I think we are on the brink of a huge transformation in how we perceive ourselves as ‘the economy.’ Will we go forward, or go back to the perceived security of yesterday? I wonder.
Could you indulge an older perspective for a moment? I know, I know, the way we are supposed to think is….”If you ain’t got the solution, you’re part of the problem.” I disagree. I always say that this kind of thinking has tended to keep folks from sticking their neck out, in case they are thought to be fools.
To be clear, I’m certainly not one to give any advice, and I do notice that some of today’s ‘experts’ are doing ‘consulting practices’ that I remember experiencing over 40 years ago. It may sound like new ‘strategies’ to those who haven’t been exposed to them. Know what? It ain’t! Is it just more of what we are familiar with? Is there just some kind of hope about the effectiveness, since it might have worked in the past?
It’s like the play-by-play sports commentator who is reporting…but mostly making up, what is happening on the field. Sure, the score is changing, but the truth is that ‘good’ plays may have been just broken plays that worked out! Everyone in the stands now wants the team to repeat that play. They’ll even bet money that it’ll work again! Is that our business model that we need so strongly to protect?
So, should we pour money into ‘stimulus packages’ for the economy or not? My well-thought-out personal answer is a definite, ”I do not know!” My concern is that we might be trying to recover what needs to be left to rest. I just know that it might be time to slow down and not ‘dash off in all directions at once’, trying to fix stuff that appears to be in transition. Where is the transition headed? That’s the dilemma.
I notice that every year at this time, we take a somber look at the economy and measure success or failure by how much ‘stuff’ we have purchased over the past couple months. Is life just ‘We are born, we buy stuff, the stock market goes up or down, we pass on’? Wow!
I’m not suggesting there aren’t varieties of ‘answers’ about how we should be living and seeing our world. I do notice, however, how powerful the ‘status quo’ is in grinding it all up, discrediting it, rejecting it, or turning it into more consumer goods!
We have a ‘paper world’ which I call the stock market where we make and lose money, based on some kind of agreement or disagreement of company performance…..like a betting game. I see and hear so much expert advice, charts with lines going up and down, projections, lots of theory about what it all means, and lots of excuses for unsatisfactory changes.
There are those who exist comfortably in that world, and how it works for the common good. For me, that’s about as little as I know, and most of my friends know little more than that. Oh, everyone knows lots about their right choices in the market….after the results are in!
To be insightful….hey, why not….this is my space! It is like there was an idea, thought to be good at the time, that got out of control. It seems to have taken on a life of its own and now it runs the show…we have no idea who is steering the ship, so we are powerless to make changes in direction. Well, ‘It’ is steering and we are going for a ride, for which someone else bought our ticket!
We were just told a short while ago, that trillions of ‘invisible’ or ‘pretend’ money has vanished from existence. How can invisible wealth have such an impact on the visible lives of us all? Who designed such a game where the aim is to cut costs (which is really about people, isn’t it?) in order to appear to be successful, so folks would bet their hard-earned cash, or worse, borrowed money, on that invisible money game?
I am reminded of some things that folks, much smarter than me, have said in the past. The first is that there is a tendency for business, after a business failure, to try to resurrect what they did in the past…..slightly altered, of course. They call it ‘going back to basics’. Do we need to go back to any basics?
Now, that kind of bothers me. What basics? If they are talking about social values, then why did these get ‘lost’?
If they are talking about ‘best practices’ or relationship with the consumer, then who knows what that is? Things are changing so rapidly these days! To do a ‘check out yesterday’s results’ and decide what are the best practices for tomorrow, is really all about yesterday, isn’t it? Where’s the vision in that?
It might make sense to put aside ‘yesterday,’ and opt for a clean slate on which to re-invent ourselves. Of course, the danger would be to believe that by resurrecting yesterday’s practices, making a few minor adjustments for tomorrow, getting approval from the so-called ‘experts,’ and checking the effect on the market, that we are heading in the right direction. Shouldn’t life be about expressing our passion, rather than being ‘cannon fodder’ for a game we didn’t know we were creating?
Maybe what really matters is that we learn to take care of each other in a world that is challenging our humanity’s capability to do so, and our priorities become more about what gives us verve and joy. This might begin to create a new way for prosperity that we may only have dreamed.’
Rich