The '00 decade, or the 0's or the aughts or whatever you want to call the period from 2000-2009 has finally ended to a deafening chorus of "Good Riddance!" For the United States it was a decade of loss. We lost money, we lost jobs, and most of all, we lost our way. In terms of material wealth, American prosperity took a beating. Here's a sobering illustration of my point. If you had taken your life savings as of December 31, 1999 and stuffed it in a mattress, content to earn a return of 0.00% over 10 years, you would be 35% richer than if you divided your wealth into equal thirds and invested each third broadly across the stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, and S&P 500.
This was bound to happen sooner or later as the American dream gave way to the American pipe dream. We lost touch with reality, and our delusion led to an inevitable fall. We replaced our parents' and grandparents' dreams of owning their own homes in order to build a better life with our own avaricious fantasies of buying homes in the expectation of selling them for obscene profits and borrowing against this windfall in the interim. Likewise, we viewed the stock market as a casino that would make us filthy rich without the bother of contributing something of value to the world. Now with the financial and housing markets only averting collapse through extraordinary government intervention that has mortgaged our future, we have fallen back to reality with a sickening thud. We knew all along that risk and reward were directly correlated, i.e. low rates of return involve low risk and high rates of return involve high risk, but our misplaced sense of invincibility allowed us to ignore the forces of gravity that would surely have their day.
The last decade also saw our peace of mind and sense of security shattered as a routine Tuesday morning in September 2001 became a living nightmare few dared to even imagine. Never again could we see ourselves as invulnerable to the barbarity we once thought only happened in other countries. As if the carnage weren't bad enough, we compounded the tragedy of that day by quickly squandering the sense of national unity and common purpose within our country and the communion we shared across the world. On top of everything else, we have lost faith in all of our institutions. We don't trust the government, corporations, church leaders, mega church leaders, the media, or each other. Even baseball, which once served as a refuge from the scandals of the day has been infected with wholesale cheating.
We have struggled before, but this time the voices or reason are being drowned out by the shrill voices of hate and division for which we have developed an insatiable appetite. All too often, the notion of two sides merely disagreeing is vanishing in favor of the perception that the world is divided into those who agree with us are right and those who are evil and must be defeated. With the advent of the new decade, we should resolve to make a desperately needed course correction and stop the madness. Like a coach with a gift for making halftime adjustments, our greatest asset as a nation may be our ability to correct problems and make improvements. Notwithstanding the gloom of the preceding paragraphs, I have confidence in our future, but we need to make changes now. To illustrate the choices before us, let me leave you with an old Cherokee parable:
The old chief was teaching his grandson about life. He told the boy, "A terrible fight is going on inside of me and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt and ego. The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. This same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person too." The boy thought for a moment then asked his grandfather which wolf will win. The chief replied, "Whichever one you feed."
