This post represents a new start for this chronicle. It is also a long time coming that I reflect on the economic turmoil we are experiencing. If you read artedetimo v.1, you know that I have lamented the problems that have founded the economic mess for a while, but since all the stuff has hit the fan, I’ve been trying to figure out what to say about it. It has been one thing to see the gathering storm, but it is another to see where we’re going to come out.
One thing for sure is that the old captains; the economists, investors, bankers and businessmen, that had no vision and have no vision of where we could be going, need to be removed from power. A strong point I have tried to articulate in the past has been that in the last 20 to 30 years we have increasingly traded long term value for short term gain. That’s not necessarily a bad thing at all times, but when that gain is used to let s drive around big cars, buy house we can’t afford, and push for high dividends to pad our retirement funds, it has lead to where we are. This mess has been a long time coming.
Its odd now when I flip through the news shows I hear a lot of talk about all sorts of 20-30 year trends; maybe a little too late in my head. Its nice to hear now, but problem was that we should have been picking up on these trends 5-10 years ago when anyone who was looking could see them coming. That’s not how things work is it.
The country needs vision. Obama is trying to provide that vision, but he’s butting up against a whole class of people who won’t be able to let go of the way things are. It’s only when our financial society is pushed aside that we will see a new way forward. I can’t blame anyone though; you live much of the last 2 or 3 decades like you are running the show, you start to think that’s how things are. Society in the US since WWII has been more of a creative man’s cave, despite the man in the gray suit and the middle manager society’s logistical dominance. The problem solvers and innovators have always been the source of our greatness no matter how many layers of corruption, or bureaucracy or finacialism covered them up.
Go back to Lee IA coca. Was he a suit? The auto industry has been in this situation before, but last time there was a visionary left in teh industry to pull it out… I don’t see one today do you?
Steve Jobs? Apple despite its tiny share of the computing world has been the point of the spear head since its foundation. You ask the business world about them and they laugh, but if you think of computer history, its criss-crossed by the style-is-equal-to-practicality visions of Apple. Is this going down that pc v. Apple road? I don’t think so. My point is only that the PC’s type is good for business makers, the Apple type is good for making businesses.
I think this idea of imagining what society, culture and our relationship to nature COULD be, is at the core of why I write this blog. So many of the public figures out there leading our institutions have so little imagination its frightening. I’m not sure if it has been beaten out of them by life or what, but it is something that plagues us in all parts of life. We, both our leaders an us, get caught up in the limitations of the way things are, and can’t see past the trees.
Alas, this post is only a teaser, or a re-starting point. It is where I put my writing on a path that is line with what my work and passions are about.
I hope to weave this thread of the social forest here. I will be presenting my art work along the way, which follows that theme. I’ll post the work of others who use their imagination to get us somewhere beyond the dead end we live in. Above all, I hope to spark the imagination in all its forms within my readers; you.