Some thoughts on… Out with the Old
Despite the market swoops and falls, the 2008 year had personal highlights – my sister Nausheen got married and moved to Dubai; Klaus turned 40 and started business school; Barack Obama was elected President. Nonetheless, it’s tradition to mark the year- end and welcome the New Year in anticipation of better times.
Custom dictates that we create resolutions to commemorate. Typically the declarations are one-dimensional goals with measurable endpoints, e.g. “I will go to the gym twice a week” or “I will stop smoking”.
What if instead we create messy resolutions and attempt success on multiple dimensions? Here’s my stab at describing the items I would like to leave behind this year.
Elevating false heroes. For many, this year saw a Knight enter the election to parry, pounce and salvage the US Presidency. Obama has demonstrated promise and reasoning. But he is not superman; he is not a savior; he will not remove the arthritis in my left shoulder. As citizens, we have a responsibility to communicate our desires for change, to support him, and to work to achieve these goals ourselves. Passively waiting for others to fix our lives is a guarantee of failure. We should set the bar high, and put in place the catalysts for success. High expectations can be accompanied with a dose of realism and personal action
Yet, it seems we have a penchant for constructing perfect idols – composite projections of our desires – that we believe will solve our problems and then are troubled when they fall. Why do we care if Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie – two competent and pretty actresses – are fighting over a handsome boy? Or that Amy Winehouse, a Grammy award winning singer, is going back to rehab? Or that Plaxico Burress, a gifted football player, can not maintain control of his gun? We create these false heroes based on their talent, but we really don’t know these people. So why should we be surprised by their lapse in moral character?
In Christopher Nolan’s recent movie The Dark Knight, Batman demonstrates flawed judgment – eavesdropping on private conversations, taking justice in his own vigilante hands. The citizens of Gotham turn on Batman by the end, and Singer’s message is that “We don’t get the hero that we need, but the hero we deserve”. In our lives, we may need hypothetical characters without faults but instead let’s choose as our role models amongst people we know well – a motivational teacher, an altruistic neighbor, a dedicated volunteer. These are really the heroes we deserve and the ones that should be brought to the fore.
Loitering atop the pyramid. I live a privileged life, as do many of the readers of these postings. We all recognize that we are at the pinnacle of the world pyramid on most measures – purchasing power, clean food and water access, health care availability, commodity and resource usage. This is nothing to be ashamed of, most folks have labored to achieve this situation, and we should continue to strive if we envision being higher on the ladder. We should be embarrassed though if we are taking this position for granted – dawdling in this fortunate standing – not taking action to integrate or aid those in a less advantaged situation; or even worse, exploiting this prominence to look down upon others and to bully them into submission.
Over the past few years, the US as a country has taken our elevated position in the global economy for granted. We doggedly pursued a military resolution in Iraq at the cost of political disengagement from other corners of the globe – a resurgent Russia, a cholera-stricken Southern Africa, a human-rights suppressed Burma. We can extend our hand – not just raise our fists – to the others on the pyramid at both a country and personal level. This will involve getting off the proverbial couch and leaving behind the air-bubble surrounding our heads in order to interrelate with the global community.
Retreating to simple solutions. The neo-conservative ideologues (with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney as prominent members) have influenced the country over the past few years. The advantage of accepting any ideology whether conservative or liberal is that it provides doctrines and beliefs that starkly discriminate between right vs. wrong, insider vs. outsider, harm vs. benefit. Of course no situation is ever black or white, but the comfort of simple solutions is attractive in times of strain and stress. In a post- 9/11 world, sending troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein in a country that was never involved in the terrorist attacks is the simple and right thing to do. Landing the President on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner “Mission Accomplished” in May 2003 is a straightforward display of victory.
We mustn’t blame the ideologues for trying to convince us of these messages – they may actually believe them. Instead we should be embarrassed for being so gullible. In Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, Tom Cruise delights as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg – who with a coterie of senior German officials conducts an assassination attempt on Hitler. A taut thriller, the movie conveys the significance of the story by simplifying the motivation – Colonel Schaufenberg is good and the Nazis are evil. Even in this story which seems to demand uncomplicated answers (we can all agree the Nazis were bad), there are some knotty questions: Why did the officers attempt resistance so late in the war? Were they really seeking protection of the German people or glorification of their own position with their allies so close at hand?
Asking the difficult questions doesn’t take away from the basic parable, but forces us to question the baked-up truth that is being provided to us. In the end, we may choose to believe them, but at least we have done so after our own questioning.
So what are you willing to put away with the old year? The next posting will describe the themes I’d like to initiate.
December 31, 2008
Custom dictates that we create resolutions to commemorate. Typically the declarations are one-dimensional goals with measurable endpoints, e.g. “I will go to the gym twice a week” or “I will stop smoking”.
What if instead we create messy resolutions and attempt success on multiple dimensions? Here’s my stab at describing the items I would like to leave behind this year.
Elevating false heroes. For many, this year saw a Knight enter the election to parry, pounce and salvage the US Presidency. Obama has demonstrated promise and reasoning. But he is not superman; he is not a savior; he will not remove the arthritis in my left shoulder. As citizens, we have a responsibility to communicate our desires for change, to support him, and to work to achieve these goals ourselves. Passively waiting for others to fix our lives is a guarantee of failure. We should set the bar high, and put in place the catalysts for success. High expectations can be accompanied with a dose of realism and personal action
Yet, it seems we have a penchant for constructing perfect idols – composite projections of our desires – that we believe will solve our problems and then are troubled when they fall. Why do we care if Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie – two competent and pretty actresses – are fighting over a handsome boy? Or that Amy Winehouse, a Grammy award winning singer, is going back to rehab? Or that Plaxico Burress, a gifted football player, can not maintain control of his gun? We create these false heroes based on their talent, but we really don’t know these people. So why should we be surprised by their lapse in moral character?
In Christopher Nolan’s recent movie The Dark Knight, Batman demonstrates flawed judgment – eavesdropping on private conversations, taking justice in his own vigilante hands. The citizens of Gotham turn on Batman by the end, and Singer’s message is that “We don’t get the hero that we need, but the hero we deserve”. In our lives, we may need hypothetical characters without faults but instead let’s choose as our role models amongst people we know well – a motivational teacher, an altruistic neighbor, a dedicated volunteer. These are really the heroes we deserve and the ones that should be brought to the fore.
Loitering atop the pyramid. I live a privileged life, as do many of the readers of these postings. We all recognize that we are at the pinnacle of the world pyramid on most measures – purchasing power, clean food and water access, health care availability, commodity and resource usage. This is nothing to be ashamed of, most folks have labored to achieve this situation, and we should continue to strive if we envision being higher on the ladder. We should be embarrassed though if we are taking this position for granted – dawdling in this fortunate standing – not taking action to integrate or aid those in a less advantaged situation; or even worse, exploiting this prominence to look down upon others and to bully them into submission.
Over the past few years, the US as a country has taken our elevated position in the global economy for granted. We doggedly pursued a military resolution in Iraq at the cost of political disengagement from other corners of the globe – a resurgent Russia, a cholera-stricken Southern Africa, a human-rights suppressed Burma. We can extend our hand – not just raise our fists – to the others on the pyramid at both a country and personal level. This will involve getting off the proverbial couch and leaving behind the air-bubble surrounding our heads in order to interrelate with the global community.
Retreating to simple solutions. The neo-conservative ideologues (with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney as prominent members) have influenced the country over the past few years. The advantage of accepting any ideology whether conservative or liberal is that it provides doctrines and beliefs that starkly discriminate between right vs. wrong, insider vs. outsider, harm vs. benefit. Of course no situation is ever black or white, but the comfort of simple solutions is attractive in times of strain and stress. In a post- 9/11 world, sending troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein in a country that was never involved in the terrorist attacks is the simple and right thing to do. Landing the President on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner “Mission Accomplished” in May 2003 is a straightforward display of victory.
We mustn’t blame the ideologues for trying to convince us of these messages – they may actually believe them. Instead we should be embarrassed for being so gullible. In Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, Tom Cruise delights as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg – who with a coterie of senior German officials conducts an assassination attempt on Hitler. A taut thriller, the movie conveys the significance of the story by simplifying the motivation – Colonel Schaufenberg is good and the Nazis are evil. Even in this story which seems to demand uncomplicated answers (we can all agree the Nazis were bad), there are some knotty questions: Why did the officers attempt resistance so late in the war? Were they really seeking protection of the German people or glorification of their own position with their allies so close at hand?
Asking the difficult questions doesn’t take away from the basic parable, but forces us to question the baked-up truth that is being provided to us. In the end, we may choose to believe them, but at least we have done so after our own questioning.
So what are you willing to put away with the old year? The next posting will describe the themes I’d like to initiate.
December 31, 2008