Dan Pallotta

12.10.2004

Friday, December 10, 2004

I received an e-mail yesterday from an organization publicizing the same news item I did yesterday - the one about half of the world's children living in war, poverty, or disease. This particular e-mail noted that this goes on while the other half of the world lives in riches. We have to be very careful here. Would these children be any less likely to live in hunger, war, or disease if the "other half" of the world were living in poverty too? It is irrational to point the finger at that part of the world that has lifted itself above poverty as the cause of the poverty from which the other half of the world hasn't yet, and it does absolutely nothing to move us toward a solution. It creates division, schism, entrenchment and morally righteous, self-serving rhetoric that does absolutely nothing to lift those children out of poverty. I am growing more and more suspect of the social do-gooders who don't seem to have their eyes on the prize, that is, the eradication of hunger, war, and disease, but instead have their eyes on passing moral judgment, while the numbers of starving children continue to grow. Do they doubt for one minute that millions more children would be starving and dying of hunger-related disease if not for the vaccines and economic opportunity made possible by the progress of the industrial nations?

It is time that we sought solutions that come from a context of bounty, not a context of scarcity - a context of visionary possibility through which we generate more wealth and more progress for all the world, not one where we say this is the limit of our potential and therefore half of the world is morally depraved. My family and your families live in the "other half" that buys a new car every five years, lives in a nice home, goes to the movies, spends money on Christmas presents, yes, all while there are children starving. Does that mean they are morally depraved, and is calling them so any way to work toward a grand solution? No, it is not, I say. Everything about it is petty.

The biggest problem with the people who want to create social change is that they don't think big enough. Their judgments are often petty and their ideas are as well. From the little cubicle they call their vision, what options are they left with but to rail against the very features of society that are capable of solving the problems they claim they want to solve?

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12.09.2004

Thursday, December 9, 2004, Second Post

When you are tempted to believe that our elected leaders and learned experts know best, and that your own ideas about how the world should be run are childish, foolish, and naive, consider this report out today and know that no one, but no one, could make a bigger mess of our world than the people currently running it:

"LONDON, England (AP) -- More than half the world's children are suffering the effects of poverty, war and HIV/AIDS, denying them a healthy and safe childhood, UNICEF's annual report said Thursday.

The United Nations children's fund report on The State of the World's Children found more than 1 billion children were growing up hungry and unhealthy, schools had become targets for warring parties and whole villages were being killed off by AIDS."

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Thursday, December 9, 2004

I finally finished reading "Atlas Shrugged" yesterday. I could spend the next year writing blogs about it, literally. The most palpable feeling with which it left me was fear. At first. This is because it takes away the concept of God and puts the responsibility for things squarely at my own doorstep. Now, taking away the concept of God and taking away God are two different things. But I find I rely a lot on the concept of God in my own life more than I do on God itself. God gave me a mind and a body and a voice with which I can do considerable things, and have, but often I forget that I have these tools at my disposal and wait instead for God to do something for me - show me a sign - give me an idea - give me my next project. Of course, God has already responded. God gave me a left brain and a right brain - a kind of cerebral studio of my own - and any number of other things with which to come up with new plans and new dreams. And the times, as they are and as they evolve, will stimulate that studio. I don't need to wait for God to create for me.

I recall John Denver once saying that, "the songs come when they've a mind to." This is not entirely accurate. I create the songs when I have something to sing about. And God has already given me everything I need in order to create them.

My high school debate coach's son put a quotation by Lanford Wilson in his yearbook back in 1981 or 1982 that I have never forgotten. It is right on the money with Ayn Rand. It goes, "And after they had explored all the stars in the universe and all of the planets around each sun they realized they were alone, and they were glad, because they now knew they would have to crerate all of the things they had hoped to find." I used to feel tremendous freedom from this quotation when I was twenty. But the concept of being utterly alone, without a concept of God, as Ayn Rand expressed it, frightened me terribly yesterday, at the age of 43.

It reminded me that we are alone. But this does not mean there is no God. It means that God is not other than us. God is not separate from us. God is not in the sky. God is our left brain and our right brain and our freinds and our planet. We have everything we need. We need not wait for a second coming. This is terribly frightening and it is terribly freeing. It places tremendous responsibility on my shoulders. It places on my shoulders the responsibility that I have placed on the shoulders of God. This does not mean I have to bear the weight of the world. But it does mean I have to take responsibility for my own life. It does mean that I, not God, am responsible for my own happiness.

What a world we would have if everyone started there.

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12.08.2004

Wednesday, December 8, 2004

Can you count the ways that you limit yourself? Can you count the number of ideas you have had that you criticized as worthless? Can you count the number of things you believe you will never do, never see, and never be? What is it that has limited us so? What is it that has covinced us to trade our joy for our regret?

Somehwere, sometime, someone told us it was not OK to live a life of unbridled joy. And we have been repeating that message to ourselves ever since.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Our system of education does not teach students to learn or to think. It teaches them to memorize and regurgitate. But real learning involves rigorous inquiry. It is about asking questions. We do not teach people to, or how to, ask "why?" But "why?" is the birthplace of all great ideas. Why do we believe that the sun revolves around the earth, Galileo asked. Why do we have to limit ourselves to orbit around the earth, Kennedy asked. Why do computers have to be beige, Apple asked. Why should a car have only one power source, Toyota asked.

Imagine the magical world we could be living in - all the uninvented inventions that would surround us, if we spent part of each day, from kindergarten through college, teaching students how to ask, "why?" instead of making sure they remember the name of the man who invented the cotton gin. How sad to teach people to remember the names of inventors from the 1800s at the same moment we sentence them to a life without the critical thinking skills to break a paradigm, shift a reality, or ever invent something themselves.

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12.06.2004

Monday, December 6, 2004

The activist who has nothing to offer but their criticism is the most dangerous kind of vermin. They criticize the greed and the egos of others. But what they want is more than money and more than fame. They want moral superiority. And for that they would destroy the most ingenious charitable endeavor, the most promising industrial achievement, and the most life-saving pharmaceuticals. All because someone else is going to make a profit from it. That kind of envy is borne of an evil too great to describe. How much are we as a society supposed to pay so that the activists might have their moral superiority?

How many lives are the activists willing to sacrifice so that no one makes a profit? And what does this say, in the end, about their real character?

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Sunday, December 5, 2004

I am a little embarassed to say that I am just really discovering Ayn Rand for the first time. I saw a documentary on her life about a year ago, but have been putting off reading "Atlas Shrugged" because it is about a million pages long. But finally, I have committed myself to it and the reading goes quickly. From what I have read of her she terrified people with her ideas. This is probably a good sign that she was telling the truth. People want to say that she was the anti-Christ of literature. But actually, I think someone like here, who bothered no one, who only sought to use her mind, who believed that violence was impractical and that the state ought to leave people alone, had a lot more in common with Jesus Christ than a lot of people who go around calling themselves Christians. of course, it is easier to take the simplistic view and overlook any of the subtleties of her thinking that made it quite beautiful.

It is interesting to see how much she had in common with Henry David Thoreau. For instance, he wrote in "Civil Disobedience," that, "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbot; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

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Saturday, December 4, 2004

"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation...We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." Abraham Lincoln

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Friday, December 3, 2004

What would you do with your life if there were no one judging you, no limits, no need to do anything other than that which would make your spirit soar with joy? And what is it in you that prevents you from doing that thing, and how long will you let it rule you?

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Thursday, December 2, 2004

Did you know that the dollar sign is the rsult of the overlap of the letters "U.S." ?

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