Potential wisdom in this story comes from aspects of the story that have a distinct deja-vu quality about them when you compare them to what is happening today. Here was a president that we voted in to put an end to a very unpopular war that the previous president (a guy from Texas) had gotten us into in a real big way and then couldn't get us out of.

This new president wound up taking another six years to get us out of the war. And during that time, he got paranoid and started subverting the checks and balances between the three branches of the federal government that the Founders put into our Constitution specifically to avoid the abuses of power that happen when one of those branches (usually the executive branch) starts to overshadow the other two branches. In the name of national security this president and his people got carried away with spying on folks they didn't like, compiling lists of bad guys, playing dirty tricks and doing other things they ought not to have been doing because they figured they could get away with them.

In the end, what saved us was that Congress was able to rally around a few of their more principled leaders and they got up the gumption to insist that the executive branch treat them with respect and obey the rules written in the Constitution. And they went on to pass laws (which seem to have been ignored lately) that were meant to prevent this sort of run-away executive branch behavior from happening again.

What It All Might Mean

We are creating a planetary cerebral cortex that could better preserve and make use of our collective hard earned wisdom. Maybe we won't have to continue, generation after generation, making the same dumb mistakes just because the generation that learned about those mistakes the hard way is not around any more and the generation in charge didn't get the wisdom they needed to do something different.

Recently there has been a big run up in gas prices, and they won't be going back down again, ever. Because there are now at least a billion new drivers who can afford to own a car who are or soon will be clogging the roads of this planet, and they want their gasoline just as much as we existing drivers want our gasoline. And the term "oil producing country" is a misnomer because nobody produces oil; there is no new oil being made; we are just using up what we have found and hoping to find more but obviously there is an end to the amount of oil that is going to be found.

There have been food riots, and there will be more, inevitably. The price of food is rising because the price of all the things we use to grow food like water, fertilizer, petroleum, pesticides, and land is going up and the number of people who want food is going up too. So, obviously, the price of food won't be coming back down either.

The atmosphere is filling faster and faster with carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gasses; glaciers and ice caps are melting; rain forests are being cut down; oceans are being overfished; animals are being driven to extinction; civil wars and drug wars are popping up all over; and nuclear weapons are getting easier for aspiring tough guys to get their hands on.

The prospect of hitting the brick wall sooner than we thought is, I think, a wakeup call that may actually be just what the doctor ordered. It may be the clear and common threat that focuses our thinking and provides the collective will to rise above our traditional nit-picking, narrow-minded, self-serving, self-deluding, self-destructive behavior.

We need wisdom in a big way.

Luckily the Boomers are here to help... Speaking words of wisdom; let it be; let it be.