The economy: Why we got to here

Over forty years ago, I took a high school class called Comparative Ideologies. It was the closest thing to an honors class my school offered in Social Studies -- my high school did not offer official "honors" classes -- and required instructor permission to enroll.

The class was an exploration into the history and sociology of our relationship with commerce. In a rare departure from state-supplied textbooks, we had to go to Powell's in downtown Portland to buy the sole required text for the course: Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers.

The class, and the book, helped to forever change my outlook on a great many aspects of my life.

It explained how the history of economics came to be, and how great thinkers in the discipline tried to understand humans' relationship with commerce, wealth and power over the centuries.

Through my study of these ideas, and with gentle but clear guidance from my teacher, Nadine Eisele, I came to understand that the systems in place that governed our daily lives were largely beyond my control. The best that I could do was to learn how to navigate the landscape with as much integrity as possible, and to forgive myself when I stumbled.

I learned that most of the stumbles in my economic life were not my fault, and could not be.

I also learned that because of various conditions of my birth and life, I could never work hard enough to be as comfortable as the people who ran the world.

So I decided at a young age not to work so hard, in order to have more time to live a meaningful life filled with family, friends and things I cared about.

Because of the current economic and political landscape we now live in, I decided that revisiting the book was a good idea.

The last revision of the book by Heilbroner was published in 1999, six years before his death.
It does not touch upon the world we live in now, but it definitely anticipates it and explains how and why we've come to this point in history.
I had kept my dog-eared 1981 copy for twenty years before finally donating it.
I decided to buy the latest edition available, and read it again.

Rereading it has given me a strange sense of comfort and reassurance about the choices I've made in my life, and helps me to know what may be ahead for our country and for the whole planet.

So much of what blew my mind when I was seventeen now makes more sense, and clarifies the reasons for a nearly lifelong mistrust of the "American Dream" that was sold to my generation back then. And while I admit that I feel sad at how the world has turned out since my idealistic youth, that sadness is mitigated a fair amount by the knowledge that while I could never have power over, I could -- and do -- have power to.

Understanding that difference has made all the difference.
That understanding, combined with my place on the historic timeline, have helped to soften some of the blows of how we got to here.