Naiveté

We are brought up and educated to analyze, assess, and evaluate situations, problems, and people and we are warned that being naive is no way to survive in our society and this world. I can vividly remember taking offense to being called naive when I was younger, therefore, adopting cynicism and embracing resignation seemed only natural. One day, I woke up as a "reasonable" adult looking for proof and evidence that this world does not tolerate naiveté. After all, it is easier to lower the expectations of people and government policies than to be hopeful and then disappointed.

I had a conversation with a colleague the other night talking about the automobile industry bailout. We both agreed that the auto industry deserves to fail but the consequence of such failure will be catastrophic not only to the industry itself but the economy as a whole. We disagreed on the root of the problem therefore the solution to the issue. We are not trying to pretend that we have THE solution for the auto industry but the discussion was to exchange information and checking in with our thought process. At the end of our discussion, he said "I don't care about what happens to the Big Three or Detroit, what's important to me is my family and my savings". I nodded in agreement and left for home. As I got on the highway and sat in traffic, it occurred to me that not only are the financial markets around the world intricately linked together, the asset classes are synchronized by various factors and economies, but all of us - human beings - will inevitably be affected by the choices that each one of us make.

This is going to sound naive but we can no longer afford to believe that our choices in our lives only affect us. The consequences of our decisions are borne by many if not all. The financial system meltdown is the manifestation of our beliefs and choices over time. The mentality that our actions do not affect others have been proven dead wrong. We are not many, but we are one. The choices that we make at the expense of others will eventually come back to haunt us, maybe not in our generation, but it will eventually catch up to our future.