Today I am thinking about how many times I have been thankful for a parking space at Trader Joe's (a local market), but not thankful for the food I purchase once inside the store.
I think about how thankful I am for a clear highway and lack of traffic on my way out somewhere, but I am not thankful for the destination that I am so eager to get to.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
i(solation)Pod
I have witnessed brief moments of people huddled around an iPod, or group of iPods, to compare and share their choices in music. Such moments are fun to watch and often interesting to listen to. Within this kind of moment, people are brought together through technology.
Communal iPod moments are short lived however. The basic nature of using an iPod is a solitary one. People have the power to tune out from the world and find comfort in their personal soundtracks. When given the opportunity, most high school students today tune out their teachers and fellow classmates to listen to their iPods. Is the gain from the comfort of solitude greater than having to reconcile the sounds of the world which surrounds us? What observations go unnoticed in the comfort of programming the familiar?
Communal iPod moments are short lived however. The basic nature of using an iPod is a solitary one. People have the power to tune out from the world and find comfort in their personal soundtracks. When given the opportunity, most high school students today tune out their teachers and fellow classmates to listen to their iPods. Is the gain from the comfort of solitude greater than having to reconcile the sounds of the world which surrounds us? What observations go unnoticed in the comfort of programming the familiar?
Saturday, May 3, 2008
We Are Living...
We are living in a crisis of the basics: food, diet, fuel / energy, housing, health care, education, employment, government, our economy and the environment. (This list is incomplete. Add to it what you will - time, family, guidance...) None of these problems are new. Our Crisis of the Basics is the vanishing point where all of these individual problems pull together into perspective. These problems are related; they are so grossly intertwined that it is difficult to determine just how tangled these issues are. A solution for one problem does not necessarily solve any other problems. Often our solutions for a particular problem simply cause other problems to fester.
Take, for example, the current economic situation in the United States. State revenues are suffering losses in terms of property taxes because people are defaulting en masse on their home mortgages. As a result state dependent systems such as education are suffering huge budgetary cuts. These cuts in funding will include the layoffs of many employees of the education system. Many of these "pink slipped" people may be faced with defaulting on their loans soon after. They may also face a loss of health benefits thereby adding to the problems of the health care system. The cycle continues and the problems compound.
Cutting the education budget is merely a knee jerk reaction and not a solution at all. We seem to have confused reactions with a solutions. Or, maybe, we are just so busy - so caught up in dealing with the continual onslaught of problems that we have no time or energy to focus on true solutions.
A common response to such a problem is to ask, "Who is to blame for this fiasco? The banks? The dominant political party? The President? The President's advisors?" Rather, I think it is more important to ask "What" is to blame instead of "Who". The basic concept of investing in debt, to me, seems fatally flawed as a primary means to sustain any economy. We are now discovering that living in a world of debt management has serious limitations. Take a moment to consider the cultural attitudes towards debt. Might the problem exist in how people think about debt - or rather - do not think twice about accruing debt? Debt seems to have become a disposable commodity like most other products sold to people.
I propose that it is time to rethink the concept of debt and our acceptance of it within the American culture. There is no real future in debt. Managing debt is simply an economic simulacrum of sustainable prosperity. A real future lies in getting out of debt altogether.
Do I really think that was as individuals can abolish debt? Not really. Debt is an integral part of our economic system. Our reliance upon debt has, however, temporarily re-wired the American economic system. Debt has become a form of "systemic circulation" instead of a form of "pulmonary circulation" within our economy.
What I think we can do culturally is change our perception of debt and how we use it within our economic system. This change in perception is not a solution in itself - rather - it is a beginning towards future solutions.
Time to go pay my bills...
Take, for example, the current economic situation in the United States. State revenues are suffering losses in terms of property taxes because people are defaulting en masse on their home mortgages. As a result state dependent systems such as education are suffering huge budgetary cuts. These cuts in funding will include the layoffs of many employees of the education system. Many of these "pink slipped" people may be faced with defaulting on their loans soon after. They may also face a loss of health benefits thereby adding to the problems of the health care system. The cycle continues and the problems compound.
Cutting the education budget is merely a knee jerk reaction and not a solution at all. We seem to have confused reactions with a solutions. Or, maybe, we are just so busy - so caught up in dealing with the continual onslaught of problems that we have no time or energy to focus on true solutions.
A common response to such a problem is to ask, "Who is to blame for this fiasco? The banks? The dominant political party? The President? The President's advisors?" Rather, I think it is more important to ask "What" is to blame instead of "Who". The basic concept of investing in debt, to me, seems fatally flawed as a primary means to sustain any economy. We are now discovering that living in a world of debt management has serious limitations. Take a moment to consider the cultural attitudes towards debt. Might the problem exist in how people think about debt - or rather - do not think twice about accruing debt? Debt seems to have become a disposable commodity like most other products sold to people.
I propose that it is time to rethink the concept of debt and our acceptance of it within the American culture. There is no real future in debt. Managing debt is simply an economic simulacrum of sustainable prosperity. A real future lies in getting out of debt altogether.
Do I really think that was as individuals can abolish debt? Not really. Debt is an integral part of our economic system. Our reliance upon debt has, however, temporarily re-wired the American economic system. Debt has become a form of "systemic circulation" instead of a form of "pulmonary circulation" within our economy.
What I think we can do culturally is change our perception of debt and how we use it within our economic system. This change in perception is not a solution in itself - rather - it is a beginning towards future solutions.
Time to go pay my bills...
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