Category: Life

  • "Living at Zero" and the Creative Pipeline

    "Living at Zero" and the Creative Pipeline

    I was watching a presentation by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len on their concept of “Zero Limits” and it had me irritated.

    They wrote a book on the concept, titled Zero Limits. The idea is this: that at the core of all of us is the divine (call it God, the Universe, or whatever you’re comfortable with).  Everything else – our bodies, our thoughts, our fears – these are layers on top of this divine core.

    It’s a bit like a chocolate truffle – there’s the soft core, the divinity inside of there, and surrounding it is a thicker, protective layer of harder chocolate.

    Their point is this: to live a truly good life, you must be in contact with your core at all times, by erasing away the layer after layer that we’ve added on throughout our lives.

    In their view, the divinity, or “zero” – a state of no fear, no worry, and no “information” is where it’s at. You live a pure life of inspiration and action in line with the Divinity.

    I agree with them, to a point. Their concept of Zero is very similar to my Stage II of the Creative Pipeline, where Intuition and Inspiration comes from.

    In order to have that intuition and inspiration flowing for you, you must have clarity. Clarity means letting go of the memories, worries, and all that over stuff that comes from Stages III and IV of the pipeline.

    When you get tapped into this, it becomes almost miraculous in how easily good things (and more importantly, fun things) happen. You quickly achieve the things you want to achieve in life, and most importantly, you enjoy the process of achieving it!

    But they are oversimplifying

    The presentation I watched was filmed in front of a live audience. The audience had a ton of questions about this concept of Zero.

    When someone asked a question, it was always answered with some variant of this:

    “Your question is ‘data,’ you must not question, just let go of the data and get back to Zero, where all is good.”

    Every. Single. Time.

    Have you ever had one of those slivers in your foot or hand that’s so small you can’t see it, but every time you push on it, it hurts?

    That’s the kind of irritation that was growing in me as I saw them answer one after another person with this same answer.

    Of course, Dr. Hew Len would say that I need to “clean and to clear” on this irritation, but I don’t think so.

    Instead, I was inspired to write about their wrongness on this particular point, rather than to just “clean and clear.” Writing about it is way more fun.

    So, back to my reaction. As I watched, I kept thinking to myself: then if all it is, is going to Zero at all times, why not just kill myself?

    That will take me back to Zero far more quickly than all of this “clearing” stuff will. If I truly want to be zero, without any data or information, then why be in this world at all?

    And that is where me and Dr’s Vitale and Hew Len diverge, massively

    Their concept of Zero is quite useful. But… their idea of why you must get to Zero is very different than mine.

    From several comments he made, Dr. Hew Len’s idea seems to come from a place similar to that of many religions over the ages.

    It’s a place that says this: we are all sinners. We are all impure. We have taken the purity of “the Divinity” and muddied the waters with our impure filth, our dirt. To become pure again, we must get rid of all the dirt and the filth.

    So: we are here on the planet to prove ourselves, as a test of worthiness, to see whether we can get rid of our dirt (or not, in which case we’ll have to come back again…!)

    I don’t agree with that. It is a jaded and cynical view that comes from many religions over the ages that have seen humans and our purpose here on this planet in a very negative light.

    We aren’t here to “prove ourselves” or to “right some wrongs from a past life” or any such nonsense!

    Instead, we are here to enjoy, to experience, and to create!

    We have brains and bodies for a reason: to use them to their fullest.

    We don’t enjoy life when we’re not using this marvelous equipment we are all born with.

    When was the last time you saw a truly happy and glowing couch potato? (I’ve never seen one)

    So, when Dr. Hew Len kept telling questioners to stop questioning and to start cleaning, I believe he was doing them a disservice.

    Questioning is a natural part of using our minds and enjoying our experience here on this planet.

    Sometimes our minds get clouded and our pipelines get clogged. That’s when we need to get clarity and “go to Zero.”

    There is a time and place for it, but it is just one stage of the Creative Pipeline, and the other stages are equally important to living an engaged and fun life.

    It is not the only thing we should be doing, all the time, every day. How gawldamn boring!

    This, my friend, is why I developed the Creative Pipeline. There are so many philosophies and perspectives out there about how to live a more fulfilled and successful life – and many of them seem to have nuggets of truth.

    Yet most of them ultimately fail, because they only give one little piece of the puzzle, like this “Zero Limits” stuff.  It’s like trying to complete a Jigsaw puzzle with only half the pieces. You get awfully confused.

    That same thing has happened to many people who are genuinely seeking personal development, and get trapped in these limited systems where they don’t have all the puzzle pieces. It happened to me, for many years.

    How To Learn More About The Creative Pipeline, In Order To Get More Out Of Life

    I made a series of short, entertaining videos for you that walk you through what the Creative Pipeline is and how you can put it to use right away in your life to get more enjoyment and more of the “stuff” that you want (money, success, whatever…). In the videos, I take you on a road trip to Marin Co. California, to Hawaii, and to give you a big reveal that’s going to blow your socks off (you’ll either love me or hate me for this one, but I doubt you’ll leave it feeling blasé). I also tear down the “working 105 hours per week” lie.  Get your videos here.

     

     

  • Who are you? Just beans and franks? (and how to avoid writer's block!)

    One of man’s biggest quests throughout the ages has been to answer the seemingly simple question: “who am I?”

    The answer is not so simple. Or is it?

    We have on the one side the materialists who answer this question with the explanation that we are a “side effect.” In their view, we are a random byproduct of a random universe, kind of like the meat scraps that are swept off the floor then made into bologna or hot dogs. Or a bit like farts….a byproduct of attempting to digest certain kinds of foods like beans. Beans n Franks. That’s all we are. Thank you, Richard Dawkins, for such enlightenment.

    Then we have on the other side the fundamentalists, who answer this question with the explanation that we are a product of an all-knowing, “perfect” God.  We are here to “prove ourselves” to that God. God is perfect, we are far from it. Yet we are supposed to strive to that perfection. We are supposed to make up for the original sin, and all the sins thereafter. Wow, what a burden. I feel tired already.

    If you feel a bit dissatisfied with these two most common explanations of who we are, join the club. There’s an ever-growing cadre of thinking people who accept neither explanation as true, and who strives for a better, more satisfying explanation of existence.

    How about this one?

    An identity is .. a dimension of existence, action within action, and unfolding of action upon itself–and through this interweaving of action with itself, through this re-action, an identity is formed.

    I’ll tell you where that came from in just a bit. But first, let’s contemplate this statement. (I had to read and re-read the corresponding passages several times to really get it. Maybe you’re smarter than I am…)

    What this is saying is that our identity depends on action… the action and re-action of experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Think about that for a second. Are you anything more, or less, than the things that have happened to you throughout your experience (which includes the actions you’ve taken and the re-actions to those?)

    Identity is formed by the flow of actions throughout life. It’s the actions and reactions that define who we are.

    Now here’s an interesting passage:

    Once more, action is not a force from without that acts upon matter. Action is, instead, the inside vitality of the inner universe–it is the dilemma between inner vitality’s desire and impetus to completely materialize itself, and its inability to completely do so.

    Now, this is going to take a moment to explain. Say that, like me, you believe that thought precedes matter, not the other way around. (If you think that matter precedes thought, like the materialists, I’m afraid that this quote will never make sense to you, and you will likely remain philosophically lost, as I was for several decades of my life. Sorry about that.)

    So, let’s say we have an Apple. But, instead of biting into it, we’d like to share it evenly between two people. (Let’s say Adam and Eve want to share evenly in their sinning!). This inspires the possibility of a cutting device with which to cut that apple.

    Before biting into the apple, Adam, being the industrious fellow he is, goes off and fashions a crude knife out of a stone. He now has the first knife, which he uses to cut the apple.

    Aha… but after the apple cutting exercise, it quickly becomes apparent that this knife thing can be used for other purposes. It could be used to hunt… it could be used to shape other tools, like spears and arrows, it can be used to carve patterns, it can even be used to threaten Eve.

    This is action: the materialization of one idea… leads to many more ideas.

    Our ideas cannot completely materialize themselves, because to be “complete” would mean there’s not another idea. Yet each time we create something, it creates more ideas, not less. Action is the continual sequence of these creations, these ideas…

    Now, interestingly:

    Identity, because of its characteristics, will continually seek stability, while stability is impossible.

    Think about that. It’s true. Most of us define our lives by trying to find some kind of stability.

    And yet, if we really found complete stability, we would get absolutely and totally bored.

    We would be the Stepford Wives… squared. It’s a fine balance between these two, the desire for stability and the constant change, that creates consciousness….Here’s another quote:

    It is this dilemma, between identity’s constant attempts to maintain stability and action’s inherent drive for change, that results in the imbalance, the exquisite creative by-product that is consciousness of self.

    and further

    Consciousness, therefore, is not a “thing” in itself. It is a dimension of action, an almost miraculous state, made possible by what I choose to call a series of creative dilemmas.

    So consciousness is a state, coming from this fine imbalance between the desire for stability and the constant flow of action in the universe.

    Then what of Ego?

    Ego consciousness is a state resulting from the third creative dilemma, which happens when consciousness of self attempts to separate itself from the action.

    and

    Ego consciousness…involves a state in which consciousness of self attempts to divorce self from action – an attempt on the part of consciousness to perceive an action as an object … and to perceive action as initiated by the ego as a result, rather than as a cause, of ego’s own existence.

    Here we have this ego fellow, trying to be separate, distant, and aloof. Looking down upon all of the action, and saying: “look, I DID THAT. See how cool I really am??? (look Ma!!)”

    When it is the very fine balance of action and identity which is the root source of Ego in the first place.

    In other words, Ego is a false barrier. It is an attempt to make us separate from the action, better than the action. It’s not all bad, it’s just often misused.

    Here’s why.

    Let’s say that my Ego says “I am an author. And I am a damn good one at that. I just had a New York Times bestseller! Expectations for my next book are very high!”

    Now, as long as I am caught up in that ego, writing the next book is going to be fraught with challenges such as writer’s block.

    I am attempting to separate myself, artificially, from the identity which has been and is being created by the action of writing.

    If I can, instead, just BE the action of writing – i.e. let the sum of actions and reactions be my identity… then I am far more likely to succeed on my next writing endeavor than if I get all wrapped up in the ego of being a bestselling author.

    So here we have a very important, actionable piece of advice that comes from all the philosophical musings:

    Do not get wrapped up in ego. Get wrapped up in action.

    (That is my own quote, it’s not from the book I’ve been referring to).

    Having studied and written a bunch about creativity, this is one of the great secrets. Creativity is a flow, and the more that ego is happening, the more that the flow gets blocked.

    The flow of creativity is a series of actions. It’s making ideas real… either as words on the page, notes on an instrument, or what have you…

    If Ego is sitting there saying “I’m separate from the action, because I’m better than the action, and I’m going to be judged by other Egos for the action that I’m taking” it stifles the very action it’s trying to take.

    So, if you want to be truly creative, you need to BE the action, not be apart from the action.

    This is who you are. It is who I am. We are that fine imbalance of actions and reactions with our desire for stability.

    On this little sojourn of ours, let’s consider one more quote, from a different book:

    Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.

    This quote is from Brené Brown’s book “Daring Greatly.” It’s all about the power of vulnerability in creating a better life experience for ourselves.

    And what is vulnerability but the elimination of our Ego barriers and immersing ourselves fully in the actions and experiences of life?

    It’s not that Ego should be entirely eliminated. It has its function in helping us have a unique experience, apart from other humans. Without it, we would be just one big collective consciousness. But that compartmentalization of experience is it’s only real function. Sadly, it seems to have been blown way out of proportion by the likes of Freud and whole generations following him.

    At our core, we are just our experiences. We create our actions and experience them. It is a never-ending stream, through which we constantly grow and change. Our identity is not static, as much as we may want to cling to that. Indeed, it’s the desire to cling to that kind of static identity that causes so much bitterness and nostalgia, rather than embracing the present fully.

    If you want to live a truly great life, immerse yourself in your identity; an identity of action and re-action, of having ideas and finding ways to make them real, of experience, of change. It is truly that simple.

    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

    Ok, so I promised to tell you where those quotes came from, and I will. However, that’s a good story in and of itself, which distracts from the story here.

    Therefore, I’ll talk about the source in a separate post, here. However, before you go read that, I highly recommend that you think about the truth of these statements of their own right.

  • The Zombie Apocalypse is upon us!

    Zombies, zombies, everywhere.

    If you look to Hollywood, the world is but about to become a big zombie-fest.

    Life imitates art, or so they say.

    That being the case, I’ve pondered the meaning of all the zombie movies of late. They seem to be taking off where the “robots that conquer the world” left off. (For some reason, I had more affection for the robot stories, like Battlestar Galactica, The Matrix, Terminator, etc… not any good ones lately, though)

    In any case. Does this say something about our culture? The preponderance of zombies?

    I think it does.

    We have been living under the pall of the industrial era. It turned us into good little zombies…(or robots), obedient to the “system” so we could crank out widgets on the assembly line.

    Don’t get me wrong. I love the creature comforts that the industrial era has provided to humanity.

    But all good things must come to an end. It’s time to move on.

    Yet our economy, our schools, and most of all, the big mega-companies who prefer drones rather than thinking humans as employees, perpetuate the old way. The zombie robot drone way.

    Humanity is waking up. We realize that old way no longer works. We want something more, something better, something more freeing.

    Unfortunately, most of us haven’t yet figured out how to get it. (Hey, it’s why I’m doing what I am, to show that there IS another way, by example…)

    So we sit back and fantasize about wiping out the evil flesh eating zombies. That’s fun and all.

    But it is no substitute for the real work we have to do:  to escape the zombifying system that we’ve grown up in and to replace it with something better.

  • Life is meaningless! You are nothing but space debris!!!

    Over breakfast and interesting conversation evolved about the state of physics and what it tells us about the meaninglessness and purposelessness of our lives, both individually and collectively.

    I’ve been thinking about physics lately, well, because I’m a mad scientist, but also because my brother visited.  He’s an actual, bona fide, physicist.  Plus, a friend of mine mentioned an article on the Higgs Boson to me on Facebook – the supposed God Particle.

    Now here’s the thing: the state of physics right now reminds me of where biology was in the early 20th century.  Back before Watson and Crick and Rosalind Franklin came along and showed us that DNA was at the heart of all cells, and was the carrier of information from one generation to the next, biology was a mess.

    Really. A big mess.  We had people going out, collecting species from all over the world, dissecting them with extreme care under microscopes, and trying to figure out “how it all fit together.”  The result was a field called taxonomy, which was all about sorting and sifting through these species and seeing how the limb of a frog looks kind of like the limb of a human, so must somehow involve something similar going on. It led to overly complex book volumes that would discuss these similarities (and differences) at length.  People spent lifetimes debating them. Oh, what a waste!

    Once we finally figured out that DNA was at the core of it all – in every cell – it dramatically simplified things!  It’s not that biology is now simple. Genomes are incredibly complex.  However, they give us a simple unifying principle for how cells grow, mature, and pass on information from one generation to the next.  As a result, the advances in biology have been dramatic.

    If we turn our telescope to the field of physics, which is attempting to bore down into the deepest of recesses of our universe to figure out “how it works” – it is very much like those microscope-wielding biologists in the pre-DNA days.

    The field of “quantum field theory” does the same kind of sifting and sorting through the “taxonomy” of the universe that biological taxonomists did in the early to mid 1900’s.  We have particle after particle being named and endlessly debated. We have massive supercolliders that are much like the microscopes that biologists used… attempting to probe ever deeper into matter.

    And yet… there’s something missing. Something very big. It’s that unifying principle thing.

    See, the assumption of these physicists (like my brother, whom I love very much), is that the universe is like a big machine. It is no more and no less than a machine.

    What got that machine going is “outside of their scope.” How it got there is “irrelevant.”

    So, they peer and dissect and postulate and theorize, all based on this “universe is a big machine” theory.

    Our best and brightest are all working to “prove” that our life, and our universe, is essentially meaningless.  Because if it’s just a machine, then it IS meaningless.

    If it is a machine, then everything we do is just a product of gears turning away in the deep recesses of matter, and we have no control whatsoever over what happens.  We are just cogs in that machine, going through the motions.

    Maybe the reason that physics has failed to figure it out is that it is intentionally ignoring the unifying principle.

    What if that unifying principle involves consciousness and awareness, rather than gears turning away endlessly and meaninglessly?

    Harumph. Well, physics won’t go there.  It can’t go there. There is a great fear among the sciences to admit anything that sounds like God might be involved.  The schism goes too deep, and science has thrown the baby out with the bath water.

    What if we don’t have to refer to “God” in any traditional sense to find our unifying principle? What if, instead, we refer to a simple “field of awareness” that exists, and of which we are a part? There are many ways we could use the concept of awareness or consciousness without having to refer to God. But, no. Anything that remotely hints at anything even slightly God-like is BAD. It’s got to be rejected.

    Because of that penchant to reject even the slightest whiff of consciousness, to admit that it’s not all just a machine turning away its gears, we have our best and brightest, across the world, working very hard to prove that life is meaningless, to prove that our universe is a machine, and to prove that our cells are just little machines inside the big machine that we call our lives.

    These folks – intentionally or unintentionally – work to deny that there could be some reason that we exist within our magnificent universe, such as being here to enjoy life, create, and grow. Any reason is “outside the scope.”

    Well, what if you were crossing the desert, and you found a big machine that looked kind of like a printing press, but it wasn’t.  You started to take it apart to figure out how it worked. You carefully dissected it, classified each gear, and each circuit. You drew diagrams and equations of how they all fit together.  You could even put it back together if you needed to.

    But you never stopped to ask yourself: why is this machine here in the desert? Who made it? What is it’s purpose?

    That’s how physics is today.

    The sad part is that many of us look to our best and brightest for guidance about “what does it all mean?”  But they can’t give us guidance. They’ve for the most part stopped asking that question. Instead, the only thing they can tell us is “this is how the parts fit together.” As if the meaning were in the gears, equations, and circuits.

    No. The meaning of any machine is in its purpose.  No human would build a machine, investing time and effort, if it didn’t have some purpose.  So, why is it that we think that the most complex machines we know of (human brains) are entirely purposeless?  It’s fucked up.

    Don’t let them tell you that it’s meaningless. They have no clue. They are not looking for meaning. They are looking for the absence of meaning.

    Because meaninglessness is what they’re looking for, meaninglessness is what they find.

    So, don’t let them convince you that your life is meaningless and purposeless. It is not. It is just that you have to find it yourself, since you can’t look to anyone to find it for you. They aren’t looking in the right place.

     

  • A Simple New Year's Resolution: Fun

    There’s a funny thing about our brains (or, more aptly, our minds).

    It’s that we often get confused about the origin, the journey, and the destination.

    Just for example, let’s say that once, long ago, you decided you wanted to become a scientist. You thought it would be fun to explore the workings of the world. You thought it would be thrilling to make the next big breakthrough, and to share it with the world.

    Let’s say that, based on this notion of the fun and the thrill of science, you decide to embark on a journey. It’s a difficult journey of training and education. It’s fraught with perils and challenges. It lasts for many, many years. Some of us even add extra time to the journey, just because we’re gluttons for punishment. In my own case, the journey from BS degree to being a tenured faculty member who had “made it” was about 18 years.

    A funny thing happens along the way. We often completely loose sight of why we started the journey in the first place! I often did. I’d get caught up in the minutiae of the process of “getting there”, taking it all too seriously, and totally forgetting why I embarked on the journey.

    If it wasn’t for something my PhD mentor once said to me, I may have been completely lost in the journey. He once commented that whenever he was feeling frustrated by something like a grant proposal, he’d step back and just remind himself to have fun with it.

    It worked for him, and it worked for me.  Many of my biggest successes with things like big grant proposals resulted from a process that went something like this:

    1. I get lost and frustrated in a project to the point of exasperation (a state of mind often lasting weeks to many months)
    2. In a flash of desperation-driven insight, I remember the words of my mentor about having fun
    3. I come back at the project with a renewed attitude of “just having fun” instead of worrying about the outcome
    4. The project succeeds beyond my wildest imagination

    In other words, it would take a state of desperation and exasperation to remind me to simply have fun with it, and having fun with it would, more often than not, lead to success.

    Having short memory, I rarely remembered this principle much beyond the completion of each project. I had forgotten why I’d gotten into the career in the first place. This “having fun” was just something I used as a tool to accomplish a goal such as getting a grant proposal written, or whatever.

    It wasn’t a core, working principle of mine. Instead, it was like a rest stop along the freeway, where I’d occasionally pop in to relieve myself, then get back to the “hard work” of driving forth towards my (now forgotten) destination.

    It took some wild twists and turns to finally take me back-to-my roots, to remind me of why I started doing what I’m doing in the first place.

    This isn’t just true of science, it’s true of anything we do in life. We do things in life because we think that, somehow, some way, they’ll bring joy, happiness, fun, meaning, and satisfaction.

    Yet very few people I encounter remember that principle. It is just so easy to get lost in the “getting there” – taking the process way too seriously – that we never “get there.”

    It’s a kind of hellish limbo. I see it all the time in my work with scientists, who struggle with meaning and purpose (and fun) even more than they struggle with getting grants funded. The two struggles aren’t separate. Grant reviewers can sense when you’ve run out of steam, when you’re writing from a defensive, uninspired position. But this post isn’t about grants, it’s about something deeper.

    Why do we get lost?

    Our society doesn’t much remind us about having fun. Instead, it reminds us about danger, responsibility, challenge, and being a good citizen. Those are all worthy things, yet if you’re living a life driven by only those things, what’s the point?

    A recently published longevity study by Stanford researchers showed that “happy-go-lucky” types don’t live as long as hard working, “conscientious” types. This might sound counter to fun, if you associate fun with partying and overeating and the like. But fun is multi-faceted. Long-lasting fun doesn’t come from excess drinking, partying, or overeating. Those quickly become stale unfun activities, if that’s all you do.

    Long-lasting fun comes from the pursuit and accomplishment of worthy, inspiring goals. It comes from facing the challenges and overcoming them. Fun comes from being immersed in the process of pursuing your goals, and once accomplished, setting a new goal.

    However, the danger is getting lost in the process, much like I was for most of my faculty career. I forgot why I was doing it, and so my only goals became to achieve external goals like getting tenure. I was not having fun, and therefore I was less conscientious. I resorted to other avenues of “fun” such as overeating. I stopped taking care of myself. I stopped taking care of others around me.

    I’ll bet if I’d been interviewed by those Stanford researchers during that time, I’d have scored lower on the conscientiousness scale (which they associate with longevity) than I have at any other time in my life, including now. It’s hard to be conscientious and hard working when you’re hating every minute of it – when you’re having no fun at all.

    If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

    Even if the Stanford researchers, led by Howard Friedman, had found that having fun shortened lifespan (which they did not), I’d have to ask: what’s the point of living longer if you’re not enjoying it?

    That’s like going on a carnival ride that you hate, then asking the attendant to let you keep on riding after the first ride is over. It just doesn’t make sense.

    The first priority should be fun, joy, satisfaction, and only second should we then worry about the length of time we’re here on the planet – not the other way around.

    Really. We. Are. All. Here. To. Enjoy. Our. Lives.

    There is no other reason for existence. We are not here to feel guilty. We are not here to work hard for some external goal that only makes our parents or peers happy. We are not here to please others.

    We are here to live a fully expressed, creatively engaged life: which is a fun life.

    Let’s make this New Year be a year of fun. Not just stupid, drunken fun, but real, deep, core fun. The fun that comes from work we enjoy doing, from time spent with family and friends we enjoy being with, and from experiencing the riches that our world has to offer.

  • re-imagining the American Dream

    Today I ran into yet another person who’s dissatisfied with where she’s at in life.

    The disillusioned seem to make up about 80% or more of the people that I meet or have the opportunity to talk deeply with.

    Some dissatisfaction can be a good thing… it motivates us to want and achieve more. That’s not the kind of dissatisfaction I’m referring to, however. I’m talking about a deep, core dissatisfaction, that goes something like this:

    “What the fuck am I doing with my life?”

    This seems to be much more people now than ever who are asking this.. Why? Why now?

    The stale American Dream

    Dreams and goals are great when you’re moving towards them. We had an American Dream that our parents and grandparents worked towards.  Prosperity. Abundance. Freedom. Then, in large measure, they got that.  While there are plenty of people who’ve been left out of this, there are also plenty of people who already achieved it… and are bored with it.

    To understand this, imagine going for a gold medal in the Olympics. You work and you train for many years, then you get the gold.  Maybe you even do it a second or third time.  Imagine if it stopped there. Imagine if, after doing that, you had no new goals or challenges.  Instead, you just sat around, looking at your gold medal(s) and reminiscing about how great that was… constantly. Pretty quickly you’d become a bore. Pretty quickly, you’d probably take up a drinking, drugs, or gambling habit to “escape” the tedium.

    Dreams aren’t so fun anymore once you achieve them.  It’s great to revel in accomplishments, for a while… but then it’s always time to move onto the next dream or goal.

    We had an American Dream.  We accomplished it.  Then we sat around reveling in it for way too long.  It’s grown stale, and holds no excitement anymore.

    The suburbs are stale

    The suburbs are a shining example of the dream that became stale.  Before we had them, most people either lived in cramped city quarters, or in a rural agrarian setting.  The suburbs promised a perfect “happy medium” for masses of people.  Everyone got plenty of space, the two car garage, the pool, and the RV.  You could zip to work in your shiny new auto on wide-open freeways.

    From the standpoint of someone living in the city who wanted more space, or someone who lived in the country who wanted more social and economic contact, the suburbs were a fantastic dream to be a part of building.

    We plowed tremendous resources into building them. We built up a TV and movie culture about life in the suburbs (the Brady Bunch comes to mind!).

    That lasted for a good 30 to 40 years, from the 1950’s to the 1990’s.  But then the dream got stale.

    The suburbs were mostly built out. They were a “done deal.” We knew that we could accomplish it. There was no challenge left, no thrill, no excitement. What’s more, the younger generations wanted more.  They wanted new challenges and new horizons.

    It’s not that the suburbs suddenly became bad.  They just didn’t hold any hope, promise, or challenge for the future.  The dream had moved on.

    The dream and the economy

    That left the economy in a mess.  At the bottom of it all, the economy depends on human needs and desires. Sure, it is possible to prop it up for a time with governmental intervention – but that never lasts.  The core is always the populace, and how they translate their needs and wants into economic activity like buying and selling.

    It was clear that the old way of doing things was stagnating.  The masses didn’t need ever bigger houses and more cars.  The internet started to promise a “new way,” and a bit of a bubble got built up around that.

    Yet once that first bubble collapsed, the government and banks went into a panic.  They decided that it was essential to prop up the dream all over again… so that we could get back to the “good old times”.

    They lowered interest rates and promoted cheap and easy loans. People started buying houses, not because they really needed or wanted them, but because they were driven by greed.

    It ended in a big ka-pow in 2008.

    Then, we were back to where we started.

    Let’s prop up a dead dream (again)!

    A certain fiction theme goes like this: someone dies. The protagonist stands to loose a lot if people know that the person has died. So the protagonist pretends that the dead person is still alive. That is, until people catch on.

    That’s exactly what the big players in our economy have attempted to do.  They like to pretend that the dream isn’t dead.  “No, in fact, it’s quite alive.  Can’t you see all this money we’re putting into small businesses, new housing starts, and making shiny new cars?!”

    However, the populace ain’t buying it.  A lot of us smell a rat.  We know there’s something wrong, we just don’t know what.

    And that’s what leads to this widespread, core dissatisfaction.  We want more, but we’re being told that we shouldn’t want more.  We’re told that “living the American Dream” should be all we need.

    That’s bullshit.

    Humans have always wanted more, and it’s a good thing

    The whole reason that humans left the plains of Africa to travel across the world was because we wanted more.  The reason men stepped foot on the moon was because we wanted more.  The reason we have the internet is because we wanted more.

    Wanting more is our heritage. I’m not just talking about more stuff (in fact, as far as stuff is concerned, less is often more). I’m talking about more out of life. More and better experiences. More satisfaction. More meaning. More challenge. More inspiration. More joy.

    Unfortunately, because powers that be have propped up the old dream (you know, the one where you get a job-for-life and are happy-ever-after in the suburbs with the white picket fence), growing numbers of people are angst-ridden, depressed, and worse. They want to move on… but don’t see how they can.

    “I’ve got kids to feed and bills to pay.” 

    Instead of defining a new dream, most people stay stuck. They feel obligated to the old dream, even though it’s not of their making.  They feel beholden to something that previous generations created, and they have no new dream to replace it with.

    If you want to know why the economy hasn’t gotten better, this is why.  Until we collectively realize that we need to move on and define a new and bigger and better dream, we’ll stay in a chronic sort of economic malaise. (either that, or we get embroiled in a war that captures people’s imagination and passion… but I think sending people into deep space would be far more interesting than just having another war).

    We don’t have to destroy what came before. A lot of what came before is good.  Having a good living space, having freedom to travel around, and having enough food on the table… all those are great. We don’t have to give those up, and we shouldn’t give those up.

    Instead, we should build on them. We should reconfigure them to our current liking.

    Once we’ve done that, we should figure out: what’s the next challenge? What’s the new dream? Women on Mars? Exploring the deep seas? Deciphering the genome? Finding more joy and contentment? All of the above? We should pursue those dreams with courage and passion, just like our forebears did in building the original American Dream. Just like earlier humans did in setting out to explore the planet.

    The day of reckoning

    Someday soon, masses of people in Western countries are going to wake up and realize that the dream is dead (maybe that’s what the Mayan prophecy of 2012 was all about?)  It’s inevitable.

    Then the only question is whether they’ll realize what the trouble is, finding a positive way of engaging with a new dream…. or instead, finding a scapegoat to blame their woe upon, and starting down a path of destruction.  We’ve been down the latter road at least once, and it wasn’t pretty.

    I do hope that instead, we’ll find the will to re-imagine the American Dream into something newer and better, something more appropriate for our time, and something that we can all aspire to.