Stel

Once again I find myself enjoying your newsletter. You deliver real quality and I like the honest and direct manner in which you deliver your message.

On the subject of Ms Pinkett Smith and her claim that “I can have it all, and I only need to want it” (as well as other variations of the familiar and false motivational maxim that each and every one of us as a separate individual can “be, do, and have whatever we want”), I find such claims to reveal a deeply self-oriented worldview in which the person’s interconnectedness with others and their interdependence upon them is not even hinted at, let alone appreciated.

It is a worldview that would do proponents and advocates of the so-called Law of Attraction proud! Me, me, me and more of me and my material wants! The purpose of others is to revolve around me and to be attracted into my self-oriented world!

The Smiths can only succeed in the movie industry because thousands of others created that industry first. And countless millions of others toiled, sweated and bled to establish the free, democratic, and capitalistic society which in turn facilitates and supports the existence of that movie industry, which in turn pays the Smiths their millions.

How far would Ms Pinkett Smith get with her list of wants if she woke up one morning as a penniless North-Korean?

I remember a conversation I once had with my late father, a master aviator of the old school. He was telling me about how he had succeeded in life as a self-made man who had made good on his ambition to become a pilot.

“Yes, Dad,” I said, “I’m happy for you that you were able to enjoy a wonderful career as an airline pilot. But tell me, who was it that built all those airplanes you commanded? And who created the airline that hired you?”

Dad huffed and hawed over this a bit, and then said, “Well, uh, I’ve never thought about it along quite those lines…”

And neither have the countless Mr and Ms Smiths of this world, it seems to me!

Cheers,

Tom Albertsson