(Another item from the Fuel For Thought files)
Our Ideas (May 13, 2004)
“We must maintain the credibility of our ideas”.
– Thomas Friedman, NY Times, 5.6.04
What are “our ideas”?
I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing the answer to that. I wonder about some of our shibboleths: like
‘success’ and ‘opportunity’. We wink at
‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ these days; we use them to leverage desperate
people. How do we demonstrate our
attitude regarding the significance of human life? What do we mean by ‘the value’ of human
life? I’ve been wondering about that,
too. Is there a difference between the
significance of human life and the ‘value’ of a human life? Is a human life relevant to the bottom line?
People always speak about their ‘hard earned money’. Is all money ‘hard earned’? Is a stock sale or dividend as ‘hard earned’
as a day’s pay for a stonemason? Do we
work to live or do we live to work? How
important is stuff and glitter, the bling-bling that weighs us down, compared
to, oh say, our relationships with our children? Is winning having the most toys when you die,
or is it having people who love you beside you when you die? Late one sultry evening back in 1969, I was
asked by my Soviet interpreter, “Why would you want to buy something you didn’t
have the money for?” We were drinking
very sweet local ‘champagne’ after a day of vodka toasts. I had been trying to explain buying on
credit, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.
I tried but couldn’t answer her question, and it haunts me to this
day. And why would you spend your life
running like you are a hamster in a cage so you can buy what you don’t have the
money for?
We don’t have ideas so much as we have plans…we are always
planning to do things and then doing things, but we almost never think about things. Not in our common lives.
What do the American people care about? What do we spend time paying attention
to? Golf scores? Waiting in line? Our next cars? Botox treatments? Makeovers?
The differences between Cialis, Viagra or Levitra? Who will be the next paragon of
Survivor? The winner of Nascar? The American Idol? Will the friends on “Friends” still be
friends after the final episode of “Friends”?
And why do we ‘pay’ attention to something instead of being mindful of
it? Are we in debt to our
attention? Yes, most likely.
So language reveals a lot about us. I don’t think any of my lists include what
Mr. Friedman had on his mind. I’m not
sure most of us have ideas. Most of us
believe, but do most of us think? So I
come to that question for all of us: Do
we know what our ideas are and where they came from? And do we care? We are so engorged, not only by most of the
food we neither need nor care enough to enjoy, but also by our externals: our
clothes, our furniture, our homes, our cars…our stuff. Hummers rapidly became our national icon,
while the national flag is fashioned into underwear and bikinis. ‘Patriotism’ is flags waving from the roofs
of cars and yellow ribbons on trees, the more elaborate the better. So take a poll, Mr. Friedman; your question
is simple: What are our ideas the
credibility of which is in danger? My
poll says that most of us are concerned about how much money we can get.
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