Thursday, 8 January 2009
Moving into 2009
Last year I began, as I always do, with a sense of hope and some not uninteresting, I think, dreams of what I might work for both within and without the church. They were pretty much dashed in the lead up to Advent. I have been on leave since Christmas and with the current situation in Gaza and things unfolding in the congregation whilst I’m absent, hope isn’t really what I have in mind for this year. And no dreams seem to be on the horizon. Rather I’m weighed down by many hours given to thinking as to what might be needed to keep going and survive as a congregation and a minister in 2009. I have to admit that I went to bed early on New Year’s eve feeling rather ‘flattened’ by the reality about and beyond me. So, what do I hold on to? Sort of what I hear a couple of others saying, viz., to keep doing what I’m doing. Doesn’t seem much, and perhaps not very encouraging to some. But it’s what I’ve been reduced to. Keep faithfully doing according to my calling and ordination.
Monday, 22 December 2008
Watership Down .. and the mission of God
One of the mythic literary tales involving liminality and communitas is Richard Adam’s Watership Down. Fiver, a small nervous rabbit, has a premonition something terrible is going to happen to their Sandleford warren. And he’s right; a housing developer is planning to build on their field. Fiver tells his brother Hazel and they try to warn their aging Chief Rabbit, to no avail—he doesn’t believe them. Hazel and Fiver decide they must leave, and are joined by other rabbits in their search for a new home. And no sooner than they have left, the bulldozers come and destroy the warrens and all the other rabbits. To cut the long story short, the adventure takes the rabbits out of the safety of their warrens where they do very un-rabbitlike things; like crossing rivers, fields, and roads. (Rabbits, like the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, seldom travel far from their burrows.) At nights, out of their burrows, and feeling very insecure, they comfort and encourage each other by re-telling tales of the adventures of the great rabbit hero; El-Ahrairah and they are inspired by his story to continue their journey. They come across many other warrens and they try to warn them. They even get imprisoned and escape, but they eventually do get to Watership Down which becomes their new home, and once they find females to mate with, they settle down and start again.
Once again, this children’s fantasy accesses universally mythic ideas related to adventure, the role of danger in personal growth, leadership, communitas, and the innate capacity of life to adapt when threatened by mortal danger. To my mind, this myth-laced story challenges us to get out of our burrows because of the coming danger (the adaptive challenge) and do things that defy our all too human instincts to burrow down in denial and our middleclass penchant for safety and security. We are inspired for this task by re-telling of the dangerous stories of Jesus Christ, the martyrs, and the great witnesses of the faith who did exactly the same things. All our heroes are people, who refused to settle down, people who lived dangerously, and who by doing so significantly advanced the mission of God.
I was directed to Alan Hirsch's blog in an email from a friend. He said that it was worth pondering .. and it is! I've already found my old copy of the book and added it to the list of books to read in the January break.
Once again, this children’s fantasy accesses universally mythic ideas related to adventure, the role of danger in personal growth, leadership, communitas, and the innate capacity of life to adapt when threatened by mortal danger. To my mind, this myth-laced story challenges us to get out of our burrows because of the coming danger (the adaptive challenge) and do things that defy our all too human instincts to burrow down in denial and our middleclass penchant for safety and security. We are inspired for this task by re-telling of the dangerous stories of Jesus Christ, the martyrs, and the great witnesses of the faith who did exactly the same things. All our heroes are people, who refused to settle down, people who lived dangerously, and who by doing so significantly advanced the mission of God.
I was directed to Alan Hirsch's blog in an email from a friend. He said that it was worth pondering .. and it is! I've already found my old copy of the book and added it to the list of books to read in the January break.
Saturday, 6 December 2008
"Sweet Revenge"
(Must be the end of the week. Another article sent to me)
Many people today (thankfully, not everyone) are experiencing what may feel like the worst of times. Their reactions to this, not surprisingly, include feelings of fear, hopelessness, helplessness and even despair. They want to hit back at those who have hurt them. They want ‘sweet revenge’.
Revenge can be defined as harm done to someone as a punishment for harm that they have done to you first. It’s sometimes called ‘sweet’ because, at least in prospect, it feels rather satisfying. The saying “revenge is sweet” stresses the pleasure you think you’ll feel from harming someone who has harmed you—from paying them back in kind.
Yet punishing others, especially when it’s irrational, is based purely on emotion, not reason. And revenge breeds revenge. The more your brain is activated by the anticipation of revenge, the more willing you become to act vengefully. The same, of course, is true of the person you inflict your revenge upon. You pay them back, they do the same to you and on it goes.
Why is revenge, the act of harming someone, ‘sweet’?
Dr. Edward Hallowell, psychiatrist and author of a book called Dare to Forgive: The Power of Letting Go and Moving On says there’s a simple reason for the rise of revenge. It’s because revenge satisfies. “It feels so good. It’s a wonderfully triumphant feeling.”
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge.
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge. We actually feel satisfaction when we punish others for what we consider to be their bad behavior. When engaging in vengeful thoughts or deeds, whether you actually act out your revenge or simply considers it, your brain’s pleasure centers are being stimulated.
Vengeful behavior is reactive and self-defeating
Revenge doesn’t come from thinking, but from the acting out of fear. In meting out punishment and visiting revenge on another, you may believe you are justified, but the rational part of your brain is scarcely involved. It’s your ancient, primitive reptilian brain—all fear-based instinctual reactivity—and your animal limbic brain, which generates ‘reasons’ based on protecting your turf and your emotional sense of selfhood. They’re in charge.
Angry, hurt people can easily come to feel like helpless victims, harmed by people and forces ‘out there’. That’s why, as they being sucked into the quicksand of victim consciousness, they feel the need to hit back at those they blame. Viewed from this emotionally-charged standpoint, revenge seems to be the only strategy that will give them back any sense of self-worth.
Many who seek revenge (in mind or in deed) live in an “if only” world. That is: “If only I could punish, remove or even annihilate (fill in the blank with an individual or individuals, a group or groups), then I would experience some happiness or satisfaction.”
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied.
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied. The ‘high’ it provides is fleeting. It offers no true peace or security. It’s needs are never-ending, like drug addict who needs to score one more fix, and then another. Revenge soon becomes a way of life—an endless, miserable, self-sabotaging, self-limiting obsession.
What’s real here?
When you feel angry and hurt, your perception easily gets disconnected from reality. You may project your feelings of hurt and outrage onto people ‘out there’ although the problem has been inside you all along. Maybe that person you so long to ‘pay back’ has nothing to do with your pain. Harming them may well gain you nothing. Unless you take the time to explore your inner feelings and emotions to look for the root causes of your anguish, you may be aiming at the wrong target. It’s all too easy to blame others and spend your energy fantasizing about revenge instead of curing the problem and getting back on track.
James Baldwin explains it well:
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with [their own] pain.”
Moving towards a better solution
As Charlotte Bronte wrote: “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong.” No one was born seeking revenge, so how do people come to indulge so much in blaming and being vengeful? How did they learn to want to punish others for their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life?
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself.
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself. When you choose to take your life in your own hands, there’s no one to blame, no one to punish, no one with whom to get even. Only by moving from a place of vengeance to a place of taking back your power and control of your life will you ever stop experiencing yourself as a helpless victim.
Once you move your mental processing from the amygdala and limbic brain to the cortex—the level of the brain involved in thinking, problem-solving, goal-setting, and planning—you’ll be able to be less reactive and see the consequences of vengeful decisions before acting on them. The cortex also allows you to distinguish between feelings and facts. You’ll be able to let go of negativity and be more understanding and considerate: to act from having a conscience, not from emotional, unintelligent urges to violence.
Many people today (thankfully, not everyone) are experiencing what may feel like the worst of times. Their reactions to this, not surprisingly, include feelings of fear, hopelessness, helplessness and even despair. They want to hit back at those who have hurt them. They want ‘sweet revenge’.
Revenge can be defined as harm done to someone as a punishment for harm that they have done to you first. It’s sometimes called ‘sweet’ because, at least in prospect, it feels rather satisfying. The saying “revenge is sweet” stresses the pleasure you think you’ll feel from harming someone who has harmed you—from paying them back in kind.
Yet punishing others, especially when it’s irrational, is based purely on emotion, not reason. And revenge breeds revenge. The more your brain is activated by the anticipation of revenge, the more willing you become to act vengefully. The same, of course, is true of the person you inflict your revenge upon. You pay them back, they do the same to you and on it goes.
Why is revenge, the act of harming someone, ‘sweet’?
Dr. Edward Hallowell, psychiatrist and author of a book called Dare to Forgive: The Power of Letting Go and Moving On says there’s a simple reason for the rise of revenge. It’s because revenge satisfies. “It feels so good. It’s a wonderfully triumphant feeling.”
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge.
Brain-imaging studies indicate the brain centers that ‘light up’ when we experience pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction also light up when we commit, or even consider, an act of revenge. We actually feel satisfaction when we punish others for what we consider to be their bad behavior. When engaging in vengeful thoughts or deeds, whether you actually act out your revenge or simply considers it, your brain’s pleasure centers are being stimulated.
Vengeful behavior is reactive and self-defeating
Revenge doesn’t come from thinking, but from the acting out of fear. In meting out punishment and visiting revenge on another, you may believe you are justified, but the rational part of your brain is scarcely involved. It’s your ancient, primitive reptilian brain—all fear-based instinctual reactivity—and your animal limbic brain, which generates ‘reasons’ based on protecting your turf and your emotional sense of selfhood. They’re in charge.
Angry, hurt people can easily come to feel like helpless victims, harmed by people and forces ‘out there’. That’s why, as they being sucked into the quicksand of victim consciousness, they feel the need to hit back at those they blame. Viewed from this emotionally-charged standpoint, revenge seems to be the only strategy that will give them back any sense of self-worth.
Many who seek revenge (in mind or in deed) live in an “if only” world. That is: “If only I could punish, remove or even annihilate (fill in the blank with an individual or individuals, a group or groups), then I would experience some happiness or satisfaction.”
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied.
The truth is that revenge is like a drug: the more you use it, the more of it you need next time to feel even mildly satisfied. The ‘high’ it provides is fleeting. It offers no true peace or security. It’s needs are never-ending, like drug addict who needs to score one more fix, and then another. Revenge soon becomes a way of life—an endless, miserable, self-sabotaging, self-limiting obsession.
What’s real here?
When you feel angry and hurt, your perception easily gets disconnected from reality. You may project your feelings of hurt and outrage onto people ‘out there’ although the problem has been inside you all along. Maybe that person you so long to ‘pay back’ has nothing to do with your pain. Harming them may well gain you nothing. Unless you take the time to explore your inner feelings and emotions to look for the root causes of your anguish, you may be aiming at the wrong target. It’s all too easy to blame others and spend your energy fantasizing about revenge instead of curing the problem and getting back on track.
James Baldwin explains it well:
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with [their own] pain.”
Moving towards a better solution
As Charlotte Bronte wrote: “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong.” No one was born seeking revenge, so how do people come to indulge so much in blaming and being vengeful? How did they learn to want to punish others for their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life?
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself.
Rather than blaming others and seeking revenge, you could choose to get in touch with your needs and deal with your issues yourself. When you choose to take your life in your own hands, there’s no one to blame, no one to punish, no one with whom to get even. Only by moving from a place of vengeance to a place of taking back your power and control of your life will you ever stop experiencing yourself as a helpless victim.
Once you move your mental processing from the amygdala and limbic brain to the cortex—the level of the brain involved in thinking, problem-solving, goal-setting, and planning—you’ll be able to be less reactive and see the consequences of vengeful decisions before acting on them. The cortex also allows you to distinguish between feelings and facts. You’ll be able to let go of negativity and be more understanding and considerate: to act from having a conscience, not from emotional, unintelligent urges to violence.
Missional vs Attractional Church debate
(Another interesting piece sent my way)
So the whole missional vs. attractional church debate has risen to the bloggy surface yet once again sparked by Dan Kimball’s recent post on the Out of Ur blog. In the piece he questions the fruit of so-called missional churches because a few that he knows of anecdotally haven’t grown while attractional churches are making converts in droves. Since they aren’t making converts, they therefore are ineffectual. Being missional means squat apparently unless you are growing in numbers and the sins of attractional models are incidentally absolved since they are making converts. Others have questioned the reality of such conversions, and I especially liked Dave Fitch’s response on that account. But to the specific accusation that missional churches are ineffectual, I have to ask - at what?
According to Dan, effective churches are those which make (and continue to make) a lot of converts. I’m all for conversions, but what exactly are they being converted to? Is a conversion that professes the name of Christ, but is consumeristic and “me-centered” really the sort of conversions we want? It may be easy to attract people to that sort of faith, but to pull out the old phrase - what you call people with is what you call them to. What’s the point of “converting” people to American consumer culture with a Jesus veneer? Even if you desire that they will eventually change, why the bait n’ switch? But to write off the people who are attempting to give up all that in favor of self-sacrificial living because not enough people want to jump on that bandwagon simply astounds me. When did Christianity become a popularity contest? I know I’m being extreme and harsh with those questions, and in many ways I am a both/and sort of person in regards to this issue, but I was just really shocked to hear the missional church dismissed in such a way.
And of course I’m saying all this as a “failed” missional church planter. Failed in terms of numbers and money. We couldn’t attract enough people willing to give enough money to pay our salary and so the church failed. Yes, that’s crass, but that’s what happened. And it also totally misses the entire point of what the church actually was. We were a bunch of messy people working our butts off serving each other. We had people attending who really weren’t welcome in other churches because they were “too much work” or because they “asked the wrong questions” or because they just weren’t cool enough for the attractional churches. Our church became family to each other - opening our homes (literally) and seriously caring for each other and for our community. Throwing parties for the “poor” and the mentally disabled, working to improve the local environment, helping the struggling get back on their feet. No - not one person I know of “converted” because of the church, but a lot of people made decisions to follow Christ because of it. Decisions to not walk away from the faith, decisions to return to the faith, decisions to not just go through the churchy motions any longer, decisions to devote their lives to service. That failed missional church made some serious impact for the Kingdom.
So Dan, I just want to throw my anecdotal evidence right back atcha. Missional churches are effective. It all just depends on how you define effective.
So the whole missional vs. attractional church debate has risen to the bloggy surface yet once again sparked by Dan Kimball’s recent post on the Out of Ur blog. In the piece he questions the fruit of so-called missional churches because a few that he knows of anecdotally haven’t grown while attractional churches are making converts in droves. Since they aren’t making converts, they therefore are ineffectual. Being missional means squat apparently unless you are growing in numbers and the sins of attractional models are incidentally absolved since they are making converts. Others have questioned the reality of such conversions, and I especially liked Dave Fitch’s response on that account. But to the specific accusation that missional churches are ineffectual, I have to ask - at what?
According to Dan, effective churches are those which make (and continue to make) a lot of converts. I’m all for conversions, but what exactly are they being converted to? Is a conversion that professes the name of Christ, but is consumeristic and “me-centered” really the sort of conversions we want? It may be easy to attract people to that sort of faith, but to pull out the old phrase - what you call people with is what you call them to. What’s the point of “converting” people to American consumer culture with a Jesus veneer? Even if you desire that they will eventually change, why the bait n’ switch? But to write off the people who are attempting to give up all that in favor of self-sacrificial living because not enough people want to jump on that bandwagon simply astounds me. When did Christianity become a popularity contest? I know I’m being extreme and harsh with those questions, and in many ways I am a both/and sort of person in regards to this issue, but I was just really shocked to hear the missional church dismissed in such a way.
And of course I’m saying all this as a “failed” missional church planter. Failed in terms of numbers and money. We couldn’t attract enough people willing to give enough money to pay our salary and so the church failed. Yes, that’s crass, but that’s what happened. And it also totally misses the entire point of what the church actually was. We were a bunch of messy people working our butts off serving each other. We had people attending who really weren’t welcome in other churches because they were “too much work” or because they “asked the wrong questions” or because they just weren’t cool enough for the attractional churches. Our church became family to each other - opening our homes (literally) and seriously caring for each other and for our community. Throwing parties for the “poor” and the mentally disabled, working to improve the local environment, helping the struggling get back on their feet. No - not one person I know of “converted” because of the church, but a lot of people made decisions to follow Christ because of it. Decisions to not walk away from the faith, decisions to return to the faith, decisions to not just go through the churchy motions any longer, decisions to devote their lives to service. That failed missional church made some serious impact for the Kingdom.
So Dan, I just want to throw my anecdotal evidence right back atcha. Missional churches are effective. It all just depends on how you define effective.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Losing and Winning classes
(I'm getting interesting "bits" coming my way these days)
Warren Buffett: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html
Just because the days of children and labourers going down stinking coal mine shafts are over (in the West any way) does not mean that class warfare is not being waged, it is covert and representative democracy has tended to water down any sort of class consciousness that may have existed in the West.
What/who controls the economy, culture and politics? The ruling class, ie. capitalists. It is true that what it means to be "working class" has changed over the years, and there is some potential for members of the working class to gain capital through loans etc..however it is not possible to say that the middle class or small business owners have more influence over the economy, culture or politics than say Rupert Murdoch or major financial institutions.
Also, from the ABS
The share of the economy going to profits has hit the highest level since the ABS started keeping records in 1959, while the share allocated to wages has hit a new 43-year low, today's National Accounts data has revealed.
The data shows the "profits share" of the economy hit a new record high of 27.8% in trend terms, the greatest share going to profits since the ABS began collecting the data in the September quarter of 1959.
At the same time, the "wages share" of the economy fell to 52.7%
Just because the term "class war" seems cliched and old fashioned does not mean that it does not exist. It is a tragedy that the winning team (Warren Buffett and his friends) can see and wage this war. The losing classes are so over worked; stressed by mortgages and interest rates; distracted by reality TV and plasmas and caught up with celebrity style politics to the point that they pose no real challenge to the system. Workers are playing by the rules of the ruling class and are getting ripped off.
Warren Buffett: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html
Just because the days of children and labourers going down stinking coal mine shafts are over (in the West any way) does not mean that class warfare is not being waged, it is covert and representative democracy has tended to water down any sort of class consciousness that may have existed in the West.
What/who controls the economy, culture and politics? The ruling class, ie. capitalists. It is true that what it means to be "working class" has changed over the years, and there is some potential for members of the working class to gain capital through loans etc..however it is not possible to say that the middle class or small business owners have more influence over the economy, culture or politics than say Rupert Murdoch or major financial institutions.
Also, from the ABS
The share of the economy going to profits has hit the highest level since the ABS started keeping records in 1959, while the share allocated to wages has hit a new 43-year low, today's National Accounts data has revealed.
The data shows the "profits share" of the economy hit a new record high of 27.8% in trend terms, the greatest share going to profits since the ABS began collecting the data in the September quarter of 1959.
At the same time, the "wages share" of the economy fell to 52.7%
Just because the term "class war" seems cliched and old fashioned does not mean that it does not exist. It is a tragedy that the winning team (Warren Buffett and his friends) can see and wage this war. The losing classes are so over worked; stressed by mortgages and interest rates; distracted by reality TV and plasmas and caught up with celebrity style politics to the point that they pose no real challenge to the system. Workers are playing by the rules of the ruling class and are getting ripped off.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Fear in life ..
(Part of a post sent by a friend in the USA)
Fear is a natural part of everyone’s life. It only becomes a problem when it blocks you from being who you are and achieving what matters most to you. Many people fail to find their path in life because of fears of what might happen if they change, try something new, don’t agree to what others want or fail to follow the conventional path.
Most fears are groundless. Our minds are exceptionally good at imagining all the things that could go wrong. They call up images of embarrassment, criticism and even ruin. They assume whatever could go wrong will. Everyone will laugh. Maybe you’ll be demoted or fired—who knows? Understanding how what you value most produces your strongest fears can go a long way towards showing you which concerns are over-blown, even imaginary, and which you should take seriously.
Everything you are attached to produces a corresponding fear
The more strongly you value anything, the stronger the fear associated with it will be. That’s why high achievers, for example, are terrified of failure in any activity, however trivial.
When an attachment becomes too strong in your life—even an attachment to something positive—it’s on the way to becoming a major handicap.
When an attachment becomes too strong in your life—even an attachment to something positive—it’s on the way to becoming a major handicap. Achievement is a good example. It’s a powerful area of attachment for many successful people. They’ve built their lives on it. They have always achieved success in everything: school, sports, the arts, hobbies, work. Each fresh achievement adds to the power of their attachment and the central place of achievement in their lives.
Because of this, failure becomes unthinkable. They’ve probably never failed in anything they’ve done, so they have no experience of coping with it. The mere prospect of coming second frightens them. Failure becomes the supreme nightmare: a frightful horror they must avoid at any cost. Nothing—not ethics, not honesty, not other people, not even their nearest and dearest—can be allowed to come between them and the next achievement.
The collapse of ethical standards in major US corporations over recent years probably has more to do with fear of failure among long-term high-achievers than criminal intent. Many of the people at Enron and Arthur Andersen were supreme high-fliers, basking in their success and the flattery of others. Failure was an impossible prospect. They had to win every time. And if brutal working schedules and harrying subordinates wouldn’t ward off the prospect of ‘failure’, they were ready to lie, cheat, falsify numbers and hide anything negative to make themselves ‘winners’ in the eyes of the corporation and their rivals.
Beware of the very things you value most in your life
When your attachment to anything you value, however benign in itself, becomes too powerful, it will increase the chance that the corresponding fear will corrode your life and destroy your relationships from within. Over-achievers destroy their lives and the lives of those who work for them. People too attached to ‘goodness’ and morality become self-righteous bigots. Those whose desire to build close relationships become unbalanced slide into smothering their friends and family with constant expressions of affection and demands for ever greater love in return.
Balance counts for more than you think. Some tartness must season the sweetest dish. A little selfishness is valuable even in the most caring person. And a little failure is essential to preserve everyone’s perspective on success. Are you a positive person? Maybe you need to cherish the negative parts too.
Fear is a natural part of everyone’s life. It only becomes a problem when it blocks you from being who you are and achieving what matters most to you. Many people fail to find their path in life because of fears of what might happen if they change, try something new, don’t agree to what others want or fail to follow the conventional path.
Most fears are groundless. Our minds are exceptionally good at imagining all the things that could go wrong. They call up images of embarrassment, criticism and even ruin. They assume whatever could go wrong will. Everyone will laugh. Maybe you’ll be demoted or fired—who knows? Understanding how what you value most produces your strongest fears can go a long way towards showing you which concerns are over-blown, even imaginary, and which you should take seriously.
Everything you are attached to produces a corresponding fear
The more strongly you value anything, the stronger the fear associated with it will be. That’s why high achievers, for example, are terrified of failure in any activity, however trivial.
When an attachment becomes too strong in your life—even an attachment to something positive—it’s on the way to becoming a major handicap.
When an attachment becomes too strong in your life—even an attachment to something positive—it’s on the way to becoming a major handicap. Achievement is a good example. It’s a powerful area of attachment for many successful people. They’ve built their lives on it. They have always achieved success in everything: school, sports, the arts, hobbies, work. Each fresh achievement adds to the power of their attachment and the central place of achievement in their lives.
Because of this, failure becomes unthinkable. They’ve probably never failed in anything they’ve done, so they have no experience of coping with it. The mere prospect of coming second frightens them. Failure becomes the supreme nightmare: a frightful horror they must avoid at any cost. Nothing—not ethics, not honesty, not other people, not even their nearest and dearest—can be allowed to come between them and the next achievement.
The collapse of ethical standards in major US corporations over recent years probably has more to do with fear of failure among long-term high-achievers than criminal intent. Many of the people at Enron and Arthur Andersen were supreme high-fliers, basking in their success and the flattery of others. Failure was an impossible prospect. They had to win every time. And if brutal working schedules and harrying subordinates wouldn’t ward off the prospect of ‘failure’, they were ready to lie, cheat, falsify numbers and hide anything negative to make themselves ‘winners’ in the eyes of the corporation and their rivals.
Beware of the very things you value most in your life
When your attachment to anything you value, however benign in itself, becomes too powerful, it will increase the chance that the corresponding fear will corrode your life and destroy your relationships from within. Over-achievers destroy their lives and the lives of those who work for them. People too attached to ‘goodness’ and morality become self-righteous bigots. Those whose desire to build close relationships become unbalanced slide into smothering their friends and family with constant expressions of affection and demands for ever greater love in return.
Balance counts for more than you think. Some tartness must season the sweetest dish. A little selfishness is valuable even in the most caring person. And a little failure is essential to preserve everyone’s perspective on success. Are you a positive person? Maybe you need to cherish the negative parts too.
Monday, 17 November 2008
Another perspective on the current "world financial crisis"
In the Notes from the Editors for the September issue of Monthly Review (written in late July) we asked why, with the United States bailing out the financial sector of the economy to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, there was no public outrage. As we observed at that time, “In the end there seems to be no satisfactory explanation for lack of popular protest over a series of ad hoc grants showering hundreds of billions of dollars of public money on the masters of finance, collectively the richest group of capitalists on the planet. And that raises the question: Is this outrage present nonetheless, growing underground, unheard and unseen? Will it suddenly burst forth, like some old mole, unforeseen and in ways unimagined?” The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, the resulting freezing up of credit markets, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson’s emergency plan for a $700 billion bailout of financial firms, offering “cash for trash,” i.e., proposing to buy up the toxic waste of virtually worthless mortgage-backed securities at taxpayer expense—quickly answered our question. When the U.S. Treasury got into the act with its bailout proposal, requiring Congressional authorization (previously the Federal Reserve had led the way in bailouts, to the point that treasury securities had sunk to just over half of the Fed’s assets, as we explained in September), all hell finally broke loose. Suddenly, the public outrage that had been growing beneath the surface burst forth. The U.S. capitalist class was abruptly confronted with a major political as well as economic crisis.
The visible anger of the population over the bailout plan did not stop the Treasury Department, the Congressional leadership, the president, and the two presidential candidates—together with financial capital—from going ahead and patching together a deal based largely on the original Paulson proposal. What was completely unexpected, however, was the revolt in the House of Representatives on September 29 with 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats voting down the $700 billion bailout package, leading to the largest one-day point drop in U.S. stock market history. To be sure, the powers that be soon had their way, and a version of the Treasury Department proposal, with added elements designed to provide political cover for representatives who switched their votes, was soon passed. But the initial revolt in the House forever changed the nature of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, making it overtly politicalfor the first time, and leaving a legacy of popular dissent. The politicization of the bailout issue and the increasingly desperate economic conditions guarantee that the longer-term consequences for U.S. capitalism will be immense.
No one has a crystal ball to look into the future, and the nature of this crisis makes it impossible to predict what will happen next. But a few things seem obvious. First, the bailout to be carried out by the Treasury Department, though massive, will at best only stop an immediate meltdown. It will not bring the financial crisis to a close. The genie of financialization is out of the bottle and it is going to take time to get it back in again. The crisis of housing and mortgage lending has not in any way abated. The Federal Reserve and other agents of the federal government had already poured more than the $700 billion bailout package (including home mortgage rescues) into the financial system over the previous year in the form of loans, guarantees, swaps, giveaways, and takeovers (“A Tally of Federal Rescues,” New York Times, September 28, 2008; “Treasury and Fed Looking at Options,” New York Times, September 29, 2008). Moving rapidly from a lender of last resort to an investor of last resort, the federal government has enormously stretched its resources—already under strain due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Second, the rapid decline in U.S. economic hegemony is now obvious to the entire world and is likely to impair the willingness of foreign investors and governments to take dollars—necessary to finance the growing U.S. debt. International pressure is growing to prevent Washington from exporting its crisis abroad. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has demanded that Latin American, African, and Asian states not be made into “victims of the casino erected by the American economy” (“U.S. Crisis Deepens Divisions in S. America,” Washington Post, October 1, 2008). Indeed, U.S. imperialism is visibly weakening everywhere—despite $1 trillion of actual U.S. military expenditures in 2007 alone (see “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review, October 2008).
Third, the real problem is still not being addressed: the stagnation of the U.S. (and advanced capitalist) economy. This is not so much an effect of financial crisis, as commonly supposed, as the cause of the vast growth of the financial superstructure in the first place—and why the bursting of the financial bubble is such an immense and currently insurmountable disaster (see “The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis,” MR, April 2008). The stagnation of production, symbolized by the recent $25 billion in federal loan guarantees to the big automakers, has received relatively little attention in the face of the astronomical financial crisis, but remains at the heart of the economic malaise.
Finally, it is now sinking deep into the public consciousness in the United States that the most important question in the end is: Who will pay? The bailout deal skirted the issue by leaving it up to the next president to come up with a way to compensate the public for losses from the Treasury’s buying up of financial toxic waste. What this means is that the real political battle has only just begun.
If these are the main dimensions of the problem, what should U.S. leftists do at this point? This is not an easy question to answer. It is not our job to fix their system. Nor in fact is it fixable. As Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy argued in 1988 in the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crisis, this is, judged from the longer-view, an Irreversible Crisis. There are therefore no visible solutions. Under these circumstances the emphasis should be on reducing inequality, strengthening the position of workers, providing decent jobs for people doing the work for which they are equipped, and guaranteeing such social essentials as: adequate health care, nutrition, housing, education, Social Security, retirement pensions, and environmental protection. Military spending should be cut drastically and used to fund needed social programs. A tax on securities trading and ideally a wealth tax should be imposed. Such things can only be achieved, however, if the population rises up and demands control over the political economy. Again, we should not pretend for a moment that any of this would repair what is wrong with the capitalist system. It would not. But some such set of measures is necessary to create a better life for the vast majority of the population, and as a step away from capitalism and toward a better socioeconomic alternative.
Certainly, there is something to be said for the view of U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR) when he wrote in response to the Paulson bailout(“Wall Street Bailout Won’t Help Main Street,” Eugene Register-Guard, September 29, 2008): “In President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, we invested in building roads, bridges, hydroelectric dams and other public works projects to rebuild our nation’s broken economy.” DeFazio went on to argue that if a bailout plan was to be adopted it should be paid for by a securities transfer tax, such as actually existed in the United States from 1914 to 1966. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has proposed a five year, 10 percent surtax on individuals with incomes of more than $500,000 a year and of households with incomes of more than $1 million a year. None of this would solve the core contradictions of the system. But such actions would represent a start in the right direction. It is high time that in the relentless class war that has been waged by the capitalist class against the working class since the early 1970s, the U.S. populace at last begins to fight back en masse, insisting that their needs be met. In much of the rest of the world of course the continued existence of the U.S. dominated order of monopoly-finance capital, commonly identified as neoliberalism, is already—or soon will be—under challenge.
The visible anger of the population over the bailout plan did not stop the Treasury Department, the Congressional leadership, the president, and the two presidential candidates—together with financial capital—from going ahead and patching together a deal based largely on the original Paulson proposal. What was completely unexpected, however, was the revolt in the House of Representatives on September 29 with 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats voting down the $700 billion bailout package, leading to the largest one-day point drop in U.S. stock market history. To be sure, the powers that be soon had their way, and a version of the Treasury Department proposal, with added elements designed to provide political cover for representatives who switched their votes, was soon passed. But the initial revolt in the House forever changed the nature of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, making it overtly politicalfor the first time, and leaving a legacy of popular dissent. The politicization of the bailout issue and the increasingly desperate economic conditions guarantee that the longer-term consequences for U.S. capitalism will be immense.
No one has a crystal ball to look into the future, and the nature of this crisis makes it impossible to predict what will happen next. But a few things seem obvious. First, the bailout to be carried out by the Treasury Department, though massive, will at best only stop an immediate meltdown. It will not bring the financial crisis to a close. The genie of financialization is out of the bottle and it is going to take time to get it back in again. The crisis of housing and mortgage lending has not in any way abated. The Federal Reserve and other agents of the federal government had already poured more than the $700 billion bailout package (including home mortgage rescues) into the financial system over the previous year in the form of loans, guarantees, swaps, giveaways, and takeovers (“A Tally of Federal Rescues,” New York Times, September 28, 2008; “Treasury and Fed Looking at Options,” New York Times, September 29, 2008). Moving rapidly from a lender of last resort to an investor of last resort, the federal government has enormously stretched its resources—already under strain due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Second, the rapid decline in U.S. economic hegemony is now obvious to the entire world and is likely to impair the willingness of foreign investors and governments to take dollars—necessary to finance the growing U.S. debt. International pressure is growing to prevent Washington from exporting its crisis abroad. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has demanded that Latin American, African, and Asian states not be made into “victims of the casino erected by the American economy” (“U.S. Crisis Deepens Divisions in S. America,” Washington Post, October 1, 2008). Indeed, U.S. imperialism is visibly weakening everywhere—despite $1 trillion of actual U.S. military expenditures in 2007 alone (see “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review, October 2008).
Third, the real problem is still not being addressed: the stagnation of the U.S. (and advanced capitalist) economy. This is not so much an effect of financial crisis, as commonly supposed, as the cause of the vast growth of the financial superstructure in the first place—and why the bursting of the financial bubble is such an immense and currently insurmountable disaster (see “The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis,” MR, April 2008). The stagnation of production, symbolized by the recent $25 billion in federal loan guarantees to the big automakers, has received relatively little attention in the face of the astronomical financial crisis, but remains at the heart of the economic malaise.
Finally, it is now sinking deep into the public consciousness in the United States that the most important question in the end is: Who will pay? The bailout deal skirted the issue by leaving it up to the next president to come up with a way to compensate the public for losses from the Treasury’s buying up of financial toxic waste. What this means is that the real political battle has only just begun.
If these are the main dimensions of the problem, what should U.S. leftists do at this point? This is not an easy question to answer. It is not our job to fix their system. Nor in fact is it fixable. As Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy argued in 1988 in the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crisis, this is, judged from the longer-view, an Irreversible Crisis. There are therefore no visible solutions. Under these circumstances the emphasis should be on reducing inequality, strengthening the position of workers, providing decent jobs for people doing the work for which they are equipped, and guaranteeing such social essentials as: adequate health care, nutrition, housing, education, Social Security, retirement pensions, and environmental protection. Military spending should be cut drastically and used to fund needed social programs. A tax on securities trading and ideally a wealth tax should be imposed. Such things can only be achieved, however, if the population rises up and demands control over the political economy. Again, we should not pretend for a moment that any of this would repair what is wrong with the capitalist system. It would not. But some such set of measures is necessary to create a better life for the vast majority of the population, and as a step away from capitalism and toward a better socioeconomic alternative.
Certainly, there is something to be said for the view of U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR) when he wrote in response to the Paulson bailout(“Wall Street Bailout Won’t Help Main Street,” Eugene Register-Guard, September 29, 2008): “In President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, we invested in building roads, bridges, hydroelectric dams and other public works projects to rebuild our nation’s broken economy.” DeFazio went on to argue that if a bailout plan was to be adopted it should be paid for by a securities transfer tax, such as actually existed in the United States from 1914 to 1966. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has proposed a five year, 10 percent surtax on individuals with incomes of more than $500,000 a year and of households with incomes of more than $1 million a year. None of this would solve the core contradictions of the system. But such actions would represent a start in the right direction. It is high time that in the relentless class war that has been waged by the capitalist class against the working class since the early 1970s, the U.S. populace at last begins to fight back en masse, insisting that their needs be met. In much of the rest of the world of course the continued existence of the U.S. dominated order of monopoly-finance capital, commonly identified as neoliberalism, is already—or soon will be—under challenge.
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