Economics for everyone (episode nine)
By John F. Sase
Gerard J. Senick, general editor
Julie G. Sase, copyeditor
“The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away unwept, unhonored, and unsung, no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these, the public verdict will then be: The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor.”
—Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), American philanthropist
During the past eight episodes, we have laid down some basic tracts of Economics for the well-being of all. During this time, we considered the fundamental fulfillment of our needs and wants, the management of scarce resources, and the division of these resources into human and non-human categories.
Last month, we explored and hoped to simplify the matter of Economic Cycles. Through our explanation, we hope that our readership has gained a better understanding of Economics. Most attorneys with whom I (Dr. Sase) have talked understand the “feast-or-famine” cycle that those in the practice of Law experience. For some firms, their ups and downs in case-activity parallel our national Business Cycles. We cannot expect handouts from the top down. Our economic recovery and growth must come from the ground up, and small businesses and professional practices hold the key.
In this episode, we continue to address the application of economic essentials that every small business or professional practice needs. We will delineate the responsibilities of a small group into those of Production, Transportation, Properties, Marketing, and Management and generally discuss the sub-functions in each area. However, first, we need to address some core elements of success in business, which is the theme of this month’s column. Whether a company is a law firm, a blues band, a clothier, or any other kind of business, clients, fans, and customers prefer to patronize those firms that they Know, Like, and Trust. This sense of connection extends to a business of any size, though the focus tends to be on the “face” in the crowd—the active principal or principals of the business. Therefore, before discussing the structure of tasks and responsibility that help a firm to survive, let us turn to a core set of values that should exist in a company and its members. These core values, which comprise the foundation for the structure of a successful modern business, have been taught for a century.
These core values for success form the essence of a worldly philosophy developed by Andrew Carnegie. A steel industrialist who then was the wealthiest person in the world, Carnegie shared his beliefs with Napoleon Hill in 1908. Hill, a law-school dropout of meager means, was working as a freelance journalist in Virginia when he was invited to conduct a short interview with Carnegie. An impressed Carnegie invited Hill to stay on at his home. Over the next three days, Carnegie shared his philosophy of life with the young man. Though he did not endow Hill with money, Carnegie did commission him to carry out the task of communicating his philosophy to the world. Hill accepted the challenge. The output of his efforts, in the form of his lecture series and a book, “Think and Grow Rich” (The Ralston Society, 1937), reflects Carnegie’s philosophy. In his recorded talks, Hill includes the success stories of politicians, inventors, and industrialists who were friends and associates of Carnegie. These figures include Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, among others. Hill synthesized the philosophies of his interviewees into what he called “Philosophy of Achievement.” Based on his series of lectures on this topic, he released a home-study course called “The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons” (Tribeca Books, 1928). Over the next decade, Hill reworked this material into a single volume, which became “Think and Grow Rich.” A best-seller at the time, the book now is considered a touchstone of the entire field of self-improvement. At present, “Think and Grow Rich” has sold more than seventy million copies worldwide. After the publication of his book, Hill went on to become one of the most influential writers and lecturers of the twentieth century.
Positive Mental Attitude
Next, we will cover Carnegie’s “Twelve Things that Constitute Real Wealth.” (Faithful readers of this column may recognize this list and our explanation of it from a few years ago; however, we have remolded this information for our current series of articles.)
Carnegie’s first element of real riches is the maintenance of a positive mental attitude. Like Occupy the World, this may seem deceptive, a goal that is very easy to achieve. However, a positive mental attitude often can be most difficult to attain and to maintain. Many professionals in fields that require physical and emotional empathy for clients often confront this challenge. These professionals include doctors and other medical personnel who treat life-threatening or imminently fatal conditions; psychologists and psychiatrists; funeral directors; police officers; fire and rescue workers; and musicians. Of course, we need to include attorneys and their experts in this listing. Need we say more?
Even members of society not facing severe challenges may suffer from chronic or temporary depression. The Web site for the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated a decade ago that “9% of adult Americans have feelings of hopelessness, despondency, and/or guilt that generate a diagnosis of depression. At any given time, about 3% of adults have ... a long-lasting and severe form of depression.” Likewise, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey found that 8.5% of us, excluding the institutionalized portion of our population, purchase anti-depressants. The reaction to assaults on our collective mental attitude appears to increase with age: for example, the Survey found that more than 13% of senior citizens consume anti-depressants (Statistical Brief #77, May 2005). Furthermore, the National Center for Health Statistics states that our use of anti-depressants has increased by nearly 400% over since the late 1980s (National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2010: Table 95). Even if this societal condition seems moderate by the numbers, the problem appears much greater if we include the many of us who self-medicate with alcohol and illegal street drugs.
We often blame current global and national conditions, both political and economic, for this scenario. However, in spite of the wars, plagues, famines, and oppression that have occurred during the past six millennia of recorded history, the human condition has remained relatively constant. Though much of this condition is positive, it also includes some negative elements, such as depression, that often are the result of what we go through in our lives. Therefore, we may observe that the attainment and maintenance of a consistently positive mental attitude have eluded humankind throughout the ages. In response, many of us turn to religion, meditation, and various rituals as well as to food or some chemical substance in order to attain and sustain a positive mental attitude.
Since the dawn of recorded history, we have created rituals that coincide with the daily, seasonal, and annual waxing and waning of sunlight. Around the world, many Christians conduct prayers at sunset called Vespers, while Muslims engage in parallel prayers known as Maghrib. Buddhists in Nepal and other places raise flags at sunset. Every week, devout Jews observe the Sabbath from sundown to sundown.
Annually, cultures celebrate the shortest day/longest night of the year with some Feast of Light that coincides with the Winter Solstice. Romans placed the Solstice on the 25th of December on the Julian Calendar in 45 BCE. This date marks the ancient feasts of Sol Invictus, Dionysus, Mithras, and other gods. This calendrical adjustment of the Solstice led to the standardized observance of Christmas on this same date. However, Winter Solstice now occurs around the 21st or 22nd of December due to celestial adjustments.
Other ancient celebrations, including the Saturnalia, the Festival of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, Yalda, Inti Raymi, and Yule, all celebrate the shortest day/longest night of the year. Today, these observances have been overshadowed by Christmas, Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Eid ul-Adha, and Kwanzaa throughout the world. Nevertheless, the common theme within these rituals revolves around the concept of light. Hence, we may call them collectively “The Holidays of Light,” a term that suggests mutual respect for our variety of rituals and beliefs. All of these ancient and modern celebrations of light have embodied the achievement and preservation of a positive mental attitude in, literally, our darkest hours (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). Addressing attorneys, an expert witness on Economics would suggest looking at the annual consumer spending associated with the celebration of these rituals. What human value(s) led Carnegie to rank this component of real riches the highest on his list? We may suggest that a positive mental attitude is priceless in measurement and infinite in value, both individually and collectively.
Sound Physical Health
The second component of real riches coexists closely with the first. Without dwelling on the relationship between the natural and spiritual sciences, we may suggest the existence of an interrelationship with and codependency on the fulfillment of our ten remaining components. Concurrently, the actualization of the following ten attributes of wealth proceeds from the realization of these first two.
Enlightened doctors of medicine emphasize that the health of the mind and body intertwine. The well-being of one depends upon the health of the other. Thus, many doctors recognize the importance of a positive mental attitude during the process of recovery from a serious physical illness. Many of us believe that the body is the house of our spirit, soul, or essence—the quality called many different names throughout the world. Whatever our individual beliefs, humankind has used the concept of a building to represent our physical form.
A healthy human building allows us to function daily and to attain, hold, and enjoy the remaining ten forms of wealth. In a worldly sense, lawyers, doctors, and others refrain from practicing their professions on the proverbial street corner (musicians excluded on this one); a well-maintained office, clinic, or studio remains a preferred base of operation. On a more fundamental and universally human level, we may observe that millions of homeless families and individuals around the world struggle to keep body and soul together daily. Whether these folks have come to their current predicament through financial events, natural disasters, war, or personal choices, we quickly realize that the lack of a healthy domicile produces negative ripple effects across all other aspects of life.
Harmony in Human Relations
Like the first and second attributes of real wealth, the third and fourth attributes remain interconnected to one another. Living with the absence of fear allows us to experience a sense of harmony within ourselves and with others. We feel and extend our inner harmony when we reach out to one another. Congruence in human relations renders a comprehensive aesthetic similar to the harmony among sounds and colors or the proportions within physical objects. In human harmony, we experience a balance and flow that produce energetic feelings of well-being. These feelings heal and subsequently maintain the health within bodies extending beyond any one of us.
Furthermore, the energetic feelings that originate from harmony grow exponentially as the number of relationships compounds among us. Some of us refer to this extending web of relationships as the biosphere, while others call it the human family. No matter what concept we use to envision this expansive corpus, it remains true that dissonance within our web of relationships creates negative energies that bring turmoil while consonance generates positive energies and peace.
Freedom from Fear
During his first Inaugural Address on 4 March 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt told us, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear does not enter from outside of our sensed “I,” our core sense of self.
Rather, fear comes from within. It looms in reaction to terror from beyond. Emotional and psychological terrors can stultify and grind us down to the point at which we lose our ability to succeed in any endeavor.
Generally, our fears emanate through reactions to the thoughts, memories, experiences, or perceptions that lie entangled deep within our subconscious minds.
Furthermore, the external dangers that we confront stimulate our development of fear. Whether or not these dangers are real or imagined, our fears remain real to our “I.” In turn, they produce “bad juju”—negative effects upon our physical bodies, psyches, and spirits that coalesce to form our concept and percept of self.
As a result, we often describe our fears as weights that fall upon us or as sharp shards of glass that pierce through our personal space and into our inner core. No matter how we describe the menaces that plague us, our descriptions always seem to capture a sense of terror. The combined action of exuding fear and pushing it away from ourselves creates a feeling of freedom and peace, a feeling of lightness of being that leaves us unencumbered to pursue our dreams and to step forward into a future that appears unshackled from the golem riding upon our backs.
Hope for Future Achievement
“Hope springs eternal,” writes English poet Alexander Pope in “An Essay on Man, Epistle I” (1733). Hope serves us as a great motivator for any success in life. Before his reincarnation as a giant paper-mâché head in America’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Father Bill Cunningham co-founded a nonprofit institution, Focus:HOPE, with Eleanor Josaitis and others in 1967. They created this civil- and human rights organization in Detroit within days after the racially-divided economic riots scarred the city. Intentionally, Cunningham and the company voted down the names Focus:FAITH, Focus:LOVE, and Focus:CHARITY for their organization. These colleagues decided on the name Focus:HOPE because they understood that only a focus on a better future could move Detroit beyond the crippling turmoil and division that brought the city to its knees.
When we human beings have a life to which we can look forward, we muster the power to endure and to push onward. Even for those of us who lack financial security, having the self-discipline to achieve a dream, a labor of love in which to engage, or even some minor gift to share with others may help us to embrace hope for the future. In doing so, we find purpose in life. In effect, hope provides us with the determination to persevere. No matter how bleak the present, the possibility of better days to come serves to keep us focused on hope.
The Capacity for Applied Faith
Some of us believe in a deity, though our conceptualizations and visualizations of such an entity run the gamut. Others believe in the basic nature of human beings and the power of the human mind. Then, some of us believe simply in themselves and in the good or evil that we can do. Of course, even the most malfeasant demagogues throughout human history have tended to believe that what they did was good, right, and just.
Nevertheless, stripped of all embellishments, possession of some form of faith and its application to a task in which we believe continues to exist as some constant, prime-moving force within the universe. Regardless of the root or source of our faith, the capacity to identify and to harness it within ourselves is linked inextricably to all of the other elements that form true wealth.
Willingness to Share Our Blessings with Others
Many of us have heard it said that the one thing that makes a person feel truly poor is the belief that s/he has nothing to give to another. Those of us who grew up as fans of the television series “The Beverly Hillbillies” (Filmways, 1962-71) may abide by Jed Clampett’s philosophy of life and raison d’etre, a force that took him from his days in the foothills of the Ozarks “shooting at some food” to his life as a multimillionaire in the Hills of Beverly. The character of Jed built his sense of purpose around his belief in “doin’ fer folk.” Sharing creates communication, and that communication develops the bond that holds humanity together. For most of us, our blessings and good fortunes may range from a simple abundance of material goods to the ability to give of ourselves. In contrast to our sharing of material goods, our service to others usually embodies open-mindedness, a sense of self-discipline, and the wisdom of understanding.
Let us consider the classic book by Dr. Seuss, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (Random House, 1957), and the animated television special of the same name (Cat in the Hat Productions, 1966) as examples of how the giving of ourselves ranks higher than the acquisition of material goods. To the Whos in Whoville, all of the things stolen by the Grinch—their presents and decorations and even their roast beast—remained superfluous to their celebration of life. Above and beyond their possessions on the mortal coil, the Whos continued to share blessings of a higher order. Of course, that selflessness affected the Grinch as well: his heart, we may recall, grew three sizes that day. The Grinch became as magnanimous as any Who in Whoville, not unlike the epic turnaround of Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens.
To Be Engaged in a Labor of Love
This element of real riches does not suggest that we love or like everything that we do throughout our lives. Nor does it mean that we should focus narrowly on only one endeavor that brings joy to ourselves, to the disdain of all else. Generally, elements of wealth exist within ourselves that create both pleasure and pain in any task. However, rather than bowing to the Marquis de Sade on this point, let us leap to the other end of the spectrum and quote the immortal words of Mary Poppins in the Disney film version of the same name (1964). She says, “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and—SNAP—the job’s a game!”
Beyond the simple and mundane, finding specific labor that we love brings a sense of involvement, purpose, accomplishment, and joie de vivre. Though such a labor of love may not always nourish our bodies, it will nourish our spirits (or so the musicians among us may say). After all, it may be true that our spirit has dominion over our physical form.
When labor of love enfolds within our professions, this labor forms an essential sustainer of life. Ask an attorney, an economist, a musician, or any among us who remain truly engaged in our work, “When do you plan on retiring?” The chances are that the “R” word has escaped the vocabulary of those of us who plan to go, in the words of Dr. Stanley Heyner, a founder of Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan, “tippytoes up.”
An Open Mind on All Subjects, Toward All People
Most of us like to consider ourselves as open-minded. However, one of the great weaknesses of human nature rests in our hesitation to move outside of our comfort zones. We tend to cling to our own sets of beliefs that bring us comfort, much as we would cling to a life-preserver or a rock in a stormy sea. The stormier the weather, the more we cling to a sense of our righteousness. When faced with growing complexity in life, we seek the support of those beliefs that we believe to be right. All of us engage in this action to some extent by associating with others who hold the same or similar sets of beliefs. Why? This weakness remains a part of our human nature. Perhaps it serves to remind us that we continue to remain human beings rather than perfect beings. Our basic nature includes the “why,” which makes it challenging to keep an open mind on all subjects toward all people. As human beings, we take great comfort in the simplification and homogenization of all thought and things, among them our views on politics, science, and human life, as well as our conceptualizations of and beliefs in a deity.
Complete Self-Discipline
On occasion, we rely upon others to discipline us. On other occasions, we rely on others to create and to maintain social and business institutions for us. These reliances lead us to an invisible form of slavery.
Invisible slavery presents us with even graver dangers than those visible. Under the yoke of invisible slavery, we may not even realize that we bear its weight. As did Keanu Reeves’ character Neo at the beginning of the film “The Matrix” (Warner Brothers, 1999), we may exist under the illusion that we are masters of our fates. Destiny begins to change for Neo when he realizes that he has existed as nothing more than an electrical-power source—a human battery—for the highly developed machines that control the world.
The creation of any material wealth demands that we master the necessary tools that are demanded rather than falling into place as a cog within some grand industrial structure. Only through self-imposed and self-developed discipline do we escape the false security of this illusion. Furthermore, only through self-discipline do we achieve the wisdom that allows us to understand our fellow beings and the “cosmic all” in which we exist.
(Continued) ...
