FROM HERE TO THERE

 

JOURNAL

FROM HERE TO THERE

Bill Barksdale, columnist

Life has its ups and downs.  It’s easy to get lost, even depressed.  Planning, that is to say setting goals, helps to smooth out the journey.  But how do you set and achieve goals?  Whether your goals are personal, business or governmental, the same strategies pretty much apply, although each is a bit different.  Goals change as needs change or when old goals are met and new goals are envisioned.  Personal goals are more easily understood, because they are about you.  The confusion arises in differentiating between government and those of private sector business.  Most conventional businesses are essentially profit-driven, whereas it could it could be reasonably argued that the purpose of government is not profit but rather the fair and equitable administration of the Peoples’ affairs to benefit as many of those “governed” as possible (the common good); therefore, I posit that all monies and other assets collected by government are meant to benefit all citizens, conscientiously identifying the greatest need, while encouraging commerce and entrepreneurialism which, ideally, help support a strong financial foundation. 

All goal-setting shares some characteristics.  For instance, each can benefit from a classic S.W.O.T. analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  A Strategic Plan, also called a Business Plan – is simply a detailed outline for goal attainment.  Start with where you are today and where you want to be in X number of years or months – the Goal.  Goals are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-managed.  A five-year plan, as an example, sets mini-goals that target where you want to be at the end of Year One, Year Two, etc., until you get to the end of Year Five – the Goal.  One step at a time makes it realistically achievable, and analyzing your strengths can help you identify beneficial opportunities, as well as your weaknesses.  By recognizing your weaknesses you can remedy them by utilizing your strengths.  Recognizing opportunities offers ways to be more effective, not only at helping people, but (in business) providing a more useful service and achieving a greater profit.  By identifying threats you can find solutions, often turning those threats into helpful guidance for improvement.

See how that works?  An S.W.O.T. analysis helps us reach our personal goals, improving both business and good governance.  When things go off target you can make corrections; otherwise, businesses fail and government doesn’t achieve its goal of securing the greatest good for all.  It’s often said that the U.S. is a “capitalist” society, but any good economist must admit that in fact we have a combination of capitalism and socialism.  Just look at all the government assistance that businesses such as agriculture, energy, the financial industry and other commercial enterprises receive from our tax dollars.  That’s a form of socialism.  I’ve never been able to understand why some people get so angry when they hear the word “socialism” when our country couldn’t exist without it as part of the mix.  Political misinformation has often prevented us from seeing that reality clearly. 

The Covid-19 virus is the elephant on the table that will keep stomping on our heads until we pay attention.  It’s forcing us to reevaluate some goals and ways of doing things as it exposes incompetent, harmful governmental leadership.  The virus, in the absence of a reliable vaccine, is inspiring creative change.  When we work together in a respectful and reasonable way, things get better.  When we listen to misleading advice and ignore truthful guidance, things get worse.  A virus has no brain, no anger.  It’s simply a package of genetic information that infects cells until a counterforce intervenes.  Most agree that the health crisis didn’t have to get as bad as it is if we had benefited from straightforward leadership in the first place.  As citizens of the most hard-hit country in the world, we obviously need to do a better job with our future choices. 

As far as “moving on” goes, there are things we can control.  In business you collect customer-feedback to know how to improve your product or service and thus your profit.  If you’re smart, you also listen to your employees.  In government you can ask the old question “Is the Nation better off than it was four years ago?”  We have the capacity to examine what has been done correctly and what went wrong.  Next we choose a better direction. 

We have resources: money, creativity, equal justice (in theory), ethical guidance, a population willing to work, a social safety net, an education system.  We have the tool of communication.  Honest communication is an invaluable means to make better decisions.  Don’t be boon-doggled by liars who stand to profit by misleading you.  There’s always a parade of flim-flamers out there.  Don’t be a fool.  Let your inner guidance point the way.  You know right from wrong. It’s called intuition.  Trust it.   

As Michael M. Kaiser said in his book, The Art of The Turnaround, “What one must not do is waste time rehashing the past, pointing fingers, and looking for scapegoats.  These activities stall all progress and deflate the hope and optimism that can emerge from the planning process.”  Formulate worthwhile goals.  Make plans.  Review them regularly.  As the opportunity opens up, move forward.  This is how we get from here to there.

Shangri-La

By Bill Barksdale

Almost everyone has heard of a place called Shangri-La.  A mythical place. A kind of utopian paradise where people live in happiness and harmony with themselves and nature.  Shangri-La was invented by author, James Hilton in his 1933 book Lost Horizon, later made into Director Frank Capra’s haunting film of the same name.

As a filmmaker, Capra often seemed to be searching for what is good and fine deep inside the human spirit.  His films (It’s A Wonderful Life and State of the Union - both made shortly after World War II) examine the innate courage and decency of one person to prevail over greed and cruelty.  

In Lost Horizon, Robert Conway is abducted away from his strife-filled life and finds himself in a strange, remote paradise hidden in the Himalayan Mountains.  Here he meets the ancient High Lama, Father Perrault.  In Capra’s version, screen writer Robert Riskin wrote the High Lama’s words, “Look at the world today….What unintelligent leadership!  A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other, compelled by an orgy of greed and brutality.” 

In her novel, The Kin Of Ata, writer Dorothy Bryant portrays an angry, successful, reckless man who is speeding away from his cruel and mediocre life, a life which has no meaning. After a catastrophic accident, he suddenly finds himself inexplicably transported to a strange land where the people live seemingly simple, introverted lives but things are not what they seem.

Much like Dorothy Bryant’s character, Father Perrault had been seeking meaning to his life, and found a simple answer: Be kind.  Is there any more profound guidance than, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”?  Much creativity and wisdom can flow from this advice.

The idealistic purpose of Shangri-La was to be a depository of the best of humanity so that if human blindness and madness destroyed civilization, there would be a community that could seed a renaissance to rebuild a broken society.  Of course, with today’s powerful and insane weaponry, chemical and nuclear pollution - a world without humans to decommission and decontaminate its waste would likely end the life of our magnificent planet altogether - a sad and asinine legacy for humanity when we have the potential for a much better outcome.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes in his book Anger “Anger is a zone of energy in us.  It is part of us.  It is a suffering baby that we have to take care of.”

As I’ve quoted many times before, the Realtor® Code of Ethics begins “Under all is the land.”  As we create community we build upon that land.  Our very life itself depends on our good stewardship of the land.  This fact is something no rational person can deny.  When we get lost in tribalism, politics, greed, the compulsion for dominance – one over the other – we lose site of the reality that there is only one.  And by “One” I mean the planet, all life on it and all that includes. 

In Lost Horizon, Robert Conway says “There are moments in a man’s life where he glimpses the eternal.”  We can’t spend our individual and collective existence escaping.  We must be moving toward something better.  In my lifetime it has never been more important than now that we, as the human race, begin to consider what we are moving toward.  That begins with listening to one’s inner truthful conscience.

We hold a great gift in that we are intelligent and creative beings that share a unique planet in the vastness of the universe.  We have the choice to evolve and get better, or we can throw away and destroy the gift we share through hubris – arrogance.  James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon between World War One and World War Two.  Our own great country, The United States of America, was nearly ripped apart by the Civil War.  Lately I’ve heard news commentary speculating of a second Civil War.  What!  Will we really head foolishly into such a hellish future?  Or will we, as a nation of diverse people, come to our senses and choose wise goals and wise leadership?

Will we need a Shangri-La to reseed the world or even our nation?  I hope not.  Under all is the land.  I hope we humans can evolve as a nation and a world to the next level. 

Richard Curtis, in his movie About Time, said “I just try to live every day as if I deliberately came back to this one day.  To enjoy it as if it was the full, final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.  We’re all traveling through time together every day of our lives.  All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable life.”

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

By Bill Barksdale

First published in 1842, Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Masque of the Red Death is about the wealthy and privileged Prince Prospero.  As a fearsome and deadly plague ravages the country, the Prince and his wealthy friends isolate themselves in Prospero’s castle to party and wait-it-out until the plague passes.  The common people will be dead, but the Prince and his friends will emerge untouched. 

The Prince holds a huge masked ball one night for his guests’ entertainment.  A mysterious party-goer appears in a tasteless costume dressed as a victim of the plague.  The enraged Prince, determined to murder the intruder, chases it through each of the seven rooms, each decorated in a different theme, until he confronts it.  Ripping off the mask he discovers there is nothing inside the costume, only the Prince’s horrible death and soon to follow, the deaths of all the party guests.

Well, as Marilyn Monroe sang “When Love goes wrong, nothin goes right”.  

We’ve “sheltered in place”, as the new vocabulary says, to help slow the spread of a deadly disease.  One of the good things about the Covid-19 virus pandemic is things have slowed down for a while.  Filthy air and water all over the planet have started to clean up.  Clean air and water are, of course, essential to life – most life that is.  Some pathogens thrive in toxic conditions that most life on Earth cannot thrive or even live in. 

Unfortunately, many people haven’t been able to earn a living.  Some people in large cities or isolated areas have died, unnoticed and alone.  Others have become frustrated and even abusive.  Society has become a kind of pressure cooker, and we are seeing the contents of that pressure cooker explode as “non-white” people finally say “Enough is enough!” and rebel against centuries of abuse at the hands of people who see themselves a superior.    

I watched a violent “thriller” movie last night that seemed dull compared to the nightly news. 

Instead of real federal leadership in a time of tragic national need, states have been played against each other, scratching and begging for desperately needed personal protective equipment and imperative testing so the disease can be tracked as it spreads, so we can identify its trajectory and try to protect those in the path of danger. 

In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed The Federal Emergency Relief Act.  It read in part:  “That the Congress hereby declares that the present economic depression has created a serious emergency, due to widespread unemployment and increasing inadequacy of State and local relief funds, resulting in the existing or threatened deprivation of a considerable number of families and individuals of the necessities of life, and making it imperative that the Federal Government cooperate more effectively with the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia in furnishing relief to their needy and distressed people.”

FDR also went on to establish The National Recovery Administration, whose goal was to foster fair business practices, regulate “cut throat competition”, and establish antitrust regulation so corporations couldn’t become so large and dominant that they could gouge citizens of their resources at any price, thus forcing people into poverty and insecurity.    

Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, a great progressive activist herself, really cared about the people of the United States.  Ancient philosopher and Roman lawyer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, said near the end of the unstable Roman Empire "The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law". 

Real leaders have emerged – sometimes - in times of great need to help “We the People” find our way and thrive.  That’s the highest and best function of effective government. 

In 1934 a group calling itself The American Liberty League was formed, funded largely by the enormously wealthy DuPont’s and their wealthy corporate cohorts.  Their goals were to roll back President Roosevelt’s creations of Social Security, unemployment insurance, minimum living wages, and to advocate for an extremely “conservative” Supreme Court that would back them in rolling back the FDR reforms meant to prevent a second “Great Depression”.  The members of the deceptively named “The American Liberty League” wanted to preserve and increase their vast wealth.

For some people, too much is not enough. 

In actual fact, spreading the wealth through fair wages, makes our nation a wealthier country.  Helping every responsible person who wants to own their own home reach that goal, makes us a more equal, just and secure country.  When people feel safe in their homes, that’s a better and freer country.  When a person can walk down the street and not fear being killed because of the color of their skin, that makes all of us freer.

When the super powerful and wealthy try to lock themselves away, disregarding the rest of the people, they violate the “supreme law”.  They might find themselves tearing off that frightening Masque of the Red Death to an unanticipated bad outcome. 

Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame.  He is a referral agent for Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc.  CADRE# 01106662.  Read more of his articles at his blog at BBarksdale.com

 

                                                            

                                                                I Am Not A Robot
                                                                 By Bill Barksdale

Often when I log onto a website, before I can proceed I have to click a box that says “I am not a robot”, a precaution by the site manager to make sure there’s an actual person and not some machine doing mischief. In a very real way computers have made this a small world. Electronic mass communication is so common now that most of us are not only always connected, but under surveillance as information is constantly gathered about us.

Eighty percent of the calls that come to my home are dialed by a robot. I answer my phone with a robot that tells me who is calling and then my robot tells the caller – often another robot – to leave a message or please hang up. I recently heard of a home security device that allows one to remotely see what’s going on in their home. It seems the problems with some of these devises is they can be hacked and someone else can see what’s going on in your home too. 

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights says “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The question then is, is it legal or ethical for someone - including government entities, corporations or anyone else - to search your home, papers (read that as all correspondence including internet searches and emails), effects (personal belongings), or you - without a good reason “probable cause”? 

Do you think the Constitution implies that your privacy can be violated just because we now have the technology that makes it possible? Before you answer, read the Constitution. It’s short and readily available. The founding fathers of the U.S. couldn’t have foreseen computers, but as technology evolves, the courts have an obligation to update and apply the intention of the Constitution to U.S. law. Rigging our justice system with biased, activist judges who have life-time appointments is unethical, and I argue, unconstitutional. 

This is a real estate issue because the issue is home invasion. If your privacy and home are being invaded without Probable Cause, that’s a violation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Some judges claim they are “Constitutional originalists”, a new extremist term saying they intend to stick to 240 year old technology and not acknowledge that – things change! We don’t live like we did 240 years ago. “Constitutional Originalist” and the evolution of technology are fundamentally opposed.  

We’ve tragically come to accept that if we want to watch TV or use a computer, we are being tracked. Your information is sold and used to manipulate you with targeted advertising or messages to influence what you think, how you vote and what you do. We’ve come to expect it, but our apathy and pathetic feeling of powerlessness allows the invasion of privacy. 

That’s not the legal intent of the Constitution. Many of us, especially younger people have grown up with computers, cell phones, “social media” and have never known a world where true privacy existed. No American should be OK with being spied on without “Probable Cause”. That’s literally unconstitutional. 

Privacy is something that billions of people say is important to them. Large corporations and government entities spend billions to protect their illegal activities which invade our homes and our privacy. I have no doubt that the people who drafted and signed the Constitution of the U.S.A. would not approve. After all, just because you can, does that make it OK or legal? 

If you are unduly influenced to behave and think in a way that benefits a few thousand people in the world, that’s not OK. Never take invasion of privacy for granted. 

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that a “market” is a kind of god, and that unethical invasion of privacy is legal and “constitutional” if there’s a buck to be made, or minds changed without all factual information. Moronic economic theories espoused by people like economists Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan – shapers of the “Trickle Down theory” of economics in the 1970’s & 80’s and still in operation today, makes no realistic sense. It doesn’t work. That’ been proven, but we’re still being sold that absurd “Trickle Down” lie.

When Alan Greenspan left his post as Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006 while the economy collapsed at the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2007, he admitted that his economic guidance didn’t work. “Too soon old. Too late smart.” 

A market is a question of supply and demand. If housing supply is kept scarce, people feel insecure. Insecurity is a profit-making strategy. If people feel insecure enough, some are willing to trade their freedom and privacy for survival or convenience. 

The only one that can stop the undermining of the United States of America is YOU! You have to vote. You have to get proactive by contacting your government representatives and letting them know that invasion of your privacy is not acceptable. If you don’t personally speak up, you will lose your privacy and freedom. Believe me, ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch Brothers corporations who own one of the largest privately held corporations in the world, Facebook, and many other large corporations want nothing more than for you to not care - to be afraid. They have certain key politicians and judges in their wallets, in my opinion. 

Will you choose to be a robot to wealthy power brokers, and politicians and judges on their payroll or will you choose to breathe free? “Under all is the land”. You and I depend on that land and all that is on it in order to live. It doesn’t belong to just a few wealthy people. When you get complacent about your rights as a U.S. citizen you lose and evil wins. 

This is the time. Contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know that you want to protect freedom and privacy. Vote. I can’t say that enough. If you want to live in a nation “Of the People. By the People, and for the People” you have to stand and speak up to protect that ideal. The United States is a continuously unfolding experiment and that experiment will fail if you don’t participate and defend it.

Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame. He is an agent at Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc.