Jenny and Erin

When I first started spending time on the Internet I felt slightly lost. Who are all of these people? The social cues I was used to depending on when meeting someone were missing; such as how they dress, hold themselves, their tone of voice or even being able to tell if they are actively engaged in a conversation. Funny enough, it didn’t take long before I started to notice similar cues; how a person writes, whether they share a lot or just a little personal information, how they convey emotion, if they YELL a lot, whether they post their picture along with comments or if they respond to everybody or selectively. If you are paying attention, these things are all very telling.

I thought it would be much simpler to contain what is known about oneself on the Internet. I thought it would be easy to disclose only the information you want others to know, whether true or untrue. After spending some time online, I no longer think this is the case – there’s snotty comments, common annoyance with certain people, admiration of others, the ability to track down nearly every word someone has ever said and to know where the person is accessing the internet from. Yep, most websites and blogs have the ability to track your physical location, down to the street. You can be silently watched on the internet, both your words and habits, for a very long time before any contact occurs. Your brilliant ideas, foolish thoughts or hotheaded responses are visible for all to see – and people either accept your words as a snapshot of you at that time understanding the limitations of a single example of written word or these same words stamp a lasting impression of you for old and new viewers alike.

Not all that different from what we experience in person. Each of us will always have those people who knew you “when”. Some of these “whens” feel a little better to be remembered for than others - when you were in high school and acted like a fool, as the party girl in college, when you lost your temper at a friend in the middle of dinner at a fancy restaurant, the night you had amazingly brilliant and accurate reflections on the world, and so forth. It doesn’t matter how far you go in life at some point these people will inevitably catch up and remind you of who you used to be. Just as online these times do not necessary stay in the past.

I am surprised at how different and yet similar these two ways of communicating are. I am also surprised at how difficult it is to hide your core self online. Do I think it can be done, yes. But I imagine it comes at the same cost as hiding your core self in your daily interactions out in the “real” world. Hiding brings inauthentic friendships, relationships and the hollowness that living a persona for the world entails. Yes, I believe the stories of people being lied to or taken advantage of over the internet - just as I do of people being lied to or taken advantage of in their every day lives – as they are not all that different.

What does a credit score say about a person? Can it truly be used as a measure of one’s character, worth or value? Loads of people base their judgments on your credit score. These may be the obvious people - lenders, loaners and apartment managers – or the not-so-obvious – potential employers, people you date and even family members. Is your credit score an accurate representation of you? Are the judgments being made about you after a glance at your credit score fair?

Although the exact method for calculating credit scores is a black hole, the concept doesn’t need to be a mystery. Simply put, a credit score is the rating of how well you keep your word when it comes to paying back money you owe. Your credit score doesn’t have to be about having the right number of credit cards or the perfect balance between good and bad debt. It is simply a reflection of whether or not you pay your bills when you say you are going to.

However, when it comes to credit people often are playing a game of pretend, with others, and more dangerously, with themselves. They pretend they have more money than they do. Or that checks and credit cards aren’t real money. They pretend they will always be able to juggle their bills and mortgage and come out ahead. Worst of all, they pretend (especially to themselves) they’re not giving their word when they sign a check or receipt thereby promising to pay. They imagine that because no one can see how precarious their financial situation is that it just doesn’t exist. It’s time to stop pretending.

The hardest thing anyone can ever do in life is to stop pretending. Sometimes it is hard to see through the games we play with ourselves, but once you do, hold onto it. Let’s say you want to raise your score. If you’re like most people, you’re looking for a quick fix – call mom or dad for a loan, close credit cards, play hardball with collection agencies or maybe even hire a company to fix your score. Although these big dramatic gestures may feel good in the short term, you are focusing in the wrong place.

Crazy as this sounds if you want to fix your credit you must practice both self-awareness and honoring your word. It doesn’t matter if you can negotiate ten dollars off your total debt balance; what matters is that you approach this process with as much integrity you can muster and say only things you mean (especially to yourself). Let your word mean something again. Your word, and others belief in it, is worth more than ten dollars. And honestly if you have poor credit and are still trying to find a way to raise your score to borrow more money, you are still pretending. Focus on what matters and don’t worry about what your credit score is.

Maybe because your credit score is not only a reflection of how you manage your money, but your ability to be honest and keep your word, is why it matters so much to others. What a credit score fails to show is the direction you are going, whether it be a incline up or down. Change your thinking and your credit score will inevitably follow. I don’t know if a credit score is a fair judge of a person’s entire character, but what I do know is ultimately your credit score doesn’t matter – who you are does!

We are living in magic times. Times when we embrace technologies we don’t understand. Times in which we are disconnected from the very knowledge our survival depends upon. Why do the lights turn on when you flip a switch? How does clean water show up in the faucet? How exactly is the internet bringing this post to you right now? We rarely even realize how much we don’t understand, much less dwell on it. If we did, it would be too scary.

This knowledge gap is so disturbing because it is hard to predict cause and effect if you don’t understand something. I was watching TV with an 8 year old and a commercial came on - a woman approaches a grocery store shelf to get a carton of orange juice. The scene cuts to an orchard and a supervisor yelling at farmhands to hurry up. They toss him a container of juice and he manages to put it on the shelf just in time for the shopping woman to grab it. This smart city girl turned to me wide-eyed if this was really where orange juice came from. I explained about orchards, fruit pickers, packaging plants and delivery trucks, but still I could feel her doubt. Lack of knowledge creates doubt.

When you don’t know or think about something’s origins, such as the orange juice, it is easy to get wrapped up in the wrong things. If orange juice for all practical purposes comes from a grocery store, not an orchard, then a clean grocery store is more important than the conditions the oranges are grown or packaged under. When your orange juice is recalled and the nightly news runs reports about chemically tainted orange juice, the disconnect between your watchfulness of the local grocery’s hygiene and the tainted juice in your fridge scares you. Your lack of knowledge about the orange juice’s true origins caused you to fail miserably when accurately predicting danger. Cause and effect are not linked. A clean store doesn’t equal safe food. The world is a dangerous place. The doubt you felt before at your lack of knowledge has now crystallized into fear.

Bound tightly to these knowledge gaps (the very source of our fears) is a lack of understanding about whom or what is good, or bad. In fact, you can’t even determine where to look to for information. Once you start searching for the truth, even for something as seemingly straightforward as orange juice, you realize it’s hard to know what to believe and/or who to trust. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is overworked and a quick internet search informs you that its monitoring systems are overwhelmed and spotty at best. It takes hours of concentrated study to understand the differences amongst organic, locally grown, and natural foods. Then you have to figure out how to apply this new knowledge, all the while not exactly sure how accurate it is since it came from the internet and your local food co-op staff. But hey, you’re trying! Your fear has been replaced with a vague sense of distrust.

After surviving the tainted orange juice, researching the best alternatives and taking the time and financial hits associated with feeding your family organically, you hear something on the radio driving home that causes a flash of anger. A large chain store has been accused and acknowledges they have been “mislabeling” non-organic foods as organic and selling them to you at organic prices. Your anger builds as you drive home, as you tell your wife and when you remember the tainted juice in your refrigerator. It’s easy for anger to tip over into hate.

The orange juice was just a silly example, now consider how this can be applied to the water system, our electrical system and the “rolling blackouts” the gripped parts of the nation, our national security, or even your retirement accounts. Pssst…here’s the dirty little secret that no one wants to speak in these magic times. Lack of understanding creates doubt. Doubt blends into fear. Fear encourages distrust. Distrust creates hate. When you are angry your actions become uncontrollable and highly unpredictable. Hate can destroy us all. Living in magic times is dangerous.

What kind of life is it if everything is just a “starter”? Lately I’ve been hearing more and more about starters - starter marriages, starter rings, starter homes and even starter mansions. I don’t think it’s a stretch to point out that there also seems to be a rise in starter kids and starter families. When, and why, did everything become just a stepping-stone to bigger and better?

It is disturbing just how much time is spent thinking, planning, plotting and living for the next rung on the ladder. When did we start buying a house instead of a home, or better yet, when did we start buying an “investment” instead of a house? Two generations ago a mortgage made sense – you bought a house, married, raised children and retired all in the same house – you ended up owning something. It was yours. This has gone out of fashion and given way to buying a series of houses to match each change in your lifestyle and a mortgage that never goes away. It’s easy to eat up thirty years renting a life.

Wedding rings and first marriages have also attained starter status. It seems that somewhere along the line the meaning of the wedding ring was lost. Ideally, the emotions and hopes that go into giving and receiving the ring impart it with a sort of emotional “power”. I imagine it would sting to overhear the woman you love talking to her friends about how this is just a starter wedding ring. How about the day when she suggests you trade it in? Does this change your love for her just a little bit? Or is she just a starter to you too? Are you slowly looking for the newer, shinier, nicer version of her?

Starter kids, poor things, are common in our culture. What else would you call children of never married or divorced parents, kids who moms and dads marry and remarry, reproduce and start a new family with “their children”? Maybe it’s even worse for the kids who have one or more parent form instant families with a live in lover only to dissolve the whole relationship on a whim – pulling on and off the label of family as fast as you can say starter. There’s also the parent who sees a whole part of their life as a starter, shakes it off and begins again in fitting fashion – moving across country (too far for small children to fly alone) to a new job, eventually a new spouse, kids and life.

We are living in a culture where more is better, bigger is better and new almost immediately becomes old. We are teaching children a lifestyle of more and cringe at the ugly reflection we see. If all of the things in your life are just crappy starters – your home, your wedding ring, your marriage and maybe even your family how much love, nurturing and effort do you truly give them? Isn’t there something to be said for loving things in spite of their “defects”? Remember the old saying; home is where the heart is? Well it applies too much more than your address. Where is home (and your heart) in a starter life?

Oh, what kind of fool am I? I found myself outraged and intrigued last week by the homes and energy consumption of President Bush and former Vice-President Al Gore. In fact, I cared enough to research and write a post about it. Click here to read last week’s post “President Bush, In the Closet? Al Gore a Hypocrite?”. Now I’ve realized that not only was I missing the big picture this whole time, I’ve also been drastically underestimating the players – a couple of shifty politicians. Worse yet, if I’m right, not only have I been duped - so have you!

One of our readers forwarded me the link to “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, a documentary challenging human’s responsibility for climate change. Click here to watch the film. For those not fluent with the climate change debate (also referred to as global warming), it is widely believed that the rise in carbon dioxide emissions is one of the largest contributors to our changing climate. Carbon dioxide is emitted when we do things such as produce electricity from coal, drive and make plastic. “The Great Global Warming Swindle” never asserts climate change is not occurring; rather it convincingly argues that a link does not exist between climate change and carbon emissions. Thus, the role we can play in stopping or reversing climate change is radically less than popular propaganda would have us believe.

Since Al Gore appears to understand the “climate crisis” so well, I’d argue it’s highly probable that he is aware of this data and believes it. This explains why he has done so little to personally to reduce his “carbon footprint”, especially in relation to the comforts of home (and a two year $30,000 gas and electric bill and a pool buys you comforts!). Does the persona of environmental crusader promise him enough notoriety (and potentially a second bid at the White House) that he is unwilling to “out” the true facts, and the potentially even scarier truth, that personal responsibility isn’t enough to reverse the impending climate changes? If so, what does this say about Al Gore the man?

Maybe President Bush isn’t as dim as he’s been publicly portrayed, especially on the subject of climate change. Say he also believes that carbon dioxide emissions are not linked to a changing climate and is therefore equally unconcerned. So why his sustainable home? I’d imagine in his role as President of the United States he is privy to a lot of information that the rest of us aren’t; such as doomsday scenarios. There are dwindling resources worldwide and gaps in our country’s internal and external security as well as disaster planning and readiness. What better place to be if our country’s infrastructure collapses than at home secluded on hundreds of acres with animal herds, vast amounts of security (or at least guns) and sustainable water and energy supplies. Makes you wonder, just what DOES he know?

If carbon dioxide emissions aren’t responsible for climate change, it sheds some light on the seemingly contradictory private versus public behavior of both Al Gore and President Bush. It also raises some very scary questions, questions I’m almost too afraid to ask. What aren’t they telling us? And why?

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President Bush, In the Closet? Al Gore, A Hypocrite?

I was angered last week when an article was forwarded to me about Al Gore’s “inconvenient truth.” The story goes, after losing the 2000 presidential election Al Gore decided to dedicate himself to the environmental movement – determined to halt the ever-impending threat human activity has caused on our planet. In February 2007 Al Gore won an Oscar for the movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Part portrait of Al Gore the man and part portrait of the current environmental situation, it is riveting and a call to action. It is also a perception-changing documentary about Al Gore the man – in it he is funny, articulate and passionate. He comes across as a man on a mission to save us from ourselves, able to take all of the scientific mumble-jumble on the environment and reformat it into an understandable message for the average person.

In March 2007 a nonprofit think tank found that in 2006 Al Gore’s 10,000 sq ft home used more than 20 times the national average kilowatt-hours, resulting in a two-year bill of $30,000. The Gore home sports a pool and pool house in addition to the main 20 room; eight-bathroom structure and its grounds are meticulously maintained. The energy calculation does not include consumption associated with his family’s private jets, SUVs or additional two residences. ABC news reports additional sacrifices Al Gore and his family have made such as using florescent light bulbs and signing up to have his electricity come from renewable resources. Further, he is in the process of installing solar panels. In the process?!?

For an individual who has spent the better part of the last six years teaching and preaching about “saving the planet” he seems to personally be doing little to limit his family’s personal impact on the environment. Thanks a lot buddy.

This story gets even crazier - the sitting President of the United States, George W. Bush, a man with a horrible environmental record as president an even shadier past in the oil business is quietly “outed.” What is he “outed” for you are probably wondering – oil leaking into the ocean, taking money from lobbyists who don’t believe climate change exists??? Nope – it turns out his “white house in Texas” is for all intents and purposes environmentally neutral and was intentionally designed this way! The Bush’s 4,000 square foot home in Texas is a passive solar house built of native limestone positioned to absorb winter sunlight with geothermal heat pumps for warming and cooling, water from rain runoff is stored and used as well as re-using so called gray water (water that escapes from the shower and sink) to water the exterior of their home. The grounds of the Bush home are planted in native flora and so they require little in the way of maintenance.

What is going on? Jenny and I spent an evening talking about the possibilities:

• Is President George W. Bush a closet environmentalist afraid to come out?
• Has Al Gore taken the stance of an environmentalist because he saw it simply as an opportunity to win public favor and notoriety?
• Have both Al Gore and President Bush chosen their public positions because they feel a higher duty to represesent the way their constituents and party desires? And if so should I be satisfied, as they are elected to do just this, represent their constituents? Then why do I feel so mislead and disenchanted? How important should a politician’s personal opinion be on any issue?

Even with all of these thoughts there is still one, even larger, looming question. Which of these men has the potential to actually change the hearts and minds of others in such a way as to begin to change our energy consumption patterns? Al Gore seemed to be on the right track with his movie, however, I argue that people who went to see this movie were likely already “environmental converts”. But, the most recent revelation about his energy bill and other “sacrifices” for the environment have made his position a joke. President Bush is doing something for the environment (gasp); not only is he buying the technology and putting his money into the field, but bringing dignitaries and world leaders to his ranch and showing them that this it is possible without losing the luxuries we are all so accustomed to (i.e. hot showers, a landscaped yard, heat when it is cold outside). So for policy he earns a zero, but all in all, I think President Bush is coming out ahead. And that doesn’t say a whole lot for Mr. Gore.

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I’ve Been Duped - And So Have You!