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The Power of Failure
Posted by Joseph Riggio on Sunday, November 02, 2008As we’re entering the last part of 2008 and those of us in the northern climates are feeling the onset of autumn weather it’s a good time to take stock and begin thinking about how you’ve gotten to where you are and where you want to go from here. Maybe you’ll find that along the way you’ve picked up some baggage you no longer need, and have been judging things by some old “installed” criteria that no longer fit you so well. One of those things might be the education you have or haven’t had yet ... about failing really well.
Good Morning,
To some folks it would seem as though I have been really busy lately ... major client projects I’m working on, serving on a Board of Trustees, serving on some volunteer committees, developing new material for the MythoSelf Process training programs, designing a new professional leadership communication training program, working with private clients, reformatting my radio show on VoiceAmerica.com, multiple writing projects, launching new products for 2009 ... WHEW! And when I’m not doing that (or sleeping) of course I’m carving out time for my family every chance I get, which I make sure is plenty actually ... taking my daughter to school and sometimes picking her up too, cooking dinner for the family, talking with my son and helping him make plans to attend graduate school, spending some time with my wife just enjoying each other’s company. That sure looks like a long list, and I didn’t even try to make it comprehensive ... just what I thought of off the top of my head as I’m writing.
I’m going to guess there are some folks who could give me a run for my money with their own lists. The point is that many people today are busy, some of the folks I work with are among the busiest people I know. Yet what’s interesting is that the best performers I know don’t seem busy. In fact the best performers I know seem to move from one thing to another with both elegance and grace, and they do so as though they have all the time in the world to do it. Unlike the popular impression that the busiest people are the most powerful or successful, what I have found is that the most powerful and successful people I know have all the time they want and need to do what they want. I’d even go so far as to say that the real metric becomes:
“Having all the time you want, to do whatever it is that you want, that is absolutely uncommitted to doing anything because you must or have to, and the means to pursue those things you want to be doing, is the most accurate measure of success you’ll find.”
Most people confuse the phrase in the last part of that sentence, “...and the means to pursue those things you want to be doing ...” as the measure of success. But, having the means and not the time is absolutely useless and some folks have found out either just before or just after their heart attack or stroke. You see I know more and more folks who have begun to reconsider how much they have in terms of “means” in favor of how much they have in terms of “time.” And, these folks are opting to make more from less.
These folks are simplifying their lives in every direction, e.g.: smaller homes, more carefully chosen vacations, less “stuff” they need or want to own (which serves one well when you choose for a smaller home), moving away from the “big metro areas” into more remote and often more beautiful locations for their primary residence ... some folks I know have even taken to moving permanently to their favorite vacation locations as their primary residences. What’s interesting is that these folks are not perceiving their life experience as simpler but rather as more full, complete and whole when I speak with them. They have opted out of the system’s definition of “success” and have begun to redefine it for themselves. In part this redefinition includes doing what they want not necessarily what they “should.”
Very early on in this journey of mine I made a decision to do what I wanted with my life. That decision included dropping out from the standard schooling track, even though I was top honors student when I tried and a very good student even when I didn’t. I just realized at the time that for me an endless track of classroom schooling imposed on me by teachers who would demand that I prove that I’d learned what they wanted me to wasn’t the path to take to keep what I already had, and would more likely corrupt many of my best intincts. I had done enough schooling in school, and had enough schooling outside of school to know that for me what I wanted and needed to learn wasn’t contained in those hallowed halls nor held by those hollow educators.
Now, some folks would look at this and suggest is was a first step to failure and lack of accomplishment (and many did) ... “Oh no! What will you do with a good ("approved") education?”
Now you’ll notice that word “approved” in parentheses there in that quote, yet you’ll seldom hear anyone using it in actual speech. However, that’s exactly what they mean ... that any education that isn’t approved by the system isn’t actually to be considered an education at all. And more and more as we “move forward” the requirement to do anything comes with a price tag on it of having taken the “approved” education to get your ticket punched first. In many ways education today is the “mark of the beast” and if you don’t have it you will have to fight tooth and claw to get pass the prejudice of choosing your own path.
So what do I think the role of formal schooling really is about then? Well that depends on who you ask. For some incredibly gifted and sincere teachers it is a way to expand their student’s minds and their lives. I’ve seen and even worked with those kinds of teachers ... and they are brilliant to be around. For others it is a way to impose the mores of society on the students in their care, teaching them what is right and wrong, what has to be known by everyone for their own good, and in some case literally how to think about things according so some proscribed protocol. Unfortunately in my limited experience, as a student, as a parent, as a faculty member and as a citizen of this great nation that later type is much more common. The system is designed not to educate but to teach:
“educate" [To bring up or guide the powers of, as a child; to develop and cultivate, whether physically, mentally, or morally]
“teach" [To impart the knowledge of; to give intelligence concerning; to impart, as knowledge before unknown, or rules for practice; to inculcate as true or important; to exhibit impressively; as, to teach arithmetic, dancing, music, or the like; to teach morals.]
You see the major difference here is that real education is about helping what’s inside to come to the surface and manifest fully, i.e.: “To bring up or guide the powers of, as a child”, whereas what teaching is about is imparting from the outside in what is desirable for the teacher, i.e.: “To impart the knowledge of; to give intelligence concerning; to impart, as knowledge before unknown, or rules for practice; to inculcate as true or important” This major and critical difference so often goes completely overlooked and therefore missed by even really well meaning parents, and many teachers as well, when they think about schooling children.
And now as I continue to keep my vigil regarding how we are schooling and inculcating our children into our society, as I listen to the drivel of the politicians calling for more schooling and more funding for schooling, I am in ever greater distress. I am distressed specifically because I don’t believe those politicians are among the innocent and ignorant masses who tout the wonders of “Getting a good ("approved") education.” I think they are in fact part of the very system that wants to inculcate children to follow the rules, to do what they are told, not to upset the apple cart or think for themselves.
One of the things I point to most often is how school is more and more becoming a place in the U.S. of A. where you’re not allowed to “fail.” They are teaching that “failure is bad.” For example:
*"There are folks who are against the whole [valedictorian] idea because they don’t like the competitiveness,” says Michael Carr of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
*In Texas, Indiana and Kentucky, several schools are parading 10 or more of their top students as “valedictorians” on graduation day—making a joke out of a once-great honor. According to the dean of admissions at one California college, some high schools are honoring as many as 50 to 100 “valedictorians.”
This is a total joke!!! What do these folks think they are doing??? Can you imagine in our evolution if some tribal elder had decided on this kind of utter and abject stupidity? “Bruce I know you don’t see so well, and your spear arm isn’t as strong as Larry’s, but we want you to feel like you are just as valued as any other hunter or warrior in this tribe so I want you to lead the hunt today, HO!” That tribe died off, they have no descendants, their genes have been crushed under the hooves of the buffalo that Bruce could neither see nor spear ... gone for all time ... THANK G-D!!!
Yet this is exactly what we are doing to our students today, forcing them to deep mediocrity. For instance Bruce may have been the best woodworker in the tribe, he may have “invented” the practice of hardening spears and arrows in fire. Yet because he was never allowed to fail he was never forced to find his own path, the one where he naturally excelled and where his natural proclivities and fascinations would allow him to excel. This is the very path I find education in the West on today. The path that’s about mediocrity and producing the right kind of worker bee for the system not for the bee. For example:
*"But this Kumbaya attitude has also seeped into classrooms, with potentially serious consequences. A school board in New Hampshire, concerned about undermining the self-image of kids, voted earlier this year to end the practice of breaking students into different groups and teaching them according to their ability. So now the school is “leveling” the groups and teaching everyone together.”
And our freaking genius politicians keep talking about more education and education as the great equalizer (there’s a real revealing statement if I ever heard one) ... and not a peep about real education reform! Not one politician has the guts to stand up to the NEA or the AFT and say, “NO MORE ... NO MORE FUNDING FOR OUR FAILING SCHOOLS ... OR THE SYSTEM THEY SUPPORT! And, it’s not about the schools it’s about the process, the very core pedagogy that we need to revisit.
Somewhere along the way we lost our impetus to test ourselves, and in so testing ourselves find out our limits ... and our strengths. We seem to have built a system where the average became good enough and there was little to no reason to strive for excellence. We have derided those who have achieved excellence and seek to tear down each and every accomplishment that identifies someone as elite. Oh, it’s okay if the system that produces elite performance gets some credit, but not the individual. You just need to read the gossip papers and magazines, to note their sales volume, to collect the headlines they tout and you’ll know all you need to about how we love to see our heroes destroyed in the most public and eviscerating possible manner.
Yet it is in failure that we learn about how to succeed. Success, and even more so excellence, requires risk. But we are taught to be afraid to fail. The message of the larger society is that your failures will be publicly displayed and used to diminish your achievements no matter how great. We are building a culture that derides the “tallest poppy,” the individual who dares to stick their head up and above others as they strive for excellence. When what we need are more opportunities to fail early on so we learn the critical lesson that failure is temporary, as is success. This lesson above all others allows us to take grand risks. Knowing that failure is only temporary and in fact most often a step on the way to the success we desire will allow and encourage us to take the risks required to succeed wildly.
The danger here to the “status quo” resides in the corollary lesson that taking risk, failing and defining success by your own terms will cause many people to opt out, to choose their own path and not the one most desired for them to take by the society they are instructed to serve like good worker bees. The real education is finding out who you are, with all of the accompanying lessons that come with testing yourself to the very limits of your being. Yet even the most simple opportunity to test oneself in the crucible of becoming educated, i.e.: finding out what’s inside that you can bring to the surface and manifest on the outside, has become an issue for concern in our schools, those bastions of good ("approved") education:
*"No more honor rolls, valedictorians, letter grades—how long before schools start to ban simple games like tag? Oh, wait: That happened at a Santa Monica, California, school just a couple of years ago. “In this game, there is a ‘victim,’ or ‘It,’ which creates a self-esteem issue,” the principal explained in a newsletter to parents. Tag would no longer be allowed, unless supervised by adults. Your lesson for the day, kids: School is no place for winners.”
So instead of winners, winners in the game of living their own lives, we are producing a country of well “educated” very busy people without much of a life at all.
I appreciate that I am as busy as I am, but not to busy to stop and smell the rose ... every day. I appreciate that by some fluke I both had the intuition to step away before the inculcation took over completely and convinced me that my role as dictated to me by others was more critical to my well being than stepping away, taking the risks, failing ... and succeeding ... to find my own path. I appreciate that along that path I was fortunate enough to find a few amazing teachers who opened me up to myself ... and to the wonders of this world we share. And, I appreciate that despite all the challenges I see around me, especially at times in our own backyard, I still live in a country where I can write and publish this post at my will.
[*NOTE: All the quotes about schools I’ve used above come from Outrageous! “A” Is for Average Not achievement or accomplishment or All-American. Not anymore. by Michael Crowley at Readers Digest online (http://www.rd.com).]
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
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(13) Comments • Permalink
Your words read tohourughly heart-felt. Thank you very much for an informative post. I wish you were my Sun’s school-teacher. All he gets is wise words about following the words of the teachers.. And I look at their life, and what do they know? After all one only can teach what one is. Then again, the great nation that the US of A is has produced more award winning geniuses than any other country. So I believe we’ll find a way.
Don’t quite see how being raised in an environment of success vs failure will in any way encourage one to go one’s own way. By my understanding it merely traps one into forever seeking that success, as defined by the power interests in that society, and running away from failue so becoming not only conventional but a shit to those who have been labelled ‘failures’. Any way I thought there was no such thing as failure or success in the mythoself model: everything’s just data, right?
Joseph wrote: “One of the things I point to most often is how school is more and more becoming a place in the U.S. of A. where you’re not allowed to “fail.” They are teaching that “failure is bad.”
Joseph, thanks for this informative and engaging piece. Glad to hear that all is well in New Joisey.
IMHO the entire public school system is set up to instill a fear of failure into our young people. Those who learn how best to jump through hoops, they comply and get the goodies- the grades etc. Public schools have no place for the real innovators- those who bring something to the party. Those who “fail” and make mistakes over and again are the ones who propel society forwards- Thomas Edison springs to mind here.
“The real education is finding out who you are, with all of the accompanying lessons that come with testing yourself to the very limits of your being.”
Again, I fully concur with this definition of eduction. An education cannot be taught, but only sought by the learner, and the “failures” are the data we call the experience that is “learning”.
That’s really interesting! I’ve been doing private work with people who for instance think in very simple terms of what, when and how they should be doing things, based upon commen succes/failure criteria (company managers for instance). I’ve noticed that it is not at all difficult for them to get in touch (intent) and to a state “where they do not need anything (else)”. Even to build quite concrete and ridget motivation strategies.
However, when it comes to going into process, they are left defenseless against the consequences what they now think and process differently.
But the very fact that they were forced to align themselves with and act upon a new set of boundary conditions prompts for an internal re-configuration (sort of like the brownies in Goorge Lucas’s “Willow”: “let’s go this way”, “No no no no. I don’t think so. This way” (together:) “THAT way!”.
Now, in the movie, all ends well. For us, there are no guarentees and that is why re-configuration must and will happen.
But why go through 30 re-configurations?! i totally agree with the fact that people who are just handed success status (because we don’t want them to “feel different” or “hurt their feelings") are actually stripped of their chance, even their right, to figure out their own life. My question is - do we have to wait to graduation before kids hit that point of personal crisis? or even later?
With kids of that age - they do think in terms of how they stack up against each other, which is totally ok. What should be in place is a chance for children to make a cross -reference. So it’s not just “ya’ gotta get A’s and do as the teacher says...”. Something else must be in place that children will have to relate to and it must be communicated to be of equal “importance”. I know what people will say - “wont kids choose the more entertaining offer?”. Guess what, they will! They will also be forced to figure out what they want. And how they will do it.
That’s what I think is really interesting about Joseph’s blog post: In the end, people who think in terms of success/failure have to be placed, physically, in a situation where they can not choose what they would usually choose. Simply getting in touch will not create sufficient conscious contact for them to act and get the outcome they want.
Joseph - shouldn’t our kids be doing a h… of a lot of roleplaying or elite sports or elite what ever - of their choice?
Allstair Jack? ...
Anyway ... you’re confusing simple aphorisms like the oft quoted, “There is no failure only feedback.” of the NLP community as though they are absolutes. In this case you seem to imply that the phrase, “It’s all just data.” is an absolute in the system of the MythoSelf Process as I have designed it. Simply ... that’s incorrect, and since I’ve made up the system I would know 
If you want the two absolutes I ask for people to accept within the tautology of the MythoSelf Process they would be: A) The Universe Exists, and B) The MythoSelf Process Is All Made Up ... a Complete Fabrication I Have Designed. Beyond these two requested absolutes everything else is open to interpretation, both subjective and collective. In this way the MythoSelf Process is much more of a hermeneutic system than a tautological system.
The phrase, “It’s all just data.” is intended as an alert rather than an absolute. It’s a reminder you could say, that data in the environment is just that ... data ... until you make something of it ... i.e.: meaning. However, as soon as we assign meaning to the data ... a default as far as I can tell in the human system ... it does become something to/for us. What the data becomes, i.e.: the meaning we assign to it, determines our response to the data and our behaviors, which in turn determine our performances and the outcomes we produce or not. For a more detailed hierarchy of this process as defined within the structure of the MythoSelf Process model I refer you to the white paper: Twelve Essential Notions on this site.
To your point about success and failure vis-a-vis the pointing a child to their own unique path my point was two-fold, 1) when children are subject to the inculcation of reward and punishment, re: success and failure, as they are defined externally by others (in my case example teachers) their responses begin to take on a pattern of response designed to elicit reward based on the imposed, external criteria of success, and 2) when children aren’t “allowed” to fail, i.e.: to aim for an intended outcome and not produce it via their performances in relation to it (the intended outcome), they do not have the opportunity to develop the resiliency required to take the risks associated with succeeding in relation to the outcomes they set for themselves, which may be beyond their current level of competency, learning and/or skill.
So we might say we agree about the idea you allude to regarding setting children up to succeed or fail based on external criteria to some extent. However, when we take this idea further and allow the children themselves determine the success criteria and teach them how to do that we are building a completely different kind of response potential in them. This you could say would be one of my intended outcomes for allowing children to fail ... as well as allowing them the experience of winning, which cannot be valued in the same way without the risk of failure being present IMO.
Joseph
Interesting, and you call your self a doctor.
But seriously, you seem to have missed a very important point on this matter. That is, that the whole notion of what knowledge is, is what needs to be opened to question. Who does not alrady know that subject matter knowledge is different from experience and real competence (e.g. learning about riding a bike, and learning to ride a bike)? In particular, that knowledge is not contained in the brain and tested via memory recall - that knowledge is competence to produce specific results obeservable in the world. Then there is the matter of emotional learning. Power is not found in failure. Power is just another assessment of knowledge - knowing how to produce value in the world is power. Failure is just feedback, if you want to say something useful about it.
“All knowing is doing; all doing is knowing” Dr. Humburto Maturana
Erik,
IMO:
Role-playing ... NO
Situational Learning ... YES!
From my point of view role playing is when the “actors/actresses” KNOW they are playing a role, have little to no real vested interest in the outcome and are going through the motions as they would enact a scene in a play. This kind of “learning” is very common in corporate training programs from my observation and produces virtually no sustainable result whatsoever. Given all that I would not impose that upon our children.
However, what you may be referring to is what I’d call Situational Learning. This is most easily described as putting learners in situations which mimics the actual situations they are learning to perform in relation to. The distinction here is that the learning situation is “real” and they have to perform appropriately to get their outcomes in the situation. The key is developing the relationship to the situation for the learners such that the outcome becomes relevant to/for them, i.e.: they have to build a vested interest in the outcome.
Real games do this quite well ... just visit a casino some time and see how “real” the outcomes are for the players and how vested they are in them (the outcomes). Building real games that generate a vested interest in the players takes great skill in my experience. I base much, if not all, of my training on installing skill sets via designing and facilitating real games in situational learning environments.
I think surrounding situational learning with appropriate content and then encasing the content in the real games of the situational learning environment produces outstanding results in terms of creating learning environments that produce lasting performance regardless of whether that performance is in the domain of maths or sports ... or anything in between or around as well.
FWIW I have found that learners respond best when the stakes of winning and losing are included in the design of the situational learning environment, whether the learners in question are five or fifty years old BTW.
Joseph
Hi Joseph, Thanks for your detailed response. Nice to know we’re not too far away in our analysis of success and failure. I think the model I proposed, that which is based on external reference, is what the ‘no-failure’ brigade are rallying against as it is what has so far existed. I do agree that in practice this isn’t going to get us very far, however noble and well-meant the intentions. So your synthesis, as it were, is likely the solution to the problem. Hopefully after both of the former tacks have been tried and failed we might move towards a version of education you describe: success and failure only within the terms of the individual child.
Allstair, you’re welcome ...
Hey y’all,
Good blog. Good dialogue. I know that there’s more than a few gen-x’ers and younger that have an “approved” education and are pretty urked off about their lives. I think it does have something to do with following a path not their own and being unsupported in their “natural proclivities...” People in my generation have pretty much been sold a lie by the education system (and adults!). Get a degree. Then get an advanced degree. Then get a “good” job with benefits. Then, you’ll be happy. There’s a lot of unhappy people that have followed this forumla. I have a good friend who is pretty miserable. He has a “good” job as an accountant for a big firm. The problem? He hates accounting. He loves art. He loves kids. He would love to teach kids art. This is what fascinates him and it’s more than obvious when you talk to him. It’s written all over his face! My guess would be that he showed this fascination very early on, but was pushed in a different direction by adults. At some point, I think an adult is still accountable for their life and how they want to live it...but that’s another story…
I don’t have kids. If I do, though, I have thought about how I would want them “educated,” knowing that my most awesome learning has happened outside of the classroom and outside of any formal setting. Mythoself is a perfect example for me. It rocked my world. Massive amounts of learning and “unlearning” b/c of it. Definitely, still going on for me...So, I’ve spent the last few years unlearning what school has taught me...replacing it with something that actually works.
Anyway, just some thoughts...thanks for the blog.
Allison
[The key is developing the relationship to the situation for the learners such that the outcome becomes relevant to/for them, i.e.: they have to build a vested interest in the outcome.]
If it’s a temporal closed loop (ends monday at 1 pm) - I’m with ya. If it’s open ended.... Let me just say, I think that is the interesting case because it resembles life. At some point, what a person has chosen MAY BE “incorrect” and that person will have to let go. My question is - why wait to graduation? And for an external (authority) figure to make a judgment that says nothing about a persons skillset and certainly not where they excel but exclusively how that person measurably performed according to that school system. Has a person not failed equally if they get top grades? I’d say thay have and I’ll tell you why:
if the vested interest is locked to a tangible outcome such as getting grades at school or must be an architect or must end up married, a home, to kids, a Volvo and a woof - I will argue that such a person may or may not end up with what they want. How will they know if they have not been taught how to know? At some point a long the way, they’ve got to stop and sense if what they are vested in is the “right” out come for them. Indeed, if the outcome is first and foremost tangible - can it ever be “right”?
I work with companies that want to do the innovation thing. I find that many of them confuse innovation with “doing better” instead of (including) “doing different”: How you make a million $ today is not how you are going to make a million $ tomorrow for an extremely long list of reasons.
However, businesses have exactly build a vested interest in THAT (tangible) outcome - which at some point will no longer suit them.
Now, I happen to think it is a case in point that such companies will learn by failure. I think that even going for the innovation thing will demand failure much like learning to walk and falling, or learning to ski and falling.
But what if you’re failing and you do not get it?
So companies that keep going for the same outcomes past a certain point are failing. But they don’t get it until it is too late.
Look at the banks mutual back-clapping society and where that has brought the US and much of the world.
Back to school: Are grades an ok outcome? I mean kids (nearly) identify with getting grades. That is, their teachers approval (- did I just write that?). At some point there has to be an arrest to that vested interest to re-configure. Configuration as defined by Complexity or a self organizing Chaos Physical system.
So you along with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and few other good men knew there was a different outcome you could go for.
Would it be an idea to have a kindergarden class that allows children to know “what they want”? But also to know weather “what they are going for” is their choice and if it is a choice that aligns “well” with them? And especially how to stop and how to let go.
Joseph, your approach to failure delights me, indeed! And coming from you, as an educator, it is even more valuable!
Failure is what keeps the world going round...however much of an oxymoron that sounds. Failure well done, well executed, that is, grandiose failure, fuels the passion for unprecedented, disruptive solutions and takes the world forward. But this is a well kept secret from many educators 
The other day I was addressing an audience of businessmen, owning hair salons, employing anywhere from 20 to 250 people each. As I was expounding my points, one of these guys interjects..."this is all of very good and what is really missing in our industry is a good education, most of us here are merely high school graduates and maybe not even that”. I just had to laugh! I pointed at the table nearby where the management team of the giant company sponsoring this event were sitting. It was a group of brilliant Harvard, Wharton and Kellog MBAs… I told the people “hey, true, you lack a good education and that is why you are the businessmen here, and these guys over there are, after all, just well paid employees”.
I have indeed found that the higher the formal education one gets, the more one probably looses the knack of entrepreneurship. Highly educated people (in terms of stacking diplomas on their bathroom walls) they create ideas, concepts and terminologies...but it is the “naive” guys that create profitable businesses. The examples are endless. Indeed, those star diplomas trim people to get jobs with lucrative salaries, but it is a very rare case that these graduates go beyond being self employed professionals (homo consulticus?), to being true business and profit creators for themselves. It seems that the furthest some brilliant people remain, from assimilating the systems and thoughts of others, the better able they are to think for themselves, to act swiftly, go on a limb, on well calculated risks, and chase their personal dreams.
I am not against a good formal education. I think we need to understand that it also stunts creative thinking in many ways, and encourages conformity!
That’s why I like Feuerabend’s Against Method
But we have a loooong way to go before we produce an educational system that favors diversity, individuality, originality and personal initiative!
Hi all,
For those concerned with these topics…
Equality, Education, And People’s life chances, their effect on personal and societal well-being, efficiency in organizing and delivering the resources necessary for them..
My primary work is on these grand concepts and how they actually play out in the world.. And it is aided and made more challenging by the great minds that have commented on these questions..
Should you have the desire for it, I strongly recommend A. Sen’s book Inequality Rexamined. It’s a dense, yet easy read (compared to other philosophers and economists) and speaks volumes in a single volume by building on those that have come before him and adapting a simpler language.
And for the educators, facilitators, negotiators, and trainers out there… It has useful hints as to how societies have organized themselves (either willingly or otherwise) to reach some of these goals, or to aim at them..
As America (and by implication the world) enters a new period, that was a long time coming, as the ‘skinny kid with the funny name’ put it a few hours ago… The challenges the peoples of this planet face are very much the same as they used to be millenia before we were here. Aristotle spoke to these ideas before Sen and many others since then. With an ongoing financial crisis, energy sources becoming scarcer, life expectations as high as they are in the West, and as low as they are in the South, etc. etc. ...I suspect we will see these issues very much at play in the months to years ahead. At least that’s what I see as being on the agenda.Then again, I’m a hopeful sole.
