By Jim Selman | Bio
Moods ‘color’ our experience of living. They
are all encompassing interpretations of the world—especially the
future—and tend to determine the quality of our lives. When we are in a
positive mood, the world is bright and we ‘feel’ great. When we are in
a negative mood, we typically want to withdraw from or strike out at
everyone around us. One of the most useful things we can learn as we
grow up (at any age) is that moods aren’t personal. First of all, they are involuntary. No one I know decides they will be
in a bad mood (although there are a few who more or less equate their
mood with ‘the way I am’, which can[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
Here is what I was reading in the Buenos Aires Herald
this morning (paraphrased)—“Some folks like what Obama’s doing, other
folks aren’t so happy”. Here’s another—“Lots of middle class people
believe there is a financial crisis and others don’t seem to have been
affected at all”. This is then followed by a restatement of the news
for the last few months with a dash of history added in, such as
comparisons between BHO and JFK or FDR. Blah, blah, blah… I think that the malaise of the media has less to do with conservative or liberal bias than with[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Personal Empowerment
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
The engine that drives the world’s economy
is a principle that is embedded in our worldview—“more, better and
different”. It may seem obvious, but when we think about consumerism,
materialism or alcoholism—or any ‘ism’ really—they are all based on the
idea that if we like something, then ‘more’ is good (and conversely, if
we don’t like it, then ‘less’ is good). Continuous improvement demands
that things get better and better—and ‘more’ better is better than
‘less’ better. At the end of the day, we work hard to innovate and
create ‘different’ expressions of what we already have. These three
perspectives pretty much define our options at every moment. To do
‘nothing’ is rarely considered as an alternative. Experientially, we
cannot tolerate boredom. We’re hooked on change, but the only change we
can relate to is ‘more’, ‘better’ and ‘different’. Remember the axiom,
“The more things change, the more they stay the same…”?[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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 By Jim Selman | Bio
I
just saw the movie WALL-E about a lonely robot on planet earth 700
years after a Wal-Mart-like enterprise wins the game of mega mergers
and is the only corporation left, effectively running the world. The
people had to leave because they couldn’t keep up with the trash.
WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class) spends its days (we
soon begin to think of it as a ‘he’ thanks to some brilliant scripting
and Pixar magic) creating skyscraper-scale mountains of trash. It is a
great film and brilliantly delivers ‘social responsibility’ messages
while telling a beautiful love story that meshes with some profoundly
human moments when people wake up to the possibility of having a choice
combined with responsibility for cleaning up the mess we made in the
20th and 21st centuries.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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I went to an interesting exhibition called “Babylon” at the Louvre*
over the weekend. A lot of the explanations were in French, so I am
sure I missed a lot of the factual history. What was clear was the
mythology surrounding the Tower of Babel that God supposedly destroyed
when the civilization became too decadent. As I recall, this account
heralds the beginning of disparate languages and the considerable
miscommunication that has been going on between human beings every
since. We’ve been working a lot recently on the formation of the Eldering Institute,
which is, among other things, focused on promoting “multigenerational
collaboration” (which of course implies intergenerational
communication).[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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After seeing the movie The 11th Hour, I have been thinking a lot about The Eldering Institute. The idea all along has been a strategy for mobilizing a lot of people, both retired and younger to “take on intractable problems”. The foundation for this has been the observation that most older people want to make a difference and leave the planet in better shape than we found it, and younger people are faced with a sufficiently uncertain future that most would love to have partnerships with older people if there could be an authentic relationship—one based on mutual learning, respect and appreciation for the differences between our world views. Finally, the idea of Eldering recognizes that most of the larger ‘problems’ confronting us are paradigmatic in nature. This means that ordinary thinking and attempts to ‘fix’ things won’t work. We must create a new paradigm and doing so requires that all of us participate. No one has “the answer”, but together we can create possibilities that neither of us can see without the other.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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My friend Chauncey Bell recommended The 11th Hour, a movie about the state of our environment and the kinds of things that need to happen if we’re going to have much of a future to think about, on his blog. It didn’t contain a lot of new information, but did a great job of focusing the mind and will hopefully mobilize a lot of people into action through The 11th Hour Action website. Several of the commentators and experts in the movie drew a parallel between the ‘state of our mind’ and the state of our environment. It reminded me that was exactly the way we used to talk about consciousness at work. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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People sometimes ask me what I mean by ‘the culture of aging’. I can start by explaining what I mean by ‘culture’. Culture is, first of all, a word. And, like all words, it is a label for some phenomenon, some observable thing or idea. Culture is a concept and a very basic aspect of who we are. It contributes to how we relate to the world and, most of the time, constitutes an opening for our actions. It is a context for our human experience and occurs as a kind of non-stop conversation about ‘the way it is’. Culture defines our local reality, our norms and acceptable practices and, most importantly, what is and is not possible. Our paradigms or interpretations of the world persist and are maintained through culture. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Fearless Aging
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I was listening to an interview on CBC’s wonderful Sunday program called “Our World”.
They were speaking with Charles Taylor, a 76-year-old Canadian
philosopher and political activist who was recently awarded the
Templeton Prize to research how spiritual aspirations shape society and
politics. In this interview, he came across as one of the most
optimistic commentators on the state of the world I’ve heard and he was
positive without being unrealistic or naïve. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Wisdom in Action
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We had a wonderful conversation last night with my daughter Lauren (who is graduating from college this week) and two of her friends. The mood was celebratory with lots of speculation about Lauren’s future and so forth. The conversation became focused and very interesting as we began to talk about how her generation uses and participates in the ‘technological space’ of the Internet. Specifically, we ‘older folks’ were wondering why the young seem so intent on putting everything about themselves—information we’d prefer to keep private—on public display on sites like Facebook and MySpace? [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Wisdom in Action
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