A Heavy Very Heavy Heart

Earlier today a seven year old boy had breakfast at home the last time. His siblings walked to the bus stop with him for the last time. He and his siblings watched the bus approach and the driver place the vehicle in position with all signals flashing. The boy didn't make it to the bus. He was hit by a driver that neglected to heed the signals. That family will have dinner tonight, and those parents will put their surviving children to bed tonight. The family of the perpetrator of this event will do the same. But to everyone, tonight is a very different night than the last.

As I have grown older, and relish in the life with my growing children, these events trigger an enormous emotional wave of fear, sadness, anger and hope in me. The rules are in place. The infrastructure is in place. People are educated and knowledgeable. And yet accidents happen. Lives are terminated, by any measure, premature. There have been several in our city over the course of a recent past. In each case lives are lost seemingly unnecessarily. Sure sure, there are no accidents. We are not necessarily meant to understand all these goings on in our midst. I am familiar with that higher plane (state of consciousness).

But let's take the current state of the world. Rules are in place. Infrastructure is in place. People are educated and knowledgeable. And BIG accidents have happened - our financial meltdown qualifies I believe. The models didn't have valid assumptions. I can't help but say its the people. Its the people. Individuals making conscious choices. The driver of the car choose to not pay full attention. Whatever the underlying circumstances, a conscious choice was made. As with Sir Allen. As with Bernard L. Madoff. As with Ezra Merkin. The boy crossing the road certainly too had a choice. He predicated his choice on the all signals blaring being his safety zone. The investors in FFG, BLM, or Stanford also made choices. And probably relied on the regulatory structure and rating agencies for what ended up being a false sense of security.

But its the people. The individuals making decisions that compromise the lives of others. The people that are relying on those individuals are a risk, sometimes unbeknownst. But wait. Take a look broadly at our modern society. We have to place our trust in other people every minute of the day. And what accomplishes this for us. Our brain. One of the fabulous wonders of our "being" is the amazing feat our brain accomplishes every second. information bombarding us from every direction and to every sense. And we are constantly receiving and processing this information and making decisions. Those perpetrators of crime don't function any differently. They are receiving and processing information. And making decisions. The difference is what they value and how much their decisions reflect those values.

Sir Allen and Uncle Bernie and Ezra and Nicholas Cosmos and Art Nadel, and even the driver of that car that killed that child all made conscious decisions that caused profound harm to someone else. Their value system did not fully integrate that part of the equation. The assumptions in the models for these folks to make decisions lacked that module or the module was not fully functioning.

Its the people, the individuals that make the difference - doing good, or doing bad. My heart is heavy, very heavy for the family that has lost their young boy.