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It all Falls Apart

  It all falls apart Everything is starting to unravel.   You can see it all around you.   Inflation, mass migration from the third world, $33 Trillion in debt and climbing quickly, breakdown of social norms that have evolved over tens of thousands of years, out of control crime, a political system that is unraveling in its ability to govern, war.   The fact that all of these things are happening simultaneously is not surprising.   The interconnectedness of our increasingly complex systems act as feedback loops.   One system begins to fail, which influences another system that is dependent on it to also fail.   And so on.   Before long, a total systems failure occurs.   Think about something as simple as a McDonalds Big Mac.   The interconnected systems that must come together to make that happen must all work in harmony.   The lettuce growers need to plant and harvest, they need fertilizer and equipment, they need transport companies to move their lettuce to market. McDonald’s buy
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Scarcity Defines You

  Scarcity Defines You “In an isolated system, any natural process in that system progresses in the direction of increasing disorder, or entropy, of the system."  2 nd Law of Thermodynamics   The Second Law of Thermodynamics is perhaps the most consequential physical law that influences human existence.   It states that everything inexorably moves from order to disorder – from order to chaos.   It is the fundamental reason for all of human suffering.   And it is the fundamental reason that we will never rid ourselves of suffering.   In fact, the Second Law of Thermodynamics means that we are literally designed to suffer. There is no antidote to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.   All things decay.   Because of this law, all things that we find useful and necessary for human existence need to be constructed, built, or harvested. All the things we need to exist requires energy in order for us to extract their utility.   This is called entropy and it is fundamental to how
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Turning Points

  I get the sense that the world cannot sustain the amount of people we have at the standard of living that they expect.   I get the sense that all of the global challenges that are beginning to come to a head – climate change, mass migration, environmental degradation, are caused by third world nations moving towards first world standards of living.   Perhaps the world can sustain the consumer driven culture that the west enjoys with its massive consumption of resources and the incredible detritus of its waste.   But it can only do so if that culture is contained within the confines of the west.   As billions of people demand the same kind of standard of living that the west enjoys, concurrent resource consumption and the accompanying pollution and environmental waste, explode to unsustainable levels. The west will continue to demand its current standard of living even as the third world demands it also.   And if the third world cannot get it in the places where they live, they jour
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Fix Ourselves Instead of Fixing the World

  Why exactly are we competing with China for global hegemony?   Why exactly are we engaged across the entire globe in wars and insurrections?   How much does this cost?   The traditional rationale of such things was to keep the world safe for trade, keep the oil flowing, and maintain the world order.   And that if the US did not do these things, then either Russia or China would.   We work very hard to keep nations dependent on us so that we can be the nation that essentially runs things. This has sort of worked.   We spend blood and treasure running around the world trying to get everyone to buy into this system through either pay-offs, threats of force or just straight bombs.   And in return, US corporations flourish as money flows easily to their coffers.   It is good for US consumers in that we get cheap flat screen TVs and we get to offshore our greenhouse gas emissions to the third world.   After all, the pollution and detritus of a vast consumer driven civilization is gross,
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I am Judas

  Every day I remain silent in the face of increasingly discriminatory policies at my Fortune 50 company.   Quotas, or ‘targets’, are formulated.   Training programs are ‘offered’ that proclaim me a racist for the color of my skin.   Struggle sessions, or ‘difficult conversations’, are orchestrated where we are segregated by race or gender and encouraged to talk about how some people’s culture, by dint of their skin color, harm women, people of color, or the LBTQ community.   We talk about equity and how lack of equal outcomes are toxic; and how people of a certain skin color, stand in the way of racial progress. I take all of this in and say nothing.   For saying anything that contradicts the religion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will get me fired.   Even asking questions that may illuminate contradictions or the potential unintended consequences of such thinking is enough to limit your career at the very least.   You are quickly seen as an apostate or heretic to the cause.  
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Decline from Greatness

The west is dead.   I’ve been saying it for a long time.   A viewing of the Grammy’s the other night is all you need to see to conclude that we are a civilization in steep decline.   We normalize humanity’s deepest pathologies as if they were something to celebrate; even as we subsidize the destruction of the family, the community and our institutions of faith.   No civilization can long endure such an onslaught.   We are overextended trying to police the world, printing money as fast as we can, and abandoning the principles upon which we were founded.   Other nations are not engaging in such foolish activity.   They will overtake us, while we become a shell of what we once were.   A once great civilization destroyed by corruption and a deep lack of moral moderation.   In that respect, we are not unlike many civilizations that have gone before us.   The pendulum swings and the inability of humans and institutions to moderate their most selfish desires inevitably leads to ruin.   And sa
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Rational Diversity Equality and Inclusion

  Rational DEI As a Fortune 500 organizational development consultant, I have worked with lots of organizations who are now engaged in significant Diversity and Inclusion efforts.   These efforts are mostly laudable and driven by a desire to create more diverse and inclusive workplaces.   Of course, the positive outcome of creating diverse and inclusive workplaces is undeniable and well-documented.   There are lots of theories about why this is so, but it seems relatively easy to generalize that when people feel valued, when their perspectives are heard, and when we actively seek out different opinions and perspectives, that we get better outcomes. There is another angle to many D&I efforts that attempts to rectify imbalances in how many diverse people hold leadership positions in the organization, to fix any pay disparities, and to close gaps in hiring, retention and attrition of diverse employees.   These are also laudable.   It is easy to see why it would be difficult to con
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