The Big Picture
2012 proved to be a year when human consciousness faced many challenging realities. We lived through an interminable election campaign in the U.S. that produced far more heat than light. We saw the stark evidence of global warming in the flooded subways and rail tunnels of New Your City. We faced our inner demons and grieved for the innocent lives lost to maniacal killers. All this forced us to look into the mirror to search for answers within ourselves for our troubled times.
The year was dominated in the U.S. by the presidential election. It started out as a close race, but turned into a decisive victory for the President, giving him four more years. Over one billion dollars was spent to influence the electorate and pay for lavish campaigns, a record sum. Don’t tell me a country that can afford to blow one billion on an election is broke. Amazingly, after all the money and speeches, we wound up back where we started, with a divided, dysfunctional government arguing about a fiscal cliff of its own making. Whoever said elections solve anything? At least we now know Obamacare is here to stay, social security and medicare will survive, three impressive accomplishments for Time Magazine’s Man of The Year.
In my humble opinion, Time’s annual award should have named Mother Nature, but I suppose they didn’t know to whom the award should go. A hurricane hit the New Jersey-New York coastline on October 29 and devastated coastal areas for hundreds of miles. I saw the aftermath in lower Manhattan on a recent trip. Six weeks later, many older buildings are still without power and the train tunnel to New Jersey remains flooded. It was the worst storm to hit the Apple in recorded history. Hurricanes are supposed to hit Florida, not New York. This happened because the oceans are heating up and weather that used to stay in Florida is now riding the Gulf Stream all the way to the Northeast. This is precisely what climate scientists told us would happen due to global warming. The polar ice caps and Greenland glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate. We experienced one of the hottest summers on record.
So, how much more evidence do we need before we act? There is a fact about frogs that says a lot about our current attitude towards climate change. Scientists found that if you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will immediately jump out. But if you place the frog in a pot of lukewarm water and then slowly raise the temperature over a long period of time, the frog will sit there and boil to death, never realizing it should jump. We are that frog in the pot. Our world is heating up, caused in large part by spewing 500 billion tons of carbon emissions into our atmosphere which causes an increase in carbon dioxide which creates a greenhouse effect that heats up the planet. I know that’s an awful lot of science for some of you, but just stop and think about it. Where do you think all the pollution we emit goes? Do you think God vacuums it up so we can keep on polluting to our heart’s content forever? Doomsayers predicted the end of the planet on 12/21/12, and they were wrong as always. However, if we do not act soon to seriously reduce carbon emissions, we may seal our own doom. Two million years of human history could be wiped out.
The third big story of 2012 was the growing violence in our society and throughout the world, especially in Syria, where the bloody images of wanton death were too much to stomach. While humans have been killing each other since we figured out how to wield sticks and stones against each other, this year saw the growing phenomenon of mass shootings, in which an angry white male with mental problems walks into a public place and opens fire randomly on innocent bystanders. Following on last year’s shooting in a shopping center parking lot in Tucson, where Congresswoman Gabby Gifford was the target, this year’s horror reel included a mass shooting at a Batman opening in a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Most tragically of all, a crazed gunman shot his own mother and then turned his legalized M-16 assault rifle on six and seven year old children in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. After each of these horrors, we hear talk of the need to come together to support the grieving families and knee-jerk reactions ranging from banning all guns to arming every man, woman and child in the country. After a brief period of mourning and handwringing, we go right back to telling ourselves that nothing can stop a lunatic bent on mass murder and buying more weapons in the hope that they will save us.
The real problem, it seems to me, is our culture of violence. We are a nation soaked in blood. The brutal truth is that we all contribute in some way to the problem. We were born out of an armed rebellion against the British and then fought our way across the North American continent, slaughtering Native Americans and Mexicans who got in our way. In the 20th century, we fought eight ways and became the largest military power the world has ever witnessed. We started the 21st century declaring a war on terror so open-ended that we will never achieve victory or peace. Our movies and TV shows depict violence in every imaginable form. My sons play video games so gruesome, I can’t stand to look at the simulated blood splattered on the screen. Even our sports are filled with violent metaphors. We cheer offenses and defenses, shotguns, pistols, bombs and killer instinct.
Violent culture alone does not produce mass killers. Most of us watch the violence, but never act it out. Increasingly though, a small number of men turn fantasy into reality. I call it Angry White Male Syndrome (AWMS), a neurosis based on paranoia about a loss of authority, privilege and control. The AWM believes that he is persecuted in the modern world. No longer running everything and forced to recognize others as his equal, the AWM takes out his anger on women, blacks, latinos, asians, gays, muslims, jews, sikhs and anyone else who is not a white male. Rush Limbaugh is his spokesman. Some AWMs are driven by a psychosis that blurs the imaginary world in their heads with the reality of their desperate lives.
How do people become so unhinged? There are many reasons, including genetics and environment, but the fundamental profile of a mass murderer is emerging. He is usually a working class white guy who doesn’t fit in. He lives in isolation which feeds his rage. He withdraws into a fantasy world to replace the miserable reality he inhabits. The violence of our society and easy access to military weapons lures him to becoming military wannabe. He purchases military assault weapons and massive amounts of ammunition. He doesn’t know why at first, but it gives him a sense of power. People listen to a man with a gun. One day, something happens to trigger an irrational violent reaction. He grabs his weaponry and shows up someplace where many people gather, determined to leave his evil mark as a mass murderer, usually before ending his own life. The gruesome aftermath appalls us, but we can’t bring ourselves to either treat his mental illness or take away his firepower. So, as Santayana warned, we are doomed to repeat history because we fail to learn from it.
I grew up in a family with mental illness and abuse. I saw how it destroyed my parents’ marriage and negatively affected my sister and me. My father was bi-polar, also known as manic-depressive. He could be a perfectly normal working class guy one moment and then inexplicably turn into a raging maniac the next. He would lose his tenuous grip on reality and enter an imaginary world that none of us could fathom. I remember once he imagined he was the Lord Jesus Christ and burst into preaching fire and brimstone. It was comical until he tried to perform miracles that endangered him, my mother, my sister and me. If he had held a gun during one of his manic moments, I have no doubt he would have murdered my mother and killed me when I tried to stop him. Luckily, we did not own a gun.
I find myself increasingly estranged from my nation’s violent culture and my own white maleness. I believe in love and peace, not hate and war. I became a pacifist as an adult. Most of the wars America has fought in my lifetime were unnecessary. We could have solved our problems more effectively and inexpensively by negotiating with our enemies rather than killing them. I’ve never fired a weapon outside of a paintball game and never killed anything larger than a cockroach. I’m sure to the AWM that makes me a girly-man who lacks cojones. If the hallmark of a real macho man is loving to kill, then I would prefer to be feminine. A woman would never walk into an elementary school and murder innocent children in cold blood.
The Business World
Despite all the doom and gloom used to scare us during the election and the continuing economic struggles in the U.S., Europe and Asia, 2012 was actually an improving year for business. The stock market was up 13 percent for the year, corporations reported record profits and businesses began to hire again. We are poised in 2013 for a return to significant growth.
For Training Education Management, business followed the general trend upwards. We had our best year since the Great Recession hit in 2009. Existing clients provided steady work and new clients included a pharmaceutical and utility in Southern California. We also expanded to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time, making three trips to South Africa and Zimbabwe to teach our Strategic Human Resource Management certificate program. I witnessed the booming metropolis of Johannesburg, saw magnificent Victoria Falls and rode an elephant, among other adventures. I also met wonderful people everywhere I traveled, people whose dreams and love of humanity were no different than mine, despite our physical, cultural and linguistic differences. The more I travel around the world, the more I am convinced that we are all one species tied together by our common DNA and our ability to communicate our thoughts and emotions in so many profound ways. We need to stop fearing and hating each other and just sit together to talk, work and play. I invite all my readers to make a point to reach out to someone different from you in 2013 and have a one-to-one conversation. I’m sure you’ll find you are not as different as you first thought.
I continue to embrace technology, as it revolutionizes the field of training and education. I launched a major revision of my website, which I invite you to visit, if you haven’t already dropped by. I am using e-learning tools to deliver webinars and self-paced web-based learning. My next target is M-learning, or mobile learning, to design training and education apps for smart phones. Despite all this wonderful technology, I miss the human dynamics of the classroom. I’m an extreme extrovert, so sitting in front of a computer screen is not all that thrilling to me. I hope that classroom training doesn’t go the way of the buggy whip. Maybe I’m an old fuddy-duddy, but I can’t see how you build deep meaningful relationships in a 140 characters.
Personal News
This was mostly a year of happiness for my family. My two sons continue to mature and grow into men. One of them gave me a granddaughter on December 1, making me a grandpa for the first time. It is quite a watershed moment when your children bear their children. We now have three generations of the Ford family in California. Judging how much we all love it here, I think our family is going to be in California for a very long time to come.
I began a romance novel this year. It grew out of a desire to express myself artistically, something I have neglected for years due to the heavy pressures of running a business. I love music and performing arts, but I know my real strength lies in the written word. I have already finished half of it and plan to complete it in 2013. Whether it ever gets published, I am enjoying the cathartic experience of writing fiction again.
Priceless Moments
2012 was certainly not all doom and gloom. Here are my favorite shout outs to people who provided the lighter moments of 2012.
Mitt Romney:
Thanks for reminding 47% of Americans that we are freeloaders while you proposed lowering your own tax rate to zero. Thanks too for reminding us what a freeloader Big Bird is and for sharing your binders full of women.
Barack Obama:
You looked as lost as a tongue-tied schoolboy staring down at your notes during the first debate. I guess it must be hard having to be the polite black gentleman who never blows his top in public. But, you came alive down the stretch and hit the winning shot at the buzzer.
CIA Director Petraeus:
If you can’t keep your mistresses a secret, how are we supposed to believe you can keep the nation’s secrets? But, hey, thanks for giving hope to short, middle-aged men. We didn’t think we were in demand anymore.
Republican Senate Candidates Aiken and Mourdock:
Thanks for explaining “legitimate rape” and how God wants rape victims to bear their rapist’s child. Nothing like having gray-faced old men with two dollar haircuts explain the facts of life to the rest of us.
White Southern Secessionists:
Talk about poor losers! Obama wins a second term and you want to secede again? Things didn’t work out so well for you the last time you tried to form the Confederacy, so why do you think it would turn out any better this time? Considering that I am spending 20 cents of every dollar of my income taxes subsidizing your country lifestyle and cheapskate local governments and seeing how much you hate America, I say good riddance. Don’t let the door hit you where your hounddog should’ve bit you.
The Mayans:
Your civilization didn’t last long enough to find out whether your prediction about the end of the world on 12/21/12 would come true, but that didn’t stop doomsdayers from selling “end of the world” kits that packaged and willed people’s belongings to the next creatures who will inhabit the earth. Wonder how insects are going to use smart phones?
Psy:
Congratulations on becoming a global pop sensation with your Gangnam Style. I’d bet on your horse every time. Music is the universal language we all comprehend.
Pope Benedict:
Congratulations on your new Twitter account @BenedictusPPXVI. I understand you are already up to 1.2 billion followers. With the Bible running to 1600 pages and papal encyclicals averaging 140 pages each, I guess you won’t be running out of material to tweet until at least 2112.
NY Court of Appeals:
Thanks for ruling that pole dancers working in the Empire state’s numerous exotic dance clubs are subject to local taxes, since they are not presenting a “dramatic or musical arts performance” that is tax-exempt under state law. I guess scantily-clad women gyrating on a pole to music is not dramatic unless your significant other catches you watching.
