Great Conversations

My goal for this blog has always been to try to reframe ideas so that my reader might see a new way to proceed out of the quagmire where we often seem to be stuck. To gain inspiration, I have been reading a lot of books written in the last couple years. And I plan to continue that trend. But with a recent gift of a new Kindle, it has made it easier for me to also read the classics so I joined an online group called  Great Conversations.

Right now, we are reading William James and that was a great place to start as I have some history reading James. I have particularly enjoyed his writing on the topic of habits. We all make New Year's resolutions to change our "bad habits" and exercise more, eat better, or strive to be more forgiving and kind.  We usually think of changing our way at the local level. And in many cases, we do not undertake the change at all because old habits are hard to break.

Nationally, as Bill McClellan, a journalist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, pointed out, we have become like a dysfunctional marriage. We are more interested in proving the other party is wrong than in really solving any of our problems. And a divorce might be necessary for the sake of the kids, but it is virtually impossible. So our best bet may be to go to counseling and see if we can change our bad habits.

One of our bad habits involves throwing around economic terms that no one really understands, capitalism, socialism, free markets, or communism. It is hard to discuss new ideas unless you have the language to do so. We have images associated with these words that scarcely reflect the reality of what those terms mean in terms of our own economic realities. I challenge us to take each sector of our economy and examine what part the government plays and how things really work. Then perhaps we can come up with new words. Agriculture in America is hardly an example of capitalism or free markets at work nor is it truly socialism. Food is our most key and elemental need. When we do see free markets at work, i.e. the movement to buy organic, we still see a dangerous mix of government regulation and profiteering.

We need to expand our language to describe new models and we need to create new habits when discussing and governing. If we don't, we will forever be stuck in the past and some group/country/sector or movement that is able to form a new paradigm will pass us by.

I think there are the limits on the Occupy Wall Street protestors ability to affect lasting change. They do not have the ability to articulate a different vision than their current reality and they are following in the footsteps of all the other talking heads and using the habit of anger instead of building a new way of approaching politics.

 

The art of being wise is
the art of knowing
what to overlook.

William James
Principles of Psychology