Avoiding the oncoming car crash by watching the road signs and warnings. More on our homeland, your national rights, and the wisdom to know the difference.
ROAD SIGNS AND WARNINGS
Almost every morning, I get into my car to drive to the local YMCA. This nourishes me, body and soul. I enjoy the social value of vibing with friends, colleagues, and health fanatics. But, I also do it for a simpler purpose: to rediscover, daily, that motion is the solution to many things. The routine opens my mind and spirit.
In returning from the gym, for the last year, I’ve witnessed the construction of a circular intersection down the road from my home. As you approach it, constructions engineers provide three warnings before you hit the circle—a testament to their understanding of human inattention, distraction, and speed.
I also smiled when I saw they deliberately left a large earth-moving CAT tractor in the middle of the circle during the most dangerous weeks of construction. Even a person distracted by the radio, with its news cycle full of hate, would not miss seeing this giant device. This Hail Mary from the construction-consciousness shines a light reminding us of a change in routine, a slowing up, and an easing into the new turn.
Now that is good constructive leadership. Good leaders in governments and business should know how to construct with the intangible- how to maneuver through the murky depths of what may come to the surface, be brought to light, based on whether we choose path A or path B.
I have found in my life that we all can do the same in our behavior and attitudes. Like these construction engineers, we can each play a role in improving the sanctuary of today. Some want to help through musing and creativity—and that quieter contribution makes mighty sense. These meek crusaders help others to unearth powerful insights, hidden in dark corners of our minds, simply by shedding their light. Some want to do it by activism and resistance against wrong-doing, and I see that mounting again throughout the world. And some want to look to the horizon and advance the future by transmuting hate and fear into inspiration and productive focus as bankers, lawyers, and chiefs of commerce. I have faith that each archetype fits somewhere into a puzzle, whose complete picture becomes the key to our people, as one, rising to the next level.
THE CHOICE BEFORE US: BE ALERT
We all began life in joy, running across the earth and grass. Over time, first with toys and sports, many of us in time discovered the thrill of competition. Eventually, we would seek competition in many aspects of our lives, from our work, to our possessions, to our politics.
However, competition unattached from joy can bring hate and division, as we see so often today.
The key is making the choice to embrace social value and care. We carry and discover the joys of this care when we speak at the gym’s sauna, when we meet in supermarkets or in the halls of movie theatres, both at home and during travel.
People that care want to know and to share; to blossom and unfold their lives’ experience to blend with those around them. We may have mentored their children. We may have discussed their teachers and parents and helped our children and neighbors have children and become civil neighbors. This virtuous cycle is social, not a vicious box as some news stations and many elements of internet suggest.
You will find the values of social capital and humanity expressed in most religions, all regions of the world, and in most industrial cultures when their leaders fight against blind ignorance, greed, and the self-interests of prejudice.
If one is simply selfish, they have a kind of upside-down logic. But by making the choice to be deliberately civil, you see the world as something to keep not conquer.
BEING CREATIVE, CARING, AND MORE FREE
Artists across the ages have reminded us of the need for a personal quest of the soul, the acts of daily devotion and discipline, to give back to the society that birthed us. I will write more about the id, the ego, and civilization’s call for some superego in each of us next time. For now, simply record in the back of your mind that coming back to basics offers you a celebratory sense of civilization, where you feel a citizen of the world as well as of your homeland.
Do not drive with anger straight ahead. Do not stab yourself with attempts to hurt others. A global American can learn not only from Ben Franklin and a career in business, but can learn from the Canadian Leonard Cohen, or the Irishman Van Morrison, or our own living legend Bob Dylan. In song, we make a smoother turn.
Rise with integrity. Be present with friends, family, and kin in our lives as we swim past a meaner world, one that will slowly sink into the past. Be a beacon of light as you celebrate your global ties and acceptance. Be like Ben Franklin all over again. That is the global American.
For further reading:
As a social historian Bruce Piasecki recommends you read his comments in the context of coverage on the $6.4 trillion lost in the last day on the stock market. Please note, without bias or prejudice, that the USA based stock values declined 10 percent in the net while global nation based traders like those in the UK dropped only .5 percent. There is a market meaning to this social history on America’s current retaliatory tariffs. Reach back history to 1930 if you want to see this known economic and market pattern to expect next in terms of inflation and stock stagnation. Modern global history illustrates why you can not win with hate, isolationism nor anti-globalization politics since World War II”.
See www.brucepiasecki.com for some videos by readers, CEOs and Board members now posted on a forthcoming PBS show called Doing More with Less; there also find some leaders like Bill Novelli and Chris Coulter commenting on my ideas of competition, globalization, and social history in the making.
For a cartoon on Piasecki’s competitive principles, visit: www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com
