The Charles Schulz Philosophy






 

Although this philosophy has often been attributed to the creator of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, there is no evidence that he actually penned it.  Regardless who the author is, it still makes my point.

In our capacities as fathers and mothers, family protectors, and business decision makers, we all have to measure other people.

We have to judge who to trust, to help us, and who to lead us. Who will I trust with my kids?  Who will I do business with? Who do I trust as a political leader? Who do I trust for investment advise?

The list goes on.  What I am really saying is that we have to make judgments about others everyday.

The question is what criteria are we using when we make these judgments?

In the quest to build leaders it is easy to say that we want them to have impact in society, to make a difference, to “be the change we wish to see in the world.” Ok, I agree with that, but what character qualities, what skills, what disciplines do we want to inculcate in these future leaders to achieve the desired “change?”

What follows is the philosophy of Charles Schulz (or someone else).

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.

4 Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, few of us remember the headliners of yesterday.

These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields.

But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten.

Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

And we seem to be little effected by these momentary achievements.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

6. Identify 2 mentors who helped to open the doors of life for you.

7. Recall one act of kindness that forever changed your perspective on life.

Easier?

The lesson: 

The people who make a difference in your life are almost never the ones with the most credentials, the most money…or the most awards. They simply are the ones who care the most.

In fact, I submit that people who make a positive difference in your life are probably making a positive difference in the lives of others at the same time.  Good people are usually good to everybody.

These criteria should also apply to our leaders. High achievement is contagious and helps to raise the standard for all of us, so yes when possible we want our leaders to be the best in their fields, but we also need leaders who are not afraid to admit mistakes, we need leaders who genuinely care for others, we need leaders who are charitable in their private lives, we need leaders who are truth and principle driven, and who are self-deprecating and humble.

^“Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be [their] rulers . . .”

(Exodus 18:21)

It is time we reexamined this whole leadership thing.

After all, we are the ones who decide who we are going to follow—a basic requirement for leadership.

So if we get to decide who the leaders are why are we choosing so many bad leaders?

Or maybe bad leadership is not the issue here.  Maybe bad choosing is the real problem.

When we choose leaders, are we more concerned about what is in their hearts or are we more interested in what is in their wallet and how much that will benefit us?

When we choose leaders do we care more about how they think or who they know?

When we choose leaders are we more interested in what they do when few are looking or do we value the intuitive skill of smelling out a good photo op?

Again I say, it is time we reexamined this whole leadership thing.

 

Return of the Manual Arts

We have spent considerable space in these posts discussing education, particularly the liberal arts.

This post is dedicated to the lesser known side of our curriculum—the manual arts.

Manual arts are not something that the average American thinks about in the 21st century.

But a hundred years ago, the vast majority of Americans were engaged in the manual arts everyday.

In fact, excluding the last 60 years of developed nations, manual arts were the reality for nearly the entire global population. Even now, most of the seven billion inhabitants on earth engage in the manual arts daily.

Without the manual arts, most of what we enjoy almost unconsciously, would not exist.  In our high-tech, synthetic, and artificial world, we have reached a “roman” sense of existence—the only difference from then to now—we just have more sophisticated slaves.*

In a very thought-provoking article by Oliver DeMille, The Future of American Education: 8 Trends Every Parent Should Understand, DeMille gives us a glimpse of what we have become:

 

Since 2001 a number of social commentators have noted that as a society we are outsourcing more and more of the things that were typically done by families (one of the best works on this is The Future of Business by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich).

 

For example, the following list includes things done almost entirely by families in the year 1900:

Childcare

Education

Eldercare

Counseling

Food Growing

Cooking

Cleaning

Reading Bedtime Stories

Sexual Intimacy

Home Repair

Taking Care of Animals

Yard Care

Role Modeling

Teaching Religion

Massage Therapy

Entertainment

 

The list has changed in the past century, and the victim has been the family.  Perhaps the “Big 5” on the list are:

 

Childcare, which has been outsourced, especially in urban America, to professional childcare institutions.

 

Food Preparation, which has been outsourced to fast food and pre-packaged meals.  For example, 1999 was the first year in which expenditures in the U.S. for fast food exceeded expenditures for groceries. 

 

Entertainment, which used to consist of families reading together or activities like group picnics and outings.  Today, even when families are together, they usually sit facing away from each other toward a television, movie screen, or sporting event.

 

Teaching Religion, which was once seen as the role of parents with the preacher lending a helping hand, is now almost entirely outsourced to the pastor or Sunday school teacher or to some secular alternative.

 

Education, which historically was overseen by parents who hired and evaluated teachers and did much of the instruction themselves, has now been almost fully outsourced to “the experts.”

 

Another huge trend, which already has drastic consequences that are only beginning to be understood, is the outsourcing of counseling between husband and wife (discussion of their fears, anxieties, worries and fondest dreams) to expert counselors.

 

Perhaps the 54% divorce rate in the U.S. is connected to this; as Allan Bloom** pointed out in 1987, people live, sleep and sometimes eat together, but they don’t think, dream and work together toward a common goal in the same way that our grandparents did. This delegation of intimacy to the experts may yet be the biggest trend of all.

 

And what is the impact of using videos or DVDs in the place of reading bedtime stories to toddlers?  The outsourcing of our families and the things only families can do well is a growing trend, and a very sobering commentary on the future of our society.

 

Historians might compare it to the fateful practice among French women in the 1750s-1780s of not nursing their own children—of instead turning them over to wet nurses. Few would argue that this was the only cause of the bloodbath and societal fall in the French Revolution in the 1780s, but almost everyone agrees that this was a significant part of it.

 

So, with all these duties being outsourced, what is left that only the family can do?  According to the new economy – nothing.  The leading view today is that “It Takes a Village,” that even love can be outsourced to teachers, coaches, clubs, and mentors.

 

The truth is that it does take a village, a community, but a community of families working, playing, cooperating and facing obstacles together, not a community of government institutions.

This idea of outsourcing seems to be a national pastime, albeit there does appear to be a small underground resurgence of the manual arts illustrated by websites such as theurbanfarmingguys.com.

One of the reasons we have disowned the use of the manual arts is due to the steady progression of technology.  The advent of labor saving devices (LSDs) has improved our lives in many ways.  It has also been the underlying source of a whole host of sedentary lifestyle diseases. Where is the balance?

Labor saving devises or the greater concept of saving labor has an interesting history.

From the advent of the Industrial Revolution, saving labor changed the world from mere survival to producing a cash crop beyond subsistence or allowing a farmer increased discretionary time for more favored pursuits.

By the 1970s the workingman was able to produce much more with a fraction of the backbreaking labor required a century before which stabilized into a 40-hour work-week…increasing discretionary time even further.

It also freed the American housewife of many undesirable chores, and like her spouse, freed up significant “my time”…but to what end?

If it was to allow them to relax a little more, no harm down. If it permitted more time to give to others or to develop talents that would be good too, but unfortunately for most of people, it led to their less ambitious side with copious amounts of time being devoted to the latest entertainment and diversion– Television– late morning and afternoon soap opera TV series such as the “Dark Shadows” or “General Hospital”, and time devouring shows such as “The Price is Right.”

It allowed them more time to engage in recreation and entertainment on the weekends, often ignoring family, relationships, and service to neighbors, and expanding into long weekends which monopolized the traditional Sabbath for non-Sabbath day activities.

By the 1990s we were thoroughly absorbed by a numbing consumerism, life had gotten pretty easy so labor saving was really no longer the goal, but keeping up with the “Jones,” and securing the latest fashions or gadget, or the newest car, or a bigger house was—this really exploded with the advent of computer technology, gaming, and home entertainment from the late 1990s to the present.

The latest chapter in our American LSDs story is resulting in skyrocketing obesity— 70% of all adults and 30% of children in America suffer from poor health and diseases not seen two decades ago.

According to Popular Mechanics (2011), every man should possess certain basic manual art skills.

They provided a list for men to become more manly, clearly an indication that males no longer possess these skills.

Removing anything on the list that was technology related, I am including the remaining 16 manual arts that the modern man has apparently lost:

1. Sharpen a knife

2. Patch a radiator hose

3.Frame a wall

4. Back-up a trailer

5. Build campfire

6. Use an ax properly to chop wood

7. Fix a dead outlet

8. Navigate with a compass and map

9. Fillet a fish

10. Get a car unstuck

11. Paint a room

12. Mix concrete

13. Clean a gun

14. Change oil in a car (and know that the filter needs to be changed too)

15. Paddle a canoe

16. Fix a bike flat

While writing this post, my 22-year-old daughter looked over my shoulder, saw the topic and stated that of her closest 15 male friends ( ages 20-30) only one had competency with all the items on this list. Things that four decades ago any self-respecting man did himself–only specialists can handle today.

Today there are 184 million active facebook users in America (that’s 60% of our entire population) spending more than two hours a week on facebook, but if you factor in all online activities (all social media, all gaming,  all youtube viewing and other online videos, etc) the percentage sky rockets to almost 25% of our awake time.

For the average American over the age of 16 that can be as much as five hours a day, every day or the equivalent of an entire work week per month. This does not include texting, and playing games on our iphones.

This is all time wherein we are distracted from our loved ones, our community and our social responsibilities.

How do we not see that this is a monumental waste of our national resource of labor, not to mention a decline of our national character?

We are so far removed from reality that we even believe that we can get a sense of the plight of the third world farmer through playing a video game!

LSDs and the specialization of the consumer age has not only made us inept to care for ourselves, it has driven the cost of living many times over what it was just fifty years ago.  Are our lives really better and more satisfying now compared to the 1940s?

Working as a youngster on a dairy farm in the mid 1970’s, I worked along side sixty year-old men who never had high cholesterol and very little arthritis. They had no weight problems (a little pudgy—they were in their sixties) and were active in every other way. They could put in a 12-hour day of hard farm work as easily as I could.  Yet today I see countless 30-something men who are overweight, soft, and would likely expire at the thought of hard physical labor.  What has happened to us?

We have forgotten the enjoyment of using our hands, the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from “doing it ourselves” and the security of self-sufficiency.  We have forgotten that human beings are still needed for the most basic necessities of life—food still grows in the ground and must be harvested, fruits still needs to be picked from the tree, cloth is still manually fed into the sewing machine, and fossil fuels and natural resources are still wrenched from the earth— by hand.

Not having personal experience in the manual arts is one level of losing our humanity and threatens civilization—not remembering that someone is practicing the manual arts right now—is a much deeper and catastrophic failure.

We believe that every congressman, every police officer, every corporate CEO, every surgeon, every diplomat, every teacher, every real estate agent; every American citizen would make better decisions, have better morals, and lead happier lives if they were more engaged in the manual arts. In fact, we challenge our reads to do just that– find ways to more deeply engage in the manual arts.

The manual arts are a natural cure for egoism, self-deception, and obesity.  The manual arts are an instinctive remedy for a troubled mind and eliminate the need for sleep aids. The manual arts will increase health, vitality, and improve your view of the world.  The manual arts enhance our powers of observation and appreciation.

Many of the manual arts involve dirt or soil or being outside in the fresh air—it is spiritually grounding and emotionally balancing.

Some of the least stressed and happiest people I know are masters of the manual arts.

*At the peak of Roman culture there were seven slaves for every roman citizen. The Romans had for the most part completely shunned the manual arts, becoming increasingly dependent on slave labor and the importation of their food supply. We have reached a similar existence.  We are becoming more and more dependent on exports and even the manual labor done in this country is emotionally and culturally relegated to a certain segment of our population.

** Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom

 

The Dawning Of A New Era

We have been saying for years that the day would come when the concepts and results of a liberal education would again be valued in politics, business, and society in general, that citizenship would enjoy a renewed position of importance in our nation, and that statesmen would rise up in our capitols to provide courageous leadership in the face of party politics—particularly one’s own party.

That period of history has just commenced.

We believe that when Senator Rand Paul stood on March 6 to filibuster the U.S. Senate John Brennan consent vote, and spent nearly 13 hours to call the executive branch of the United States government to account for its unclear policies regarding the use of unmanned drones in U.S. airspace, he unwittingly triggered a movement back to the principles and values upon which this nation was built.

Paul’s determination to personally take a stand against the executive branch—an act many in his own party have rebuked him for—shows the triumph of personal conviction over party hierarchy.

Much of his testimony and debate during this famous filibuster, detailed the convictions that all lawmakers should espouse: principles of sound government, accountability, the value of the rule of law, acknowledgement of Divinity, and the firm foundation and lessons from history.

Rand stated that he had not planned this filibuster in advance, so I think it is fair to surmise that the stream of support from both sides of the aisle was fairly spontaneous and genuine.

It shows that when someone leads out for truth and right, others will follow.

Not all Americans will instantly embrace these ideas and values—in fact, we predict that most Americans won’t—but we firmly believe that enough mothers and fathers will refocus the education of their children, that enough business leaders will reevaluate the purpose and methods of their businesses, and that enough political leaders will rise up as statesmen to lead the charge for liberty—to make a real difference.

This is why Monticello College exists, we are dedicated to cultivating an education and environment that foster public virtue, induce moral character, and emulate the courage and foresight of the American founding period, preparing our graduates to guard the principles of liberty.

It will take time to clearly discern the impact of this event.

But we predict that Pandora’s box has been opened and more and more Americans will look to Paul’s example and begin to take such measures in their own lives, which will undoubtedly lead to an increased interest in the founding principles, that have set America and the United States as a light on a hill.

 

P.S. I challenge you to watch all 12.5 hours of the filibuster (C-Span or youtube) as a show of solidarity for his act and as a means of responsible citizenship.  We did at Monticello College.

 

 

The Liberal Arts During Bondage; Part Three: The Fourth Turning: The Opportunity Of The Century

Click Here to Read Part One

Click Here to Read Part Two

To wrap up this series, let’s rely on history to show us a way out of Bondage. As was mentioned in part two, we not only rely on the 250-year society oriented Tytler Cycle to show us the way, but the more personal 80-100-year Century Cycle or Saeculum.

This last post is dedicated to the fourth and first turnings/seasons of the Century Cycle as described in chapter seven of our book, A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens. What follows is that chapter in its entirety.

History runs in cycles, and there is a pattern of four seasons repeated over and over, each about 20-25 years long.  Like the seasons of the year, they come naturally and each feels different.  These four seasons are called “turnings,” like turnings on a cycle, by authors Strauss and Howe in their book The Fourth Turning.  The four seasons are:

1st: Founding. New institutions are built up to progress after the last crisis, like the United Nations, Social Security, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), NATO, and other organizations being created right after the Great Depression and World War II.  Lots of businesses flourished in this period also.

2nd: Awakening. Youth grow up and challenge the old establishments, like the 1960s counter-culture movement at Woodstock, the Civil Rights movement led by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, and strong pushes for Feminism and Environmentalism, etc.

3rd: Unraveling. Two big viewpoints and political parties fight for power, and everything seems like it will come apart.  Economies boom.  The last unraveling happened between 1984 and 2001, and the one before that in the “Roaring 1920s.”

4th: Crisis.  Big problems come.  Actually, crisis seasons usually consist of three crises in a row, sometimes overlapped.  First is the wake-up crisis that shocks everyone, like the Boston Tea Party, the election of Abraham Lincoln, the 1929 stock market crash, which started the Great Depression.  In recent times, it appears that 9/11 was such an event.

Second comes a major economic crises, and then, third, usually a major war, pandemic or a mixture of these all at the same time.  The last several crisis seasons include The Revolutionary War and Depression, The Civil War and Depression, and the Great Depression and World War II.  Sounds bad, huh?

We live today in a crisis era, and you will grow up and start your life, family and career in a Crisis or Founding season. The good news is that a Crisis Season is always followed by another Founding, just like winter always ends with spring!

The bad news, which is also the biggest challenge in all of this, is that when the Crisis comes almost everyone over thirty years of age is totally immersed in the rules of the last phase.

This means that even though the economic boom times and long periods of peace are over, most people keep making choices that reflect what worked before.

They make a lot of bad choices, because they don’t realize that the rules have changed.

For example, parents educated in 2nd or 3rd seasons often think that their kids should see education as job training.  For 4th and 1st seasons, however, that is a big mistake.

Teens need to be prepared for entrepreneurship and initiative much more than specific job skills.  There are many other differences between seasons.

Here are the leading rules of success in each turning.  In each season, success is found in:

2nd and 3rd: Big Institutions, Professional Careers, Investment, Credentials and Resume, Leisure and Entertainment.

4th and 1st: Family and Community Relationships,  Entrepreneurial Ability, Initiative and Leadership Skills.

The way to fail in 4th and 1st seasons is to try to live in the rules of the previous seasons.  The way to succeed is to engage the new reality.

As teens, you may need to help your parents and grandparents with this!

Those who will thrive in times of recession, depression, slow growth economies, even war and other major crises, are the ones who focus on home, community and entrepreneurship.

Again, the problem is that older generations define success the old way: a good major in college, good career, fun entertainment almost every evening, a really nice house, several new cars, and good retirement.  They also want the same for their kids.  This is a 3rd Season view.  It will be available again, if the cycles hold true (as they have for over 3,000 years) somewhere around the years 2070-2080.

The generation before them saw success as: public schools as central to the community, a stable job at one company for life, husbands supporting families with wife staying home, savings in the bank and home ownership as the best investments.  This is a 2nd Season view, and it will come back again somewhere around the years 2045-2055.

As for real life from now through the 2020s, 2030s, 2040s and maybe into the 2050s, it is time to get real!  Success now and for most of your life will be determined according to the rules of 4th and 1st Seasons.  The new economy is here, and the new realities with it.  These new realities need all your idealism and enthusiasm, but they can’t and won’t be like the past, which too many adults are just pining for.  Those days are gone.

Another key of leadership is to focus on what’s next, not on the past or even the challenges of now.  Overcoming current challenges is important, but the focus should be on what’s ahead.  Those who thrive from now to 2029 will be the ones who focus on and embrace the rules of the coming 1st Season ahead!

Be one of those who thrives, and help others do the same!

Because of the cycles and seasons, some of the most important classics to study as a teen are those written during 4th and 1st Seasons, or by authors who lived through them. One of the best of these, with a focus on family and entrepreneurship, is Our Home by C.E. Sargent.

Sargent lived through the 4th season of the Civil War period, and built his career and family in the 1st season which followed.  His book is one of the Great 100 Teen Classics listed in chapter two.

Following are fourteen “rules” for financial success, family leadership and overall happiness in 4th and 1st seasons, as taught by C.E. Sargent.  We have added a lot of commentary to these, geared specifically for our time.  Still, all fourteen of these guidelines apply to any 4th and 1st season period in history.  These are so much more helpful than many of the things suggested today for success by 2nd and 3rd season experts.

Fourteen Rules for Success Over the Next 50 Years

First, embrace the new.  And the now.  Forget 3rd season goals.  They are gone, over, done, and it is time to move on.  As a teen, you may not have gotten caught up in a lot of 3rd season planning, but if you did it is time to embrace something else.

Those who pine away for the old will not succeed, nor will those who wait around for the old days to come back.  Forget the old measures and methods of success, and get excited about the new opportunities!

Second, spend evenings and Sundays with family.  This principle is so simple, and yet so powerful.

People bond naturally in the evening, and in our modern world the best entertainment is family time.

So much in financial and career success in 4th and 1st seasons depends on family support and relationships, and close bonding is vital.

Such bonds also build a closer community around the family, and this is also needed for financial and social success in this season.

Where Shanon lives, (it is kind of a time warp) they still live this way for the most part.  It has just begun breaking down over the past 5 years, (they are about 20 years behind the times) but for the most part, families there are very tight. You can always see them taking walks as family groups almost every night.

The community does a ton of things together: baseball, community festivals and parades, local fund-raisers and neighborhood parties etc. This community will do much better than others in the future as they already know each other very well and are comfortable with focusing heavily on the family and community.  Tough times are easier for them because they already know how to work together.

Shanon remembers when he first moved there, it snowed about 3 feet in 2 days.  Before city employees could begin the process of removing snow, family members had already dug out the widows and elderly of their families.  It was inspiring to see how everyone just pitched in and helped.

Third, strengthen your self-culture.  In 2nd and 3rd seasons, much of life is built around popular culture, fitting in, looking “right” to others.  In contrast, in our time happiness is much more important than impressing anyone.  Figure out what makes you happy, and live it!

 

Fourth, clearly articulate and write out your individual rules for life.  Plan them.  Live them.  Leaders are needed, not conformists.

Your family, community and those around you need you to know who you are, what you stand for, and for you to truly stand for something.

Of course, true leadership and excellent rules include conformity to core morals and goodness.  Decide what is most important to you, who you really are, and be it!

Fifth, instead of raising children, the focus of families will be on raising adults!  This means that the teen years won’t be seen as times of all fun and games, but rather teens will be considered young adults who are needed to help the family succeed.

In addition to their education, they will help the family flourish by doing a lot more work than the last three generations of teens.

Also, the educational focus will be less on training accountants, attorneys or engineers and more on preparing youth to become good parents and wise citizens.

Indeed, in 4th and 1st seasons we need 18-year-olds who can go to war, lead communities, start businesses, etc.

Some might see this as a loss of youth, but that is just old seasons thinking.  In truth, teens flourish in 4th and 1st seasons because they are given opportunities for leadership and responsibility.

Sixth, make Meaning a central focus of your learning, conversations and thinking.  In 2nd and 3rd seasons the emphasis is often on prosperity and getting ahead.  In current times the national emphasis shifts to things that really matter.

Tests, trials and struggles bring important lessons, and the opportunity to consider what is truly important and what isn’t.  Look for meaning in everything, and you’ll often find it.  Learn to be grateful, to see the “silver lining” in challenges, to learn from mistakes, and to get up whenever you fall down and just keep trying.

The 4th and 1st seasons are great times to turn to great classics and learn the best lessons of the past.

Seventh, spend a lot of time serving widows, orphans, grandparents, the elderly, the sick, and any who are down or struggling.  These should be the focus of much family time.

In 2nd and 3rd seasons these are simply service projects, but in 4th and 1st seasons they become true community—much more than an after-work project once in a while.  Make this one thing a priority in the 4th and 1st seasons, and you will find happiness and thrive in other ways too.

Boredom is a 2nd and 3rd seasons’ disease. Bored? Go serve. Make service the default.  If you have nothing else to do, serve.  By the way, doing something that seemingly blesses only you is doing something worthwhile.

But if you are just looking for entertainment all the time, start looking for things to do that help other people.  Sometimes the best service (and most entertaining activity) is spontaneous service.

If there aren’t enough projects already organized by others, organize some yourself or with a group of friends.  Don’t wait on this one—get started right away.

Eighth, make marriage the central focus of your life.  Even as a teen, preparing to be a great wife or husband is a vital project.  Note that the focus usually changes with the seasons:

2nd: Job over Parenthood

3rd: Parent over Spouse

4th: Spouse

1st: Spouse

In 4th and 1st seasons families grow stronger, and a large part of this is that spouses really need each other and turn to each other for help.  This blesses all levels of family.  Unfortunately, a shift to such times often starts with a lot of marriage struggles—unless people understand and apply these fourteen principles and other guidelines of good relationships.

Teens and other singles often do this focus on marriage better than married people, because they think in terms of romance, dates, etc. rather than children or career as top priority.  In their search for a spouse, they put marriage first.

The key is to maintain this after marriage.  This doesn’t decrease the value of parenting, but in fact increases it.  Truly happy parents do the best parenting.

Ninth, get a true leadership education, what you might call an Impact Education.  Consider the varying focus of education in different seasons:

2nd: Job Training

3rd: Career Training

4th: Impact Education

1st: Leadership Education

Leadership Education includes the skills of initiative plus ingenuity, tenacity, quality, creativity, persuasiveness, etc.  Nothing teaches this as effectively as classics, mentors, simulations and the seven keys covered in earlier chapters.  Indeed, Leadership Education was specifically designed to prepare people for success in challenging times.

Tenth, engage entrepreneurship.  This is a must for almost everyone in 4th and 1st seasons.  Even those with stable jobs, which are much fewer in these seasons, seldom have the opportunity for spouses to have a job too or to get extra money through overtime or extra jobs. Spouses or teens help support the family through entrepreneurship. The majority of people will have to be entrepreneurs to make a living.

Note that different generations have very different views about entrepreneurial ventures.  Here is what being an entrepreneur means to most people in the different seasons:

2nd: “You can’t get a real job!”

3rd: “Build a business and sell it, retire young.”

4th: “Entrepreneur to survive, until the economy is better.”

1st: “Build a business, do it right, take it big!”

The key is to adopt the 1st season view, no matter when you are entrepreneuring.  It is the only one that really works.  In a 4th or 1st season, it is vital to adopt this mindset for your career whatever it is—even if you have a stable job (only employees with this view will keep the company stable).

In 4th and 1st seasons, entrepreneurship is the key to survival and also success.  It requires all the skills and knowledge that naturally come from a good leadership education.  The best place to start as a teen is the great reading list in chapter two of this book!

Eleventh, produce wealth.  Seriously, there is no time to create and build wealth like 4th and 1st seasons (this is easiest in 3rd seasons, but much of the wealth created then is lost as quickly as it is gained; besides, the next 3rd season will likely come in about the year 2070).

It may seem strange to emphasize producing wealth in times of recession, depression, war and challenge, but that is exactly the best time.

This is not to say that you should put greed first, but rather that in such times a focus on entrepreneurial building is exactly what your family, the community, the society and the nation need most!

In 4th and 1st seasons, building businesses is among the most charitable and patriotic things you can do for the society.

People desperately need jobs and nations desperately need successful businesses.

More than anything, the world needs the leadership education that you can only gain by building something!  The classics are a great start, but once you leave the classroom the best leadership education is found in building organizations and making them work!

This is called being a producer, not just a consumer, or dependant or victim.  Author Dennis R. Deaton calls this having an “Ownership Spirit.”  He writes in his book by that title: “When we think in owner terms, we live independent of circumstances.  The ups and downs of the day don’t define who we are, our mood, demeanor, or commitment.

When something goes awry, owners can be disappointed and frustrated, but they don’t find someone to blame or resent, as Victims often do.  Owners tend to focus their thinking on what to do—what options they have and what courses of action to pursue . . . . When people treat them rudely, owners seldom take offense.

They could, of course, but they see that as a waste of time and energy . . . . Owners understand that life is not easy, and they don’t expect it to be.”

In addition to this vital mindset, society needs rich people more than ever in 4th and 1st seasons, and people who are creating riches.  Society needs you to be a producer, or owner.

Of course, the popularity for creating wealth is different in each of the seasons:

2nd: Savings and security for the family (from a steady job and bank savings accounts)

3rd: Money to retire young and relax (from entrepreneurship and/or investing)

4th: To help the needy, by giving them jobs and where needed charity (by building and growing a successful business)

1st: To build society, including the needed new institutions of strength after the crisis season (by building and growing businesses)

Twelfth, develop your creativity and inventiveness.  This is needed so much in 4th and 1st seasons!  Creativity is needed to find ways to be more frugal, individually and as a society; and also in producing things, money, jobs, wealth, philanthropy, etc.

Creativity and inventiveness are needed in finding ways to give yourself and others needs, wants and luxuries.  They are necessary to fix society’s problems and take advantage of its opportunities.

Times of challenge are always the seasons of greatest opportunity, and success in such opportunities depends on your creativity!  Leadership education in the classics and using the seven keys is the best way to start a truly creative education, and add to this with your own initiative and the guidance of parents and mentors.

Thirteenth, dig deep and find your inner resiliency.  Whatever happens, success goes to those who keep trying and never give up.

After one great crisis season, Winston Churchill taught that the key to success is never to give up.

He also said that courage is the most important virtue because without it the others aren’t used.

Part of resiliency is to stay optimistic and enthusiastic in the face of whatever happens.

Life is hard, and in 4th and 1st seasons it is harder than in the others, but that just means that we have more opportunity than ever to really help improve the world.  Very little progress or positive change occurs during 2nd or 3rd seasons, but in times like now much can change very quickly.  Of course, the change depends on leadership, which is why leadership education in your youth is so vital.

Fourteenth, and finally, grow your ambition!  You were born to do great things, so don’t settle for anything less. Ambition sometimes gets a bad name, but that is mainly because it means different things in each of the seasons:

2nd: Personal Status

3rd: Personal wealth

4th: Making Sure the Right Side Wins

1st: Making Sure the Right Changes Happen

As you can see, even if great ambition were negative during 2nd or 3rd seasons, it is all-positive during 4th and 1st seasons.  For example, the American founding ambition to make sure the Colonies beat Britain is a great thing.  Likewise the Northern ambition to end slavery in the Civil War and the Allied ambition to stop Hitler in World War II.  Thank goodness for such high ambitions!

But the truly great ambitions came after these conflicts, in 1st seasons where the people set out to improve the world.  Some of the changes were good, while others were bad.  The difference was the quality of the leadership, based on the education of that generation’s leaders while they were in their youth.

In your generation, the world cries out for great change.  So much needs to be fixed.  So many things in this world today need to be improved.

Your generation can do it.  But like past generations, it will depend on the leadership of the next fifty years.  And that will depend in large part on the education you and your generational peers get in the next five to ten years.  Will you follow old thinking of 3rd seasons and focus on career training?  Will you accept mediocrity?  If so, the future of freedom and prosperity will not be an improvement on what you inherited.

If not, you need to learn right now, in your youth, what the new 4th and 1st seasons rules are and become a master at them.  Lead out in the new way of dealing with and solving challenges and crises and improving the world.

What will be your mark on the world—improvement or further decline?  It depends in large part on your teen and college education.  It is up to you, and to others your age.

It is time for a generation to change the world, to drastically improve it.  We believe it will be your generation that does it.  Are we right?

We started this book by promising to tell it to you straight, to tell you the real deal.  We have done that.

The future depends on you.

It doesn’t get deeper or more real than that.

We also started with the thought that when God or the Universe wants to change the world, he sends a baby—perfectly timed to grow, learn, prepare and then take action at the right time.

But there are times when one baby won’t suffice, when the challenges facing the world are just too great, and so instead of a great reformer or a few key thinkers what is needed is a whole generation of leaders.

This happened in the Sixth Century B.C., and in the first decade of the Common Era, then again in the American Founding generation.  George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and so many more were part of this generation.  In their youth, they worked to learn and get a great leadership education.  Then, when the world needed them, they were ready.

It is happening again today.  You are such a generation.  But will you succeed?  That remains to be seen.  One thing is certain: to do so, you will need a superb, leadership, Thomas Jefferson-like, education.  In five years, you will either have such an education . . . or not.  The ones who do will lead.  Our challenge to you is to be one of them!

It is who you were born to be, it is the real, genuine you.  The world needs you.

If It Saves Just One Life

I was shocked, dismayed, and like you I personally grieved for the families who lost children at the Newtown, Connecticut shooting just two month ago. What a severe act of violence.

Who can make sense of 27 senseless deaths? It will indeed be a black mark on American history.

And as much as I try to feel their loss and grieve with those parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and grandparents, I still believe that citizens have a right and duty to maintain our constitutional second amendment rights according to the founding era original intent.

At the time of this tragedy, President Obama tasked Vice President Biden with finding a solution in 30 days so this never happens again.  Vice President Biden has offered his recommendations and as a result we have or will have a slew of new executive orders limiting the inalienable right to bear arms for self-protection.

During this process, the vice president was explaining the attitude of the president concerning this issue and said, “And as the president said, if our actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking.”

Wow, if one were to take that logic serious, if it only saves one life, we should ban cars.

If it only saves one life, we should ban peanuts, sports, and fishing.*

If it saves only one life, we should ban electricity.

If it only saves one life, we should ban alcoholic beverages, hammers, and knives.

If it only saves one life, we should ban travel, mountains, and water.

If it only saves one life, we should consider banning everything but sitting around.

* Not my material.

But by that same logic, if it saves just one life we should arm every citizen.

If it only saves one life, we should encourage all citizens to take gun safety courses.

If it only saves one life, the government should encourage all fathers and mothers to stay married and love each other.

If it only saves one life, fathers should spend more time with and showing true affection to their sons and daughters.

If it only saves one life, families should start going back to church.

If it only saves one life, we should stop the spending and start living within our means.

The real question is not so much if it saves one life, but do we give up liberty for security?

The immortal words of Mill answer that question for us:

A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked, if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it, if by monetary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet, even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions, in all these cases, they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.

John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)  

English economist & philosopher (1806 – 1873)

The Problem Reaction Solution Paradigm 

It is part of human nature to press our advantage.  We do it in sports, we do it in business, and unfortunately we do it our personal relationships.

People who have government power also do it, frequently out of the best of intentions, but that power is often used to press the advantage in the moment, which leads to laws and policies that forever impact our lives.

To defeat such tactics, the population must develop the ability to keep a clear head, to not be reactionary, to remain calm in a crisis, to develop the habit of stopping and considering the results of any set of actions to their likely and long-term conclusions.

One of the long-standing strategies employed by many tyrannical powers over time to “press the advantage” has been the misuse of the Hegelian Dialectic (who I will talk about a little later) or what is known today as the Problem/Reaction/Solution Paradigm (PRSP).  The PRSP is a strategy employed to expand power, usually of the executive, and employs a three-step process:

1) Problem – The government or powerful entity creates or exploits a problem, blaming it on others.

2) Reaction – The people react by becoming very alarmed and demanding a solution immediately, often without thinking about long-term consequences.

3) Solution – The government offers a solution that was planned or desired long before the crisis.  The citizens are more than happy to accepting help from the government when offered and the citizens seem generally willing to give up their rights in the process.

The essence of such a strategy is to either create a crisis/tragedy or wait for one to occur (the scarier the better) that frightens the people enough to demand some immediate solution. The strategy requires that the people become very uncomfortable and even emotionally shaken, then to offer a solution that removes that fear.

Taking advantage of the emotional state of the populace is exemplified by former Gov. Ed Rendell in this news clip. The end result of such a strategy is never good for the people and almost always results in more power for the government.  Using this strategy to disarm civilian populations is one of the oldest games in the book.

In the case of restricting and discouraging armed citizens, in the 20th century alone there are at least 10 separately documented cases (Poland, France, Denmark, Finland, Burma, China, Russia, Hungary, Italy, and Romania) in Europe and Asia where a nation was invaded as a direct result of having an unarmed citizenry or a tyrannical government was able to maintain its control by having previously disarmed the population.

There are also 3 very obvious cases (United States, Switzerland, and Israel) where a country was not invaded specifically because there existed a privately well-armed citizenry.

There are some things that once sacrificed in exchange for security (real or imagined), can never be regained. The second amendment is not a hunting provision, it was not designed or intended to support sportsmen.  It was the result of 8 terrible years of war for independence followed by 4 years of civil strife. It represents a solution to tyranny and invasion—from outside or inside our borders. It is the final defense for human liberty, when all else has failed.

If we ban firearms, if we allow this to happen at the level that the president is demanding, we deserve whatever follows.

Now on to Hegel.

The Hegelian Dialectic

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a 19th century German philosopher and theologist who wrote The Science of Logic in 1812.

In an effort to explain his understanding of historical change or the means of human progress, he developed what he called the Dialectic.

Hegel taught that as man struggles to overcome the division between reason/morality and selfish desire the following process ensues:

Process

He said that the Geitst (mind and spirit – self/reality) comes to know itself as it is combined with influence from a supernatural force. The greater the development of mind, the greater the internal desire for freedom (increased awareness of the concept of freedom and increased knowledge of self).  This occurs in a revolving process of three steps.

1. You see the world in your way (your reality)
2. Outside influences challenge that perspective creating a conflict in perception. This leads to an internal struggle to reconcile the two
3. The reconciliation creates a new perspective and a new reality

This new reality (new step 1) is again challenged which leads to a new step 2 and so forth.

The terms used by Hegel to express these steps are:

1. Thesis (abstract)
2. Antithesis (negative)
3. Synthesis (concrete)

This process is in and of itself harmless and perhaps helpful for those searching to understand philosophy.  However, when understood and purposely used to twist reality and control people, it can be very bad.

Karl Heinrich Marx

Marx was a German philosopher and revolutionary socialist who died penniless in1883.

He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867–1894).

He worked closely with his friend, fellow revolutionary socialist, and benefactor Friedrich Engels.

Marx took what was a benign theory of human development and hijacked it to suit his own purposes. He said that if the dialectic was accurate and people were already accustomed to the process naturally, why couldn’t he engineer the antithesis to lead to his desired synthesis (the Problem/Reaction/Solution Paradigm), thus having the power to direct the general actions of society of Socialist purposes.

Below are the very different perspectives of Hegel and Marx concerning the dialectic.

Hegel – Reality is a matter of mind and through the individual process of ideas and acting on those ideas we will eventually come to the perfect Synthesis (new thesis) that does not change after the fire of the Negative or is not abstract and needs no Negative.

Marx – Reality is a matter of means of production and by adjusting the means of production via revolution, man will become more equal and improve together in a very egalitarian/communitarian way.

Even Marx did not envision the global impact his ideas would have less than 75 years after his death. As a result of Marx’s misuse of Hegel’s Dialectic, the 20th century saw countless millions being denied basic human rights and more than 200 million human exterminations all as a result of the use of Marxist theories or what is called today the Problem/Reaction/Solution Paradigm.

This paradigm is being used in America as I write these words. It was used during the terrible 9/11 Crisis. It was used during the bursting of the Real Estate bubble and the subsequent “trillion-dollar” bail out.

It is being used as the government takes advantage of the deaths of 25 elementary school children.

 

Sources:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/01/09/if-it-only-saves-one-life/http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/01/10/biden-obama-could-rule-on-gun-control-by-executive-order/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-01-10_191741&utm_content=24556866&utm_term=_191741_191749

 

 

The Fat Lady Begins To Sing

And so it begins…

The most recent national election declared the passion of the American people for the Nanny State.

Of the almost 127 million voters, a majority preferred a governing system that favors high taxes, a saturated welfare system, forced health care, and an abundance of government dependent workers.

Apparently we have learned nothing from the real-time occurrences in Europe, most recently in Greece.

So here we go on the carnival ride of our lives. As Congress very predictably followed the president down the rabbit hole, we are in for the spending spree of the century.

As Oliver DeMille put it in a recent article, “Make no mistake. Whatever the pundits say, we fell off the fiscal cliff on January 1, 2013.

‘Until House Republicans stand up and simply say “no” to the Obama super-spending agenda, the Spendocracy will grow and a depression is looming.

Indeed, conspiracy theories aside, those who want government to grow are actually benefited by recession and depression because they gain even more demand for increased government involvement.”

There is no turning back; in fact, according to a recent Forbes article titled “Do You Live In A Death Spiral State?”,this government growth and spending frenzy is not just a national government phenomena; the state and municipal governments are joining the party as fast as they can.

Face it, with more than 20% of the states already upside down, this is our new reality; and the sooner we warm up to it and adjust our thinking, the better for us in the long term.

Quoting from the Forbes article:

Don’t buy a house in a state where private sector workers are outnumbered by folks dependent on government.

Thinking about buying a house? Or a municipal bond? Be careful where you put your capital. Don’t put it in a state at high risk of a fiscal tailspin.

Eleven states make our list of danger spots for investors.

They can look forward to a rising tax burden, deteriorating state finances and an exodus of employers.

If your career takes you to Los Angeles or Chicago, don’t buy a house. Rent.

If you have money in municipal bonds, clean up the portfolio.

Sell holdings from the sick states and reinvest where you’re less likely to get clipped. Nebraska and Virginia are unlikely to give their bondholders a Greek haircut.

California and New York are comparatively risky.

Two factors determine whether a state makes this elite list of fiscal hellholes. The first is whether it has more takers than makers. A taker is someone who draws money from the government, as an employee, pensioner or welfare recipient. A maker is someone gainfully employed in the private sector.

Let us give those takers the benefit of our sympathy and assume that every single one of them is a deserving soul. This person is either genuinely needy or a dedicated public servant or the recipient of a well-­earned pension.

But what happens when these needy types outnumber the providers?

Taxes get too high.

Prosperous citizens decamp. Employers decamp. That just makes matters worse for the taxpayers left behind.

Let’s say you are a software entrepreneur with 100 on your payroll.

If you stay in San Francisco, your crew will support 139 takers. In Texas, they would support only 82. Austin looks very attractive.

Ranked on the taker/maker ratio, our 11 death spiral states range from New Mexico, with 1.53 takers for every maker, down to Ohio, with a 1­to­1 ratio.

The taker count is the number of state and local government workers plus the number of people on Medicaid plus 1 for each $100,000 of unfunded pension liabilities.

(Sources: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and a study of state worker pensions done in 2009 by two academics, Joshua Rauh and Rovert Novy­Marx. Professor Rauh estimates that the shortage in pension funding is on average a third higher today.)

The second element in the death spiral list is a scorecard of state credit­ worthiness done by Conning & Co., a money manager known for its measures of risk in insurance company portfolios.

Conning’s analysis focuses more on dollars than body counts. Its formula downgrades states for large debts, an uncompetitive business climate, weak home prices and bad trends in employment.

Conning rates North Dakota the safest state to lend money to, Connecticut the most hazardous. A state qualifies for the Forbes death spiral list if its taker/maker ratio exceeds 1.0 and it resides in the bottom half of Conning’s ranking.

A final word.

Ideas have consequences, and the consequences of the ideas that are shaping our fast approaching fiscal reality could not be any more obvious. Sure, go ahead, hope and pray that a miracle will occur or that government will come to its senses and stop all new spending and cut deeply into current spending (yes, that means real budget cuts such as reducing or stopping all non-vital services, no new construction projects, and pay raises).

And while you are waiting for that miracle or change of heart, you might consider entertaining the same steps that we have been suggesting for at least two years:

1. Read at least one of the depression books listed below within the next 30 days (no really, just do it).

2. Re-evaluate your current economic and family situation and make hard choices to re-position with a better strategy (down-size, more family time, grow a family or community garden, food storage instead of family vacation).

3. Get as liquid as possible and out of debt as soon as possible.  Fire sale opportunities will be on the rise over the next 5-10 years.

4. Start a mini-factory (develop multiple streams of income – home-based business, a cottage industry, enhanced education to shift to more flexible income, parallel incomes, CSA, Network marketing business, etc.) and be as creative and optimistic as possible.  These sentiments will soon be in short supply.

5. Create a culture and community of service

6. Create a family legacy. This means lay the groundwork for a multi-generational organization that unifies and protects your family — come what may (true happiness can only be found in family).

Take a look at this list of books to help adjust your thinking and position yourself to succeed during economic hard times at a level we have not experienced in our lifetime:

The Great Depression Ahead – Dent

America’s Great Depression – Rothbard

The Fourth Turning – Howe and Straus

The Third Wave  – Toffler

5,000 Year Leap – Skousen

The Cube and the Cathedral – Wiegel

The Servile State – Belloc

A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens – DeMille/Brooks

 

P.S. Please be sure to do your own research.  I am ok if you don’t believe me, but for heaven’s sake, do not believe those who are saying “don’t worry, things are just fine.”  Get your own sense of truth by doing your own investigation.