John Renesch: Exploring the Better Future

Wall Street Skull and Crossbones

In 2002 I wrote about the “modern-day tyrants ” suggesting they might be the master manipulators of Wall Street. In part I stated:

 

These modern day tyrants value short-term financial gratification more than anything else. Their actions are totally inconsistent with a sustainable world in which people are valued and life is affirmed. They create no real value in the world, certainly not in the way most of us think about adding value, such as an exchange of something for something else. Their sole purpose is to make a profit, and to do so with the least amount of capital as possible.

Fast forward six years to this past week...

 

The other evening I was watching a segment of the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean” starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. In one scene Sparrow and a fellow pirate make a toast, apparently one of the pirate codes - “Take what you can. Give nothing back.” In light of the financial fiasco confronting the whole world today, this seemed very timely for the consciousness (or lack of it) that has been allowed to permeate our corporate environments in recent years.

 

We apparently learned nothing from the Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen debacle earlier this decade. Nor from the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s. Or the many other indicators that predatory capitalism only works for a very few at the expense of the vast majority. Americans are most probably going to pay for all this maleficence.

If markets were truly free and unfettered, the market fundamentalists might have a valid point. But those who manipulate the market to their advantage cannot honestly justify that position when they themselves tilt the playing field in their favor. This is not a free market but a skewed market that required some restraints.

 

Those who have mastered this game – those who made fortunes while leaving the rest of the world in ruins – have no conscience. They leave others to clean up after them and slink off into the darkness with their loot. They truly do subscribe to the pirates code: Take what you can. Give nothing back. This makes these dubious characters the modern-day pirates, far worse than mere tyrants.

 

If you happen to know any of these modern-day pirates and are keeping quiet about them out of some distorted sense of loyalty I suggest you blow the whistle and do it now!  It may prevent another bunch of greedy SOBs from pillaging the public trough in another few years.

 

[please forward to anyone you know who works in the financial services industry]

 

Lessons from Bucky

Years ago I had the pleasure of hearing R. Buckminster Fuller speak several times here in the Bay Area. It was a year or so before the passing of his wife whom he soon followed.  “Bucky” - as he was affectionately known by his friends and fans – was a visionary inventor/engineer/architect who is probably best known for his geodesic dome design. He was posthumously recognized for his genius by having the C60 allotrope of carbon named “buckminsterfullerene” since it was structured similarly to Fuller’s revolutionary architecture for his dome.

Buckminsterfullerene molecule

Besides his many inventions and theories, Bucky left us some wondrous literature – around thirty books! One of my favorite Bucky quotes is: "If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?"

 

These are not merely thought provoking questions asked rhetorically. Bucky’s life was a living response to them. For the most part, he lived as if the success or failure of the human race was dependent on how he lived and what he did.

 

We live in a time when our world would be better served if more of us lived our lives as if the future depended on us. Quite often, people rationalize their failure to live responsibly – as if the future depended upon their actions – telling themselves they are only one person out of billions. This sort of rationalization serves two masters: the cynic who is convinced nothing can be done to improve matters and the victim who is equally convinced they are powerless to change anything. It reeks of powerlessness.

 

One thing about Bucky which is less well- known: he seriously contemplated suicide in mid-life. He had a series of business failures, an experience known all too well by inventive types whose ideas are a bit too far ahead of the crowd, had gone bankrupt and lost his young daughter to polio. He reportedly had an epiphany which caused him to step back from the brink of taking his own life and embark on what he called "an experiment” - to discover what a single individual could contribute to change the world and benefit all humanity. For the next half century, he lived that experiment.

 

What if we lived that experiment each day? What if we asked ourselves, “What can I do today to benefit humanity?” Instead of wallowing in powerlessness what if we simply did something every day that contributed to the success of the human species? I guarantee you the world would start looking better.

 

Another of my favorite Bucky quotes is, "I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except to dare to think, and to dare to go with the truth, and to dare to really love completely." I will add my own dare, no double dare!