As a natural intuitive, I often think in pictures; new ideas will come to me as full-blown metaphors. It happened just this morning as I was thinking about recent economic news. Most of us who were born, say, before the early 1960s remember The Marlboro Man of TV commercial fame. This lone figure sat tall in the saddle as he roamed the plains, master of a solitary kingdom. Madison Avenue hit a home run with this guy, because he evoked the American admiration of “the self-made man”. This morning I was thinking about how, for the vast majority of us, that archetype is beyond reach. It came to me that if we are preserve what has been holding us together as a society, we need to apprehend and embrace a new metaphor- the three-legged race. In a three-legged race, two people are tied together in such a way that they are interdependent. Progress for one depends on progress for the other. Despite all the noise and all the posturing in Congress about the deficit, preserving our life and health as a society really does depend on sharing the gain as well as the pain. Sustainability really does depend on community and the welfare of others. I would love to see the Three-Legged Race replace the Marlboro Man once and for all.
4 Jun
The Three-Legged Race
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