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The box is better than the toy. Financial prosperity is nice but it isn't everything. Perhaps America's empty-headed worship of markets, and the hard times that will result*, will give us fresh opportunities to have simple thoughts like these (Michel Gondry in The Onion):

I truly believe that kids enjoy the box better than the car or the toy that's inside. So many times during Christmas, watching a kid, or even myself… There is excitement toward your toy, but then you put the toy on the side and something is created with the package. It's a very American thing that everything has to be a business. Americans think… I like America, or I would not be here. There are great qualities to this country. But this sense that everything has to be a business is sometimes overwhelming.

I am reminded of Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist) who said that money is not an incentive for him. In human enterprises the challenge and the satisfaction are often, if not usually, elsewhere.

If American can wake up from its money worship and stop playing with and obsessing about its toys, then maybe the creativity lurking in the boxes will have an opportunity to see the light of day again.

*Subprime credit banking crisis, Bush-Cheney war and tax-cutting debts, record oil prices, nascent recession and secular bear market, burgeoning trade deficit, weakening dollar, shrinking manufacturing base, vanishing R&D, dwindling market share of the global capital markets — do I need to go on?

{ 9:35 AM }

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