By Jim Selman | Bio
Do we have an economic problem or a spiritual problem?
My teacher and friend Dr. Fernando Flores was a candidate for the
Presidency of Chile. In one of his speeches, he declared, “We don’t have
an economic problem so much as we have a spiritual one…we’ve forgotten
who we are…we lack a vision and purpose for our nation”. He dropped out
of the presidential race, but this phrase has stayed with me. I think it
is true of most nations, including our own.
There is a maxim that states, “A vision without action is just a dream.
Action without a vision is a nightmare.” A vision provides a context, a
ground of being for our lives. A vision is not a goal: it is the
organizing principle for whatever goals we may have. A vision is a place
to stand—the future as possibility—a place to ‘come from’ in all that
we undertake.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
David Brooks wrote a very compelling New York Times op ed piece recently called “ The Geezer’s Crusade”.
His point was that the elders in our society hold the future for
everyone in their hands (so to speak). Since 1980 when I was serving
on the California Commission on Aging, one of my biggest concerns has
been that, as a society, we are turning older people into constituents
competing with their grandchildren for scarce resources. David Brooks
shows how this kind of trend affects us all and today we spend about $7
on older people compared to about $1 on younger people. I am not
arguing for what the amounts should be: however, I am agreeing[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
Over the past few years, I have written about
how life in our society is increasingly becoming a 'spectator sport'. I
am again reminded of this as I listen to week after week of pundits
second-guessing President Obama and other leaders as if their points of
view are a) true, b) somehow contributing to a civil public discourse,
and c) honest and not contrived to produce controversy or provoke
conflict and drama.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Leadership
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By Jim Selman | Bio
A good friend of mine is a Canadian that grew
up in Lebanon. His family still owns a bit of land that is situated
between two of the refugee camps. It is a bleak scene by all accounts.
I asked him what he learned growing up in that kind of environment. He
said, “I learned it only takes a very few people to screw it up for
everybody”. I had the same impression as I watched the ‘9/12 tea party march on Washington’ this past week.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Leadership
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I am not an economist. Thank goodness. This is not a good time to be one. There is a wonderful overview of the field, “ How Did Economists Get it So Wrong?”, by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.
The bottom line is that the current situation “which nobody could have
predicted” was predicted and it doesn’t take an economist to know that:[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
I am no fan of the far right, but can respect
an honest difference of opinion. When the difference of opinion turns
into crass and cynical lies and propaganda designed to frighten and
deepen the already fragmented population, then it is time to cry
“STOP!”. During one of the darker moments of the prior administration,
I proposed (with tongue in cheek) the idea of creating a new
organization called the “ National Organization of Pissed-Off Elders”
(N.O.P.E.). Its mission: to step up to the plate and declare that
enough is enough whenever and wherever necessary. There is an old maxim
that the only thing that has to happen for evil to prevail is for good
people to do (and say) nothing.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Leadership
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
President Obama held a briefing on the Community Solutions Agenda
this past Tuesday, in which he acknowledged the contributions of
several winners of the “Purpose Prize” along with other not-for-profit
community organizations. The Purpose Prize was created a few years ago
by Civic Ventures
as a way to focus our attention on the ongoing contributions that
elders make in our country and the world. I thought the President’s
acknowledgment summed it up nicely, not only for the Elders in the room
but for people of all ages committed to making a difference.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Leadership
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
Last week was not a good week for the planet
and I've been taking it personally. Aside from the Iran Crisis and
North Korea, we had the usual games being played in Europe, South
America and Southeast Asia. At some moment, I realized that I had once
again drifted into a spectator role. I was trying to sort out the good
insurgents from the bad insurgents, the real terrorists from the
"revolutionaries", and I was finding that the conservative/liberal
divide seems to be a universal constant everywhere we look. As President Obama is declaring[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
"The
worldviews of our two generations are both equally valid. They are
simply our assessments of ‘the way it is’ and what is and is not
possible. Neither of our assessments are ‘the truth’. And neither are
‘false’. Understanding this doesn’t make understanding each other’s perspective any easier.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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By Jim Selman | Bio
The Wall Street Journal last week had an article on the new theme of the annual commencement speech celebrity sweepstakes: “ We are really, really sorry”.
On campus after campus, speakers of the Boomer generation were
apologizing to the twenty-something generation (I don’t remember the
nomenclature for this batch of graduates) for the self-centered and
often greedy abuses of the ‘me’ generation. This old theme had the ring
of a “mea culpa” without showing much of an agenda for doing much about
anything—coming across more like a challenge to the young to not make
our mistakes. Some of the youthful attendees rightfully asked, “Why don’t you clean up the mess you made?”[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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