I believe in the wholesomeness of the average person. What has happened to the institutions that we established for the more efficient good of us all?! Seattle Metro security police would not intervene to halt a subway attack by females against a female! The Roman Catholic Church’s child abuse scandal now reveals itself in Germany, 10 Feb NYT and the mighty Toyota failing prominently.

Earlier in my business career, I visited every sort of automotive plant worldwide, telling friends that “if you saw how Toyotas were made – hospital-like cleanliness and Japanese attention to detail (in their US plants)- you would only buy a Toyota for your car.” I contrasted this with my tour of a Detroit plant where the worker on duty in the assembly line control room read from a two foot high stack of men’s magazines on top of the console desk (circa 1987). Got to pass the time somehow.

I suppose that we’ll have to accept personal responsibility for our lives in every dimension of our lives, meaning that admitting that you’re lost is the first step to finding your way out or back or forward; I observe that we should make clear to ourselves what each of our lives means and what is the purpose of each of our associations. Not ‘why do I belong to the Rotary Club’, if anyone still does – and maybe we all should. For example, what does it mean to be a resident of Duke Forest or a taxpayer in Durham, North Carolina or a graduate of the Naval Academy and, certainly, a husband and father of two?

I believe in the wholesomeness of the average person. Presently, we’ve lost our way.