Narrative vs Fact

Today I'd like to talk about the fragility of our narrative based political system. The highlighting of this idea by Andrew Cuomo (via a good article by Heather Cox Richardson) tied this together for me.

Per the article; “Cuomo pointed out that the coronavirus highlighted the difference between reality and a narrative based in ideology. "A virus has a rate of increase and a number of deaths either goes up or goes down," he said. “The number of people going to hospitals goes up or goes down. It's not subject to debate because the hospital bed is either empty or it's full, we either bury people or we don't."

"We tested both theories," Cuomo told Cillizza. "We have the evidence. It's numbers. It's irrefutable. Why don't we pause and recognize the undeniable reality of the situation?" "There are no Democratic facts and Republican facts," he said. "There are just facts." *1

Decision making based in fantasy and "stretch goals" have a long history in business and there's a constant struggle between people who understand the realities of what a particular project or undertaking takes, and the executives who are sponsoring the work. Invariably there's a divide, between reality and fantasy versions. And so it goes with a Government of CEOs.

As we move into July we're hitting about the 5th month of US impact of Covid a few things are very clear.

The facts and numbers about Covid overwhelm the conservative's narrative of everything being "OK"- that we should sacrifice some of the living to ensure that business continues to survive, purportedly to ensure that people can work for a living. Except that is only part of the story.

• It's a fairytale that business leaders and the rich are job creators. Consumers are job creators - they create demand. When demand ebbs, business responds by cutting jobs. When it expands, jobs open up. Jobs don't get "created", they are created to fulfill demand. Yes - business will take advantage of it - and possibly apply capital to it - but many times, so will individual entrepreneurs in business for themselves.

• There is a fallacy that business is more competent than public service (Government) in taking care of people. Business is fluid. IOn order to survive in the set of rules that govern it, people are a variable to be manipulated. Good government, works with people at the center and manipulates other variables to work for the best personal outcome for the most. See states that enforced lock downs, like Pennsylvania. Fact and evidence-based decision making saved thousands of lives over narrative based decision making which is resulting in huge surges in the wake of "re-opening".

• That re-opening business means returning to conventional mechanisms - we need to be realistic - we cannot congregate. It results in death. Yes, some businesses will keep their profile but for many the world will change. Lots of restaurants and bars will fail. Black Friday will be held more virtually. Our lives are more focused on our own living spaces. Travel will take time to get back to. Gasoline sales will suffer.

And subsequently, we need to revamp our economy. Sudden change shows how trend based our business has become and we punish those that cannot predict what consumers want. We need to use our understanding of statistics to not only predict what will sell, but to hedge our risk if it doesn't. Businesses need to invest in a government insurance that supplements them in times of uncertainty. That makes us more robust.

We need programs that make sure that people eat and have shelter regardless of the state of our economy. We need education and healthcare that's available and affordable for everyone. We need to stop the narrative based thinking that says there are only winners and losers. We must be in this for everyone. everyone needs to win, at least to the point of human decency.

In the end it comes down to taking care of people. Because there is no economy or business without workers or consumers. There is no government without the consenting governed.

*1 Heather Cox Richardson, Substack, June 26, 2020 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-26-2020

When the oppressed are ignored...

I'm not a fan of violence and this current situation does not change this.

Look at what's happening. A man is shot and killed and it takes a month and two weeks after video is made available to arrest and charge the people responsible. A man is killed as a Police Officer kneels on his neck and he gasps for breath. Also, on video and the officer is charged with 3rd degree murder and manslaughter - meaning we aren't holding him responsible for intentional acts, only the result. But these are just the last of years and years of this. Yes, we made strides in civil rights in the 60's but the promise of the post MLK world is still unachieved. Black people live in fear because white people are afraid of them and the very people who are paid to protect have that bias - to the point where black people are arrested, brutalized and killed at rates that far exceed that of white people.

Peaceful protests since the 1960s whose results can only be measured in millimeters since the right to vote and the "ending" of segregation laws. When the French people were starving and the king ignored them, they had to take to the streets to affect change. The king lost his head.

All that Black Americans (and every other nob-white ethnicity closely following behind) have gotten in regards to equal rights since the 60s are platitudes. Promises. Hopes and Prayers. What will it take to affect change? If voices were being heard and change was happening, we wouldn't be having this national conversation. And the world is watching, with many of the same issues to a lesser or greater extent.

The establishment wants this to fade into the news cycle. But it's not and it shouldn't. The system is broken and needs to be fixed. People are dying. Dying.

We cannot ignore wrongful death. Cannot. Want to fix the protesting? Change the system. Announce a national task force to revamp law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Show that real work is being done to get root cause and solve it. Platitudes won't work. Ignorance won't work.

Want to solve it, government? Do something real, holistic and immediate.

Memorial Day 2020

Here we are at the cusp of Memorial Day and there the coincidence of lots of things for us. There’s the day itself and the honoring of the sacrifice made by so many that we might live together in a free society. I’m grateful for it and the importance of that. More on that in a bit. There’s our current ordeal with Covid 19 and the incredible toll it is taking on the people of our nation – both in lives lost – almost 99,000 people, and in economic hardship, especially for the poor, the self-employed .and the small business person. The illness has similarly affected the rest of the world, with over 300,000 deaths so far and economic hardship of varied levels depending on the responsiveness of their governments. 

On a personal note, my late father’s birthday was last Tuesday. He would have been 84. It’s been 21 years since he passed and I miss him very much. He is on my shoulder as I think about what’s happening.

As we celebrate the lives of those who sacrificed them in defense of our Democracy, I want to reflect on who that sacrifice was for and why it is important.

As a people, we are involved in a divide in what a free country means. We are living in a time when our self-categorizing pushes us to choose labels and is amplified by a system that can be manipulated by those with self-serving agendas they wish to push upon all of us – willing or not.

There are some that interpret this as the right to do anything they want – but that’s not a democracy. That would be Anarchy if applied to everyone equally and oppression for some if applied unevenly.

The Declaration of Independence says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

If all men (people) are created equal that means we have Freedom up to the point in which our exercise for that freedom infringes on the rights of others. That means;

• We have freedom to create and practice religion freely. That does not mean we get to subject others to our religious belief, unless they are in mutual agreement.
• We have freedom of speech. But not to the detriment of others – it is why fraud, liable and slander are part of our legal system.
• We can pursue livelihood and make our own decisions, unless they infringe on the rights of others. It’s inherently why we make it illegal to drive recklessly, it’s why we make it illegal to produce poisonous food, it’s why we prosecute for theft and murder. It is why civil liberties are protected (even though these are still not applied universally). These laws are protecting us from some of the harm we do to others.

In all of this, we have the right to challenge laws that we believe infringe on our rights – but we do not have the right to disobey them until we go through due process. 

The test of our democracy now is to see if we can survive the misinformation that’s provided to push those that would act in their own self-interest to take actions that harm others. Clearly, we’re struggling with this. 

We are acting in ways that endanger others and put our own interests first. We are blaming the sick and those who are pushing us to do the right thing for economic suffering, which should be offset by our safeguards – unemployment benefits, safety practices in food and drug processing, – but the radicalized “conservative” agenda has worn at and dissolved many of these and prohibited advances, like healthcare for everyone, so we are left with suffering, when we could be taking care of each other.

The whispering that these groups are pushing – that we couldn’t possibly afford to take care of each other, is counter to the actual facts. The money that was looted from the public till in 2007/2008/2009, in the tax breaks given early in this administration and in the multi-trillion amounts that have been pushed to the already ultra-wealthy tells us the money is there – it is collected from us but not being spent on us.
You can continue to believe that Democratic Capitalism means that there are a few winners and many losers or you can understand that our democracy is being looted and there could be a better balance, even while we preserve our Democracy and our Capitalist economy.

We will have to make it so. We need to insist on better protections. We need to insist on insurance of personal and small business continuity when a pause is needed, when we’re in crisis. We need to insist on a healthcare system that can take care of the poor in addition to the median and the wealthy.
We need Republicans to get back to an un-radicalized agenda (it is radical, conspiracy based, pushing religious special interests and is primarily focused on the wealthy now) of conservancy and responsibility. I cannot tell you how many Republicans I know that were disenfranchised when the party started to pander to millionaires and people that wanted to exploit our resources in the name of profit. Even more of them jumped the tracks during the last election. 

We need Democrats to focus on social reform (safety net and civil rights), ecological and economic renewal and protections. We need both to walk away from the money from special interests.We need investment in technological research that can be used for public and private good, in medicine, in energy, in the next generation of work and production.

Freedom for us needs to be about living free and responsibly with each other. It needs to be about building each other up, not tearing each other down. We need to get where we are going by helping others get where they’re going. 

That has to be what we fight for. Fighting for an agenda that kills or oppresses someone else is not what our predecessors were fighting for. They were fighting for the equality of all people. The prosperity of all people. The right of everyone to live, to worship (or not), to learn, to pursue happiness in ways that are important to them and don’t step on the rights of others. That’s noble and an ideal, but we can move closer to the ideal rather than further from it. 

We just have to start ignoring the spin. We need a responsible dialogue on our differences. We need to recognize that laws need to work for the best interest of people, of society. We have to demand accountability from our elected officials and make sure we are given the authority to enforce it. Now and this November and going forward. Please vote and support others right to vote. Please vote to change the current state to one that will allow a broad national conversation between our many viewpoints.

Masks, Opening, Freedom

The mask is not primarily for you. It's for the people you come in contact with. It prevents you from directly breathing, coughing or spitting on them - not that you would intentionally do any of that, but your mask prevents that.

 

Yes, it also helps protect you, from touching your face, from getting sprayed by someone else - at least for your mouth and nose.

 

Yet there's a set of people who say masks are violating their rights, obscuring their freedom. But that's not the case. It's just the opposite - not wearing one could violate the right of others to safety.

 

And certainly, I'm not perfect. The other day a contractor doing some work knocked on my door (painting our townhouses). I had talked with him before, at a distance without wearing a mask. This time he wanted me to show him some spots on one of the townhomes and was asking me to "come now". I followed him outside without thinking, no mask with me.  We walked a block and I showed him the wood that needed to be replaced. Each time he moved toward me to see where I was pointing, I stepped away.

 

Later in the day when he came back to my house, I grabbed my mask (to give him access to paint in my garage) and I could see in his eyes he was questioning why I was wearing a mask. After all, he wasn't sick, coughing, sneezing or anything like that. That pressure is an issue.

 

The fundamental misunderstanding between people - that it's some kind of affront to wear a mask around them, that you are somehow judging them individually by wearing one is palpable. I assure you I am not. 

 

I'm protecting you and yes, protecting me. I wish you could afford me the same courtesy.

 

But the people railing against using masks are the same ones who are angry when I don't let them make their illegal left turn before traffic starts (a Pittsburgh courtesy, but one that completely opposes the law. They expect me to hold traffic to let them turn after the light turns green as opposed to letting them wait until opposing traffic has cleared. They give me the finger as I legally and safely start driving in my lane.

 

It's the same people that carry their pistols and rifles to public events to show their privilege.

 

It's the same people that say the Governor (pick any one) is a tyrant for not opening up a county that still has a high death rate or new infection rate, or that has been statistically determined to be a potential death zone. It's the business owner who opens up despite being in one of these areas.

• You endanger others merely by doing what you are doing. Stop putting yourself ahead of others. It's not your right. Your right stops exactly at the point it endangers others.

• You use freedom and economic urgency to argue this.

• Look, I get that not running your business means no cash flow. We need to be looking to the government to push taxes we've paid back to us in aid.

• We need to establish business continuity insurance as part of the taxes you pay - so that in the event business must pause like this, it doesn't break us or keep us from paying employees.

• For those that say this is not government's job, I say to you bullshit. This is exactly governments job. Business only takes care of business. Religion takes care of the devout (sometimes). Charity takes care of the non-devout (sometimes) - none of these can be relied on. Government is here to protect people - all people. That includes invading armies and includes issues like keeping people fed, housed and medically well. 

The hurry to open is driven by impatience and economic necessity, the latter being created by a system that effectively endangers the poor and the independently employed. It's artificial because if these people had a source of income to help them wait out 90 days and not ruin their lives, the wait would have little impact other than boredom. Need proof? People with savings, income and food are complaining of boredom. 

 

So instead of protesting that waiting and protecting others is violating your rights, protest a system that leaves you, your business and your neighbors without a safety net. Protest a system where the wealthy grabbing 3/4 of the stimulus money in addition to the huge tax breaks they got just before that. Protest an administration that wants to privatize social security and education rather than provide. Who wants private research rather than shared government research (after all, the Government cannot do anything that benefits business - except for huge advances in technology from the space program, the CDC, The Internet, Project Management, Food Production and Distribution - literally getting us closer than ever to solving world hunger, and on and on). Protest the downfall of publicly funding the success of Americans and America. 

 

Blaming politicians that are taking steps to keep people safe and are pushing for programs to help keep people fed and in their houses, is ignorant. Protest the system that makes your endangering everyone else a necessity.

 

Make sure you are registered to vote. And vote. 

Antiseptic.

So, look, when I saw the president's questions about sanitizing with light and disinfectant, I didn't think he was suggesting anyone do it - I think he genuinely didn't know if there were ways to apply that technology to the illness.

My problem is that he pursued a stream of consciousness on public television, which had potentially dangerous side effects - just like he's done hundreds of times, riffing about things that should be discussed before he speaks to an impressionable audience - and b) that when it didn't play well, he came back trying to say he was being sarcastic. He wasn't - it's very obvious.

And just as we've seen him speak incorrectly about stuff he doesn't know about, we've seen him lie continuously rather than own it. He could have said - "I was just asking."? Not defending the guy, but a lot of our solutions come from brain storming and looking a things that already exist differently. We just don't do that in front of millions of people who are look for assurance and accurate information.

I want someone in the White House that will own their mistakes. I want someone who will listen to the experts and to constituents, and think carefully before opening their mouths. I want someone who will make decisions based on people rather than money. And I want someone who won't be using the news cycle to distract people from the almost irreparable harm that is being done to our public investment in our government as a mechanism for (all of) the people.

Real Freedom

Here’s the thing: in our society where we are all created equal, your rights extend exactly as far as life and death decisions that affect yourself physically. The “my body, my choice” argument is valid in cases like abortion or suicide, cancer, etc. the minute you get to infectious disease or other actions that potentially physically harm others, you’re past your rights.

We outlaw actions that potentially harm others. You cannot poison the buffet. You cannot crash your car into a crowd of people, and call it freedom. You can’t knowingly take actions that spread contagious disease. We shut down dirty restaurants. We quarantine.

Putting others in danger for your benefit is putting yourself above them. You’re no longer supporting freedom as defined by our constitution or society.

Yes, you need to eat and a place to live, you have your right to survive which is why distancing guidelines are in place, businesses are shut and why your taxes should guarantee you eat, keep your house, cars and can get medical attention regardless of your lack of income. That is something you should protest for.

Being part of a society comes with responsibility to respect your fellow humans right to live. If we don’t maintain that, we’ve lost what we’ve fought so hard to achieve.

The forest for the trees

I read a paper a number of years back that said that we, as a race, had a problem understanding and responding to slow moving threats. Anything that didn't hit as a fire during a news cycle and sometimes something that was discussed too long (and wore off it's shine, as it were).

I've found this true, time and time again. The holocaust. Apartheid. Darfur, Rwanda. Aids. Global Warming. Universal Healthcare. World Hunger. The destruction of the South American Rain Forest. Corona virus.

It's because we have a hard time digesting the big picture. We've been so successful as reactive analysts that we try to break down to the detail and the doing without stepping back and seeing the big picture (continuously, as it changes). Its because we can be distracted with short term goals and by the explosion in a news cycle.

I was talking with a friend the other day and mentioned that I really get angry when people say in a meeting "we're not trying to solve world hunger" or "We're trying to boil the ocean". Big problems can be solved - but they need top be seen and kept in mind.

Some of us have the big picture firmly in view in this crisis and they are being attacked and torn at, by some who need to eat and by some who are greedy and do not care about who dies - those greedy people are taking advantage of those of us who want to eat, by pushing us to take risks, rather than feeding us. Because feeding us means using money (that we have paid into the system) and starving us makes money.

Right now the Corona virus dominates the news cycle, because we didn't pay attention to it when it didn't. Ignoring the warnings, the science, the root issue does not make it go away. It makes it worse. It's time to step back again and look at the big picture.

We need to feed people. We need to make sure they keep their homes. We need to make our social programs more robust and require business to pay into a business continuity insurance fund, so we can help them keep people in mind during hardship. To succumb to the idea that we cannot feed people, keep them sheltered and healthy, but can bail out businesses is to fall for the big lie, the short view, the small picture. We have the means, right now, to solve this. We just need to see the forest for the trees.

Stay at home for now, stay well. Demand better from your representatives. Vote out the greed in November.

Disruptive Change

Everyone is a little stir crazy. "When will we get back to normal?"

To paraphrase Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction. "We're pretty phreaking far from normal."

Normal will change - it has to. Businesses will look to repair the status quo. We need to get them back and functioning, but not exactly as they were. We need to make this better.

We cannot walk out of this experience and move back to the same unstable, socially insecure for 70% of the country we were at, where employment, a condition for survival, is treated as something that can be ended in minutes. We cannot move back to pretending the world cannot function without everyone congregating in an office building. We cannot go back to a medical system that will drown people without insurance.

Isn’t it time we figure out ways to give each other a pass, to at least live a life that is free from hunger and where anyone can get treatment for injury and disease?

And we have to be robust enough to pause. We cannot be in a situation where our economy collapses when we need to take a break or change slightly. It cannot be dependent upon the will of companies that only have the profit motive - we can harness that engine, but also put safety belts and brakes in, so that we don't die when we have a blip.

Coronavirus is disruptive. In the same way that cell phones have replaced home phones, we have to replace what was the norm with the emergent norm. It has exposed weakness in our current system that we can fix.

A few ideas - none of these are new, but they are appropriate:

The government ensures banks. FDIC. Right? If there are businesses too big to fail then we should insure them. They should PAY PREMIUMS in the forms of taxes to the federal government and then when the Federal government needs to bail them out, it comes out of the insurance pool. This keeps them running, keeps people employed as a condition of the insurance, but keeps ownership private.

Universal health and human care. We pool resources to fund food, shelter and medical safety nets for everyone. It is no longer an employer based "privilege" but a human right.

We invest in technology that transforms us from unsustainable power to solar, wind, water and geothermal. We start heavy investments in both research and production for these. We stop mining coal. We stop fracking and damaging our water table. We put in programs to stop burning oil. (this all takes time). We train fossil workers in manufacturing and deployment of these new technologies.

Why now? Because we are surpassing ecological limits of fossil fuels and we need new markets to drive employment. Like tobacco and smoking, we are killing ourselves with fossil fuels. We need to quit and the new technologies will generate growth - they are untapped markets. Power can become personal in many cases - we can work off of power and technology grids, but not be solely dependent because we can also diversify our power sources, so that we are not reliant on a few companies to provide - it allows us to become more robust.

Seem like some crackpot ideas? 3 weeks ago, so did the idea of 40% of our population working from home. So did the idea that more of us would have to choose between our safety and eating (some of us have been living that already for many years). And like many emergent markets, getting in early is the key to leveraging them.

Many will fight against this change. Typewriter manufacturers fought against computers. It didn't stop people from writing. Republican fought against FDR and the New Deal, even in the face of the Great Depression and World War II. Social security didn't stop businesses from making money. Changing ourselves to be more robust will be represented by the opposition as Socialism, Communism, Totalitarianism - any name they can think to call it, to preserve the status quo were 1% of the people control 90% of the resources. It’s not the end of capitalism. It’s making capitalism robust enough to support our civilization. It’s making it socially responsible.

It has to change. 2 Trillion dollars suddenly appeared because there's an election coming up 3.4 of that is being given to business scot free. Another grab. We need to change that. We need to invest in ourselves now and continually. We need government for this - business is designed to create wealth, not take care of people. Government is designed and needs to be repaired, to take care of people and keep our society robust. It needs to support business in a way that allows the engine to work and produce the great things it produces, while benefiting people - monetarily and safely.

We the people need to press it. It is time for us to invest in ourselves. It starts with your vote.

Actual Social Security

Let’s come to terms with a few things.

Covid – 19 represents something we, despite our own good sense as a world population, expect. SARS, Aids, Ebola, Ecoli and other fast spreading infections are huge warnings that this will continue to happen – and we need to be prepared for this.

Our infrastructure for the care of people cannot handle this for two reasons

First, it’s privately owned and intended to make a profit. Profit motive, at its core makes its primary goal the antithesis of human wellbeing. It’s not bad for companies to aim at profit. It’s bad to consider healthcare a profit system. (I’m not arguing that Doctors shouldn’t make good money. I’m arguing that profit should not be the goal for the funding of a medical system).

Secondly, our Republican representatives, our so called “conservative” political party, have sold off, defunded and otherwise worked to derail our publicly owned systems to push people into becoming customers of the privately owned systems – and to take over the public investment at no or little cost. This party is conserving nothing. It’s radically destroying the protections we built, after the great depression, to keep these kinds of things from happening.

Think about this:

If we all had a plan that assured we would have enough to eat, that we wouldn’t be evicted from our homes for losing our jobs, if we couldn’t go into debt because of school or medical bills and we had environmental protections that prevented unsafe food and pollution practices, then, where exactly would the emergency be?

It would be with the care of the people dying from this disease and the prospect of not working would have an impact, but it wouldn’t “destroy our way of life”. People who drive ubers or work at restaurants wouldn’t be worried about being homeless or without food or medical care and wouldn’t be worrying about the medical costs destroying their lives.

By making a substantial social safety net, we don’t ruin life. We preserve it. Conserve it.

And the emergency in business would be substantially less too. They could idle with the understanding they could draw on assistance to keep workers whole while the issue was dealt with. Yes, they would need to idle in some cases, for public safety, but that would just be put on hold.

But in our current system, businesses will be punished for standing still, for doing what is right in cases like this. And they will layoff and cut workers in order to “stay in business” but that’s like cutting off your legs because you drank poison. Even if you recover from the poisoning, you now have no legs. Cutting your means of production is killing the golden goose. Idling it is not perfect, but you can still come back from it.

So when people argue against a progressive agenda with environmental and social safety nets, they are arguing for short sightedness, they are arguing against the ability to do the right thing. They are arguing not for reasonable capitalism, where the company makes a good profit – they are arguing for a profit only motive. They are arguing for money over everything else. And it’s a suicide argument. Everything – our health, welfare, safety, morals are all sacrificed on the alter of greed. This cannot be the case.

Capitalism is an economic system designed to make money. It is not a form of government. Democracy is a system designed to protect all of the people. To pursue life, liberty and happiness. Life. We cannot protect life by protecting greed. We can only protect life by intentionally protecting life.

Better vote Democrat. Register to vote if you have not. Register to vote by mail if need be.

IN PA https://www.pavoterservices.pa.gov/OnlineAbsenteeApplication/#/OnlineAbsenteeBegin

Or look up mail in or absentee ballots in your state.

Singularly optimized systems aren't robust

I have spoken a bit about the Invisible Hand – Adam Smith’s metaphor for the unseen forces that balance markets and distribute income in free society.

I have seen it in action (we all have regardless of knowing it or not) and it works to our benefit and detriment depending on who we are, what decisions we make and what money we have.

It’s a system, that we’ve tried to optimize for personal gain, which does work, especially if you have a lot of money. But the market is a gamble, which is played by a bunch of people who are unwittingly risk adverse – they want the game spun to optimize their chance of winning.

The system is so sensitive to the slightest turn of the screw that big things, which are complex to predict, send it into collapse.

We see this pattern repeated in many systems, because the human race has been so successful at Analysis and optimization, we push it to the max, everywhere, never thinking as to why some things always seem to incorporate “waste” or “lag time”.

The reason is, we are human. We need some lubrication in our systems. We don’t work like machines. We need to build in the ability for things to not go as planned. We need to understand that we don’t get 8 hours of work from and 8 hour day all of the time. We need to have systems that are robust enough to care for (food, medical attention) the poorest as well as the wealthiest among us.

I’m talking about Capitalism but with Social Responsibility built into our plan, our laws.

We cannot rely on business to do it. Business has the goal of optimizing capital. Fine. Good. But government cannot have the same singular goal. It needs to maintain balance in the economy and take care of every citizen. Its goal needs to be running a sustainable, durable, robust system that helps people and works with business in a balanced way.

It means businesses need to pay taxes. It means the wealthy need to pay taxes.

And in our other systems – food supply, medical supply and yes, toilet paper supply, we need to be able to build programs that makes sure the poor and elderly have access to necessities.

We shouldn’t need to go into massive special modes to ensure we can survive a pandemic. Or a market change that freaks out wall street. It should be part of our planning.

We know we’re not perfect. So why not plan for it?

Shopping for the Zombie Apocalypse

Thinking I’d get a jump on things, I figured I’d shop Friday night (which I do sometimes to avoid Saturday rush) and figured as schools are closing and events are cancelled and working from home looms as a potential for some of us (unfortunately, not enough of us), this was going to be one of those Saturdays.

I knew heading into Sam’s Club, wiping my cart handle down, that there would be no toilet paper. Not an issue – my wife and I are well stocked. We buy a large pack, a few times a year. But I admittedly was not prepared for what I found.

Thinking maybe I would get a whole chicken and a couple pounds of ground beef I headed for the meat department, only swinging by to pick up cat food, which we have a reasonable amount of but there are 3 cats and couple of weeks is long enough we would run out and they would kill us in our sleep and eat us. Mine are little angels most of the time, but when they’re hungry…

Swinging over to the meat isles I was instantly stunned. Each section was completely empty, excepting the Tomahawk Ribeyes which were 2+ pounds and represented a similar investment as graduate school.

No Chicken, Pork or Beef. No milk. No eggs. Grapes and Bananas completely gone (?). Over to the frozen meat. Only a few bags of chicken nuggets left (now remember, this is a bulk buy retailer – huge inventories). Plenty of prepared meals available but very little. I found a small box of 12 frozen hamburgers Some Italian chicken sausage, half and half. As I looked around, stares of disbelief which likely mirrored my face.

There was even a substantial dent in the available bags of Doritos and Cheetos and I did grab one of each, so if you find my dead body with a strange, presidential looking orange dust on it, I went out, but I went out happily. It ain’t easy being cheesy.

A few more things and I was on my way. Stopping over at Target to get a few things I found a similar situation. Almost all meat (well, they did have some Bison, but it was $9 a pound and wasn’t doing that. A few cans of soup. Some Smarties which I use in a pinch instead of diabetic glucose when my blood sugar drops, of which they are the cheapest supplier but are almost always out of. I’m not sure why, sugar is eminently abundant.

Giant Eagle was more of the same, although they still had a lot of fresh Salmon and a few frozen ducks. I guess Duck is not “shelter in place” food.

As I was coming out of the last store, I ran into a friend and coworker and she reminded me of a thought I had earlier. In this world of just-in-time inventories, they only stock and plan on runs for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Snack foods for the super bowl. Milk and Toilet paper in substantially bad weather.

Inventory in fact, in our capitalist minds, exists as a necessary evil. But because of it, re-supplying will slow down. Manufacturing will slow down. Wall street and subsequently business, thrive on predictable outcomes and they scream in pain when they are not.

And that is infinitely funny. Because the Stock Market is a game of chance, but one whose players complains when they have to take a chance. Insurance companies and banks too, when they aren’t allowed to manipulate their bets into sure things. Oh, they’re fine with tossing the world for the little guy, overextending credit, charging high interest rates and late fees.

They’re only geniuses in the sense that they have put themselves in a position to gamble, but not in the sense they would actually want to gamble. And then you realize (if you hadn’t long ago), the issue for the market isn’t the deaths Covid 19 will cause or disruption to lives. It’s of course, the monetary impact, but even more, the unpredictability of it. And it effects a lot of us. Our retirement savings, which is invested there.

And those same people who run businesses that push for predictability, want to take away social nets that save families medically and economically – that make their lives more predictable (at least to the point where they can live and eat).

This is a mild version of what might happen if this virus was say Ebola. We are not ready. Which is why we need a socially responsible democratic government to pair with our capitalist economic model. Capitalism is ultimately not built to govern or deal with people. It’s brutal. Supply and demand, right there in Sam’s club. Fortunately, it’s not life or death for me. But it is for many. Many without health insurance, without jobs, without homes. We need systems that cushion the reality of Capitalism for the little guy, where it is so brutal. The rich can lose money, but can remain rich. You cannot lose your health and remain alive. You cannot lose your sole income or ability to make that income and remain alive.

And if we need to remind the rich, more than a 70% of the world lives below the poverty line and overf 10% in the USA, the worlds richest country, do. We don’t need to save the rich. They will save themselves. It’s time for us to vote to save ourselves and our fellow humans.

It turns out in the Zombie Apocalypse, the zombies are just wandering around Sam’s club, trying to decide if they should try “meatless chicken” or subsist on Pop Tarts. They’re not dead, they are people who are seeing their social footing shake beneath them. And if the people in Washington are only concerned about the same things as the people on Wall Street, we’re screwed. Better vote.

The Ball Pit Analogy

The basic idea of publicly funded health, publicly funded education and publicly funded military is capitalistic, but leveraging group buying.

Groups work like ball pits. if you slide down the slide you are bolstered by the balls in the pit - your fall is broken. If there are too few balls, you bottom out and still hit the floor.

If you already have health insurance, you already participate in a group to leverage investment. You do this with the military already.You don't purchase a "Military Plan" from an independent military contractor (although they exist and are purchased by those who have different-than-ordinary needs.

So when folks get freaked out with the idea of publicly funded healthcare or secondary education, I think they're not thinking clearly - they've been programed to label it socialism and call it evil (it's not socialism - the means of production is still privately owned - schools and doctors and hospitals and teachers - are paid by the state.

Yes, profit is not part of the equation for the payer. But it is if you are an institution or a provider - you make money. The part that changes, changes little. removing the profit motive from the payment system allows doctors to make decisions in favor of the patient. For teachers to make decisions based on the needs of students.

It's not that institutions (private or public) don't make mistakes. But publicly owned we have an opportunity to influence through ownership and advocacy and it means everyone gets access to these necessities.

I'm a capitalist - I believe in making money. I also believe in social responsibility. The two are not mutually exclusive. We can profit and make sure people have basic needs fulfilled. We already do it in many places. It's merely expanding it in ways that benefit everyone.

Socially Responsible Capitalism is the only Sustainable Capitalism

A friend posted a slide from a Goldman Sachs presentation in 2018 that says "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?"

So, I went looking to validate this and indeed, they make an observation that one-shot cures in these days of genome miracles don't leave the door open for ongoing revenue.

Which might make the argument for the cost of these cures to be extremely high if left to the free market.

Then I watched "Elysium" with Jen and here, it's world of sickness and poverty on earth, still used for production, where the rich have left the planet to live in an artificial environment orbiting the earth, where sickness and aging have all been but wiped out. A metaphor for Trumps wall or class division, it shows the stark contrast of a world where you die from things that are easily curable with modern technology.

And that's where we are. When all research is market driven, then this happens. When you take away publicly funded research, only large or sustainable revenue projects are looked at as viable by companies, because theirr focus is not on curing. Their focus is on a market.

And this is why we cannot trust capitalism to be our source of research.

Greta Thunberg recently made the argument that business should divest from oil extraction (and Stephen Miller, Trump minion, suggested she should study economics) and this is supported by science.

Monolithic business itself cannot get there. Because businesses are self-perpetuating and rarely respond to disruptive technology well. But divestment from oil, natural gas and coal have to be done, right now, in order for the planet to remain viable for life. And the way we get there is government incentives and taxes. You make it cheaper to use solar, wind and other technologies and more expensive to use oil. That's economics. It's not laissez-Faire economics where we let it run roughshod over common sense.

Business cannot monitor itself either. The profit motive is contrary to the wellbeing of people, much of the time. And while it's fine for an idea to exist in a perfect vacuum, we need to regulate in the real world, to keep that vacuum from sucking all of the oxygen out of the room.  With balance and oversite, capitalism can be a positive force that helps us all grow. Left to its own devices, only those with capital benefit and they push out those with less.

So the next time your conservative friend tells you that "smaller government" is needed, you can give examples where that certainly isn't the case. We need substantial public investment in everything from research, medicine, education, to sustainable production of anything - food, machines, clothing, etc...

Socially responsible capitalism is sustainable. There are profits and growth yes. And there are social benefits and protections, that allow everyone to reasonably live through it. Anything else is greed.



https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/curing-disease-not-a-sustainable-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/


https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/05/biggest-compliment-yet-greta-thunberg-welcomes-oil-chiefs-greatest-threat-label

Love in 2020

On this New Year’s Eve, the auspicious precipice of 2020, a few thoughts;

We are all the same in our makeup, with variations being a very small fraction of a percent - we share the same genetics, a set of specifications that allow this organic machine, the human body, to function, to some degree similarly to others. And to a large extent, we are also similar to all of the living organisms we coexist with.

We differ in cosmetic ways and in our thoughts, perceptions, opinions – and yet we congregate around ideas like love, friendship, peace, religion, government, war, poverty – some successes and failures – and even war and disease – so within our collective differences, we vary fairly slightly – so that at a distance, one could barely perceive them.

I can go on diatribes about those that would manipulate some portion of mankind to put themselves above others (and do and have) but they are in fact, less pervasive than the norms of love and peace. Evil stands out because of its agonizing reflection against Love and Peace.

I am reminded constantly – every day - Love is the answer. By my wife and family. By my friends and by this wide world. That doesn’t mean we don’t falter or take offence, or get mad. It doesn’t mean that there aren't atrocities or that we don’t play some unintended part in them.

It means that when we pull back, we understand when we’re wrong and that love is both action and being. We further it. It is how we can live, laugh and prosper together.

I wish you and your families love, peace, laughter and prosperity in 2020 and beyond. Pass it on.

Tobias Venar

Finding our way

Nestled down in the heart of our minds, is our home - a virtual place that exists as a center. It's a complex composite of experiences good and bad that surrounds and sets limits -  that is unique and yet frequently common with others. Part of that shared experience is innately human and part of it has to do with the country, culture, economic position and social groups we are in.

It's in that humanity, that commonality that we have to realize - our boundaries and fears, our experiences in the past won't change and cannot. Only how we perceive them and work through them.

So change becomes difficult as we get older, we pile up experiences and group think pervades. We reflect opinions of some of our friends and influences. We get comfortable with our ideas being "right". And that's all good as long as we keep perspective and understand that "right" for us is just that. Our perfection is not someone else's.

Hold that in your hand for a moment and don't let go, while we switch gears.

People can be preyed upon, when change or perceived change takes them far from their home or comfort zone.

For instance, the president says there's an immigration crisis, even though illegal immigration is at it's lowest rate in years. He says these people are murders and rapists, with some, he supposes, good people. This too is a lie, with no basis in fact.

 This isn't an innocent mistake - this is a campaign to inspire fear and get you angry about an issue that takes many, especially the less travelled, far from home and pits them against people advocating for human rights, trying to show them in a poor light, make them look like they want to invite murders and rapists into the country.  "It's the immigrants that are to blame". Easy put. Call out a common enemy, any enemy and you are pulling those more gullible to your side.

It also angers the folks advocating for Human Rights, pulling them away from their comfort zone.  It divides us and in it, gives a gift to those that wish to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.

This is a propaganda technique that used to be used sparingly. But for two years now, each day brings a news cycle that keeps people on both sides of the fence away from their comfort, with enemies to spare, we become more divided so that we can be taken advantage of. Our fears are exploited and our comforts pulled away. But why?

To distract. To pull your attention away from the draining of the public investment in this government. As each little piece is sold off or rented and funneled into tax relief for the wealthy, underwriting and subsidies for business, as public benefits are reduced. As veterans benefits are reduced. As alliances are made with enemies of the world, to support private ambitions. We start getting angry but the next news cycle comes with something else outrageous, pulling our fragile attention from the matter at hand.
This is all intentional. Even when an issue is real, it is spun to be the news cycle flaming, loud, item, which takes our attention away from yesterday's news. There's only so much outrage to go around. We can only expend anger in bursts - we're not made to do marathon anger in general.

So we lose it. It's why we cannot get anything done with Global Warming. It's a slow moving story. Aids - 32 million HIV related deaths since the start of the epidemic. 1.7 million new infections annually (4,657 people a day) and 25 million people in treatment now. And yet both of these should be headlined every day and instead they are sidelined. As are what's happening to class division. And education. Net Neutrality. The removal of support for clean energy sources, subsidies to oil and coal. Safe gun laws and the failure to do anything about the 385 mass shootings* in the USA between New Years 2019 and December 1, 2019.

And in losing this, we quickly lose what our founding fathers, our Grand Parents and Parents, our military have worked and fought for. We lose our identity as a country. We lose our foundation. We lose our long built government infrastructure, we lose public ownership. We lose our natural reserves and resources. We lose opportunity, which is our signature as a country - as the rich eat the rest of us, as our conservative politicians sell us to the rich, to our enemies, we become less.

We cannot afford to lose much more. it will take years to repair division and remake what we had. It will be a long time before we can get home again on a regular basis. But the sooner we get rid of the maleficence in Washington, those that profit from our division, the sooner we can. The sooner we can get back to being the land of opportunity and become the land of equality.

Don't lose the long view. Keep it squarely in mind. So much is at stake.

*https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mass-shootings-2019-more-mass-shootings-than-days-so-far-this-year/

Truths

There is what we believe and there is truth. Real truth. And sometimes they are close and sometimes they are not. Depending on how you use truth - either plainly or twisting the world to create a perceived truth, you change your interaction with the world.

Truths can be simple or complex and can be true all of the time or situationally. Simple: The sky and oceans are blue. Death is a certainty. Moderate: I do some harm to the world by living a disposable lifestyle. Difficult: People act in their own self interest much of the time, intentionally or not, including me.

That last one is difficult because we like to think of ourselves as generous, caring, giving - good. And all of those can be true, but at the very basis of that, is the ability to survive. The difference then, is how I perceive the world - as a fight for limited resource or a place of relative bounty. If I see it as the later, I will tend to share more and I will see others, who share less perhaps as less fortunate. And I will see those that work to deny others that bounty as stepping past the bounds that define a good human being.

It is easy to get caught in a race and think in order to win, others must lose. There are those that profit off this mindset and so the race is presented every day, by some politicians, by private agendas, by those who trade in fear in order to control.

Humanity in reality has not survived by "survival of the fittest" for a long time. That was true before we developed civilization, when we we either ate or were eaten. Civilization developed to help us leverage each other to make survival easier. It's about what we can do together - and we serve ourselves by working with others. We defeated much of evolutions tools to filter us out. It's why near-sighted people survived. Vaccination. Food development. Social nets.

A truth: The very act of being selfless (in whatever way you can) can in turn serve oneself and others at the same time.

Another truth: Taking care of oneself is paramount. Self love is different than self aggrandizing or selfishness. It's necessary to continue. It's taking care of the golden goose.

So, all year, but during this season especially (because it is a time held special by many and a time of vulnerability), remember that we are all different and in that we are all equally deserving of a life, happiness and love. Remember that you can get where your going by helping others get where they are going.

Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

(from Birches, by Robert Frost)

The fine line between self and me

By our very nature, we are self serving. We are designed to eat when we are hungry, sleep when we are tired and protect our livelihood. We have learned behaviors and anxieties that can subvert that some. We also have learned behaviors that use these instincts to go further than self care, into justifying self serving behavior for gain beyond need - to disguise want for need. We can take these behaviors further to justify actual greed.

And in moderation, it allows some of us to work and live with a safety net and cushion from basic issues like hunger, shelter - and get on with pursuing art, love and well being. In moderation, it hopefully helps one help others get there too.

It's when we act in self interest beyond the boundaries of need, beyond the boundaries of others freedoms. It's the difference between self care and "me first". It's the difference between working hard to get into a school and buying your way in. It's the difference between running a energetic and smart campaign and asking outside interests to get rid of your political opponents.

I'm certainly not perfect. I own a few more guitars than I can justify. I need to modify my life to be more in line with sustainable guidelines on waste and consumption. I've worked hard to benefit others and in turn benefit myself and my family along the way - I have taken opportunities that others might not have gotten. I'm aware of my windfalls and fault, at least to a healthy extent and my family, friends and community help ground me there, remind me of who I need to be.

This president, this "me first" buffoon, this two bit hustler is a cancer. He presents himself as the normal, but is greed and narcissus incarnate. He sets the worst example by doing the worst he can. He doesn't work to get where he is going by helping others - he blackmails to get what he wants. That's not deal making. That's win/lose. And you can't sustain a business with that philosophy - even in a perfect capitalism. And in democracy, a real democracy, you have to push for the common good, not individual greed.

And it's in the common interest that he needs to be removed. And that in the next election cycle, the infection that he has spread be removed and replaced with people interested in representing their constituency and work for the common good - and prevent that which subverts common interest in the form of special interest. That's self care.

Homesick

Let’s go back to a time, if you had one, where you felt safe, where things were simpler, where cookies and milk were a solution to a lot of what ailed you, where you likely didn’t have to focus much on anything besides your small world.

For time this was maybe 5 or 6 years old. 1968/1969 for me was a new house and new instant friends next door and down the street. Dinner on the table, concerned teachers, church every Sunday followed by a drive to your Grandparents, 

playing in the garden and sandbox, then Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, followed by The Wonderful World of Disney and then falling asleep in the car on the way home.

Those of us lucky enough to have this sort of childhood hopefully relate to what I describe even if yours was earlier or later. It was a gift. Our parents made this happen for us. There are many who didn’t have this (a discussion for another time, however). A world we can sometimes be homesick for.

But the real world wasn’t safe in 1968/1969. Womens and Civil Rights struggles. Vietnam, the Tet Offensive. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinated. Qaudafi takes Libya. Chinese and the Russians clashing. Nixon announces candidacy. Stonewall Riots.

I was too young to understand these things or pay attention to most of them.

And it’s that uncomplicated world that Trump is appealing to when he speaks to his core followers – MAGA. Nobody that age was trying to understand which pronouns best described them. Nobody was questioning God. Nobody was making them think about Global Warming, Aids, Apartheid, School Shootings, World Hunger, recycling, etc… in any meaningful way. Nobody was pushing their limits, making them think. 

They were not understanding the horrors of the age, only some of the brilliance.

You cannot go home – it doesn’t exist except in your mind. And the reason is, you are an adult – you understand more of the world around you – you are conscious and aware and you know that people have all kinds of things to survive in this world. You realize that the person sitting next to you at a bus stop may have been exposed to discrimination all of their life.

You try to understand an imperfectly adapt to the changing world around you. It’s difficult. It’s perilous. And it’s worth it. 

Because only when we recognize that our struggles are our own, but we’re in this all together – where we recognize and help lift each other, in whatever ways we can, that we succeed.

Repression of everything that has changed, that we don’t understand, that doesn’t agree with our world view, that makes us have to be have differently is not the answer. The world moves and changes and we must with it. It’s the only way to real happiness and peace, that doesn’t exclude others.

And there is the rub. You have to care about others that aren’t like you. And that’s why the white nationalism, the racism, the anti LGBTQ+ actions, the propaganda calling civil rights protesting anti-American, the propaganda calling immigrants and Muslims the enemy. It’s framed around presenting a world sterilized of everything that is different and challenging that world view.

And it’s being sold not because Mr. Trump believes it. It’s being sold because the base believes it and will vote for it. It’s being sold because the money that has taken over power will unscrupulously pander to people who prefer not to step out of their protective shell and change.

Our challenge is to help those around us step out. To embrace some discomfort for the good of humanity. To find joy in others success and joy.

It’s hard to get people to walk in others shoes, to forget the homesick feeling they have in their gut and understand that it’s nostalgia for something that doesn’t exist anymore – to leave that behind and see how the world needs to change for everyone to live together, each on their own way.

It’s hard. I’m as guilty as the next person being homesick at times. Wanting to go back to that simpler life. I get there through a song or picture or something else that triggers a memory. And it’s ok to live there for a minute, to revel in the back of the car sleep. But a few minutes later, when I wake up, I put on my big boy pants and catch up with the rest of the world and understand it’s not just about me.

But it is also about me - here, in the world many of us are striving to make, I get to choose what I listen to, how I live my life, who and how I love – as long as it doesn’t step on others rights to do the same.

One way of helping others there is by pulling them to the scene of abuse, helping them walk side by side with the abused then helping them step into those shoes. A good example of this is during the closing argument of “A time to kill”.

The trial of a black man who kills the man who raped his little girl. All white jury, in the south. Jake, the protagonist lawyer, walks the jury agonizingly through the rape and beating of the little black girl. The urination on her, the throwing of her fragile, broken body over the bridge and being left for dead. “Can you see her?”

“Now, imagine she’s white”.

Suddenly the white jurist is transported to standing in the shoes of someone who is horrified and is now seeing the horror from their own shoes – from their own house, if you will. If you cannot get them to care about others, then get them to care about themselves in the same circumstance. That their safe home is not safe for others.

This is how we get some of those that cannot go any other way there. There are those that cannot be shaken even then. But we know the majority of folks want to coexist. Want to revel in the joy of others as well as their own. Who want everyone to be able to live, love and worship with dignity and respect. There is comfort in that, as we face the vocal few who still cannot get there, who are being tweeted to.

Home. That home is a place of mutual respect, not a world sanitized of all that is different. Keep that in mind as you fight the good fight. Keep that in mind as you persevere.

Where we came from, where we are going

As you are enjoying your coffee or latte, eating your breakfast burrito or sandwich, dreading your 40 minute commute to your workplace on Monday, imagine you were desperate enough to change your life that you leave the place you were born on foot.

Imagine walking for months, not knowing how you were going to eat, but knowing ahead there’s a place where you can eat regularly, maybe even have  bed, where the threat to life is only occasional and accidental. Where exploitation is as minimal as it can be.

Then imagine the toil of getting there and having to deal with arbitrary constructs called borders and imaginary obstructions to finding reasonable way of making a life let alone a living, that were lumped in with legitimate law, as you pass through one country to another, until you finally reach your destination and find they put up the biggest artificial constraints of all.

We enjoy our privilege because our grandparents or theirs made this journey themselves – many on boats, but many on foot too. All of them taking their lives in their hands. And unless you are Native American, this is your family story. And we enjoy what we enjoy because they were given the opportunity to join this country.

---

In New York for one evening on a training, I rush to Battery Park to catch the last boat to Ellis Island to view my Grandparents names on the wall there (my Aunt went through trouble of getting their passage recognized, as thousands have). All four of my Grandparents came from Europe, over on boats. orphaned by the Russian Revolution, others with their parents, looking for a better life.
As I looked at Yasha and Helen’s names on the wall, I was overwhelmed with gratitude, with the memories of these dear people, who worked so hard, changing their lives and subsequently making mine possible.

---

The people making their way here are doing so because they are at best in poverty and need and at worst, in danger. We are the 3rd largest country in the world. We have a population density of 36 people per square kilometer – maybe a little higher (number is 2016). In India it’s 416 per square kilometer. Our fear of scarcity in this, the most lush and vibrant economy in the world, is unfounded. Our prejudices about people of different origin and in some cases different skin color based in scripting from generations of prejudice and propaganda, especially in the propaganda of these political years, where one party has decided that calling these people the enemy will allow them to stay in power.

In a self made crisis, in one of engineered mismanagement and underfunding, they are pointing as these people, who are fundamentally us, as a threat. Clearly, as we look at the past, anytime someone has pointed at an unorganized group of humans as a threat, it’s been a move to further themselves (think of McCarthyism. Think of the interment of Japanese Americans. Think of the Nazi persecution of Jews. And on and on.) We not only have the ability to welcome more, but a moral one. Being born somewhere is hardly good criteria from which to separate humans.

Yes, we need to screen and understand who is coming here and try to ensure they are not bringing hate with them (just as we see, we need to do a better job of this within our borders, for people who were born here). But this crisis is a political stunt, done with malice and hurting thousands, ripping families apart as a grab for control over a fearful part of our populace, by an oligarchy, with the goal of staying in power, to further exploit the populace, through government and business.

We cannot allow this to continue to be our way. We are the land of equality and the land of opportunity – not in perfect practice, but in declaration, in purpose and we need to strive to pull ourselves back on to that path.
We do that by;

• Voting in people who believe in and act on diversity, human rights and secular law
• Influencing government, business and neighbors to understand and work for these goals once again
• Build laws that help prevent this from ever happening again, that value human dignity and account for basic human rights and needs for all of us. 

And if you think this is not what this country is about, then read through our founding documents again. Read the words of our great women and men – and understand. We are not here to stake a claim against the rest of humanity, but side by side with them. There is no us and them. It is just us.

Finding Joy

Here’s the thing; Everyone has the right to find their joy within their own space. The minute you involve others in any way, the rules change and you have to be cognizant of their right to find joy too. There are certainly unintentional ways this happens. In families it can happen because of a sense of obligation, the obliged frequently giving up joy for the obligator – and both parties may not recognize this – and both may play both roles.

It frequently happens from differing expectations. It frequently happens because one or more parties feels entitled. We impinge on each other without intention – and if with intention, we’re doing wrong and need to fix it.

It reminds me of something my Dad used to say; “Only you are responsible for the perfection of your own dream.” My corollaries are, “You’re not an island. Your dream needs to  consider others.” And “It’s better to focus on the Journey as much as the Destination. Destinations are goals, but the Journey is now.”

So – you’ve got to be your own advocate. You need to say what you want. You need to find joy in the moment, the process, as well as the end product. You need to decide when you can live with the compromises and responsibilities that come with relationships with others. You need to understand how you affect others. This isn’t easy, even if you’re a reasonable person. It takes introspection and self awareness. It frequently takes work. There will be limiting factors (societal rules, resources).
But you can find your joy in the process, if you pay attention, if you get where you’re going by helping others get where they’re going.

I urge you to find that path.