Weekend Oct 16 2016
Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize for Literature
Bob Dylan, American folk rock musician, lyricist, and author, and generally kind of weird guy, has been named the first musician in the 115 year history to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Please understand that neither Mark Twain nor Robert Frost ever won a Nobel. But now Dylan joins such luminaries as Vislawa Szymborska, Dario Fo, and Mo Yan. Or as Jeff Foxworthy puts it, I just can’t make this stuff up.
Still I am encouraged. Yes in my most introspective moments, I have lain awake wondering if all these shared insights among newspaper columns, weblogs, academic papers, podcasts, not to mention television and radio interviews would go unnoticed. But if Dylan can break through, I suspect there is hope for the rest of us.
One of my friends used to say that Bob Dylan was one of those guys that, if you didn’t know who he was you wouldn’t listen to him anyway. Clearly my friend would have never made the cut for the Nobel Committee. And what are some of the pithy thoughts that catapulted Bob to join this elite inner circle including Sir Vldiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul. Here is a sample.
Ah but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now…
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows
IN the jingle jangle morning
I’ll com followin’ you
Yes words to live by indeed fit for the Nobel list of luminaries as well as your record album collection spanning Peter Paul and Mary and Donovan.
I can see I have been way too conventional. Dylan made it as age 75 so I have a few years to re set my course for the destiny that is surely mine.
Like Hedda Hopper, Bob seems to have an affinity for strange hats and unconventional garments. I guess my Haggar khakis have got to go along with the Ralph Lauren polos. And I suppose some sort of unusual moniker would help, hmm, how about digital futurist?
Oh and what would be my contribution to the world of literature. How about
Experience is what you get when you are expecting something else.
It is near impossible to stop a bad idea cloaked in good intentions.
Very few people are capable of making a short-term sacrifice to reach a long term goal.
What, did you say, too Erma Bombeck and not enough Toni Morrison (1993 winner)? Well maybe but after all I am just now transitioning to someone more in the Swedish caste of things So give me time here. And clearly I need to begin planning some ‘think-ins, introspective seminars, as well as seminars that challenge one to think organically. Yes we are speeding towards the digital confluence of human events now happening in nanoseconds rather than years, will we act or be acted upon? (Well hey, it’s a start….)
Meanwhile we have yet another Too Big To Fail TBTF corporate crisis jumping right off the front page. John Stumpf, CEO Wells Fargo, failed to see the growing sentiment against big banks, and their haughty TBTF attitude.
Bernie Sanders had made this a cornerstone of his campaign. Sanders had no idea how to break up the big banks but by golly he and his supporters were all for the idea.
Here is what the Corporate Bigwigs at WFC missed.
Social mood motivates social actions, not the other way around.
Social mood is endogenously (internally) regulated, not prompted by outside forces.
Social Mood is unconscious, unremembered, and constantly fluctuating.
Waves of mood arise when humans interact. This is the herding impulse.
Now connect the dots. The so called recovery since 2009 has been for those big companies who could borrow at zero rates, buy their own stock back, and reward themselves with options. Both parties are aware of this and hear it from constituents all the time. And so individuals began to react to outrageous fortunes awarded for little to no real accomplishment on the part of corporate executives. And this was happening at the very banks that had been part and parcel of the 2008 melt-down. Without realizing it, all the Democrats and Republicans felt the same way, their feelings being internally generated. Then the Senate and House members of both parties began herding towards an unconscious, shared belief.
And that is how John Stjumpf lost his job.
Follow Dennis Elam at http://www.themarketperspective.com
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