Crunch Time

Welcome to the outer limits

The old, funky television show “The Outer Limits” had one of the most creative openings I can remember. The screen you were watching would begin as a test pattern. Then suddenly it would begin to morph and act erratically as an ominous voice would begin to narrate,

“There is nothing wrong with your television set” it would intone, “Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. For the next hour we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.”

It seems today that we have entered a place in the outer limits. The speed of change is mind boggling. We are held captive to a test pattern and we feel as if we have no control over our situation and its extraordinary changes.

The subsequent anxiety often expresses itself as a vice-like compression deep in the gut. Our thoughts race around in our skulls first thing in the morning toward what seems an insurmountable finish line. Days become reflective, many times obsessive, about the state of our lives and the condition of our world.

It’s no wonder. I believe we are in an unprecedented time of change, the likes of which have been experienced only a few times before. It’s an evolutionary exclamation point in human history.

Alvin Toffler’s "Social Wave-Front Analysis" looks at history as a succession of rolling waves of change and asks where the leading edge of each wave is carrying us. It focuses our attention not so much on the continuities of history as on the discontinuities--the innovations and breakpoints.
The First Wave in human history was the agricultural revolution.  It was during this time we learned to cultivate the land and grow fruits and vegetables from seeds.  It lasted for thousands of years.

The Second Wave was the industrial revolution. During this time we learned to harness the energy of steam, coal, and oil to advance the ability of machines to make work more efficient and our lives more convenient.  This lasted for hundreds of years.

The Third Wave of human development is what Toffler calls the information age.  This movement is only decades in the making and we are still trying to catch up with the speed of its change and its far-reaching impact on what it means to be human.

This is our time…this is when we discover what we are really made of...

That's the irony. Our true character doesn't reveal itself when times are sedate or situations are easy. It emerges when we are brought to the brink of intense challenges.  What a great opportunity to strengthen our resolve and build the mental and emotional moxie such times require.

 

Why depression will persist

I've often wondered what evolutionary purpose depression serves. Its been around as long as the human race has walked this earth. Because it has persisted so long and has not been phased out, it must be beneficial to our survival right?. But why?

When I'm in its throes, I don't considered my depression as beneficial to my life. Even its effects on my life have been challenging: It has stalled my life vocationally, strained relationships, and done a real number on my self-esteem. Yet reluctantly I believe it must persist. It must not be eradicated fully.  Here are my reasons:

1. In order to experience the full spectrum of human emotion, depression must be part of the mix. You cannot define happiness unless you can reference it to sadness. The reverse is also true.
2. It slows us down and causes us to ponder the deeper issues of humanity. Most of the great poetry and artisitic confrontation with the world has been birthed in the depressed heart of the artist.  It gives the existential questions of life an honest hearing.
3. Enjoyment of life is fully seized. Because of my depression, I am much more intentional about making my life truly significant. Time with my kids and wife and others is rarely squandered in my better moments.  I gotta seize the day.
4. Depression makes us empathetic to the pain of others. People who have experienced deep depression can resonate deeply with another's pain, no matter how intense. It provides comfort and consolation.
5. It inspires us to make the needed changes to make our world a better place. There is much about our society and world that is less than inspiring (you know intuitively what they are). In fact they can be downright depressing. Confronting the tough issues and helping to transform our world so they no longer drag down the heart is essential for a better world and a movement toward a meaningful future.

As much as I dread the moment of agony I know will come again, I persist in the belief that its gotta be good for my soul - and so I carry on...

Boosting mood in a tough economy

Many people in our country are currently in survival mode. Even those who had high paying jobs find themselves either unemployed or underemployed.  Finances are tight. The general mood among the populace is pretty low.

Boosting mood in this tough economy seems like a daunting task. Washington is doing what it can, putting various spins on the reality and highlighting any gains we are experiencing. It looks like we are working our way out of the financial woods - but it will take awhile before we are out completely.

I am reading a very interesting book entitled, "Deep Survival: Who lives, Who dies, And why". In it the author, Laurence Gonzales, tries to determine the reason that some people are more hearty than others in surviving disasters. He discovered that one of the deeper emotions survivors mine is humor.  It a release of tension and fears that dangerous situations produce.

The author discovered that laughter makes the feeling of being threatened manageable. It's about being cool. It's about laughing with an attitude of bold humility in the face of something terrifying. The best humorists and comedians make us laugh at life because it is a deep way we can make sense and poke fun of the burdens of life.  Survival humor is not the surface "ha ha's", but a deeper understanding of how the brain works in discovering and facing the reality of the situation.

In this tough economy, when was the last time you laughed?

The algorithms that rule our lives

This is a complicated blog and tough to understand exactly. But underneath all the big words and technical language lies some critical insights on how technology is shaping who we are and how we define what it means to be human.

It comes from a blog I follow by George Siemans, a professor in Canada who explores education and learning in the modern world.

Algorithms sound somewhat mysterious and complex. By definition, however, algorithms are basically a sequence of steps or activities, often directed toward solving a problem. The steps to solving a problem may be simple (how to bake a pizza or tie your shoes) or complicated (returning web search results based on an input term or recommending who you should follow on a social networking site). Jacques Ellul warned of the dangers of technique, and by extension technology, as a means to force humanity into states of conformity. No where is this more true than with algorithms. Google’s CEO recognizes the power of algorithms, offering a chilling and prophetic insight into the future role of search engines: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next”.

Globe and Mail’s article on Programming our Lives Away reviews the growing dominance of algorithms in our lives

Increasingly, algorithms are used to determine whether we can get access to credit, insurance and government services. They are posing a challenge to human decision-making in the arts. They are being used by prospective employers to decide if we should be hired. They can determine whether your online business will succeed or fail, and they have revolutionized the world of high finance…
Some companies now use algorithms to make decisions around hiring and firing. At Google, which boasts that “almost every [personnel] decision is based on quantitative analysis,” engineers have developed an algorithm to identify those employees most likely to leave to work for a competitor or strike out on their own. Employee surveys, peer reviews, evaluations, promotion and pay histories feed into the algorithm. It helps us “get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave,” a Google manager told The Wall Street Journal last year.
At IBM, programmers put together mathematical models of 50,000 of the company’s tech consultants. They crunched massive amounts of data on them – how many e-mails they sent, who got them, who read the documents they wrote – and used this information to help assess the employees’ effectiveness and deploy their skills in the most cost-efficient way.

The acceleration of life

None of us would have predicted on the first day of the Internet that we'd arrive where we are now. No one would have predicted that this many people would have connected, as fast as they did. No one would have imagined the range of social and cultural functions that have emerged. No one would have imagined how central it is to the operation of every key force in our society. On the first day, no one would have imagined that we would get to this point. From this point, it is impossible to imagine where we are going to go.

What we have seen is that the Internet facilitates rapid cultural evolution, dramatic change in a relatively short period of time, widespread dispersion of patterns, at a speed that would have previously been unimaginable. That means that prediction becomes that much harder.
One of the things that interests me is that if you look at science fiction, the first sci-fi novels that came out at the beginning of the 20th century had to imagine thousands of years into the future in order to imagine a future different enough to be interesting. Contemporary science fiction has to only move out five to ten years to be as dramatic. The time frame of the future gets narrower and narrower.

Our ability to look forward is that much harder because of the acceleration of change that has taken place throughout the 20th century, but particularly in the last couple of decades as digital technology has changed the speed and scale of human communication.

-- Excerpted from an interview with David M. Ewalt on Sept. 22, 2005.

Key tactics for tough times

I need to stop reading and watching the news. The bad news keeps coming and coming. Economically, experts are stating that it could take at least nine years to get back to the economic levels before this severe recession kicked in. Our government is in unbelievable debt. Culturally, there's a general consensus that the global influence of the United States is waning. We are losing our standing as the world's sole super power. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen. Personally, I struggle with the diagnosis of bipolar II disorder and its subsequent severe depression.

It's crunch time.

What gets me through it? What gets any of us through our economic, cultural, and personal challenges?  I believe there are three key tactics for tough times. They're essential. I am going to explore them in further posts and make them the influence that undergirds everything else I write in this blog.

So what are they?

Humor, Hope, and Honesty. They are more profound than they seem on the surface. Everybody needs to activate them each and every day. I believe they make the world spin a whole lot better.  Much more on humor, hope, and honesty later...

What's been on my mind

It's been a while since I wrote a post (three weeks). I've been working on a book that should be officially released in a month. That being said here's what's been on my mind lately.

The Incredibles: I just watched this movie last night and I never tire of seeing it. Now that I am in the throws of middle age (I never thought it would happen to me), I'm reminded of how fast time flies. I am also aware of the relentless changes that come with life. My body just doesn't do what it used to (heck, I take a walk around the park and my buttocks are sore for a couple days!). What strikes me everytime I see the movie is its honesty about being who you really are.

Through a series of lawsuits, the "supers" are relegated to living ordinary lives among ordinary people. Mr. Incredible thus begins to live a life of desperation. He becomes flabby. Deflated morale always occur when your gifts and talents are not being used for the better good. Today there are so many people who are underemployed, losing their home, or just scraping by. No wonder morale is so low today in our country. Too many people are not living (by no fault of their own) up to their potential. We, I, need what you have to offer the world. Part of knowing a gift is how energized you are when expressing it. You'll know you're being underused when you are drained most of the time. So, what energizes you and drains you?

Our obese military

An interesting article in the New York Times referenced the changing training regiment of the military because of the physical limitations of overweight recruits. According to officers, soldiers today are much more overweight than in the past.  I can remember being at an airplane museum in Tuscon and looking at the tight quarters for pilots in World War II era bombers. The docent (himself a veteran of that war) commented that today's pilots have gotten too big for these planes. Too much McDonald's he said.

We have an affluent diet and it is impacting even our national security. Is this what we are fighting for -to protect our indulgent way of life?

They mostly come out at night, mostly

In the movie "Aliens", a little girl named Newt, found by a visiting crew, gives insight into the cruel, fear-inducing aliens that have decimated her community and home. "They mostly come out at night" she says, "mostly".  The aliens that haunt me during this recession mostly come out at night too. They wake me up from an uneasy sleep and make it hard for me to go to bed at night. They mostly come out at night, mostly.

When you bed down for the evening there is a vulnerability that sweeps over you. Your physical body is going to shut down for a time and your brain is going to dissipate into dreams. You are at the whims of the night. It is then that I begin to feel the full weight of the situation and the reality of very tough times - the aliens of angst in our midst.

What are the aliens of angst that come out at us at night, mostly?

The alien of uncertainty: We are conditioned by our Western scientific mindset to value certainty over all else. When it gets threatened, we begin to run scared in the face of its unpredictability. It is the loss of control that we fear. Yet even in the best of times, the loss of control is a certainty. It is the illusion of control that we cling to and that gives this alien its fearful presence. To look uncertainty in the eye and accept it for the fact that it is, diminishes its negating, illusory partner; control.

The alien of failure: I have lived most of my life living under the description of bipolar II disorder. It has stalled my life. The main reason is that every opportunity became an invitation to despair. A friend asked me yesterday if I ever had a dream job. I answered I might have, but I wouldn't have known it. So here I am with very few prospects, no momentum, and not much to show vocationally for all my work.

To define failure, one must define success. You can't understand one without the other. Yet our definitions vary across the spectrum. For some success is defined by material possessions. For others it is the amount of time available to pursue what's important. This alien comes at me most profoundly because I allow the materialistic, consumeristic definition of success to rule the night. I am not a failure.  I am a good father to my children and a loving husband to my wife (thought not very capable at the moment of providing for them). So, in the words of the great American philosophy Kenny Loggins, "even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you hunny, that everything will bring a change of love."

The alien of despair: Despair is like a compression wave that radiates through everything. It is mostly a mindset that we allow ourselves to engage in and allow to have its way with us. I've mentioned in previous posts that depression has a tight logic. It's easy to stay there. What's harder is to break out of its grip. To do so requires joy. Joy is not happiness. Happiness is fleeting, like trying to chase a butterfly. Joy is enduring and finds us. It can seep into our lives in the most unlikely of situations - situations for which joy should be in short supply. It comes from something outside the realm of our reality. Joy, as C.S. Lewis says is "the serious business of heaven"

What this recession will do

This current recession is a doozie and there is talk of it either progressing into what is either called a "double-dip", a full blown depression, or a long slow slog to recovery. It's bad either way you look at it. Those coming of age in anemic economies have lower salaries as adults compared to those who grew up in good economic times. This has to do with risk aversion. They are conditioned to play it safe.

I have been greatly impacted by this recession.  Speaking gigs are few and far between and my current position as an interim pastor will conclude very soon. There is the looming threat of unemployment for the first time in my life. It scares me. After all, I have a wife and three children to provide for.  But I am not alone. A report in March from the Population Reference Bureau showed that more than 70 percent of Americans age 40 and over felt they had been affected by the economic crisis. Government data indicate that the net worth of the average American household has shrunk by about 20 percent — the greatest such decline since the end of World War II. Long-term unemployment — joblessness lasting six months or more — is also at its highest level since the mid-1940s. According to recent data from the Rockefeller Institute, 20 percent of Americans have seen their available household income decline by 25 percent or more. 

It's crunch time...

What might the impact of this historic moment have on our lives in the future? Here are some of my predictions (I'll try to explore more as I have time to ponder):

• Frugality and Thriftiness will become much more a way of life. These are good things as they put our lives in a perspective of stewardship. In my generational presentations I mention that the oldest generation known as the "Matures" (born prior to 1946) are identified by frugality and thriftiness. I remember how engrained this was in the very fabric of my grandparents lives. It never really went away. This derives from the formative experience of the Great Depression. It's interesting that the oldest generation alive today might just be the most relevant.

• Yet, the market doesn't like that stance toward life. It needs us to spend and waste. So, look for the market to go into overdrive to get us to consume (as if it isn't bad enough!). Advertising will become more ingenious and insidious in order to turn us around.

• Community will have much more meaning in our lives. The era of the rugged individualist needs to be over and done with. I think this recession is more than capable of doing that. I've found that people are more sympathetic toward one another because they are all sharing in the same struggle. Studies have shown how much the Battle of Britain in World War II galvanized people to overcome the tragedy together. In fact, when the war was over, people fondly reminisced about the heightened camaraderie they experienced then.  My hope is that attached garages and fenced in yards will no longer be excuses to avoid knowing and relying upon neighbors.

• Spirituality will become very rampant as people turn to a power greater than themselves. After all, it was ourselves that got us into this mess! Ministries of every stripe have a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to care for those in need (and there will be plenty). What a potent way to demonstrate love at the grittiest of street levels. It especially will happen among families and neighbors.

• Escapist entertainment will continue to draw us into worlds and lives that take us away for brief moments from the realities of our situation. I predict that humorists will increasingly be the mouthpiece of our times (think Colbert Report) and comedies will be the most popular entertainment choice. After all, in the words of that great American philosopher Jimmy Buffett, "if we all couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Just a few insights as I gaze into my murky crystal ball.