World Without End

I never saw the movie, "Wall Street".

I didn't have to. Back in the early eighties, I watched the local news and, now and then, high school seniors were interviewed about what they wanted to do when they grew up. To a one, they all said, "I want to get rich." The best minds of that generation all had hippie parents and they all said, the hell with it. They wanted to be shown the money.

Michael Douglas said it was all right and the race was on. Get the money and wallow in it. And so we did. I, of course, arrived late, just as the pumpkin was pulling up outside, but I got my share.

Now, folks are saying the party is over. They might be right. Good piece in the New York Times, today, by Thomas Friedman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Friedman gets paid to take the long view, forwards and backwards, and, in a few paragraphs, he lays out the forehead-slapping thesis, that we should have known we couldn't keep doing all that stuff forever. He calls it "The Great Disruption." Starting right now. Tell your grandkids, when they ask you why they have to keep working in the field.

I accept the thesis, but I'm not so pessimistic about it. It's time to roll up our sleeves again and get to work. Forget about the money. Fix Gaia. Stop blowing everything up. Make a place for everybody at the table.

Amazing that, at this juncture in history, we get Obama.

Yahweh's up to something.