Stupendous Change Leadership Series: Emasculated culture, Part 2
07/February/2007 12:17 Filed in: Weekly Column
7 February 2007; Volume 9, Issue 6
PDF copy
The United States of America, is truly a unique country in many ways. Those of us who were born and raised and have spent most, if not all of our lives here, take everything pretty much for granted. That does not mean those blessings do not exist, it is just we, for a host of reasons, truly just don’t think about it that much.
The overriding concept of America’s greatness is what has been called the American Dream. In America no matter where you start, you can achieve more than you can in any other country. Too often we natives now define that freedom in material ways, simply because we take the opportunity to change the future for granted. Like no other nation, now or in the past, your future is pretty much undefined. You create your future utilizing your God given talents and ingenuity.
When our founding documents speak of all men being created equal, they are talking about more than genetics, but also opportunity. When they used the term men, they probably meant men, free men, owning property, not so much because they were seeking limitations of future equality, but they were citizens of a paradigm in time and space. Over time that men term, has been inclusive enough to include, men of color, women, and immigrants from all over the world. In the American sense all mankind is equal because we all were ultimately created by God.
As we have attempted to move ourselves beyond the absolutes of God, and to promote our personal form of narcissistic hedonism, we have sought to create special rights for ourselves and to deny them to others. Without a doubt the most blatant interference with those God given human rights is now called “A woman’s right to choose.” In this context, a woman has the right to alter God’s natural law as a personal decision. In the respect of alternation of natural law, America through abortion rights commits a holocaust each and every year, and we know longer even think about it.
This right was extended only because the right to be a narcissistic hedonist previously became the common law of the land. Today we promote that right everywhere. The so called evangelical church being one of the prime benefactors and promoters. It is simply that the evangel of good news is no longer about Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected to give you an eternal future, the modern evangel is that God has a wonderful plan for your present life, if you just do these simple truths, that I will share with you today, and if you buy our books and DVDs.
The weeks leading up to SuperBowl Sunday saw sales of big screen TV’s go way up, not because you need that $1000 - $5000 piece of latest technology. The reason people bought these devices is because they could. That really finds its roots in the perceived truth, that this new technology is more real than real life. Reality, even the SuperBowl reality, can not exist outside of a rain drenched football field in south Florida, so we substitute technological magic for the real thing.
What we are left with after the game is an expensive device we hope will give us a better future reality, better than the real world around us, because the real world has become too complicated or aggressive for our meager self centered education and our lazy lifestyle. As we withdraw from that real world into the electronic entertainment universe, we become emasculated as men, but also as women. We never stop to think that fair and balanced reporting, is really a marketing tactic to create self centered chaos thereby to sell advertising. All that chaos does is to force us to withdraw further into ourselves, hoping that tomorrow will be better than today.
The amazing thing about the United States however, is that while that future hope may flicker, the future desires are never extinguished, but continue to burn. This without any visible source of fuel.
My comment about the park study group last week, where the decided to be blind people, were trying to lead other decided to be blind people, the program was still designed to produce a house. Whether that was a real house or just a crude outline with some ropes, is not as important as the fact that these people were trying to change an impossibility into a reality. The problem is not with the hope, the problem is with the application.
On my last trip to Eastern Washington I stopped at the rest area about 80 miles west of Spokane. As I was still sitting in my truck, an immaculate shining red 4X4 Dodge pickup pulled up along side. Out jumped what we will call a Mexican family. As they went to and from the resting facilities what struck me was the pride the whole family had in that truck, husband, wife, and the kids. You could just tell that this truck was not a macho man thing, this was the family’s American chosen mode of transportation into the positive future. When the kids returned and climbed into their places in the back seat, they scrambled like young children always do, but you could tell, even then they did it with respect, for this was their family symbol of the good life in America.
We look today at women needing to express themselves in the career world. We hear about a glass ceiling against upward mobility in the corporation. We also hear about the fact that a woman’s place in the home is God’s chosen design for the family. However, we never really stop to think that these mutually exclusive concepts are pretty much products of urban affluence.
In rural agriculture men and women work hard just to make a go of it. Men worked in the fields more than women and women tended to work more around the house, but that division of labor was based more on necessity rather than choice. The Leave it to Beaver mentality of the husband going to a white collar job, and the wife staying home and doing nothing of importance is really a post WW II happening. A short lasting reality at that.
When Jimmy Carter changed FHA rules so that two incomes could qualify for an FHA mortgage, that bubble quickly burst as housing prices doubled within a year. This time however, instead of husband and wife virtually sharing the same goals and family values, they were splintered in order to buy a house, each family member had to have at first only a job, but that very quickly developed into the need for a career. Most of that time that woman’s career, being far different than the man’s.
The result of all of this is truthfully a more self centered personality. “You don’t understand what I go through,” is equally true today for men and women, males and females. “You are so vain, you think all I have to do is to think about you all day long! Don’t you know I have a job to do, a career to build and you don’t help at all.”
It is easy to point the finger in the above statements at the other sex. In that respect what the remarks are really trying to do is to emasculate the other sex into our likeness. However, the real cause is not so much the other person, it is the reality of a culture in which you really don’t matter in any sense other than as a machine to produce some sort of enterprise acceptable outcome. In America that future goal is no longer a quality of life paradigm, but the paradigm that more and bigger is better. The reality that more and bigger can never peacefully coexist, is never challenged.
Careers that are forced to compete in the global economy are not part time jobs, nor can they be accomplished in 40 or 60 hours a week. Modern careers demand 24/7, if not in physical presence, at least mental acquiescence. The reason people are so neutered, as men and women, is in the push of that future goal, you have no time in the present. The robot that builds these things that we produce (and nobody really needs) work twenty four hours a day seven days a week, with no pay or fringe benefits, why can’t you?
Simply because you did not evolve from primordial ooze and a spark of lightning, you were not created to be a machine to design, produce, distribute, and sell, some other mechanical contraption, you were created by God in His image. In that image you were created, to be one of God’s children, and to be part of a large diverse family of similar eternal personalities. When is the last time you looked at yourself in that light? More perplexing, have you ever looked at yourself that way? Really, really disturbing is the fact that on the internet, someone may read this, and all this writing about your created humanity is completely undefined to you. You have not got a clue about anything in this paragraph. You really question the reason why you are here and sort of alive.
Enter a stupendous change experience. Why not call it a catastrophe or a disaster, everything from where you gain your personal identity has been destroyed, does not function as designed, or is of no value in the situation. If you include yourself in any of those previous descriptions, you truly are in serious trouble. But you still have your life, but again is that really important if all your support mechanisms have been destroyed?
The problem is however not with you, it is with the things and the constructs from which you gain your identity. Simply put your life contains no absolute truth, other than what you have vainly attempted to create for yourself. To use a once contemporary saying, “You are created in God’s image and God don’t make no junk.” Therefore the junk in your life you have created from the world around you to deny there is a God, or nobody ever told you that all religions don’t lead to heaven.
This really gets serious when children are involved. If you consider everything relative and there are no absolute values, how can you raise children in a changing world. If they look to you as the only anchor in their world and you believe that anchors do not exist, what happens when situations occur that you can not plan for or cope with in your own strength? These children have no way of discerning not just right and wrong, but where can hope for the future be found. When parents, if that is truly a plural statement, are no more advanced emotionally than their childish offspring, any standard for a positive future is infantile also.
While politicians haven’t used the words quite this way yet, the more politically incorrect way to speak to the Iraq situation is to call it a catastrophe and (not or) a disaster. Some have call this the beginning of WW III. The point is however, all the best of intentions have led to chaos and civil war. As with all stupendous change events wishful thinking is not going to get you to the other side of the situation.
The National Intelligence Estimate issued last week states pretty much neither the Congressional Democrats solution of some type of withdrawal, or the President’s and Republican solution of some type of felt victory have virtually no chance of success in the next couple of years. Furthermore, to paraphrase the report, one could conclude that there is no American Dream type of result possible.
Into the Stupendous Change void rides the leader on a White Horse vanquishing the troubling foe. That is a White Horse, not live in a White House. That horsey hero, depending on the natural circumstances could range from the truck driver from the power company arriving to restore your electricity after the wind storm, to someone who understands that today’s world situation requires stupendous will power and management skills.
That first step in leadership is to access the current reality of the situation. When the first guy from the power crew arrived after the December wind storm, he quickly assessed the situation, then left. Next morning he arrived with about 6 times reinforcements, three new power poles, and by the end of the day they had the main line of electricity restored.
With Iraq, the problem is much larger, but as the old saying used to go, “Too many chiefs, not enough indians.” In fact, in the nation’s capitol there are no indians at all, just a few Native Americans. Our leadership seems to be entrenched in another leadership tactical faux pas and as said earlier that is not to honestly assess the situation and the consequences thereof.
The electrical power truck driver didn’t have that problem, when he returned instead of one truck he brought six, complete with a crews in which each could accomplish the task, or in military terms, the mission they were each prepared to do. The absolute mission of the power company was to restore electrical power as quickly as possible.
With Iraq there is no longer a viable mission statement. There really is no command and control in a military sense, just some commanders trying to control a chaotic situation. Unless real command and control is established the chaos is going to get wider and bring stupendous change in the military sense to the region and even eventually to the land of the American Dream. This hopefully is only economic in this country, but could also include terrorism again. Perhaps the true question is how can you fight a real war without some type of real war related national sacrifice? A pipe dream answer no longer applies.
All of this chaos caused by emasculated leadership well before most of us were born, making politically expedient decisions with narcissistic self interest as the major factor. We have just followed that irrelevant and unrealistic path. The only hope is to again make the word truth mean something other than personal or national relevance. Both men and women are needed in their true God given roles if society is going to cope with a continuing future in which stupendous change is the only constant. That begins with the absolute truth at an Almighty God created all things, and you are not God. That truth is just a first step, but a required one none the less.
PDF copy
The United States of America, is truly a unique country in many ways. Those of us who were born and raised and have spent most, if not all of our lives here, take everything pretty much for granted. That does not mean those blessings do not exist, it is just we, for a host of reasons, truly just don’t think about it that much.
The overriding concept of America’s greatness is what has been called the American Dream. In America no matter where you start, you can achieve more than you can in any other country. Too often we natives now define that freedom in material ways, simply because we take the opportunity to change the future for granted. Like no other nation, now or in the past, your future is pretty much undefined. You create your future utilizing your God given talents and ingenuity.
When our founding documents speak of all men being created equal, they are talking about more than genetics, but also opportunity. When they used the term men, they probably meant men, free men, owning property, not so much because they were seeking limitations of future equality, but they were citizens of a paradigm in time and space. Over time that men term, has been inclusive enough to include, men of color, women, and immigrants from all over the world. In the American sense all mankind is equal because we all were ultimately created by God.
As we have attempted to move ourselves beyond the absolutes of God, and to promote our personal form of narcissistic hedonism, we have sought to create special rights for ourselves and to deny them to others. Without a doubt the most blatant interference with those God given human rights is now called “A woman’s right to choose.” In this context, a woman has the right to alter God’s natural law as a personal decision. In the respect of alternation of natural law, America through abortion rights commits a holocaust each and every year, and we know longer even think about it.
This right was extended only because the right to be a narcissistic hedonist previously became the common law of the land. Today we promote that right everywhere. The so called evangelical church being one of the prime benefactors and promoters. It is simply that the evangel of good news is no longer about Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected to give you an eternal future, the modern evangel is that God has a wonderful plan for your present life, if you just do these simple truths, that I will share with you today, and if you buy our books and DVDs.
The weeks leading up to SuperBowl Sunday saw sales of big screen TV’s go way up, not because you need that $1000 - $5000 piece of latest technology. The reason people bought these devices is because they could. That really finds its roots in the perceived truth, that this new technology is more real than real life. Reality, even the SuperBowl reality, can not exist outside of a rain drenched football field in south Florida, so we substitute technological magic for the real thing.
What we are left with after the game is an expensive device we hope will give us a better future reality, better than the real world around us, because the real world has become too complicated or aggressive for our meager self centered education and our lazy lifestyle. As we withdraw from that real world into the electronic entertainment universe, we become emasculated as men, but also as women. We never stop to think that fair and balanced reporting, is really a marketing tactic to create self centered chaos thereby to sell advertising. All that chaos does is to force us to withdraw further into ourselves, hoping that tomorrow will be better than today.
The amazing thing about the United States however, is that while that future hope may flicker, the future desires are never extinguished, but continue to burn. This without any visible source of fuel.
My comment about the park study group last week, where the decided to be blind people, were trying to lead other decided to be blind people, the program was still designed to produce a house. Whether that was a real house or just a crude outline with some ropes, is not as important as the fact that these people were trying to change an impossibility into a reality. The problem is not with the hope, the problem is with the application.
On my last trip to Eastern Washington I stopped at the rest area about 80 miles west of Spokane. As I was still sitting in my truck, an immaculate shining red 4X4 Dodge pickup pulled up along side. Out jumped what we will call a Mexican family. As they went to and from the resting facilities what struck me was the pride the whole family had in that truck, husband, wife, and the kids. You could just tell that this truck was not a macho man thing, this was the family’s American chosen mode of transportation into the positive future. When the kids returned and climbed into their places in the back seat, they scrambled like young children always do, but you could tell, even then they did it with respect, for this was their family symbol of the good life in America.
We look today at women needing to express themselves in the career world. We hear about a glass ceiling against upward mobility in the corporation. We also hear about the fact that a woman’s place in the home is God’s chosen design for the family. However, we never really stop to think that these mutually exclusive concepts are pretty much products of urban affluence.
In rural agriculture men and women work hard just to make a go of it. Men worked in the fields more than women and women tended to work more around the house, but that division of labor was based more on necessity rather than choice. The Leave it to Beaver mentality of the husband going to a white collar job, and the wife staying home and doing nothing of importance is really a post WW II happening. A short lasting reality at that.
When Jimmy Carter changed FHA rules so that two incomes could qualify for an FHA mortgage, that bubble quickly burst as housing prices doubled within a year. This time however, instead of husband and wife virtually sharing the same goals and family values, they were splintered in order to buy a house, each family member had to have at first only a job, but that very quickly developed into the need for a career. Most of that time that woman’s career, being far different than the man’s.
The result of all of this is truthfully a more self centered personality. “You don’t understand what I go through,” is equally true today for men and women, males and females. “You are so vain, you think all I have to do is to think about you all day long! Don’t you know I have a job to do, a career to build and you don’t help at all.”
It is easy to point the finger in the above statements at the other sex. In that respect what the remarks are really trying to do is to emasculate the other sex into our likeness. However, the real cause is not so much the other person, it is the reality of a culture in which you really don’t matter in any sense other than as a machine to produce some sort of enterprise acceptable outcome. In America that future goal is no longer a quality of life paradigm, but the paradigm that more and bigger is better. The reality that more and bigger can never peacefully coexist, is never challenged.
Careers that are forced to compete in the global economy are not part time jobs, nor can they be accomplished in 40 or 60 hours a week. Modern careers demand 24/7, if not in physical presence, at least mental acquiescence. The reason people are so neutered, as men and women, is in the push of that future goal, you have no time in the present. The robot that builds these things that we produce (and nobody really needs) work twenty four hours a day seven days a week, with no pay or fringe benefits, why can’t you?
Simply because you did not evolve from primordial ooze and a spark of lightning, you were not created to be a machine to design, produce, distribute, and sell, some other mechanical contraption, you were created by God in His image. In that image you were created, to be one of God’s children, and to be part of a large diverse family of similar eternal personalities. When is the last time you looked at yourself in that light? More perplexing, have you ever looked at yourself that way? Really, really disturbing is the fact that on the internet, someone may read this, and all this writing about your created humanity is completely undefined to you. You have not got a clue about anything in this paragraph. You really question the reason why you are here and sort of alive.
Enter a stupendous change experience. Why not call it a catastrophe or a disaster, everything from where you gain your personal identity has been destroyed, does not function as designed, or is of no value in the situation. If you include yourself in any of those previous descriptions, you truly are in serious trouble. But you still have your life, but again is that really important if all your support mechanisms have been destroyed?
The problem is however not with you, it is with the things and the constructs from which you gain your identity. Simply put your life contains no absolute truth, other than what you have vainly attempted to create for yourself. To use a once contemporary saying, “You are created in God’s image and God don’t make no junk.” Therefore the junk in your life you have created from the world around you to deny there is a God, or nobody ever told you that all religions don’t lead to heaven.
This really gets serious when children are involved. If you consider everything relative and there are no absolute values, how can you raise children in a changing world. If they look to you as the only anchor in their world and you believe that anchors do not exist, what happens when situations occur that you can not plan for or cope with in your own strength? These children have no way of discerning not just right and wrong, but where can hope for the future be found. When parents, if that is truly a plural statement, are no more advanced emotionally than their childish offspring, any standard for a positive future is infantile also.
While politicians haven’t used the words quite this way yet, the more politically incorrect way to speak to the Iraq situation is to call it a catastrophe and (not or) a disaster. Some have call this the beginning of WW III. The point is however, all the best of intentions have led to chaos and civil war. As with all stupendous change events wishful thinking is not going to get you to the other side of the situation.
The National Intelligence Estimate issued last week states pretty much neither the Congressional Democrats solution of some type of withdrawal, or the President’s and Republican solution of some type of felt victory have virtually no chance of success in the next couple of years. Furthermore, to paraphrase the report, one could conclude that there is no American Dream type of result possible.
Into the Stupendous Change void rides the leader on a White Horse vanquishing the troubling foe. That is a White Horse, not live in a White House. That horsey hero, depending on the natural circumstances could range from the truck driver from the power company arriving to restore your electricity after the wind storm, to someone who understands that today’s world situation requires stupendous will power and management skills.
That first step in leadership is to access the current reality of the situation. When the first guy from the power crew arrived after the December wind storm, he quickly assessed the situation, then left. Next morning he arrived with about 6 times reinforcements, three new power poles, and by the end of the day they had the main line of electricity restored.
With Iraq, the problem is much larger, but as the old saying used to go, “Too many chiefs, not enough indians.” In fact, in the nation’s capitol there are no indians at all, just a few Native Americans. Our leadership seems to be entrenched in another leadership tactical faux pas and as said earlier that is not to honestly assess the situation and the consequences thereof.
The electrical power truck driver didn’t have that problem, when he returned instead of one truck he brought six, complete with a crews in which each could accomplish the task, or in military terms, the mission they were each prepared to do. The absolute mission of the power company was to restore electrical power as quickly as possible.
With Iraq there is no longer a viable mission statement. There really is no command and control in a military sense, just some commanders trying to control a chaotic situation. Unless real command and control is established the chaos is going to get wider and bring stupendous change in the military sense to the region and even eventually to the land of the American Dream. This hopefully is only economic in this country, but could also include terrorism again. Perhaps the true question is how can you fight a real war without some type of real war related national sacrifice? A pipe dream answer no longer applies.
All of this chaos caused by emasculated leadership well before most of us were born, making politically expedient decisions with narcissistic self interest as the major factor. We have just followed that irrelevant and unrealistic path. The only hope is to again make the word truth mean something other than personal or national relevance. Both men and women are needed in their true God given roles if society is going to cope with a continuing future in which stupendous change is the only constant. That begins with the absolute truth at an Almighty God created all things, and you are not God. That truth is just a first step, but a required one none the less.