We don't have control over Oil Rigs: when they explode in a ball of fire, the oil will eventually fill the Gulf of Mexico, because we don't have any mean to "control" the leaking oil.
We don't have control over the process of trying to repair the lives of soldiers in Warrior Transition Units, even though these units came about in an uproar less than 3 years ago about... our lack of control over trying to repair the lives of soldiers.
We don't have control over Wall Street... and neither do they.
Remember the instances of "rogue brokers" who cost their firms billions in bad bets? There were quite a few of those. I could look them up. There was one with a UK bank about 5 years ago... something maybe based in Singapore... maybe the bank was Barclay's.
We have no control over our businesses.
I signed up for AT&T UVerse on a promo to (1) get good quality, and (2) to lower my cost for at least 6 months. Option (2) has not happened yet 4 months into 2010, and I am beginning to wonder if it ever will.
Businesses seem to make more money from unexplained charges, mis-billings, late fees, and penalties, rather than from any legitimate form of business.
It is not just us who have no control over businesses, it is the businesses themselves who are losing control over their enterprises.
We had better slow down and get a handle on things. Forget about multi-tasking, and learn to do one task well. There is less profit in it, but it will be better for us in the long run.
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On the business stuff, I think it all has to do with moral compass. When the Market was defined as the arbiter of everything, its soulless imperatives came to govern everything. The oil spill is one of its spawn, so is business cheating and business indifference to either their promises or the needs of their customers. There's no turning back, I fear. I just tremble for my children.
I agree, but I maintain there is no "factual" moral compass of in-born good or bad, but only the fictions we create.
We created the mythology of the Market; now we have to go into re-write......
...and it better be good this time.
I cannot accept the idea that something like morality is ultimately rooted in fiction. The notion runs head-on into my Jesuit-trained soul.
If nothing is real, we're in Strawberry Fields. In that case, pass the hookah.
I know exactly what you mean, exactly. I know because I've been thinking about it and interfacing with it for more than 40 years.
Fiction does not mean "false" or "unreal". Romeo & Juliet is a work of fiction that describes passion and love with more force, immediacy, insight, etc. than a historical narrative could do.
How puny mere facts are compared to it.
Fiction is "more real" to us because we are enchanted by it, and we thereby "participate" in the "truth" it describes.
Think of Loyola, who he was, and what he had to do. When a soldier wants to know how many of the enemy are at the east gate, he does not want a parable or a metaphysic; he wants "facts".
He did not want to participate in things with the enemy - dialogue or ecumenism! - but rather to engage them and conquer!
I think morality rooted in "facts" eventually fails, because as time goes on, it looks to the past, ignoring the inspiration of the living. Thus the present is impoverished and loses the ability to speak creatively of morality.
A morality grounded in a "good story" establishes the themes and conventions we use to tell and re-tell, to live and re-live, and to compose our additions to it.
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