25 December 2013

The 21st Day


As it is often said this time of year, “‘Tis the season,” but for what?  That is where the debate begins, which for most of us is contained by a sense of inclusion and tolerance, allowing each our own varied beliefs and expressions of glad tidings. For others who subscribe to the paranoid delusion of the great “War on Christmas,” this season is probably much like the rest of their year: wrapped in anger toward, and suspicion of, those unlike themselves.  Regardless of such dispositions, however, the holidays are, once again, being faithfully celebrated according to our particular ritualized mysticisms and traditions whose origins are often unknown or forgotten, but always pursued with a genuine spirit of conviction. 
In spite of our different interpretations and traditions, everyone in the northern hemisphere can enjoy the slow walk toward the light; that turn on the 21st day of December when the days reverse their slide into darkness and emerge, once again, to light.  It is the day when our southern neighbors send the sun back our way; no doubt reluctantly, but with the certainty of the universe providing every assurance that the cold days will continue for now, but that spring will arrive once again.  This is our distinct advantage: we get to ring in the New Year with a sense of promise accompanied by the ascent of light, rather than a slide toward darkness. 
Over the millennia the relationship of the sun to the earth has provided its own spiritual compass.  In the history of upright humans it is easy to argue that more have worshipped the sun than have worshipped modern gods and icons.  And, notwithstanding the recurring invocation of certain apocalyptic endings tied to the winter solstice by modern Biblical soothsayers (as we observed in 2012 with the prediction of such finality on December 21), the planetary/solar marriage has served its true believers well.  This marriage once guided whole civilizations and, perhaps because of the sun’s reliable behavior (save a few threatening eclipses), observances of the sun and other planets found humans in a relatively peaceful toil without nearly as much judgment, condemnation, or violence as modern religions have spawned.
And so this we northern-earthers share in late December: a turn toward the light (lower case “l” intended).  Whether our chosen spiritual leaders teach us to believe in one god or many, whether we light candles or believe a fat guy with a beard makes it down our chimney, none of our practices can affect the long shadow cast by the sun and the power it holds over our lives.  Everything else is a matter of reason and faith formed in the pathways of education, experience, socialization, and indoctrination, which as resolute as they can be are no match for the earth and the sun and their durable dance.  There is, however, one more thing you can count on as this solstice heralds the beginning of a new year: yourself.
Once the trappings of celebration and traditions find their way back to their boxes and closets, you will be left with that person staring back at you in the mirror. Society has taught us to dislike what we see, so that we might respond to the deluge of resolution-based advertisements and advice vendors and endeavor to change who we are to fit today’s idealized version of humankind.  There is, however, another choice: start 2014 by liking that person in the mirror.  After all, you have to live with you whether you like you or not—why not like yourself?  Then, seek mastery over your life on your own terms while limiting your engagements to those that allow you a sense of humility, peace, and grace.  Do not pretend.  I promise you that this practice will serve you well.  Its own spirit is captured in my favorite poem, penned in 1875 by the British poet William Ernest Henley.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Best wishes to all in the New Year.

07 August 2013

The Silent Coup


If you are a fan of the maxim “no news is good news” then you are probably having a delightful summer.  Compared to the screeching vitriol of the summer of 2012 that preceded the presidential election, this summer is one of the quietest I can remember. So far we have had Morsi’s ouster in Egypt which, lets admit it, is little more than a summer sequel to Egypt Spring: Bye-bye Hosni.  Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin is the only thing people have been truly vexed about, and that is because journalists (both accredited and faux) twisted the story in so many directions that everyone was able to be furious about something.  Then there was NBC’s recent lead news item: “‘Rip Van Roker’: Al oversleeps, misses a show for first time in 39 years.” Yawn.  Pun intended.  The lack of exciting news may, however, be an illusion.  More, much more, may be going on than the newsers know (or are capable of discerning).  A coup—albeit bloodless and silent—may be underway.

What is newsworthy and largely unnoticed by those who continue to masquerade as journalists, is what is not happening in Washington DC.  Here I pick up on the themes and observations in my posts “American Empire (?): The Way Forward” (December 27, 2011) and “The Re-emergence of Personal Sovereignty” (June 25, 2012).  Evidence of what I described as big “workarounds” that, I argued, were the key to the successful reinvention of America and Americans, is now everywhere, except Washington DC.  The 113th Congress is no better than the 112th, today’s Supreme Court has proven a parody of judgment, and the Obama administration is largely wandering about with a map that has no roads, no contours, nor even a compass rose. The three branches of our Federal government are gnarled and withered—unable to bear even the lightest load.  And yet, the rest of America is rising, slowly but steadily, from the peril that George Packer so brilliantly illustrated in The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

Most families, many communities, some cities, and a few states have figured out their futures without the prospect of relying on the Federal government.  The Feds aren’t even a part of the conversation (which should scare them to death if they had even a modicum of awareness).  On the fiscal front, Americans (but not America) have cleansed their balance sheets of debt and are re-establishing principles of self-restraint and prudence.  The days of avarice are fading in the rearview mirror.  Self-reliance, generosity, and community are verbs again.  Bloomberg reports “Americans … have more readily available funds to cover what they owe. Household liquid assets—financial
assets excluding pension and insurance reserves—rose by $10 trillion in the past four years, and the ratio of coverage for liabilities is 2.43, the highest since 2000.”[1]  In another comprehensive study by Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley of the Brookings Institution, they find that
A revolution is stirring. In the face of supersized economic and social challenges, American cities and metros are stepping up and doing the hard work to grow jobs and make their economies more prosperous. With Washington and many states mired in partisan gridlock, networks of metropolitan heads – elected officials for sure but also corporate, civic and university leaders – are reaching across partisan and jurisdictional divisions to reshape their economies, remake their places and prepare their workers for a more competitive world.[2]
Further evidence is found in communities all across America where “Community Supported Agriculture” and “Community Supported Arts” are generating even more “Community Supported _____” organizations that promote the production and consumption of local goods and services.[3]

Unbeknownst to our national leaders and the media that manically follow them, the same type of individuals Tocqueville celebrated in Democracy in America in the early 19th century are in the process of reinventing America from the bottom up—at the local level.  They are the real and viable alternative to the concoction of platitudes and vicissitudes our national leaders spew to convince us of their indispensability. Those national leaders, who believe they are the technocrats and plutocrats in whom we should trust our welfare, might want to look beyond the Beltway.  When they do, they will realize they are being quietly subverted by a once, and now again, powerful people.  People who march forward every day beyond the sightline of the everywhere-yet-nowhere media.


[1] Shobhana Chandra and Steve Matthews, “Americans With Best Credit in Decades Drive U.S. Economy,” August 5, 2013, www.bloomberg.com.
[2] Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley, “Embracing the Metropolitan Revolution,” July 16, 2013, www.metrorevolution.org.
[3] Randy Kennedy, “’Buy Local’ Gets Creative,” August 4, 2013, www.nytimes.com.

24 April 2013

Six Words to Write on the Wall


Scholars identify crises as periods when outlier economic events (extreme data points) and social and political polarity (absence of a center or consensus) prevail over what had been considered the normative state.  Economic, social, and political order is in peril.  Stated otherwise, weirdness reigns.  As an Eisenhower baby I am old enough to remember a fair amount of tumult, but the outliers and polarity today seems more pronounced and durable.  Someday historians will turn the current noise blaring at us from all directions into something melodic and lyrical, but when you are in the midst of the milieu it sounds more like a kid performing at their first violin recital. We grit our teeth and brace ourselves until the tortuous fraying of the bow ceases.  What does this chorus of noise mean?  What do the various crises emanating from the political, economic, and cultural spheres portend for you and me?  How should we respond to these events?  What should we expect of others and ourselves?  Even more importantly, what does it suggest about how we should conduct our lives vis-à-vis the purposes and aims that define who we are? Is our destiny still even ours?
            To assure that our destiny remains in our control we must first embrace the notion that crisis is good.  It is like the fire in the forest that is both devastating in the moment and essential for the future of its eco-system.  Crisis on a systemic level allows a cleansing of the detritus that has built up from years of traditional thinking codified to protect the status quo and, unfortunately, compromise our future.  What once was thought to maintain stability—like a money supply untethered from the gold standard—may mark the next tipping point toward systemic entropy.  Crisis, however, creates new spaces and resources for new actors to create and innovate.  It is like rebooting your computer: the operating system remains intact while the application software is disentangled from the remnants of prior tasks.  That is not to say crises are thoroughly cleansing; some of the rubbish remains, and that which does will fight mightily to do so.  We need look no further than some of the blowhards in politics and media to recognize this.  Yet, to succeed in our particular purposes and aims, we must take what space and opportunities arise and run through newly opened doors toward our future.
            Embracing crisis as a liberating force also allows us to learn from past crises so that we might identify words, themes, and modalities we should employ to survive and prosper, or at least find a measure of tranquillity, if not a state of grace.  Reviewing the history of past crises while also surveying the current political, economic, and cultural landscape leads me to suggest there are six words or themes to write on the wall to guide us in answering the question, how should we conduct ourselves today?[1]
1.     Authentic.  Keep it real, and keep it true. During recovery from crises there is not enough slack in the system to reward work that is almost right.  Only the real stuff wins.  Like most people, I appreciate irony, but too often today irony is worn in much the same way as a teenage girl wears eye shadow; more comical than alluring.  Yet when properly considered the object of irony—exposed in relief—reveals authenticity. The question is, what is the fundamental value expressed in its simplest form?  Seek to produce values that are pervasive and durable throughout the system, product, policy, or personal regimen.  Once identified, set them like cornerstones to support everything you do. 
2.     Resilient.  Here is a not-so-newsy flash: you, your family, your company, your community, your city, and your country will suffer a blow or blows as we unwind from the current crises in the chaotic and messy climb toward a new more settled state.  Crises, like forest fires, are indiscriminate.  Even if you avoid catastrophic damage, collateral damage is a certainty.  Many herald schemes of sustainability and independence, but they are just part of this larger objective of resilience.  To survive we must have the ability to bounce back.  In our personal lives, this means we have to be mentally and physically fit, and have access to sufficient financial and human resources.  On the human relations aspect, trust others as Machiavelli might: expect them to consider their own interests first—always ahead of yours.  But, have go-to folks that can bolster your efforts in those areas where they are stronger than you.  Take personal responsibility for your lot, however you define it.  When the blow comes take the hit, dust yourself off, and get ready to hit back.  Make yourself a hard target.
3.     Gonzo.  Just when you thought this was going to be a treatise on conservative realism, I invoke the late Hunter S. Thompson.  In shorthand, gonzo means that you should write all the rules down so you know what not to do.  Channel your inner Hunter, er Gonzo.  The vast majority of rules, frameworks, policies, and structures were adopted to protect those in power, not to protect or serve you.  Moreover, in a post-crisis world, they don’t work in your favor even if you were one of their yesteryear authors.  In the ascent from crisis, those who set aside tradition and define their world in their own terms will be profoundly successful and yes, much happier.  When you face the inevitable admonishment “you can’t do that” or “that isn’t allowed,” simply respond: watch me.
4.     Transcendent.  Rise above the rabble.  Don’t be drawn into the muck of ignorance that is so-often the marker of organizations and factions whose survival depends on the condemnation of opposing perspectives.  This is the basis of my objection to organized religion—particularly monotheistic religions—that advocate intolerance as a by-product of their own survival impulse.  The prevailing principle of these groups is, “if you don’t believe as we do you are wrong and will be subjected to our wrath.”  Political parties employ the same thinking.[2]  Be wary of ideologies and theologies that practice judgment and condemnation.  They are debilitating.  Retain your free will.  Read often and deeply; look for character, structure, and meaning.  Pursue knowledge beyond your comfort zone.  What does the artist know or do that might benefit the scientist?  This is the best way to nurture the power of an opposable mind.  An opposable mind is always open to new ideas that create solutions no one else has thought of.
5.     Stealth.  Several years ago I wrote an essay wherein I argued the next frontier—after my father’s frontier of space—was the frontier of anonymity.  It was based on the notion of harnessing the benefits of digital technologies, in particular, networks, to operate in a seamless and borderless manner to master the theoretically endless benefits of globalism.  All of this would be conducted in an anonymous manner where code and avatars replaced our traditional analog identities.  In many respects today, we are headed exactly in that direction as the anonymity of 1s and 0s dominate our commerce and communications.  Aliases have become the norm.  However, there are other aspects of anonymity—of a stealth existence—that have value beyond the ability to tweet your every thought behind an opaque hash tag.  High profiles are dangerous in periods of crisis and in the period of objectivism that follows in America’s historical four-phase life cycle (crisis—objectivism—radicalism—idealism).  Humility and self-restraint are clearly preferable to hubris.  There are many people who enjoy health, wealth, and happiness who never stick their head in front of the camera. Be like them.
6.     Grace.  There are many definitions and interpretations of grace, so let me start by suggesting the grace I write about here is when the proper balance of virtues are combined with other elements and resources to produce something beautiful.  A state of grace then is the modality that produces beauty, whether it is an object, product, service, idea, or writing.  Pierre-Auguste Renoir often argued that the most durable things in the world are those that are beautiful.  Grace is the capacity to bring everything together in such a way that people say wow that is beautiful, or amazing, or just plain cool.  I am suggesting here that grace is when you bring authenticity, resilience, gonzo, transcendence, and stealth together in just the right way to assure your destiny—which is indeed a truly beautiful thing.  Then, you are in a state of grace.
As we emerge from this period of crisis and enter a new period of objectivism, I expect those who seek grace through the careful application of these ‘six words written on the wall’ will retain a handhold on their destiny.  The fate of others will be chosen for them.


[1] The words and themes presented here all have their basis of research and argument found in prior posts at ameritecture.blogspot.com.  Please peruse the archive for more substantive material on these six ideas including references to reading material.
[2] In my recent reading of memoirs from members of the George W. Bush administration, I have found an overwhelming sense of certitude that appears to have been the proximate cause of what I call sclerotic decision making. 

23 January 2013

In Praise of Disorder


Although we humans have an inherent need to reconcile the world we live in so that we might ameliorate any measure of maddening dissonance between our beliefs, our aspirations, and the brutal realities thrust upon us, the truth is our world is a messy and chaotic place that progresses through random events.  Many of those events are originated by the few among us who engage in what Yale’s James C. Scott recently described as thoughtful disobedience.  Anarchism, he argues, is alive and well throughout both the developed and developing world and can be credited with much of the progress we herald as great.  At times, Scott illustrates, anarchism is expressed as acts of insubordination – both large and small – that alter our world.  Small, like students tromping a new path through the well-groomed grass of a university quadrangle that is later made ‘official’ by being paved with concrete once grounds crews realize that reseeding the preferred route is a fool’s task, and large like Rosa Parks act of defiance on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 that gave rise to the civil rights movement, which resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Official order, largely conjured to protect those in power, is no match for what Scott describes as “vernacular order” that is claimed, expressed, and maintained by the “petty bourgeoisie.”[1] 
Disorder, in Scott’s interpretation, is the necessary condition of progress; without it we would be staking our future on official committees that at birth lack the necessary chromosomal attributes to produce anything at all that might be considered new or better.  For example, as we reflect on great accomplishments in education (KIPP Academies), technology (iPhone), and medicine (stem cell research), each were advanced by one or a few people working against official order including well-funded adversaries with access to seemingly overwhelming political power.  And yet, working in the ether of disorder, they have prevailed and created new models of success for others to follow.  Scott’s message is worth serious consideration while our politicians, corporate titans, central bankers, Davos elite, and the jester-pundits that dance in their vaporous wake, fight over the microphone in a gratuitous attempt to persuade us that our future flows through them.  Disorder, not the order inferred by institutions, norms, and opinion polls is the incubator of greatness.  Although many of us, myself included, appreciate President Obama’s recent clarion call for togetherness in his second inaugural address, the quest for the benefits of common interest and collective action – rooted (as he argued) in the words of the Declaration of Independence – must be preceded by the inspirations of the few among us who find no trepidation in ignoring official order that is guarded by the vapid sentries of banality.[2]  Indeed, those who penned the Declaration itself rejected the order of the day.  The togetherness that followed and gave birth to a new nation was also courageous, but absent the impetus born of inspiration and insubordination in the oft-maligned chaos of disorder, the United States would have never come into being.
The benefits of disorder are further substantiated in the work of Nicholas Nassim Taleb.  His thesis, which has been developed in his books Fooled by Randomness (2001), The Black Swan (2007), and Antifragile (2012) argues that the world advances largely by events that no one – especially those who live in the trappings of official order – see coming, but which have profound effects on financial markets and the societies we call our own.  The strategic implications are, he argues, quite obvious: seek an antifragile state of being in order to gain from volatility and disorder, which is predominant (and always has been) in the world in which we live.  The great model, which both Scott and Taleb use as a referent for their monikers of anarchism and antifragility, is nature itself, which is the most antifragile system in the world, constantly adapting to, and benefiting from, volatility and disorder.  How to become antifragile starts with accepting that the world does not function according to the theories and models taught in most academic institutions that seek to provide their students with tools to fit the world inside of a box constructed from magical (and tenured!) thinking.  Then, structure an autonomous life disconnected from systemic risk by, for example, eliminating debt.  Seek not just resilience – the capacity to recover from the inevitable shocks that occur – but aim to benefit from the volatility and disorder that crushes the fragile.  In effect, win the game before others even realize it has begun.
The great work-arounds that I wrote about here in December 2011, and regaining personal sovereignty, which I wrote about in June 2012, are emblematic of disorder-friendly modalities.  One must simply ignore the silliness of those who claim that by virtue of their position or birthright they are worthy of our attention … that we ought to follow them without questioning first the very source of their presumed power.  If it originates from beyond their own personal intellect and character, we should turn our faces away and treat them as a nuisance of distraction while we pursue our own ambitions and dreams under the counsel of our own hard-won sensibilities.  There exist innumerable stories throughout history of how individuals changed the course of history while there are very few (if any) that can be credited to those who claim the mantle of official order.  It is in our power – as antifragile anarchists – to change our world.

           
           


[1] James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 30, 84.
[2] A transcript of Obama’s second Inaugural Address can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barack-obama.