with multiple vaccines now beginning to be administered, it's time to start your engines.

 

A New Year Beckons

 A new year denotes change, and that is desperately needed.  Understatement accomplished, let's move on.

Beyond the news cycle and constant covid updates, we are back to the turning to the new year, and all the hope, idealism and more that this always means.  We will make resolutions with the best of intentions (or not) drunk and sober.  We will pledge to lose weight, fall in love, fall into shape, or fall into a new job, relationship, or situation. But the reality of this new year shouldn't be lost on us.  Too often life complicates our ability to achieve our desires - the job was hectic, the schedule allowed us no time, or we weren't financially in the right place to save for that big dream.  Of course this year is different, we will still be looking for new work, or stuck in our home offices with endless meetings.  

So how to make your new year resolutions come true ?  

Make a plan.  It's honest to goodness that easy.

The resolution is the "what", and while it's always fun to dream up new "whats", the truth is that was never going to be challenging bit.  The hard part is the "how".

I'm a personal fan of this structure - 'Objectives, Strategies and Actions'.  It allows for clarity of direction, a pathway that can be changed, and the opportunity to make some mistakes or mis-steps.  That last part of pretty important, as I need the ability to fall off the wagon without throwing away the whole thing.    Let's break this down:

Objective:  that's your resolution itself.  Lose 10 lbs, stop eating sugar (my own), meet new people, or learn latin...whatever you want to do.

Strategy:  This is the macro-plan.  Let me illustrate - I'll remove refined sugar from my daily intake by understanding what it's contained in, and find substitutes for those things.  I know directionally this will mean prepping more food I'll eat later, and avoiding some favorite temptations.   Your strategy might be to schedule time for the gym, or a nite out, or give/toss the bottles you have in the house to a friend.

Actions:  This is the day to day stuff we will each do that aligns to our strategy.  So when I go shopping for food (an action), I won't buy cookies or ice-cream. Another action would be to prep some snacks as I'm prone to grazing while I work.  Your actions would also support your strategy, as applicable.  What happens if I cave in and eat sugar-coated sugar treats one-day ?  Well the action that may have prevented it didn't work, and I understand that, and don't try that same action and expect a different result.  The plan remains intact, and I learn from this and move on.

That's my plan, and I've given some thought to the how.

What's yours? 

  

 

Balance in Societies - Weapons v Freedoms

Freedom is perhaps the most misconstrued word in the english language.

Freedom to me can be the ability to do without something, and to you it might be the capacity to have the very same thing.  We can both scream and claim our need (and rights?) for freedom on the very same topic, and be 180 degrees apart on a subject, black and white, right and wrong.

Freedom means choice, or not being controlled in the sense we hear it used frequently in the debate over weapons in society.  But it doesn't infer, directly support, anecdotally mean or even imply one choice over the other, it is by definition the nature of having choice. Nothing more.

The history of our political gatherings, both as tribes and nations has meant most have been fraught at some point with periods of tyranny and oppression, with one person or a small group trying to impose their will on a larger group.  (It says much about about us that this political pattern keeps repeating, and we don't seem to learn from it).  In this context, freedom is often embraced as the ideal of throwing off the yoke of oppression to be able to rule ourselves, and hence the first and second contexts of the word "freedom" are often mixed up, and used interchangeably when discussing freedoms around weapons.

A modern open society, built on a framework of laws, created by publicly accountable, elected individuals who serve at the public's request are tasked with maintaining order.  While there is often some element of crime or disorder in a society, by and large its considered manageable enough that we still defer to the mandate of society to enforce order, while doing smaller, personally-motivated things (like locking the car door in a public place).  The consequence of that is that citizens in many places have the ability to have the freedom (read: choice) to not own weapons that would otherwise be needed to maintain order.  They have outsourced that to society at large that they live within. 

This is where it gets interesting I think.  Where that faith in one's political structures doesn't exist, where I as a citizen don't believe that order today and tomorrow can be maintained in the political structures we make a choice. In that situation I may decide that the same freedoms (read: choice) inferred on me in that same society allow me to second guess society's ability to manager order, and hence I'll arm myself with weaponry to provide a degree of personal confidence that order can be maintained.  The implication is that if society can't manage order, then I can still look after myself.  They are 'an insurance policy' in that sense, and driven from insecurities.

Both of these perspectives are understandable as human responses,  and both are arguably legitimate use of freedom, but neither create more or less freedom, or are done in the name of freedom.  A weapon is a tool, designed to make a task easier to accomplish, in the same way a shovel assists us should be we need to create a hole in the dirt.

But here's the challenge with the pro-weapon argument I think.   Dynamite is also a tool that might be used to create a hole in the dirt.   It has specific use-cases (mining), but isn't something most of us might use to plant a rose bush in our garden.  That's because it has the capacity to create significantly more damage/impact that a another tool for the same task might make. So the utility element of the tool needs to be weighed against both it's effectiveness to perform the function and its' potential to cause other damage, hence there are laws in societies around the personal use of household dynamite.  The same rules apply to gun ownership in many cases, for exactly the same rationale, especially 'assault weaponry'.  My need to hunt a deer doesn't extend to dealing with a special forces attack squad of deer.  The tools' capacity for harm in a society is outweighed by its utility to create unnecessary harm in society.

Freedom (and the need for it) as an excuse to own personal weapons that could cause significant negative impact isn't valid.  The argument itself and intermingling of the concepts of freedom are also disingenuous and transparently incorrect.  While those are true statements,  there is some context here.  Where one's society is at risk, and effective governance isn't in place - think about Syria today, or the wild west of North America 150 years back - then the risk may warrant the response.  But the gun control argument isn't being held in those situations, its being held with your neighbour today. Guns don't equal freedom, and never have.

Childhood's End

I've borrowed the name from one of my top three favourite books, an Arthur Clarke jewel that outlines a tremendous change in the world that forces everyone to re-assess every preconceived notion they have.

The idea is present in more than just fiction, historical dramas sometimes refer to this occurrence too - the time to grow up as a people, often forced and usually against our will. Change is always hard. In wartime or other great stresses on a society we are forced to very seriously address the situation we face.  These are events or times when we leave our childhood, our complacencies and innocence behind.  I think as time goes on, we're entering another of these with the virus. A time when we will separate into those that act on what's best for us all, vs. their own self interest.  As I wrote about recently, it's my opinion that the "me-centric self-centeredness" was one of the least desirable outcomes of the positive and plentiful times that we have lived in 'pre-virus'.  In that sense, the virus has addressed an imbalance in how we have viewed our own position vis a vis others and taken society's benefits for granted.

And now it's over.  Now we have seen literal life and death choices being made - despite our advances, technologies and connectedness.  And now we are seeing the world start to re-open, and some complainers argue it's not fast enough.  But let's at least be honest with ourselves - we can't go back, we can't reclaim our complacency.  We need to be a little smarter and more adult about our immediate future.

We are facing hard choices, defining choices, and it will result in a seriousness about our greater situations.  At least I hope it will.   Our willingness as a species to take advantage of one another over a dollar, or food, or water or a job should be reassessed.  We need to understand that we are a village, and have to be both independent in our communities (for enough ventilators, PPE, and health care services), and willing to help when those outside our communities that need it.  In hindsight, what if we had all pitched in and helped China contain and defeat this thing ?

Babies are self absorbed until they learn about others through communication and socialization.  We adults can no longer afford to be.

It Takes a Village

Times are unprecedented to say the least.  We are all starting to feel that on a personal level.  It's rather alarming that some deaths in 'other places' and a week self isolated can change our world, but it seems to, when bound together with tangible fear for ourselves, each other and our way of life.

I'm going to suggest that this isn't all bad, in fact some aspects of it are a good thing.

Now, I'm either a very late Boomer, or an early Gen X'er, so understand that my perspective here is shaped by my age and the times I've lived through.  Your own perspective may well be different - that's cool, differences make for a richer mosaic. I'm not right, (and neither are you) we're just a couple voices.  The key I think is listening to the voices.

The stress our world is going through right now could well be a good thing, as we needed a big shock to get out us out of our "me-centric" complacency and attitudes, to reframe the idea we're a community (many in fact) and there's much mutual dependance.   Right now many of us are depending on the strangers that deliver food to our local stores, or provide media programming, or keep our intewebs working.  Chances are we don't actually know any of these folks.  But we're a community and so appreciate that they are working and risking to support us.   Normally we only see that in the police, firefighters and nurses, doctors and teachers, and don't imagine that your role or my role in society actually contributes, but it does.

Keep in mind, that in December or January or even February this year depending on where you live, these are the same strangers we cut off in traffic, or argued at online, or made disparaging comments about due to wage discussions, and the way their situations may have affected our own view of how the word treated us, treated me. "Why should teachers get paid so much...when I don't....they should all be fired."  We were pretty set in our ways, and the moves present in lots of places to elect divisive leadership that focused and leveraged our dissatisfaction with other groups and their perceived successes and ability to affect our lives, these reflected that.  Even today, conspiracy theories abound that the virus is being supported or 'done to us' in some nefarious plan.  Sigh.

Humans are social beings.  We look for inter-connections with others and have constructed our societies in this way.  In six to twelve months when the virus thing has shaken out,  it's my hope that we'll look at our connections to one another as the key, as our saving grace, and appreciate each other more.  If the virus kills off me-centricity, then that's one victim I won't mourn.

Frustration

This emotion has always been my achilles heel.   Our friends at Mirriam Webster define it this way - a deep chronic sense or state of insecurity and dissatisfaction arising from unresolved problems or unfulfilled needs.  I suppose that like a lot of people I'm a problem solver, or if this was a job interview and I was asked about a strength/weakness, I'd offer that I'm someone that prefers to be  prone to action.  I don't like just letting issues or problems sit, I'd like to solve them and move on.  The critical element there being the move on part. Bleeding? Get a bandaid and get on with it, business issue? resolve it or agree you can live with it and move forward.  You get the idea.

The challenge here as I'm sure is obvious to all, is that some issues aren't solvable, or at least not easily, or in a manner that many can agree on.  Politics, religion, families and job situations all come to mind.  So what happens when an unresolved issue just percolates and sits like a festering sore ?

A picture is worth a thousand words as they say. That's how it eventually feels for me.

Not everyone is like this of course, some of us can see the bright side, the glass is half full, and want us all to be true to ourselves and vulnerable about the changes and challenges we face.   When personally faced with a high degree of frustration, and I start hearing that, reading it or being exposed to it in some (asinine) online posting, I personally feel like I'd like to share the explosion a little more closely with them.  Which is why frustration is such a pain in the you-know-what, as most of us have enough of our own, that we don't want someone else's too.

I've thought a lot about the topic over the years, and have tended to reflect a little on the less shareable elements - the insecurity and unresolved issues parts.  Sure, a 'type A' personality that likes a controlled outcome has probably been motivated in some way towards that behaviour.  Type A's (or high "D" in a DISC sense- look it up) aren't born that way, they've grown to want these outcomes due to circumstances in their upbringing or experience.  Which is ironic in many senses as families and jobs/work can be a huge source of frustration.  Our psyche's are self fulfilling ?  Maybe.

I don't have an answer to frustration, (which is also funny), but do have an awareness towards the triggers for me or root causes of it as I've grown older, and find myself actively steering away from these. I don't think that reflects personal growth so much as awareness, with the latter being the first necessary step towards dealing with any problem. 

I offer this for a few reasons - I wanted to vent a little today; and I wanted to offer to the casual onlooker that if you feel I'm ignoring you, its actually probably how I'm dealing with you.  Not always, but sometimes.  I imagine that might be frustrating for you now that you realize it.