Tom Clancy Wanted

Professor J,

Good clarification on the meaning of the holiday. Apparently much needed if the number of people I saw thanking veterans in general, and posting photos of family members who had served in conflict but then returned home to lead long and productive lives is any indication. However, I'm at least glad to see it indicate more to folks than the unofficial beginning of summer.

And Spankmomma? Alrighty then. LOL

Scandalmania: You indicate that you believe Benghazi to be a bungled CIA operation, the objective of which is unclear. Care to hazard a guess or two as to what it might have been (if such speculation doesn't make you nervous)? You might as well since this may be one of those situations where full disclosure never comes about. There's little chance you'll be proven wrong anytime soon. ;)

The real scandal, and the one you outline quite well, is that much of the secrecy and posturing that we see done isn't in any way related to how things play out on the world stage or to save face with our enemies. The fact that what seems of primary importance in Washington is shielding one's self against political foes who are fellow citizens. How exponentially that must weaken us I think we can scarcely imagine.

We have met the enemy and he is us. 

Few of our politicians are hard on the heels of truth. Truth is a tricky thing, isn't it? We often say we want it, but we (or in this case our politicians) only want part of it. The part of it that gives them the upper hand in some way. The part that makes themselves look the best while making their opponents look as bad as possible. Politics is so rarely very much about the truth.

In this case the Republicans look even worse than just run of the mill spin crazed politicians. Deliberately misquoting e-mails that would surely be released afterwards shows a kind of hubris that is unnerving. As if the folks back home who voted them in, and detest the Obama administration won't care all that much about them playing fast and loose with the facts. Which sadly for many is probably the case.

As you've pointed out there is plenty to warrant "legitimate criticism" but here's where the Republican's have made perhaps the biggest mistake of all. In criticizing everything, all the time, they've lost any credibility they might have had about something that genuinely concerns them. Something important like a diplomatic facility being used as a disguise for a CIA operation and a cover up when it all went bad. But anymore for the general population it is just the We Hate Obama Show run amok. Except for the true believers (those in the birther, socialist, and anti-Christ camps) who think he is the "worst president ever" no one much is paying attention.

My question about the whole Benghazi affair is this: Does any one person know the answers to all the questions being asked? Or was this an operation with several different agencies and multiple personnel involved that may appear to have been better thought out after the thing fell apart than it actually was before or during the operation? As you point out there was no back up plan or military coordination. The inability to get the story straight in the days after makes me wonder what kind of planning was involved. Who doesn't make a contingency plan for such a thing?

It doesn't instill confidence that the people in charge aren't using any more forethought than that. Is Tom Clancy busy? I'd have more faith in him at this point.

The Long And The Not So Short Of It

Madame M:

First, a word from our holiday: Although veterans deserve honor, let’s not confuse this holiday with Veterans Day.  This is MEMORIAL day, where we honor the dead who have fallen in service to their country.  While it’s also more than permissible to incidentally pay respects to our other deceased loved ones as well, since we don’t have a holiday to do that, we shouldn’t make it a second Veterans Day, as many are doing.  Veterans Day honors all veterans, living and deceased, with primary honors to the living.

The historian in me realizes that this may be spittle in the wind, for holidays have been morphing from their original purpose since, well, time IMMEMORIAL. :)

On to your “rant.”  If I’m the Spankdaddy, you’re the Spankmomma now! LOL.  Harsh but accurate words you have conveyed, and if people are uncomfortable with them, perhaps that should be a sign to them!

It is unclear how coordinated sinister the intent is, but certainly the effects are sinister.  I watch us slowly transform in ways all too similar to Rome.  And what would once have been cause for alarm barely gets notice, while the barely consequential gets trumpeted.  How very many grumpy observers there must have been in Rome’s day, from the fall of Carthage to the rise of Caesar!

I agree with you that we are complicit in our own downfall.  We say we are too busy with our lives to pay attention to politics—and then politics affects our lives in multifaceted and interlocked ways, often to our detriment.  Disgust with politics is understandable, but that reaction plays into the hands of those who seek to cement control of those politics.  We have an electorate that largely doesn’t pay attention most of the time, and is often as a consequence easily manipulated when it does, particularly in states with predispositions. 

My, my, the “pre” part of my post has taken up considerable space.  That means there’s time to address only one “scandal” this week.  The others will have to wait! :)

Benghazi: It is fairly apparent even looking from the outside that this was a CIA operation, a BUNGLED CIA operation (with no backup plan or decent military coordination—shades of Blackhawk Down) from start to tragic end to post-tragedy decisions.  Ambassador Chris Stevens almost certainly knew about it because he was probably part of it.  Whatever that operation was is unclear, and speculation that they were lured to Benghazi on false pretenses by terrorist double agents is similarly indeterminate.  That the CIA drove the narrative, the changing talking points, the info that was released, the timing, the confusion (probably deliberate), the diversion, the misinformation, and the silence, is indicative of a lot.  That the CIA has not been called heavily to task—effectively given a pass, really—is telling.  While much of what they do is intensely valuable and very necessary, the secret operations world and the classified world have attained incredible, barely accountable, and nearly untouchable power since the Cold War and now the endless “war” on “terrorism.”  What they say—or don’t want to say—usually goes, especially in a Democratic administration, whose influence on them is usually weaker.

 

There was confusion and damage control after the attack.  And officials in the State Dept certainly, and even the White House, felt like they were left holding the bag from the very House and Senate members condemning them, because it was those same members who had refused to fund the requests for increased security at diplomatic stations all over, and made necessary the State Dept decision not to increase security for Benghazi.  Hindsight always looks 20/20 in the specific, but beforehand, when resources are scarce, which they are at State, hard decisions have to be made.  And our embassies and consulates are threatened the world over.

 

But sure, the State Dept and the White House and even DoD (which rejected a request by the second highest US diplomat in Libya to send in a Special Forces team the morning after the attack) have tried to spin and shade to spare themselves embarrassment from their political enemies.  We might wish they hadn’t done that, but the environment is poisoned in Washington, and people and organizations are going to react to that environment.

The Republicans driving scandalmania largely know all of the above.  That they don’t want to focus on legitimate criticism of the administration is telling enough, let alone the fact they largely care not a whit about focusing on the critical, compelling issues.  As I have said from the beginning, this administration deserves CONSIDERABLE legitimate criticism, but nearly all of that is lost or unaddressed because it is irrelevant to the Republicans driving scandalmania, for their objective has nothing to do with crafting correctives or making better policy.

   

In place of those we get false insinuation, hypocrisy, hysteria, and hyperbole—the search for scandal.  It isn’t about political differences, it’s about that a large core of Republicans have never accepted EITHER of this president’s elections.  That he has been remarkably effective for a no-executive-experience outsider facing obstruction has only made them hate him all the more.  And the Democrats only look better in comparison, that is, in relative terms.  Because, yes, for the first 6 years they cooperated with the Bush administration, albeit sometimes reluctantly.  In Republican eyes, they are weak like that. 

Safe inside their gerrymandered districts and accepting red states, the Republicans driving obstruction, paralyzation, and diversion want to take hope for even watered-down, technocratic “change” of the non-plutocratic sort out of the equation.

Infrastructure anyone? No?  Foolish me!  Not enough things have fallen down yet for it to be a scandal.  I probably need scandal lessons.  Maybe I should watch that television series more often! :)

Skimming the Surface

Professor J,

 You make all this diversion and disconnection sound sinister. Which it well may be. Is there some coordinated effort to keep us busy and distracted? To keep us from knowing ourselves? To keep us flitting from one scandal and news event to the next? Have we sold our birthright of informed thoughtfulness for clever Facebook statuses and the latest trend? Perhaps, but if so we are complicit in our own demise. And what is the payoff for us, since we rarely do anything without a reward like a rat pressing a lever for food? Is it that we never have to be alone with ourselves or think deeply about much of anything? Is it that it allows us to skim along on the surface of life like silly waterbugs while below us lie unknown depths of murky and serious thought we think best left unmuddled? What intimacy of relationships and profoundness of thought might be lurking there? Our culture is frightened of such things.

So while I agree that all of the things you've mentioned keep us from focusing our attention on the real issues, it also keeps us from taking the time and solitude (not the same thing as isolation and/or loneliness), as well as hard work necessary to get to know ourselves. For all our big talk in this country about the myriad of things we fear, I dare say that this getting honest with ourselves is the thing we fear most.

Turn the TV up and check what's trending on Yahoo, please.

You've asked what relevance the latest round of news stories has for our everyday lives:

"When was the last time we as a nation—as Congress, as President, as a people—addressed matters of real and deep relevance to our everyday lives?  The things that trouble us deep down, both as individuals and society?  Or are we so disconnected, disunited, and unfocused ourselves we can’t even discern relevance anymore and are unwitting pawns to those with better strategies?"

 I'd like to see the politician who would like to step forth and hammer that into his platform! But as I think you are alluding to, we so desperately need that very thing.

We dislike pain and are afraid of the truth. We have lulled ourselves (or been lulled) into imagining that life is possible without being hurt, losing something, or ever doing the hard thing. You often wonder what our descendents will think of us. I imagine our ancestors would be appalled as well. Is American Idle sincerely the best use we can make of our leisure time, unimaginable for them? And what of our inability to stand, what would surely have seemed to them, expected loss and hurt. I imagine they would be hard pressed to understand our culture's need for medication and escapism to deal with fairly common events for them. The frequency not making them less painful, but far less surprising when they occurred. I suspect there was a psychological strength and defense in that.

They expected life to be hard and were thankful if ever it were easy. We expect it to be easy and are dismayed when it is hard.

We don't even know ourselves. We've lost our ability to see things clearly. We are easily diverted and trained early in life to be just that. No matter how fascinating any area of study in our education system, it can instantly be brought to an end with the clanging of a bell. The message of "stop focusing on that, and focus on this now" is built into the core of the system. We learn it early. That interesting question the student had in mind will likely be forgotten by tomorrow when they arrive in class again. Things like TV, work, and technology add to it along the way so that by adulthood it is how the mind works. Is it any wonder it is so easy to keep the curtain unnoticed while levers are pulled behind the scenes.

Oh dear. This turned into a rant and I didn't even get to Monsanto! ;)

And yes Madame does wish to hear the MUCH that you have to say on the particulars of Scandalmania. Proceed, Professor!

Cultural Dysfunction

Madame M:

You’ve hit many nails on the head.  If gentle readers have grown weary of my entreaties to “pay close attention to Madame’s platinum writing,” I’m afraid I will give them no relief here!

The Finns do have a healthy center, but they perceive their culture under stress from, certainly, the Europeanization that comes from what opens up and comes in from without, but also from globalization generally, which is causing them to compete at a pace they do not like, and do not find sustainable.  And yes, they consider Americans front and center in that globalization, for we set what they perceive to be an unsustainable pace, and certainly one that does not well accommodate the multi-week renewals into nature.  They are sometimes coping with shorter infusions, but it has raised the stress level.  Still, the compromises they have made are still FAR closer to nature connection than anything that the vast majority of Americans live.  You have hit the pulsing heart of so much that lies behind what ails us.

It should show how disconnected we are as a society in that the Finns are so open and friendly, and yet are considered by their fellow Scandinavians as often the hardest Scandinavians to really get to know.  A side note: The exacting reader will notice we have been using the slang version of Scandinavian, which should instead really be Nordic, as technically “Scandinavia” refers to Norway, Denmark, Sweden only.  Madame and I have our preferences, though, so we’ll continue to use “Scandinavian.” :)

Finland is actually a big country in terms of geography, but relatively low-density as to population.  It benefits from that, as well as its relative cultural homogeneity, lack of regionalism, etc. as you say.  And culture is a very multi-faceted and complex area.  But I will quick circuit my answer to your question to say that we have often done such a poor job of evaluating social and relationship things from other cultures that we have essentially not really tried.  And as you’ve pointed out, we have not even truly done the first thing, which is to learn of other cultures. And to be brutally candid, we don’t know ourselves either, for we have a mythical and often illusionary/delusionary view of our own culture.  For instance, we often think of it as some middle class predominating (of, by, and for) culture, which, while it was that for a time, is rapidly no longer.

So the short answer is: While nothing ever translates or transplants precisely (or precisely well), especially into large countries and cultures, we have not begun the learning or vetting, let alone a test case of actually trying something substantial (as opposed to pop culture transient things).

Turning, reluctantly, to Scandalmania: I have MUCH to say, if Madame wishes, on the particulars, background, clarification, implications (and sometimes lack of), etc. of the various “scandals.”  But there are some big-view things to be said first—

Who is steering the narrative, setting the lexicon, controlling the agenda?  What relevance is Benghazi, IRS review/approval/disapproval/delay of tax-exempt status for groups (not individuals, as in Nixon’s day), Justice Dept acquisition of media records for an active terrorist investigation, gun regulation, Boston Marathon bomber, etc. to your everyday life?  To your economic and environmental foundation?  It’s not that those other things are unimportant (or might be important), or that this administration should be given a pass on any of them, but are they the most important things right now?  Where is our focus?  Or, more accurately, who wants us to be unfocused?

When was the last time we as a nation—as Congress, as President, as a people—addressed matters of real and deep relevance to our everyday lives?  The things that trouble us deep down, both as individuals and society?  Or are we so disconnected, disunited, and unfocused ourselves we can’t even discern relevance anymore and are unwitting pawns to those with better strategies?

While the House conducts (a total of 15% of its time spent on this), for the 38^th time, a meaningless (the Senate will not even bring it up) vote on The Affordable Care Law, nearly nothing of substance is advanced.  The Senate cannot even reform itself, and caters to the truly bizarre among its ranks, meaning even less is accomplished in that supposedly more deliberative body.  The SCOTUS continues to favor Monsanto and other big corporations at the expense of everything else.  The Executive continues to do so many conflicting and contradictory things, and shifts its technocratic center so often, it obscures much of whatever it is trying to accomplish, and like most recent presidencies, is consumed with its self-importance. 

Meanwhile, the work—nay, the urgent, driving, desperate NEED—of the country and the world go begging, while the servants of the (barely) shadow plutocracy divert us with sideshows.  Frank Baum should feel ripped off.

Not Finnished Yet

Professor J,

You've indicated that we want quick actions and speedy results. Our culture seems to have a difficult time thinking long term, as we have noted over and over again. We've disconnected ourselves as well as our children and their education from nature. We (well not US but the powers that be) seem intent on doing more of what we already see doesn't work. The very definition of insanity is at play in our institutions, and not just the kind you can get committed to.

Here's an interesting info-graphic I found:

I can't help wondering more about our Finnish friends. If their educational system is superior, the country has  debt under control, individuals save more than Americans, and they rank near the top on the happiness scale, we have to wonder why.  How much could the simple answer of valuing nature and time outdoors account for their success in those areas?

For those of us who are naturalists by heart one of the most important things is simple observation. Studying the natural cycles of things, cause and effect, and the intricacies we see train us to look carefully. In order to observe in such a way as to learn anything one must slow down. In reality, one must stop. Think how stillness, even the idea of stillness is so hard to grasp in our noisy multi-tasking culture. How about the concepts of silence and solitude? People often ask what your favorite song is, but no one ever seems to ask what your favorite sound in nature is...

I might take this notion a bit farther and relate our decline in positive attitudes about saving up for things and avoiding debt to an agriculturally based lifestyle. If there is one thing nature teaches it is patience. It also teaches investing.  It also teaches, and perhaps this is most important of all, hope. Working with nature, whether in farming, gardening, beekeeping, or working to protect the environment involves investing now and reaping the benefit later. Tending to the small things now so as to have an increased reward in the future. No one ever put a seed in the ground devoid of hope. The very activity is infused with an expectation of something good.

In America we've replaced these activities with immediate gratification through consumption and entertainment. We've "shallowed everything up" (I just now coined that phrase!).  It's everywhere, from our lack of depth in relationships, to our lack of depth in thought. But the Finns aren't living in trees without technology, so what gives?

Certainly we see in Scandinavian countries bustling cities, people using their I-phones, and socializing.  Could the difference between us and them be that they have learned the art of taking moments to observe? Have they simply found a way to balance all of those things better than we do? Americans tend to trend toward the extremes of things. A healthy center seems elusive to us, often personally and as a nation.

Let me relate this to your current post on your own blog as well. The Finns seem to be such a friendly and open people, while here (as you point out), fear is at a premium. It keeps us isolated and wary. We miss opportunities for positive relationships and social encounters due to our fears. Question: How much of what our Finnish friends have is possible because of the relative smallness of the country and having far less regionalism, racism, and cultural isolation (groups who resist assimilation) to deal with? Are they perhaps blessed with something we are incapable of achieving due to the sheer vastness of our country? Are we longing for something that really can't be reproduced here beyond a certain level?

I know how you hate these open ended questions that give you a chance to expound. ;)

Did They Get The Wisdom?

Madame M:

Psychologists give us the short answer that we, in primal fashion, make quick, intellectually shallow, and emotionally pulsing decisions about “security” and “action” in favor of things that promise demonstrative and often speedy “results.”  Education, infrastructure, and environment, by contrast, are slow, seemingly non-urgent, harder to visualize results, and emotionally non-evocative.  We continually demonstrate the lack of wisdom needed to overcome this predisposition.

Ah, Madame taps on one of my favorite subjects and places: Finland.  They do things differently than us, don’t they?  How we “educate,” as you so aptly demonstrate, is, in contrast to the Finns who rate near top in the world, non-holistic, making us ill-rounded “specialized” future workers, without intellectual or social foundations (and making us less communal in the process).  The process is also faulty from conception as well.  For it also has the effect of disconnecting us from nature and the biosphere.  We then subsequently view those things as “separate” from us, and able to be manipulated as cost-free “commodities” to assume in the background but not to care for.  So the very foundation of EVERYTHING else—economics, culture, freedom, fulfillment, etc.—is perceived as optional for our concern.

If we are an experiment in seeding by a higher intelligent alien race, they must have written us off as a failure long ago for our lack of discernment.  Or maybe we are just children who will make a lot of mistakes, do a lot of damage, take a long time for the lessons to sink in, and then forget the lessons relatively quickly and start the process all over again. :)

As to prevalence of common sense by region, to my knowledge (which is not extensive on the subject), although psychological studies have been done, regional determinant studies have not.  What circumstantial evidence exists points to what one would suspect in advancing the case for Midwest common sense: reduced pace, fewer distractions, smaller communities, less “over-intellectualizing,” more connection with the life cycle/growth cycle/natural world, practical accomplishment emphasis—and the culture that forms from it, more reflective time, space—physical and mental—for thoughtful consideration, etc.

Of course, nearly as many writers have also expressed frustration with the visionless, rut-prone, anti-intellectual, pedestrian, “redneck,” character of a good deal of the Midwest population, as well. :)  So maybe we might tentatively say, with less backing other than some historical examples and some anecdotal support, that the rare national leaders that emerge from the area often show high degrees of common sense. No analysis whether they trace a Finnish ancestor. :)

To The Finnish!

Professor J,

How can it possibly be time for me to post again? I have spent every day from Sunday to now in an apple tree (though not exclusively) trying to catch my wayward queen bee and her accompanying swarm of runaway bees. It is quite the way to lose track of time I assure you, as well as events covered by the media. I then come in and turn on the news only to wonder if I wasn't better off in a tree. ;)

Have I asked this question before (if I have, forgive me): Why is it that we are willing to spend endlessly on things like war and only grudgingly on things that may improve our lot in the world exponentially, like education, infrastructure, and environmental clean up? Things which you mentioned in your last post.

Since we have, of late, been thinking about the Scandinavian way of doing things, I found this fragment of an article today about how American Parents Have Got It All Backwards.  interesting. I was particularly intrigued by the Finn's emphasis on being outside. After a day of smelling fresh cut grass, blackberry blossoms, and the lemon grass smell of a bee hive I agree whole heartedly, as would my own kids who never spent more than 3 or 4 hours a day on formal study.

Children should spend less time in school. Children in Finland go outside to play frequently all day long. "How can you teach when the children are going outside every 45 minutes?" a recent American Fulbright grant recipient in Finland, who was astonished by how little time the Finns were spending in school, inquired curiously of a teacher at one of the schools she visited. The teacher in turn was astonished by the question. "I could not teach unless the children went outside every 45 minutes!" 

The Finnish model of education includes a late start to academics (children do not begin any formal academics until they are 7 years old), frequent breaks for outdoor time, shorter school hours and more variety of classes than in the US. Equity, not high achievement, is the guiding principle of the Finnish education system.

While we in America preach the mantra of early intervention, shave time off recess to teach more formal academics and cut funding to non-academic subjects like art and music, Finnish educators emphasize that learning art, music, home economics and life skills is essential.

Those Finn's are on to something...

Is there something about the Midwest that produces such rational thinking? If so please export it to the rest of the country, and Washington in particular, post haste! This is a serious question. Is there something such as a strong agrarian history that produces such common sense and practicality?

Sense of the Midwest

Madame M:

Capital idea!  “Connections and ‘stuff we didn’t know how to label.’” :)

Your post had quite the sheen on it.  Minting the platinum I see!  Every person that gets better than the person they were the day/week/month/year/decade before creates the good synergy and good acceleration, at least to some degree.  Excellent!

“Most nations have adjusted their national security strategies to focus on economic security, but less so the United States. Washington still principally thinks of its security in traditional military terms and responds to threats with military means.”  It does this while the (real) “basic must-do list is lengthy, unforgiving, and depressingly obvious: improve public schools to sustain democracy and restore global competitiveness; upgrade the physical infrastructure critical to economic efficiency and homeland security; reduce public debt, the interest on which is devouring revenue; stimulate the economy to create jobs; and promote new sources of energy and freer trade to increase jobs, lower foreign debt, and reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil.”

Leslie Gelb, Nov/Dec 2010, Foreign Affairs.

Our problems are not insurmountable.  We just have a resource misallocation problem.  The things which will remove problems and create synergy—things like energy independence; societal-benefit jobs; environmental cleanup and preservation; infrastructure reform, repair, enhancement, and construction—are being starved.

We instead feed the already exorbitantly rich even more exorbitant advantages and evasions of responsibility.  And we continue Cold War acquisitions—high dollar items at that—amid ramped up/continuous overall “defense” spending the Republic had not seen up until the aftermath of WW2, and in blatant disregard for Eisenhower’s warning in his Farewell Address.

Gelb again: “Truman and Eisenhower carried out their reforms while holding military spending in check -- Pentagon budgets came last, not first. Both presidents allocated defense outlays using the ‘remainder method,’ whereby they subtracted necessary domestic spending from tax revenues and gave the leftovers (the "residual," as Eisenhower called it) to defense.   Eisenhower and Truman were particularly conscious of the ill effects of being a debtor nation. As such, they both essentially balanced the federal budget.”

Isn’t it interesting that the last three presidents to essentially balance budgets came from Midwestern states that adjoin each other—Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas.  Perhaps the less frenzied pace of the middle of the country back then (not sure about now!) permitted more rational thought—and common sense.

Individual Progress Can't Hurt

Professor J,

My guess is that lots of Romans were probably screaming in the background of the pages of history about what was going on in their day. I imagine that they would instantly recognize your frustration in our own time. They'd probably also be shocked to see that we haven't learned all that much in a couple of thousand years other than stabbing your colleagues on the steps of the Senate is a bad political move and watching some guy put a ball in a hoop is more civilized than watching him get eaten by a lion.

Little victories. ;)

Over the weekend I had an opportunity to think about how often we participate in our own destruction, culturally and personally. So much of what is ailing us are little things that have massive cumulative effects over time. In my last post I referred (hopefully humorously) to the constant and persistent tug on our attention. It sometimes feels like a herculean task to focus on the important without being distracted by the ridiculous (though thanks to our politicians the two often merge). In addition to our succumbing to advertising campaigns for things that are unhealthy at best and poisonous at worst, we neglect real relationship in favor of pseudo connections, escapism, and fantasy. We desire to be left alone to enjoy our various gadgets when we desperately need deep human connection. We opt for the contrived environment of indoors with curtains drawn, surrounded by our piles of stuff when mental and emotional as well as a good bit of physical healing could be obtained out of doors.

Then on top of all that, we are blind to our actions and their effects.

It isn't this decision or the other sinks us, but the cumulative effect of bad decisions over time. In contrast doing the small things that are good for us day in and day out over the years makes a vast difference in our health and mental and emotional well being. But alas, as we've discussed before we are a very short sighted nation and our seeming inability to delay gratification often leads to quickly throwing in the towel and meeting the desire of whatever the want of NOW is. Often this behavior has rippling effects on others which we are unaware of.

If we isolate ourselves, we lend to the isolation of others and the society as a whole. Our attitudes and ideas about things have a power even before they are an action. Positive, creative, enthusiastic individuals will make up a society that reflects those things. We could substitute anything for those: healthy, inspiring, problem solving, thinking, emotionally stable, mentally keen, helpful, kind, focused. Just as the small decisions have a cumulative effect over time being the best individual possible would have an aggregate effect over a group.

We like to complain about the way things are and what everyone else is doing, yet we mustn't forget to be the best version of ourselves may be one of the most powerful things we can do to initiate the change we want.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I feel all the better for having gotten it off my chest! :)

What specifically is it that those Scandinavians have going for them that we don't get? It's worth investigating since they also routinely rank among the happiest countries in the world according to the World Happiness Report.

I had trouble labeling this post. I didn't know if it went in EVERY category or none of them...maybe we need one labeled "connections" or "stuff we don't know what to do with."  LOL