Got Sages?

There is a saying in the East, “when the Sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger”.  And in America, another finger is poking us in our eyes so we don’t even see it, let alone the moon.  For those who may be challenged by metaphor, this means that in spite of the fact that we have many Sages (smart people) there are those (people with other agendas) who are distracting us by telling us to watch the finger (unimportant  news).  Then they use another finger to poke us in the eye before we can see the moon (the moon being “the important stuff”).

I know, it’s a long way around to say that we are being distracted from “what’s really going on” by unimportant news.  Unimportant news like; Sarah Palin writing on her hand, kids talking to pilots in New York, misguided political bloviaters making ridiculous comments, Congressional tickling, and Rahm Emanuel confronting Congressmen in the men’s shower. 

So what is important news?  How about tax payers footing the bill of a major bailout of financial companies, whose exec’s are still doing the same things that broke us in the first place?  How about the working family not sharing in the improved productivity gains in which they’ve participated for the last three decades.  How about health care reform that is so politicized, cluttered and confused that the average person can’t make sense of it.

So where are the true Sages?  Those who can point to the moon and say, “that’s what’s really important”.  I’m afraid they’re all gone.  They’re gone because we have reached what Andy Grove of Intel Corporation fame, called an “inflection point”.  Think of it as a turning point. When a profound change is at hand.  Profound change can be positive or negative. 

At this critical point, I don’t think anyone knows which it is or what to do.  The scary thing about inflection points is that the change is so profound that old wisdom doesn’t apply any longer.  Anybody’s guess is equivalent to anyone else’s.  So how do we judge who to believe and who to ignore?

Looking to the East again, they have another saying that I think applies here:  “Those who say don’t know and those who know don’t say”.  So I immediately suspect anyone who tells me, in no uncertain terms, that they have the answers.  They may have had the answers before we reached this point.  But their answers are what got us here.  I don’t want any more of their answers.

I voted for President Obama because I believed that he possibly could have had the answers that we needed.  Candidate Obama was so different from the past.  I saw that as a good sign.  I failed to take our dysfunctional system of government into consideration.  I missed the power that it had to resist any changes that he might have intended.  And today, I admit my reasoning was wrong.  Not because I think Mr. Obama is anything other than what he claimed to be.  But because he too, misjudged the ethical contortions necessary to get even the simplest changes made in a system corrupted by career politicians owned by powerful financial forces.

I’ve said this before.  American’s love hyperbole – Kabuki.  But this national obsession  doesn’t come free.  While we distract ourselves with sensationalized unimportant news, the Washington-Wall Street game continues uninterrupted.  Main Street is losing and we’re not even in the game.

Now we have folks gearing up for the next elections by claiming to be the real and true Sages.  They all have “great ideas” about how to fix things.  A caution here:  When it comes to selecting a true Sage, one must choose carefully.  While he or she points with one finger, watch what the other hand is doing.  There may be a finger ready to poke you in the eye.         

Robert DeFilippis