Resolutions, Not Predictions

I much prefer New Year’s Resolutions to New Year’s Predictions.

I can try to control myself. The future is unknowable. You can see the patterns of the past, you can see how things should knit together, but you can’t know, and you shouldn’t try to predict specifics.

But let’s get the chore out of the way with some generalizations.

If history is any guide, 2007 is going to be a bad year. By my reckoning we’re a year removed from a Generational Crisis election, one that will define our politics for the rest of my life, and most of the lives of my children. Such years are always filled with terrifying events which make the nature of the next crisis crystal clear to everyone.

Things like the Summer of Love. The KreditAnstalt collapse. The Gold Bond. John Brown’s raid. Each of these events crystallized the coming crisis. They helped define the abyss, and the choices which people at that time had to make. And it was the climb-down from these crises that defined the politics of the next generation. Listen carefully when a right-winger is cornered by events, forced to dig deep into the id of his ideology. A hippie is going to fall out of that tree.

I can’t tell you what that event might be. It is likely to be an environmental catastrophe that will make Katrina look like a small thunderstorm. Or it could be something else. Whatever it is, it will generate enormous fear, one that will be met with paralysis by all our leaders — political, economic, cultural, media. The Washington "cocktail party" will end, to be re-formed only after the crisis has been addressed by the people, and only after a new set of political myths and values have replaced the Nixon Thesis. (You know which ones I like.)

So on to my own New Year’s Resolutions, which I hope you will enjoy and (perhaps) share:

1. 
   Anger. I do explode sometimes at events large and small, scaring the pets and angering both children and the spouse. I have sought solace in patterns, but it is time I gained acceptance of life’s vagaries, and a more mellow attitude. I’m going to work on that.
2. Money. I have written about Internet Commerce for 10 years now, but have not made a real dime in the practice of it. I would like this to change in 2007, if only to test my own theories of what works.
3. Charity. I’m not talking here of the financial kind, although I know I could be better in that regard. I’m talking about simple human sympathy in my daily life. I talk a good game here, and I encourage others toward action in this direction, but I am often imperfect in my daily life, and would like to get a little better.
4. Soul. One hallmark of our 50s (and I’m now well into it) is that we begin to see the dark at the end of life’s light and start working on questions of an eternal nature. This is something I have long neglected in my own life, and getting down to it may help in other ways as well.
5. Family. As parents age and children go out on their own, you start to realize that family is a state of mind, not just a habit of life. And you should start to appreciate that state. I’ve done work in this regard during 2006 and hope it continues.
6. Friends. Most of my friends are virtual, and this should not be. I will make a greater effort to find new friends in my real life.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions?