Reasoned Thought

Sometimes just sitting here looking at the blank page, wondering how to fill it is the most relaxing part of my day.  I close my eyes and think about a hundred things I would like to say, but most of them are thoughts too trivial to share, or best kept to myself.  I am under no pressure to write, it is done purely for my enjoyment, and to leave for my children, and others, a record of things I think worth sharing.

Unfortunately for our society there are far too many media types who are under a deadline, and who apparently feel no such compulsion to self-edit.  Yesterday I was reading the blog Legal Insurrection, a conservative political blog I like because it does stay pretty low key in its approach, it has a regular feature on Saturdays called “Saturday Night Card Game” that deals with someone who has used race for political purpose.  This past Saturday’s posting was particularly inflammatory [here].  In this video Ms. Finney points out that Mr. Cain is only a feel good candidate for the racist Republicans and a “black man who knows his place.”  It is an interesting observation from a liberal Democratic strategist, whose sole purpose is to destroy the opposition, not to build a nation.  Unfortunately she is not alone in the media, and the same inflammatory rhetoric is apparent on both sides.

When you have so many channels and so many hours in a day to fill up, reasoned thought does not seem to be a consideration for most media political discussion.

Inspiration and Achievement

In the course of human progress we see periods of great achievement.  The question for me is what drives it?  This is inspired by a quote I saw in one of the cubicles at work.  It is attributed to Orson Welles. (I found it here)

“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Implied is that conflict leads to achievement. The lack of conflict leads to an acceptance of the status quo.  The question: is that true?  Has the United States become the nation we are because we have been in almost perpetual conflict since our founding?  I need to think about this a little.

If

I was listening to the Rudyard Kipling poem “If” this evening, it is a wonderfully inspirational poem from a father to a son.  It should be required reading in every school charged with helping young people become adults.  Its wisdom serves us to this day, and I wonder if in its simple guide it marks the separation of those who strive to succeed and those who don’t?

Those who read this, and who have read other short pieces by me will understand I am always in search of why things are, and how we can deal with our differences.  It is right to be different, as we are made to be.  If our world were homogeneous how boring life would seem.  But without the respect for those differences and tolerance of our faults we boil and bubble into a froth of hate and scorn.  The lines “Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating” seems to me the core to civil political discourse and what I believe separates the common from the radical.  Thank you Mr. Kipling.

A Changing of the Season

As the coolness of Autumn settles on us, it seems only right to reflect on this this past summer, to consider how blessed my family has been and to consider the challenges that lay ahead.

By all standards this past year has been one of immeasurable fortune for my wife and I, our daughter, her husband and their expanding family, and my son, his wife and their expanding family.  For me fortune is not valued in dollars, but in the richness of a successful life.  In that aspect we are rich beyond measure.

I have a job I enjoy, a loving wife to come home to, and the ability to provide whatever material needs we may have.  My daughter and her husband are finding out what life is like with three small children, a 4 year old big sister, a soon to be 2 year old brother, and a soon to be 1 year old little foster sister.  My son was just accepted to medical school, so the next four and a half years will put a tremendous strain on him, his wife, and their children.  I am confident they will find a way to persevere.

Whenever I reach a point of frustration with the polarization of our government, or with some petty problem at work, I have but to spend a minute or two in reflection on our blessings for the annoyance to abate. 

Who Gnu?

Have you ever Googled Gnu?  Wildebeest doesn’t come up until page 3.

Decision Making

How the mind works has fascinated me for most of my adult life.  In college I studied Psychology, but I really leaned more to behavioral psych because of the concrete practical application.  Its approach was to target a behavior, understand why it occurred and then find the right tool to correct it.  It didn’t delve into the complexities of the mind, the uncertainties of environment, education, family and all the stuff that makes psychoanalysis so complex.   As I moved into my career in the military I would discover some of these understanding very useful in guiding me, as I became a leader and decision maker.

In my role now I am on a staff, providing information to senior officers who are the decision makers.   We have just transitioned from one Lieutenant General to another, along with replacement of a couple of Brigadier Generals and a covey of Colonels.  In the transition there is significant change in how the staff is to work, and how our new leadership makes decisions.  I have to admit I find much of this new way bewildering and worrisome, perhaps because it runs so counter to what I have found to be effective.

For example, there will always be uncertainty and risk in any decision you make.  If there weren’t you wouldn’t need to make a choice.  The critical point is to balance the risk against the reward.  To do this it is reasonable to gather as much information as possible, but at the same time realize you can’t gather information forever.  There is also a time when a decision must be made or it is overcome by events. 

Apparently the need to gather information on the issue at hand is no longer essential to making decisions.  It will be interesting to see how that works out for the organization and the taxpayer.  It will make my job a lot simpler as I just document the decisions as they come rolling down the mountain.

Have you ever noticed an organizational chart is kind of like a herd of monkeys in a tree?  The view from the top branch looking down is a lot different than the view from the bottom branch looking up.

When I Close My Eyes

When I close my eyes, I see a future where all people want to achieve.  Not because someone says they must, but because they think it the right thing.  A place where people believe they are responsible for themselves, and their children and it is their choice on how they live, not the states.  But then I open them to the reality that this can never be, because we humans come from an endless variety of backgrounds, are shaped by an almost infinite number of conditions, and at any one point in our life have differing desires and goals.

I also see a reality where we as a small family group cannot do everything we need to live in this modern world, we must band together in a larger assemblage, a nation.  Without this larger collective we would still be living as we did thousands of years ago; where survival was the driving force.

So at the end of the day the question of how to reach utopia is really one of finding the smoothest path through the reality that is us.