Sunday, October 17, 2010

Outrageous, Inequality: An Autoimmune Disease

Below I repeat the opening lines to a blog entry I made on www.abqseeker.blogspot.com
I am repeating this in order to draw attention to this situation that stands to destroy our culture.
Breakout Creatives of all types have to step into the fray to end this rampant disease of mind, heart, individual, family and culture:


"Read this quote carefully.  I am going to break it up into discrete lines, like a poem, to make the impression that you must take away from it even more vivid.

It is taken from an article by Malcolm Gladwell (Blink and The Tipping Point) in The New Yorker Magazine (October 11, 2010).  It concerns Barry Bonds, who played for the San Francisco Giants (from 1993 - 2007), and who may be one of the greatest baseball players of all time -- whose career ended in disgrace because of the steroids scandal in baseball in 2006-9. After breaking Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, he was not offered a contract to return to the Giants and no other team offered him a contract.
He is the son of Bobby Bonds, who played for the same Giants from 1968 - 74.
That generational thing is important.  Here is the quote:

[Barry Bonds] ended up making more IN ONE YEAR
than ALL the members of his father's San Francisco Giants team made
IN THEIR ENTIRE CAREERS
COMBINED.

People, this is not just a travesty (considering, for instance, how much we pay teachers), it is an auto-immune disease of our society.

Instead of attacking greed, our society now promotes and advances it.  Instead of greed being contained, it has become a worthy goal."



In the forthcoming issue of Leader Pathways I write about how leaders break the mold of zero-sum models of human interaction.  The crisis of income inequality I cite here and in the Abqseeker blog is one that leaders have a special contribution to make.  They exemplify what building communities and true national wealth is all about.  

Our politics have veered so dangerously off track -- giving voice as being legitimate -- to counterfeit and frightfully stupid notions and the idiot mouthpieces for it (Beck, Palin, Boehner, McConnell, et. al.) that such inequality is actually being fostered.  It is a sinking ship mentality -- and one not like the leader of the Chilean miners who insisted on coming up last -- but one where behavior that pushes other back on the sinking ship while they take all the lifeboats. 

As recent articles in the New Yorker Magazine have pointed out, the effort to attain this state of affairs has been going for decades now.  In the current issue, the breakthrough of the nut cases in the Republican party has finally occurred, in the form of Rove, Tea Parties, etc.  Libertarian voices only want government to protect their right to greed and the gains they make by devoting their lives to it.  

Breakout Creatives, step up and stem this disease.  
Artists, write, paint and compose (ala Springsteen) about the eclipse of hope such greed sets loose in people's lives.
Prophets, write and make clear the concepts of social viability that are being demolished here.
Mystics, pronounce your precepts that show the utter venality of this mentality.  Another way, maybe a whole other system has to be imagined, envisioned and articulated.
Leaders, create organizations that demonstrate how the greater good is only made possible when people give to something greater than their own private enrichment.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Check out the New Video Tutorial

Be sure to check out the new video tutorial on YouTube.  In it I say why the Breakout Creatives Project is important to you.  It's only 6 minutes and features a new tag at the end -- not to be missed.

See the New Video Tutorial