ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference


Robert Frost


With politics looming and an end date looming, fate seems to hang on a Tuesday in November. I feel like there is a political meltdown in the midst. Everyone seems to keep pointing me towards political conversations no mater how far I run in the opposite direction from them. A journey to this point needs to start somewhere, what better place than the path laid before us.

I awoke today with a swirl of the dream from last night fluttering on my consciousness. Although the details and twists of the dream were, as dreams are, over-the-top, phantasmal and euphoric, the base of the dream is what stirred me. As psychologist or wing nut dream analyst would, I stripped away all of the flourishing delights of my dream journey. I’m not a sci-fi writer so I will spare you the details that I enjoyed behind closed eyelids. But, I dreamed of an Asimov like state. The world was governed by the logic of Google, science, technology and probability. Problems arose when human nature wasn’t part of the calculation, and humans began to be shuffled as computers saw fit.
I don’t want to delve into what my dream state was thinking about human nature, it had something to do with trying to explain technology and thermostat to my quintessential Jewish grandmother. She just wanted to freeze at the minimal 60 degrees and save some money, no bother to let the temperature be more comfortable.
This is neither here nor there.
After settling my mind and regrettable skipping breakfast, I went about resolving some questions poised to me, either internally or off the cuff comments that have stuck with me.
Lets start chronologically-ish. A couple of weeks I went to a remarkable speaker and debate. The keynote speaker was James Kunstlers, after his rousing speech about how society was built on petroleum as source for our energy and in turn our physical society was designed such (you have to take a plane, car or even a bus to get most anywhere). That we have reached peak oil consumption and all the problems dealing with a commodity that everyone so desperately needs, but we have to think about how to redesign our life’s to fit an alternate fuel source. Something that will eventually have to be able to run with out a drop of oil. Petroleum is a much more farther reaching commodity than we think of. Without petroleum, we have pharmaceuticals, no transportation, no alternative to lumber.
The debate following was a “hot mess” as some might describe it, I can really think of no better term. One panelist was in an out roar of how fear inspiring the lecture was and how name calling of Palin was unnecessary. The token republican on the panel agrees. Others noted, “forget the oil crisis, the ice caps will melt in 5-10 and this will be much worse than any prison sentence handed out.” The gentleman in the nicely ironed oxford noted how inspiring environmentalist/ entrepreneurs will save us. Worry about the environment. Let capitalism save us. We need to redesign our society. We have no oil. Don’t be mean, you big meanie. Vote early and vote often!
Of course no conclusion was settled.
After the panel exited with many of the observers, I saw some of my parent’s friends. We caught up and jumped into dialogue of the topics. They especially wanted to what my reaction was and whom I agreed with most. Most of my parent’s friends were deep in the hippie era. I told them how I thought most of the pundits were very ironic, the condescending lady caring the banner of compassion. Everyone trying to hold there voice over the next person in line to talk. Each cause was more worth than the next. They insisted that MY GENERATION was the most important in deciding what happens next. We need to vote to make sure we are heard and that we help make the change that hasn’t fully set in since the hippie movement in the sixties. We are the new hires affecting companies. We are the new investors. I could have flown out of the auditorium with all of the empowerment they besieged me with.
However, the one analogy that stuck with me was a story from Apollo 13. When the astronauts were stuck, time winding down, the end game approaching, what were they to do. The engineers on the ground compiled a cardboard box of everything they had on board, dumped the contents on to a table and worked until a solution was reached. It seems as though that’s where we are now. Anything that is none essential needs to be scrapped and put into a cardboard box and dumped out on our national table, from sea to shinning sea, for the amber grains of gold, and purple mountains of majesty. Lets go dumpster diving and get every cardboard box we can. Lets get leaders that understand this and embrace our paradigm.
After this event presidential and vice presidential debates ensued. Change battled with Real Change. Biden battled McCain. Palin can wink and she IS a Maverick. Tina Fey made fun of it all. What battle had I tuned into, comedy battled fear. After 8 years of material has built careers for comedians. When we have a real choice in the face crisis the joke only seem callow (I still love you Jon Stewart, keep up the good work). On the other side candidates were still selling themselves. It was a battle of brand, slogans and company lines. Where was the fine print? What was each person’s plan? What were they putting in the cardboard box? These were bonafide leaders. They were political party figure heads, not mavericks.
I continued to be unsettled. One of my good friends who continually sends me pieces of political thought for me to chew on sent me an interview of Naomi Wolf. Although hard to believe, she rallied up her cause of the dire situation of the precedents set before us. Is America coming to the end of its 200 yearlong path. Have we veered from so far from the constitution that we lost. Its been a source for democracy around the world. If we have drifted so far from it how well has it served us. Although her words were quit strong, you can also see that she is a nervous wreck. I can’t support fear mongering on either side of the political spectrum; it only polarizes people further and doesn’t help reach a conclusion. She didn’t bring one helpful insight. Who where the people that stared our country and not just the founding fathers, the founding generation? What burdens did they bare to help us get here. What path did they walk?
Do we need new leaders? As I watched the clip my friend sent me I drifted back throw some of the over conversation that we have had. Here comes the chronologically-ish part. About a year ago an online movie came out, the zeitgeist movie. Recently another one of my friend sent out a mass email about it. Having not seen it in a while, I redressed it. The website was updated and had a sequel. Very befitting of economic crisis, the first chapter of the film unwound the economic system. I’ll try and synthesis what I have learned and what Naomi and the zeitgeist film are getting at. The constitution was design for the people to govern the people, corporations were originally design to perform simple projects on short controlled process. People were to run their own lives. Especially in the last hundred years we have dealt these responsibilities. We didn’t want to take the time, or didn’t have the educational grasp that our founding fathers did and have changed the paradigm of government, business and society.
Our debate for the next candidate roars on. We blindly trudge down this path. There are innumerable problems that politicians dance from one topic to the next. Each topic can’t even be covered in 2-minute (two minutes in heaven is better than one, right?) reactions and they are all linked together to stay on only one topic. Pundits bounce riffs and jabs back and forth about whom is more flawed. They are all right, are they not? Plain jokes a re hilarious, Obama needs to give us answers to change. We walk down the same path nonetheless. I think its time that we start to look at the path we walk down.
One person recounted how, during 9/11 people stood there in a burning building waiting for someone to tell them what to do. This is the depressingly sadistic nature of our country in crisis. We don’t want responsibility. Tell us what to do. I don’t think this was a conscious decision, but has happened through time. The House of Representatives is no longer representative, its been capped. People that are elected need MILLIONS of dollars to get elected. CSPAN should be our neighbors discussing what we need to do. Debates should be professionals, Joe six packs and hockey moms discussing their concerns. We don’t need new leaders. We need revolutionaries. The pundit that wanted the future to rest in the inventive minds of entrepreneurs had it somewhat right. There are brilliant people out there that like fixing these problems. We all need to be involved in this. We all need to be working on what is going in to the cardboard box and what we create with it. We need experts, we need revolutionaries, we need everyone!