Peter
Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is an Emmy
Award-winning composer, NY Times best-selling author and noted
philanthropist. Currently, he is releasing socially-conscious music and
touring his “Concert & Conversation” series in support of his bookLife Is What You Make It.
Where is truth? How do we find it? How do we know it?
“How Would You Know” by Peter Buffett
(Peter is giving this song away to Utne readers–click here for your free download!)
I wrote this song as yet another plea for questioning and
answering. And when I was finished, I thought that it could use some sound
bites. I’ve always loved to put together sound collages. My favorite is the “Urban
Overture” from my show Spirit – The Seventh Fire. In it, I tried to create the sound of
America going from what I called “analogue invention to digital consumerism.” Here’s a montage from the show.
When I started to comb the internet for sound bites, I began
to see a pattern emerge. Our presidents from at least Reagan forward (they’re
the easiest ones to find on YouTube!) were saying many of the same things. It became
relatively easy to weave a narrative together (punctuated by commercial
interruptions) that had an eerie “we’ve seen this before” quality.
In some ways, they were almost completing each other’s
sentences. What is going on here? As you know from other posts, I’m a big fan
of Mark Twain’s quote, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Well, I’d like to end this particular poem and move on.
And so I keep writing essentially the same song and the same
blog post until I get it right. Until we get more people singing the same tune …
a new tune.
Recently I posted a thought on my Facebook page:
It’s estimated that
2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Instead of thinking,
“oh my god … that’s terrible” – which is a totally rational thing to
think, what if instead we thought, “how can the rest of us get to that point?”
We have to turn this system inside out. Start with the
heart, not the bank account. Start with power with, not power over. Start with
feeling, not logic.
Start with remembering that each one of us is a perfect
metaphor for all of us, made up of individual cells, all knowing their purpose
and carrying it out by being perfectly themselves. The problems start when the
cells forget their purpose and start to grow and divide uncontrollably as if
there is no end to their hunger for growth and destruction.
The expected growth we see in government and economic
sectors is impossible to sustain … it’s cancer-like.
“Anyone
who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite
planet, is either mad or an economist.”? Kenneth E. Boulding
Visitwww.peterbuffett.comandChange Our Storyto learn more.
Image courtesy of dddagg, licensed underCreative Commons.
