Next month, "Downton Abbey" will resume on PBS for its third season. Also, the World Economic Forum will meet in Davos where papers are presented and supposedly powerful people network and cut deals. But one has to wonder which event will have the most influence on human affairs. Could "Davos," as it is called, have become as irrelevant in how the world works as central planning?
As many know, that world has changed. Just ask any psychotherapist. Those professionals are overwhelmed with people contacting them for appointments to try to sort out where they are in a universe which has become chaotic. No surprise Nassim Taleb's new book "Antifragile" is #95 on Amazon.com. Its message is: Turbulence is here to stay, get used to it, find the opportunity in it, and you can thrive.
The 2012 election showed that conservative ideology was an anachronism which had had good run. The shift had been to more progressive economic, cultural, and social mindsets. Sandy demonstrated that climate change was real. Commercial centers built near water could be doomed. Waterfront property, rather than being a symbol of making it, became an albatross. And the tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut proved that, no, no one had all the answers, not on guns and bullets (Eliot Spitzer's position), not on violence in teenage pop culture, and not on how to manage loss.
Given the paradigm shift, what do the famous men (and women) have to preach to us? The world is no longer so willing to Let Us Praise Famous Men (and Women). Meanwhile, we expect to learn about life from the goings-on at Downton Abbey after World War I. Can a person like Mary really change and how do the wealthy deal with less money?
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