To Do or Not To Do
To Do or Not to Do
I read an op-ed article in a recent Sunday newspaper about the “housing bubble.” The question it posed
was, were those who forecast it right or wrong? Many who were critical were way too early, it said, and had
been virtually discredited by the time it occurred, and, and…well, the rest is immaterial. Housing prices had
been going up at an unreasonable rate as speculators moved in for the kill – over a relatively long period of
time. At some point an adjustment was going to happen. Ho-hum. The article dropped back and referenced
the “tech bubble” early in the century. How about the tulip bubble in the 1700s? Or the land speculation
bubble following the Louisiana Purchase? Or the speculation that brought on the Great Depression? Or any
number of other bubbles that seem to have come along and continue to do so as regular as clock work? And
what do they all have in common? Of course, quite elementally: greed. Housing prices? Oh, they’ll start
back up again, and there will likely be another bubble, and we will all have about the same reaction.
It is not the housing bubble per se about which I got to thinking; it was the oh so typical reaction to it – and to
most of the rest of what passes for news these days. First let me say that I realize that what I am about to
muse about is long range – the philosopher sitting on a cloud, detached. He who had his house
repossessed necessarily takes a far different view, just as those who spent their life’s savings buying stocks
in 1929 on a ten percent margin. And when there is a riot in Africa and people are killed they, and their
relatives that rely upon them, cannot be disinterested spectators.
The reaction? Not the reaction of those who are directly involved and affected by whatever it is that occurred,
but the rest of us. It is almost always short term - and emotional. Man is an animal that reasons,
understands time relationships and knows how to generalize and put things in perspective; he also places
much more importance on the now and reacts to it emotionally. There are reasons for that, and I have
hammered on most of them off and on: selfishness, greed, ignorance for starters. But let’s put that in
perspective, particularly selfishness. Individuals must take care of themselves and their families; it only
becomes selfishness when it becomes excessive – or obtuse. That line again that separates reasonable
from excessive that occurs in almost everything we do. Greed is the most natural thing for man, the
acquisitive, and power seeking. And ignorance is nothing more than a combination of lack of motivation or
ability.
But there is more; there is always more. And the more is manipulation. We are all manipulated continually,
by our fellow man through the facts and opinions he presses upon us in teaching and conversations, but of
course much more than that through mass communications: books, magazines, newspapers, television and
computers. Think short term and emotional; almost all mass communications are directed toward short
term and emotional. The only ones that aren’t are historical in nature and those, for much of the mass
communicatees, are heavily discounted; they consider them unimportant. I have read in several places lately
how vehemently people of today, particularly the young, reject as irrelevant anything more than (pick a
number) years ago. Dead white males. The mass media is well aware of that, just as aware as they are of
our emotional reaction to immediacy, and since they seek readership/viewership they capitalize on it through
sensationalism that tweaks the emotions.
Since most of us have difficulty putting things that are happening in perspective, particularly when we see
them as possibly having a direct bearing on our own lives and well being – or have an emotional effect on us,
usually because of their violence or inhumanity, we react. And this is where a more remote philosophical
view would intrude, to wit, the old nursery rhyme starring Henny Penny and her friends: the sky is falling, the
sky is falling. Our economy is collapsing, the Muslims are about to take over the world, China will destroy us,
global warming is about to put our coastal cities under water and obliterate everything we hold dear, etc.
Really?
This is not to suggest our economy should not be important to us or that a long term global warming will not
affect our lives - but now? Right now? Oh woe, the sky is falling. It would be nice if we could discuss it,
reason to a plan while listening to people with real facts and perspectives and come together to work it. Only
that doesn’t seem to be the way we do things. I like the way Anton Myrer put it in Once An Eagle: “We seem in
capable of resisting…we are a race of headlong altruists. We rush to a foreign land in a deluge of embattled
sympathy, we give away clothing, cigarettes, our rations…we do everything in our power to proclaim our good
intentions, our nobility of purpose, our loftiness of soul…and all because we think we are too good for the rest
of the world…We stubbornly, sublimely refuse to see man as he is…we’re so damned certain about how he
ought to be – he ought to be American.” Circumstances change but our reactions don’t: the sky is falling and
we must do something – anything! Or there is another reaction:we shrug our shoulders and yawn, don’t
bother me. Or we do the former until we get bored, and then yawn.
But why? What do we think? What do we do? We think, like puppets on a string, how some group of
smooth talking, arrogant, sarcastic self centered elite tell us to think, and then let them decide for us what to
do. Or we yawn, don’t bother me. And then fight over which is right. Really? Is that what we all do? There
are still people in our land that think for themselves, and sort through the chaff to find the wheat. But their
decibel count is low and they are most often blown away by the arrogant talking preening blowhards that
assume for themselves the mantle of elite, and who are madly jerking at the puppet strings as they insist the
sky is falling – and only they know how to stop it. Why do we listen to them? Actually polls are indicating that
more and more we don’t. We are beginning to see them for what they are, but we are still too shallow to
realize all elites are not created equal, so many of us have just taken to yawning, don’t bother me. What a
circus; on the one side puppets jumping around to the twists of excited puppeteers; on the other the
indifferent who are too involved in a TV program to think about it.
There is a middle ground, and perhaps one day we will get back to trying to discover it, but not until our
favorite TV programs are over. And until that happens the puppeteers will rule the day.
I read an op-ed article in a recent Sunday newspaper about the “housing bubble.” The question it posed
was, were those who forecast it right or wrong? Many who were critical were way too early, it said, and had
been virtually discredited by the time it occurred, and, and…well, the rest is immaterial. Housing prices had
been going up at an unreasonable rate as speculators moved in for the kill – over a relatively long period of
time. At some point an adjustment was going to happen. Ho-hum. The article dropped back and referenced
the “tech bubble” early in the century. How about the tulip bubble in the 1700s? Or the land speculation
bubble following the Louisiana Purchase? Or the speculation that brought on the Great Depression? Or any
number of other bubbles that seem to have come along and continue to do so as regular as clock work? And
what do they all have in common? Of course, quite elementally: greed. Housing prices? Oh, they’ll start
back up again, and there will likely be another bubble, and we will all have about the same reaction.
It is not the housing bubble per se about which I got to thinking; it was the oh so typical reaction to it – and to
most of the rest of what passes for news these days. First let me say that I realize that what I am about to
muse about is long range – the philosopher sitting on a cloud, detached. He who had his house
repossessed necessarily takes a far different view, just as those who spent their life’s savings buying stocks
in 1929 on a ten percent margin. And when there is a riot in Africa and people are killed they, and their
relatives that rely upon them, cannot be disinterested spectators.
The reaction? Not the reaction of those who are directly involved and affected by whatever it is that occurred,
but the rest of us. It is almost always short term - and emotional. Man is an animal that reasons,
understands time relationships and knows how to generalize and put things in perspective; he also places
much more importance on the now and reacts to it emotionally. There are reasons for that, and I have
hammered on most of them off and on: selfishness, greed, ignorance for starters. But let’s put that in
perspective, particularly selfishness. Individuals must take care of themselves and their families; it only
becomes selfishness when it becomes excessive – or obtuse. That line again that separates reasonable
from excessive that occurs in almost everything we do. Greed is the most natural thing for man, the
acquisitive, and power seeking. And ignorance is nothing more than a combination of lack of motivation or
ability.
But there is more; there is always more. And the more is manipulation. We are all manipulated continually,
by our fellow man through the facts and opinions he presses upon us in teaching and conversations, but of
course much more than that through mass communications: books, magazines, newspapers, television and
computers. Think short term and emotional; almost all mass communications are directed toward short
term and emotional. The only ones that aren’t are historical in nature and those, for much of the mass
communicatees, are heavily discounted; they consider them unimportant. I have read in several places lately
how vehemently people of today, particularly the young, reject as irrelevant anything more than (pick a
number) years ago. Dead white males. The mass media is well aware of that, just as aware as they are of
our emotional reaction to immediacy, and since they seek readership/viewership they capitalize on it through
sensationalism that tweaks the emotions.
Since most of us have difficulty putting things that are happening in perspective, particularly when we see
them as possibly having a direct bearing on our own lives and well being – or have an emotional effect on us,
usually because of their violence or inhumanity, we react. And this is where a more remote philosophical
view would intrude, to wit, the old nursery rhyme starring Henny Penny and her friends: the sky is falling, the
sky is falling. Our economy is collapsing, the Muslims are about to take over the world, China will destroy us,
global warming is about to put our coastal cities under water and obliterate everything we hold dear, etc.
Really?
This is not to suggest our economy should not be important to us or that a long term global warming will not
affect our lives - but now? Right now? Oh woe, the sky is falling. It would be nice if we could discuss it,
reason to a plan while listening to people with real facts and perspectives and come together to work it. Only
that doesn’t seem to be the way we do things. I like the way Anton Myrer put it in Once An Eagle: “We seem in
capable of resisting…we are a race of headlong altruists. We rush to a foreign land in a deluge of embattled
sympathy, we give away clothing, cigarettes, our rations…we do everything in our power to proclaim our good
intentions, our nobility of purpose, our loftiness of soul…and all because we think we are too good for the rest
of the world…We stubbornly, sublimely refuse to see man as he is…we’re so damned certain about how he
ought to be – he ought to be American.” Circumstances change but our reactions don’t: the sky is falling and
we must do something – anything! Or there is another reaction:we shrug our shoulders and yawn, don’t
bother me. Or we do the former until we get bored, and then yawn.
But why? What do we think? What do we do? We think, like puppets on a string, how some group of
smooth talking, arrogant, sarcastic self centered elite tell us to think, and then let them decide for us what to
do. Or we yawn, don’t bother me. And then fight over which is right. Really? Is that what we all do? There
are still people in our land that think for themselves, and sort through the chaff to find the wheat. But their
decibel count is low and they are most often blown away by the arrogant talking preening blowhards that
assume for themselves the mantle of elite, and who are madly jerking at the puppet strings as they insist the
sky is falling – and only they know how to stop it. Why do we listen to them? Actually polls are indicating that
more and more we don’t. We are beginning to see them for what they are, but we are still too shallow to
realize all elites are not created equal, so many of us have just taken to yawning, don’t bother me. What a
circus; on the one side puppets jumping around to the twists of excited puppeteers; on the other the
indifferent who are too involved in a TV program to think about it.
There is a middle ground, and perhaps one day we will get back to trying to discover it, but not until our
favorite TV programs are over. And until that happens the puppeteers will rule the day.