commentary

Everything is going to be okay. And then it won’t be. And then it will be again. And then your idea of okay will change. And then it’ll change again. Nothing is permanent — nothing at all. And that’s okay.

This synoptic quote, attributed to Alaska Miller in the blogosphere, makes an appropriate preamble to a new year at the precipice of a new decade. Looking back at the first decade of the new millenium, many things that seemed okay then are not okay today. Case in point: The most egregious abuses of a profit-driven health insurence industy in the US that kills the sick and bankrupts their families is finally being addressed through reform legislation.

And in the auto industry, the tyranny of the big three makers of gas guzzling clunkers that stood in the way of the electric car for nearly a century finally collapsed. Now you can see the emergence of stylish electric car makers, like Tesla Motors in California, making cars for tomorrow, employing people today.

Then there is the geo-political progress around the globe. We take for granted that there is no “Berlin Wall”, and that’s how it should be. People travel much more easily today, and ideas travel more easily too, across the web. Of course bad ideas travel too; the shoe bomber has given way to the guy with a bomb in his underpants, etc. Snake oil has been replaced by financial derivatives, and nobody really knows what a dollar is worth anymore, or what’s worth a dollar.

But people still want things to be okay. This is a time for the art of the possible. And that’s okay.

M. Brendon MacInnis
Publisher