Getting to the Next Level to Solve Problems

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

~Albert Einstein~

We hear a lot about consciousness these days. This attention to a new level of awareness has increasing numbers of people checking their egos, performing acts of kindness and attempting to inject a greater level of civility into our daily discourse. All of which is welcome indeed, but it is less clear how the expansion of consciousness will have any impact on the very serious issues we all face in the world of politics, business and the economy. Einstein’s quotation gives us a hint.

Regardless of whether we protested or agreed, we have all lived in a political and social context over the recent years that operated on two fundamental principals: We could have war without cost and profit without value. On their face, these principals make no sense. We all knew they made no sense. Now we are beginning to experience the reality that they make no sense and the potential consequences from an economic perspective look worse every day. Just when the latest mortgage backed securities write-offs by UBS were supposed to mark the end of that crisis, we discover that the financial turmoil has seriously impacted GE, a stalwart performer whose stock price dropped nearly 15 percent last week. So much for the theory that the credit crisis would only affect the financial services sector of the economy.