Is The American Dream a Nightmare?

Are those Wall Streeters, bankers, movers and shakers really in charge of all that matters in these United States? Does our vote or that letter to your Representative really amount to a hill of beans? Is corporate profit some nasty plan to beat down the middle class?

Being a child of the sixties, I find the Occupy Wall Street movement somewhat interesting. Personally, I can dismiss the whining about college tuition debt and the inability to get a job...no one promised a job to the holder of a BS in (you name the course of study). On the other hand, does 1% of the population control all legislation coming at us from Washington? Did you see the 60 Minutes piece on lobbying and corruption at the federal level of government a couple weeks ago? It was both amazing and disgusting. 

How many elected officials are there because of some inner desire to serve their country? How many are there to line their pockets and insure their own financial security? 

On those angles, I side with the OWS crowd. Things need to change and they must change soon. Change how? There's the question folks. Honestly, it seems rather fruitless to think about or try to do anything about this lack of real patriot leaders. How will we turn this ship 180° after so many years of sailing in the wrong direction? I know, lots of questions and no real answers. 

Below, I'd like to share two videos presenting views that are somewhat different, yet similar. Take ten minutes, watch each of them and comment your agreement or disagreement below. It could be quite interesting and I promise I won't use one of my many pepper spray containers on you if I don't agree. 

> the following video is not suitable for minor children or those with tender ears! <

Don't Settle

We lost a genius yesterday. I'm not using the word lightly. One of, if not the world's best innovator has left the building. Thank God he had time to give us so much.

Apple Computer's main man and driving force, Steve Jobs, admired by many and despised by a few, lost his seven-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He couldn't innovate his way out of that one, very unfortunately. Jobs' life proved the existence of the American Dream. Strange, isn't it, that the way so many people heard of his passing was via a tool that he created and constantly improved upon.

I fondly remember that my first home computer was a Macintosh SE which I used along with a desktop publishing program, Aldus PageMaker, in the late 1980s to publish a financial newsletter first, and then a genealogy letter detailing my search through our family history. I can smile now remembering the limitations of that machine (it did have dual floppy disk drives!) compared to what we have today, but it was a start down the road that opened the computing world to everyone. Innovation at its very best.

I hope my sons and my grandkids—anyone reading this—will heed the advice Jobs gave to the Stanford University graduating class at their 2005 commencement ceremony. Take these challenges to heart and act upon them—now. After all, our time is limited.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. 

*************

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Labor Should Have Its Rewards

I received the following in an email from a friend this morning. I'd seen it before and again today I thought about the important truths set forth within it. At first glance, it may seem cruel to some, but I ask you take the time to read and ponder each point. Try your best to put yourself in both the place of the giver and the receiver. Punishing success and rewarding failure is a certain road to disaster.

• You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. 
• You don't multiply wealth by dividing it. 
• Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn't first take from somebody else. 
• Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. 
• The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don't have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

~ Dr. Adrian Rogers

Wikipedia says this about Dr. Rogers: This quote appears frequently on the Internet and is often attributed to Dr. Rogers with an incorrect date of 1931. In fact, the quotation is part of a longer sermon delivered by Dr. Rogers in a larger series titled God's Way to Health, Wealth and Wisdom, but it also appears as a passage in Dr. Rogers' 1996 work Ten Secrets for a Successful Family which complains that our young people do not know either the importance or value of honest labor.