Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.
— Burt Rutan
At dog park the other day, my neighbor asked me if I had seen the latest Time Magazine. He explained that according to Time, the last decade, from 2000 to the present, had been the decade from hell. At first I didn’t want to read it but I decided that it might be interesting to see what had caused them to designate the last 10 years as the “decade from hell.”
Some of the things included in the article were:
- The 2000 election with its disputed results
- September 11th
- The war in Afghanistan
- The war in Iraq
- December, 2004 tsunami
- Katrina
- Recession
- Bernie Madoff
- Disintegration of Detroit
- Guantanamo
Yes, there definitely were some challenges in the last 10 years. AND there definitely is a bias to see things as only negative. Although none of us would have chosen these events if we were given a choice, I find the list to be hopeful – here’s why:
The Disputed 2000 Election
This is not an original thought, but then again, you’re not reading Einstein so here goes. Whatever you believe, think, like or dislike about the 2000 election, our nation survived the way it was designed to survive. Not a single shot was fired nor a single person hurt in this fight over who would lead our country. The system worked. That is truly a blessing.
September 11th
How is she going to turn 9/11 into something positive, you may ask. I’m not. In the life of each and every one of us there are horrible, tragic events. They are what they are. The survivors must grieve, learn what there is to learn and move on. Never forget and never live in the past.
September 11th has changed us forever. As a nation, we will never again be naïve enough to think that the two big oceans that create a moat on the east and west will always protect us from evil. There are lots of ways for evil to arrive on our shores. There is no way we can make everyone like us. All we can do is figure out what we think is right and do that. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
War
War is horrible. The consequences for everyone involved can be massive and are unpredictable.
One of the ladies in the Book Club has a grandson who went to Iraq. He went because he believed it was the right thing to do. His best friend died in his arms. When he came home, he suffered from PTSD. His family had to fight to get him the appropriate treatment because he was supposed to just suck it up.
War is horrible. The men and women who VOLUNTEER to protect us are our blessing. We need to be their blessings.
The Tsunami and Katrina
There are natural disasters throughout the world. They happen. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis have happened throughout history. They will continue to shake, blow and drown until the end of our planet. For the people who lived through these disasters, life will never be the same.
And we will never be the same. A 24-hour news cycle has brought us shocking and awful pictures of the power of Mother Nature. It has also brought us the wonderful stories and pictures of people helping people, strangers traveling half a world away to help the survivors. Never before was the need for us to do something more apparent than it is in this time.
In his book, Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference?
The Recession, and the Disintegration of Detroit
What goes up must come down. That’s an oldie but goodie, isn’t it? It was true when the tech bubble burst in 2000 and it’s true now.
In discussing the recession, Time Magazine pointed out that “The median price of an existing home was $143,600 in 2000. Today the median is nearly $175,000.” That’s a 22% increase in value. The problem, it seems, was in the middle of the decade. People saw how much real estate was appreciating and decided that they wanted part of the pie. And real estate obliged. It went up and up… until it didn’t. (That’s another oldie but goodie.) That’s how markets work.
The other oldie but goodie is that, like it or not, we have a culture that believes in getting what we pay for. In the good ol’ days, Detroit was the biggest and the best. Over time, they lost their edge. Ford was known as “fix or repair daily” or “found on the road dead,” not exactly a glowing recommendation. Back in the day, I had a Ford that stranded me on the freeway on my way into work to teach a class. There were 50 people sitting and waiting for me to show up. As a single working woman, I soon traded the Ford in for an extremely reliable Volvo (which many years later was acquired by Ford – talk about irony).
When you or I are making a major purchase, we look for value. I may want to buy American but if my safety is at stake, if buying American doesn’t feel like a good investment in my future, I’ll go somewhere else. That’s the point of having a free market.
But markets are very imperfect. Although they may work well in the abstract, you and I aren’t abstract. We suffer when bubbles burst and markets crash. And that’s where unemployment benefits and COBRA help to bridge the gap between today and when things recover. That’s where contributing to the local food bank becomes one way we help God to answer prayers.
Yes, this recession has been the worst since the Great Depression. Yes, we’ve lost more jobs in this recession than in the last four recessions combined. But, we haven’t crashed. People aren’t roaming the streets in gangs fighting over food. Things appear to be turning around. This was a serious detour on the road to financial prosperity. We have weathered it. We have prevailed.
Bernie Madoff
Bernie Madoff was a thief. There have been thieves since the beginning of time. For the people who were involved with Bernie Madoff, he was a disaster. For the rest of us, he was a news story. He wasn’t Hitler. He didn’t attempt to exterminate a people. He was just a selfish, greedy man who stole a lot of money. And there was only one of him. We can not judge ourselves by one selfish, greedy man.
Guantanamo
It seems that every generation must have its Guantanamo. During Vietnam, it was My Lai. There are always people who believe that the public doesn’t truly understand what is at risk and only they know what must be done. Sometimes they go too far.
The guards at Guantanamo went too far. It should not surprise us too much. In 1971, Stanford performed a classic experiment using college students as prisoners and their guards. They found that the behavior of the guards was evenly divided. A third of the guards were tough but fair. The second third of the guards did favors for the inmates and never punished them. The final third were aggressive, hostile and creative in finding ways to abuse the prisoners. The most disturbing finding (to the psychologists) was that there was no way to predict who would fall into each group.
Unfortunately, we seem to relearn this basic fact repeatedly. We are surprised and amazed when some prison guards behave badly. If we add in the desire for revenge and/or a way to prevent further attacks, it is easy to see how extreme behaviors could be accepted by some of the guards assigned at Guantanamo. But these behaviors weren’t accepted by everyone and that is the hopeful part of this story. The behavior was stopped.
Where Do We Go From Here?
My name isn’t Pollyanna and I’m not unnaturally optimistic, but given what we’ve been through in the last decade my conclusion is that we’ve done pretty well. As I said in my post earlier this week – “You have successfully made it this far. Your coping skills are strong. Your creativity has helped you to find the pony in the pony poop before, and it will again.” Instead of seeing this as the decade from hell, I choose to view it as a test and we’ve passed with flying colors.
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