Out of Scarcity and Into Abundance


Together, we make a great stew! from No Scarcity on Vimeo.

The Main thing is to keep the Main thing the Main thing
– Stephen R Covey

Well the Main thing for me is attitude.  I was trying to emphasize attitude to my eight year old yesterday when he was bummed out after I said we didn’t have time to go ice skating.  I gave him that old adage about it’s not what happens, it’s all about how you react to what happens.  He was still mad, but later after the sting wore off he was pretty cheerful about it.  I can’t say I changed his life, but I can try.

Even if you don’t seek out financial news these days, it will find a way to find you and it isn’t good.  But the most contemptible kind is the gloomy prognostication kind, like this one suggesting you dump stocks since the sky won’t be done falling for another six years.  Glenn Hall, among others, worry this attitude becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.  And so do I.  Nothing generates fear more than fear.

The same is true in the climate change community where it’s easy to find both alarmists and skeptics, both in quantity. But if you dig into the people who know what they are talking about – Mark Lynas, Tom Friedman, Fred Krupp, Stuart Hart, Lester Brown…, you’ll find a high degree of positive, solution-oriented attitudes.  No one claims the financial crisis, independence from petro-dictators, mitigating climate change, or absorbing refugees who have been displaced by natural disaster – whether in New Orleans or Indonesia – will be easy.  But every day, if we collectively take action and participate in constructing solutions, this will bring us closer to solving these difficult tasks.

Perhaps the economic crisis isn’t all bad – divorce rates are down significantly due the high cost of separation.