Tag Archives: Angela Davis

Up & down…around & around…change, of course!

Change, change…everywhere a change….

Wasn’t that a theme from one of those 60s anthem tunes?

Whether one was there or simply studies those years as history, it’s clear that the current societal shifts were starting their baby steps of change in the latter years of that turbulent decade.

Another moment when the overwhelming numbers of the baby boomer generation bulged through. That time around they changed perceptions about the role of youth…all societal tenets were suddenly up for discussion & wholesale reworking.

It was still a top down world, though. Technology had not yet delivered power to the consumer of the culture. Clash was not just the name of a rock group…combative stances were the name of the game.

Creating change meant battling for the new paradigm. Amerika…names like Jerry Rubin, the Weathermen, Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, & the various liberation groups, including women’s lib & Gloria Steinem’s publishing power bid with Ms Magazine…was Archie Bunker the Seinfeld of his day?
The background sound was the helicopter confusion of the Vietnam War. Don’t trust anyone over 30…& Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues said it all.

Lots of events between then & now. That hippie ethic, though, the short-lived alternative universe of that SF summer of love, a media myth perhaps, resulting in the spontaneous combustion of Woodstock, may just have gone underground between then & now. Was it that Woodstock moment, though, that reminded everyone there was power in sheer numbers?

Aging boomers, about to bulge through the next segment of life’s rhythm, aging, are changing perceptions about this final third of life…watch the latest crop of tv commercials…pharmaceuticals, to alleviate getting old, are here, there, & everywhere.

So, whether you’re in your 20s or in your 60s, time to dust off the past & look it in the eye. The 1960s began the march to bottom up & egalitarian level playing fields. The tool that delivered the possibility of the vision is our technology.

The boomers in the digital world created sleek devices, alluring & able to be held in our hand, fitted into a pocket, that allow every one of us to affect our immediate & our larger worlds. The meshing of inner & outer is possible.

Your voice is as important as my voice or his voice or her voice or as the CEO’s voice or as the president’s voice…what do the buddhists say? There is no them, there’s only us? Hmmm….

Connection is all. Otherwise, why the texting craze, 3000+ texts in a day, between friends, who only live a block apart. The same medium connects people 8000 miles apart. So, no possibility of separation, now? The commune ethic of connectedness between like spirits is with us? Geography & time have been erased?

Change is really just a scrub brush. There’s an abrasive quality to it, of course, as it scours out the past & so allows the smoothness of the future to unwrap itself. There’s no good or bad in it…it just “is”. Our opinion about it doesn’t count.

As Thales remarked, when observing a river: one never steps in the same water twice.

So, change. Affects how we live, how we work, how we communicate within the fabric of our newly global village, how we get through our days….

For real estate, the industry I’ve been a part of since 1989, the profound changes driven by the consumer “bottom up” motif are well underway. More about this later.

If you’re 18, you don’t notice technology…it’s just wallpaper. If you’re 55, you master it & wonder how you did without it, but you’re still a hybrid…you can straddle two worlds.

Two solitudes, bridged by a smart phone? Maybe….

Could be a juicy role here, in the boomer bulge. The great data maw needs constant feeding…who better than the historian, the interpreter of our pasts, to connect us to each other?

Maybe that’s a job description for our future-now world?

And on the subject of jobs…in this information age what does that word mean? Is the day of “the job” over?

And your thoughts are? Always welcome!