Every once in a while it helps to release a bit of the spleen - so apropos of nothing, here's a blog about how muddled our thinking has become.

I was listening to NPR on a long drive yesterday and two stories appeared that left me a bit speechless as to the implications.  The first was a Talk of the Nation conversation with Lewis Black.  I have no brief for or against Lewis - he seems like an interesting, funny comedian.  He was on to flack his new book about his new book "Me of Little Faith", which is a book about his experiences and thinking about religion.  Well, I thought, that's what it's come to sometimes - we get our religion from comedians and our comedy from church placards.  Not that there's anything especially wrong with satire and humor, just that we've lost the dividing edge where people who are satirists are considered insightful or experts in a specific field.  Meanwhile, the "experts" in the field are ignored or castigated.  Most people who called in to the show enjoyed Lewis Black and agreed with him on the uselessness of religion.  My favorite caller was a woman of the clergy who both a) liked Lewis Black and b) offered to raise up an occasional prayer for him.  There's a person who understands the difference between expertise and satire, and can appreciate both.

Next on NPR, there was an article about bailing out people who were impacted by the subprime mortage debacle.  The news media has evidently discovered that a lot of people who DID THE RIGHT THINGS - didn't get overextended, didn't take on loans they couldn't afford, did the math and bought the house they could afford - were upset that the federal government is considering bailing out people who were reckless or careless (or frankly, sometimes exposed to fraud).  Turns out there are a lot of people who believe that the government shouldn't be bailing everyone out.  I think we have become accustomed to thinking that the government will bail us out of all of our transgressions, so let's assume there's no risk in any financial transaction - we'll just claim we were duped.

Both of these stories make me think that many of us have lost our ability to think for ourselves and draw clear, bright lines around what is "true" and what I want to be "true".  We need to take a much more critical stance and start thinking more for ourselves and relying less on outside experts and hoping that "the government" or "others" will bail us out of our bad decisions.  This is true in public life as demonstrated from these examples, and in business, where getting anyone to make a decision about anything requires a committee so the blame is diffused and shared, and it is never clear who owns any specific responsibility.

Just like in the public sector, trying to understand how decisions get made, who makes them and who takes responsibility for a project, a program or a product can be maddening.  In businesses that are supposed to be very efficient, there's a startling lack of clarity about how decisions get made and who makes them.  Is this because no one wants to be responsible?  No one wants the risk?  Or everyone's a partial expert on everything but not an expert on anything ?

Are there any clear, bright lines of responsibility and ownership anymore?