Flashback Fridays

Now that the count of these short essays nears 900, it makes sense to review some of the better examples from the past. I explained on November 15 why the Real American Solutions must come from Americans themselves. Most of the crises we face individually and as a society are the direct result of individual decisions, not government action or inaction.

Behavior has consequences. Ill-advised decisions and actions lead to bad outcomes. Individual bad outcomes build on one another combining into what people consider national problems – the country moving in the wrong direction. To turn things around, to mitigate these crises and epidemics that we hear so much about on the news requires better decisions, leading usually to the opposite actions, saving instead of spending, for example, to improve retirement prospects. But that is just a single example. There are so many others.

One way to make sense of the myriad of possible decisions and actions is to categorize similar actions into dimensions, as I have done here. Poor choices in each of the areas of Critical Thinking, Economic Understanding, Perspective, Responsibility and Discipline lead to similar bad outcomes.

The purpose of these essays is to help readers develop two skills: recognizing behavior as the driving force behind consequences either good or bad, and being able to assign problematic behaviors to a dimension to see similarities. The result can be an “ah-ha” moment, identifying and seeing in a new light the errors of our communities and of ourselves. This understanding can lead to better outcomes, less stressful lives and even better voting decisions. 

So, with 900 examples to choose from, it shouldn’t be necessary to provide so many new examples. Some of the older ones will do just as well. It’s not like we’ve seen any significant progress over the past ten years. Americans are still making the same mistakes. The only differences today are that new technologies help to spread bad ideas faster and that almost any current example is far more likely to be politicized, which gives everyone an easy way to place the blame somewhere else and ignore their own contribution to the problem. 

Beginning soon, I will review some of the oldies-but-goodies from these many examples of poor choices and post them as Flashback Friday specials. These are still a relevant starting point to practice the skill of focusing on behavior instead of looking for new policies, promises of miracles and other unrealistic solutions.