Nine Shift

Threat or Menace? What Do You Think About Technology?

Is technology moving us forward, and/or enslaving humankind? What do you think? Spengler writes 100 years ago:

"Growth is a product of the Machine, which insists on being used and directed, and to that end centuples the powers of each individual. For the sake of the machine, human life becomes precious. Work becomes the great word of ethical thinking; in the 18th century it loses its derogatory implication in all languages. The machine works and forces man to co-operate. For that very reason Faustian (western) man has become the slave of his creation." 

He then goes on to perfectly, if poetically, describe the Industrial Age emerging between 1900 and 1920.

"Threat or menace" was a course title from a humorous adult education fake catalog from the 1970s.

Photo: playing in the sand in Puerto Rico.

What You Experienced the last 20 Years

So, in thinking about Spengler's idea of a singular epoch or time frame in history, here are the three big things I think you and I have uniquely experienced over the past 20 years.

1.Eye opening discoveries.

I remember the first time I did a live two-way video presentation for students and faculty at Moscow State University in Russia. I was taken aback seeing people I knew from my visits there, by the immediacy of it.

2. The Emotional Experience

Terry Newman of Gavilan, California, came up to me after a NineShift speech and said she had not been sleeping well because of all the things in society. "Now I know it is just change,"  she said, indicating that Nine Shift had calmed her worries and fears down a bit. Even now, there is this angst in our stomachs as we wonder if democracy will make it in America. 

3.The Hopes and Disappointments

Remember when this huge new invention was going to be released in 2001 and we all were so excited with anticipation. It turned out to be the Segway, a nation or world together heaved a big sigh of disappointment. 

As this age goes into the twilight of history, no one will be able to feel the same way about the same things as we have.

Photo: Sunset in the far southwestern tip of the island of Puerto Rico.

 

The End of an Epoch

We are close to the end (2020) of an historical epoch that no one before or after will ever fully understand, and more importantly feel, than you and I living it right now. 

That's what Oswald Spengler suggests in The Decline of the West, published 100 years ago in 1918.

He says every epoch or time period is unique unto itself.  You and I when we look at a Van Gogh painting, we have no idea how people in his time experienced it emotionally.  

Enjoy the last two years of this history making time period, there will never be one quite like it.

Photo: Puerto Rico, where we are this winter.

 

 

 

Billy Graham's Children Were Too Mean to Play With

My wife Julie grew up in Black Mountain, a town of 400 where Billy Graham lived. They just called him Billy.

Billy Graham's father-in-law, Dr. Bell, brought Julie into the world.  As a child, Julie remembers Billy coming over to their house many times.  He always came in the back door, like the other neighbors, friends and relatives, and often would sit at the kitchen table waiting for Julie's grandfather to come back. 

Julie's grandfather was getting bushes and shrubs for Billy's new house.  Back then, that meant Julie's grandfather went up into the mountains and dug up the bushes and shrubs and brought them back down.  

In the 1950s, everyone just thought of him as Billy, although "he WAS building a big ol house on the mountainside"  as Julie remembered.

Julie's house, like just about every other house in town, did have a front parlour off the front entrance to the house.  Only a few people, like the preacher and the Jewel T man, were allowed into the parlour.  When I asked Julie if Billy Graham ever got into the parlour, Julie said no, it was reserved "for the special people." 

As a young girl, however, Julie was not allowed by her family to play with Billy Graham's children.  "They were too mean," was the reason she was given.  Thanks to Julie for her remembrances growing up in a small, rural, poor community in the 1950s, along with one of the most famous Americans of the last 70 years.

 

Education Hits All-Time Low Point

Education hit an all-time low point last month when a teacher suggested a student be lynched for his boy behavior. 

The media outcry was over the obvious racial implication.  But everyone apparently missed the fact that this was a boy. 

Worse, there was no outcry among educators.    And missed was the fact that virtually all boys experience similar rants, rages, epithets, psychologically damaging and false statements from their teachers.   The teacher should be ashamed, but more importantly all of education should be ashamed that nothing, absolutely nothing, was or is being done to prevent this kind of verbal abuse and punishment of boys.

21st Century Issue: Can You Choose Fewer Work Hours?

Fantastic 21st century issue being tackled in Germany. Should you be able to choose to work fewer hours?

Europe, of course, is where many if not most of the 21st century issues are being addressed, including energy credits (getting paid by the electric company), congestion pricing, whether someone can receive a work email after 6 pm; monopolies by Google; democracy;
paternity leave; gender equity; trains; and hacking. 

The Washington Post in a great article says a union for German workers has negotiated a contract in which workers, for up to two years I believe, can work 28 hours a week instead of 40, and then get paid less .  It is an historic agreement, testing whether company and society can experience the same economic prosperity if some workers choose to work fewer hours for less money. 

The reason they can test this at all is because in Germany, like the rest of Europe, workers have health insurance and other benefits regardless of how much or little they work.  Why do they want to work less?  It's a Gen Y thing, says my brilliant co-author Julie Coates, who says Gen Y wants more balance between work and life. 

How to Write a Letter

Yes, writing a letter is an art. And yes, even Baby Boomers don't know how to write a letter. 

My father wrote his five kids a letter once a week.  He used carbon paper (look it up) while typing them to get five copies. Every five weeks I would get the original. 

So when my son expressed interest (subtly of course, but he tells his mother he reads every one of my letters) in getting letters, I looked back to my father's letters to see how he did it.  Because of course as young adults away from home we read every letter.

Short, one page was one of my Dad's 'rules.'   And something positive, upbeat.  And nothing to worry your child.  Mention her or his mother, not every letter, but enough times the child is getting another view - - positive of course - - about Mom. 

And then in this age of email, texting, photos, I try to tell a story or two, nothing big, just daily life.  But I think it is that daily life of the parents that creates a sense of stability and support and constancy for young people whose lives are ever changing and their trials and challenges omnipresent.   I end with a joke from the Internet.  

If you want to know what a 'real' letter looks like, go back a hundred years when people wrote them every day.  They knew how to write a letter.

 

 

Gen Y Likes Letters From Their Parents

 The young woman at the hotel front desk had no idea the village has a mailbox.

The mailbox is right next to the grocery store, kinda hard to miss. A pretty good English speaker, she also did not know the word for "stamp" in English (sello in Spanish, which she did know). 

But when I told her my son, about her age, liked me to write a letter and mail it once a week, she smiled and eagerly told me my son was not alone and that people her age liked getting letters from their parents.  

A special time in the 21st century for the fate of letters. What do you think? Do they make a little comeback, like vinyl records; or do they fade, like much else from the last century; or just a few old dads left writing them?

 

The Societal Changes in Puerto Rico That May Affect You

Some of the societal changes in Puerto Rico from the hurricane that, combined with the larger context of America, may affect you.

-There's less health care, poorer health insurance, which is one reason people are moving to the states.

-Big corporations are ready to swoop in and turn Puerto Rico into a rich-poor Disney land, buying up land and putting up fancy expensive "American" resorts and paying Puerto Ricans minimum wages. 

-Some young people are defiant in wanting to stay here. That is encouraging, even though they could make more money in Florida or New York. 

-The island government is considering turning the power and electricity over to a for-profit company, which will have huge price and availability and rich-poor implications for people. 

 

A Valentine's Day for All

I pause today to say happy Valentine's Day, and Happy 32nd Wedding Anniversary, to my amazing colleague and love of my life, Julia Taylor Coates Draves. 

And I hope and wish everyone else a happy Valentine's Day and my fervent hope you have ,or will have ,or will continue to look for, a relationship that enriches your life.