My opinion about the future and the Global Brain
I read 50 blogs a day, financial, political, international, environmental, technological, cultural. I am a single mom raising 3 kids. I have a brain and I intuit a huge culture shift. I believe we are in for a big, global slowdown of epic proportions. Here’s today’s online frontpage of Financial Times:
I believe that the American Way of Life that George H.W. Bush insisted was not negotiable, the one where you can make all the money you want to, unfettered by regulation or common decency, is gone.
I believe that we are offered a new opportunity. The reason I say this is that I’ve had huge life changes: divorce, selling my house, moving my kids, renting then moving to a second rental home, and finally, losing my mom. I bought in to the whole US lifestyle, have the credit cards to prove it. But I sold my home, paid off the million dollar mortgage and tons of joint marital debt and am living within my means (mostly), re-evaluating my future. And I see that we as a country need to do the same gut-check and change course drastically and quickly.
Our corporations can’t operate unless they calculate in ‘social costs’ and ‘environmental costs’ and ‘global citizenship’ costs. They can’t keep marketing to us that we ‘need’ things that we don’t. They can’t then blame us for getting addicted to their credit, their loans, their cars, and then ask us to also clean up their mess when they dissipate their profits into the hands of a few of their deal-makers.
You know the American Dream? Sales people are rewarded in the American Dream. They make the millions we glorify. But sales people aren’t responsible for the appropriateness of their product. They get paid to sell. And they walk away with their sales commission when their products, credit cards, home equity or car loans implode on us, the buying public.
We must feed and provide healthy upbringing for all of our children. We have to provide them with neighborhood centers where they can get nutritious food and before and after school mentoring and tutoring. If some kids do not need this help, great! But many kids do need this support and we are destroying our culture by not ensuring we have a smart, challenged next generation of taxpayers, let alone country builders. The George Lucas Educational Foundation knows what kind of education all of our kids deserve, and need. We will overhaul our educational system so that kids learn their own talents and are taught to those talents.
We have a moral obligation, I believe, to also feed and care for our sick and elderly. Before my mother passed away, she lived in a beautiful assisted living place, Alma Via (The Way of the Soul). She was provided 3 meals a day that met with her specific health needs: near kidney failure and rheumatoid arthritis. She felt a happy sense of community there, and my sisters and I were able to visit her frequently and take her out for medical appointments and family time. Knowing that her basic needs were met, we felt that her life was full. Every elder deserves this care.
Communities need to rebuild. Gas prices skyrocketed, now the shipping industry is faltering because of the world financial crises, trucking industries are going thru shakeups. We do not need to put our heads in the sand, but it is prudent to get your food from as close to your home as you can, to do business with local vendors.
All of these huge global stumblings, they are our sign to re-invest in our local communities. To reach out thru the global brain of the internet, but also to nestle in to our smaller environments. Its a paradox: going smaller, while going bigger. Be global citizens, but also be tribal in your county. Have a large vision about your carbon or water use footprint, but also know who your neighbors are, and offer help or accept help. Get out of debt, lay low, do not buy into the consumption mania of advertising.
So when you see the Financial Times talking about a SEVERE GLOBAL SLOWDOWN, don’t fret. Its a chance to remake things in the image of the 21st century. We’re global, we’re wired, we give a damn. Lets draw a new world, instead of continually trying to buoy up the old paradigms that we have outgrown.
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