It's cool by the Pool - right? [COLUMN]

Mr. Coker: [to Bill] Most plants thrive on animal waste, but I'm afraid this mutation possesses an appetite for the animal itself. - from The Day of the Triffids

I'm going to see a therapist tomorrow. It's something new for me, but I think it's justified. Lately I've been finding the disconnect between my personal reality with 'The Other Reality' really large. I'm not sure what the solution is. It may be to dance. Or to go mad.

I think there is a lack of urgency in terms of our awareness. I believe many are aware of what is happening in the world, but we're in a denial/postponement phase. I also think we're too absorbed and distracted to be able to find a rational perspective. How does a drug addict move out of his experience and say: this isn't me, this isn't how I want to live?

The reality is that we're addicted in every area of our lives. Greed/consumption is an addiction, and the world's bankers are completely caught up in it. Why not? Never in the history of human beings has there been so much wealth that's been so easy to create [and destroy] but also, so easy to loot.
Here's more on this:
Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman Invokes Jesus

“What good does the City do?” Turner said in the debate at the 299-year-old St. Paul’s. “Trading firms have to understand that if their activities grow to an economically useless, or indeed in some cases positively harmful scale, lack of comprehension will turn to fury.”

If you think the ramblings on this blog are irrelevant, try reading the above article, which has a bunch of the UK's leading bankers, gathering in churches, trying to explain what they are doing and why they should be allowed to do it. That's unprecedented.

Our entire economic system is being re-evaluated, and I believe the time isn't far away when it will be dismantled or changed fundamentally. In other words, how we live and conduct ourselves is about to change. Fundamentally.

Over the past few days I had an interesting experience with a marketing agency. At some point in our discussions I had to say to them 'please don't sell bullshit to me, let's keep it real'. Of course the response was 'we're not doing that'. Then you go back and list the stuff they got wrong, the professional errors. Even when you can't convince someone intellectually, it's hard to change their self-interested perspective by showing them hard evidence.

It worries me that I may suffer from the same affliction. Is it narcissism? Is it hyperindividualism and intense self-interest.

I care about honesty and I care about our mutual interest. Maybe we justify what we do, by saying that, but not really living it. Maybe that's why these bankers go to church and say Christianity justifies my getting a $10 million bonus. Does it really, or is it just a half-sensible argument?

At the root of our problems is this. We're very good at lying to each other and ourselves.
Let the solution start with you and me.