STATUS SYMBOLS

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

On the border of Ukraine and Romania, near the town of Gura Humorului, surrounded by orchards of peach, cherry, apple, and pear trees, is a large community of artistic “tinners.” While visiting the area, I discovered that the Ukrainian, Russian, and Romanian metal workers of that area historically possessed unique abilities to design and build ornate roofs of crafted sheet metal. Their homes, barns, gazebos, and even outhouses displayed roofs of stunning architecture and art form. The beautiful buildings were definitely influenced by the architecture of the old Orthodox churches, and each building delivered a pronounced message of the owner’s belief and support of the old Orthodox Christian institutions. They were eminent statements of status.

Several months later, I was traveling through the West African country of Cameroon. About 5:30 Saturday morning, I was able to negotiate for a small loaf of French bread, butter, and a cup of hot tea. My driver, Vincent, had been up early and had the Toyota SUV washed and filled with diesel for our eight-hour trip from the seaport city of Douala, north to the Mbingo hospital close to the border of Nigeria.

We took the seaport route out of Douala, a bustling city of two and a half million people, and successfully dodged pot holes and unpredictable Saturday morning market traffic. We made our way through sleepy African towns of Limbe, N’Kongsamba, and Kunba. As we approached the city of Bafoussam, I noticed certain houses that had high-pitched metal roofs made of shiny sheet metal, usually with a design similar to a weather vane on top. Some compounds had several of the peaked roofs, and others had, maybe, only one or two, and some had no peaked metal roofs at all.

I was aware of the Muslim influence in that part of West Africa, and asked Vincent if the steep square roofs of metal had anything to do with Muslim culture?

“No,” replied Vincent, “in this western region of Cameroon the culture only allows you to place one of those steep metal roofs on your buildings if you have reached a certain level of wealth. They are symbolic of castles or royalty. You must pass the wealth test, and then the other wealthy people of the area give you permission to build a steep roof. The more wealth you have the more steep roofs you are allowed to build. That is why some compounds have six or eight roofs and others only have one, and some have none. It is necessary for the real rich to constantly keep building outbuildings just to display more roofs as a status symbol of wealth.

As we entered Bafoussam, I asked Vincent what he meant by wealth. “How wealthy are the people of Bafoussam in comparative value?”

“The people of Bafoussam are everywhere in Cameroon, but their real homes are in this western region of the country.” He went on, “about all the buildings in Douala, and the capital city of Younde, are owned by the people of Bafoussam. Nearly all the construction companies are owned by them. They pretty much control the wealth of the country, and these peaked roofs send out that message.”

A status symbol is a visible, external message of one's perceived social or economic position.

What people employ as status symbols will differ between countries and cultures based on what is considered valuable to them. It is not unusual that status symbols even change over time. Anna Marie and I love to visit the historic homes and castles throughout the world. Before the invention of the printing press, owning a large collection of books was considered an impressive status symbol. With time, books became a less-recognized or rarefied status symbol.

Possessions typically perceived as status symbols in our culture may include a large house or penthouse apartment, a second home or ski chalet, haute couture fashionable clothes, some number of luxury vehicles, a trophy wife, a sizable collection of high-priced artworks or antiques, a privately owned aircraft or a luxury boat that is moveable from one status location to another. Even a securely tenured position at a prestigious university or research institute can be flaunted as a mark of high status.

Ancient Central American Mayan cultures artificially induced crosseyedness and flattened the foreheads of high-born infants as a permanent, lifetime sign of noble status. In the Middle East, and especially in the northern tier of African countries, the women use the application of henna on their bodies as status artwork. They like it because it does not wash off, but eventually disappears so that they can start over with new designs. However, they are some of the first persons to come to our free health clinics complaining of permanent liver problems. The blood that carries the henna designs away from the skin deposits the dye in the liver. That can be fatal.

The employment of status symbols can be a very tricky activity, indeed. Many times an individual is capable of buying the status symbol solely to impress others, but does not possess the personal wealth that is implied by the symbol. Charles Spurgeon, the theologian of another era, warned the people of his day, “No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.” Robert Frank penned an article in the Wall Street Journal regarding our recent financial crisis: “If the financial crisis has a silver lining, it is the decline and fall of the overpriced, over-hyped status economy. You know, the one built on bling and Hummers and Louis Vuitton for the masses. The past decade may have had its excesses, but none was as stupefying as the $300,000 watch that doesn’t tell time.”

Usually, status symbols will give insight into the value system of a culture or subculture. The symbols represent what most people in the culture or society can’t afford to own or indulge in … but wished they could. And, it is but of my own folksy observations, that status symbols wouldn’t even be effective were it not for our human capacities of envy, lust, and discontent. I rather like the advice of ancient Socrates: “If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”

“Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.” That quote was Albert Einstein’s view of wealth and symbols of status. I would say that’s some pretty intelligent advice from a pretty intelligent fellow.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

I SHOULD HAVE BECOME A WATCHMAKER

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Clocks have always intrigued me. For those of you who have visited our home, you know that we have at least one wind-up, pendulum clock in every room in our home, except the bathrooms and closets. The pendulum clock that hangs in our kitchen has been in our personal possession for over fifty years. I am fascinated by old clocks and captivated by the concept of time.

We have traveled to Greenwich, outside London, and viewed the Shepherd Gate Clock at the Royal Observatory. I have carefully lugged home interesting clocks from South America and Asia for my family, and have even visited the rare display of ancient clocks at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.

The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, and if I would have become a clockmaker and an official studier of time, I would have been called a “horologist.” Our word clock is derived from the Celtic words clagan and clocca, meaning “bell.” If the mechanism doesn’t have a bell or chime, it is simply a “timepiece” or “watch.” For the past 6,000 years, devices such as the sundial, the candle clocks, the hourglass, and the ancient water clocks have been different physical processes studied and used to consistently measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units of day, lunar month, and year. So, in layman’s language, clocks measure time and time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. That sounds simple enough . . . but wait. What is time?

We all know that an hour can seem like an eternity, or pass in a flash, depending on what we are doing. You can’t see time or feel time, yet your car mechanic can charge a hundred dollars an hour for it without fixing a thing. And some wise guy can convince you that “Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.” I even had a sacrilegious bloke once ask me “What year did Jesus think it was?” Time was a serious enough issue that when Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland was on her death bed in 1603, she begged, “All my possessions for a moment of time.”

Ancient philosophers and theologians have never been able to agree on the nature of time. St. Augustine handled the subject cleverly. He thought he could grasp the meaning of time, but admitted that when it came to explaining it he had a difficult time: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not." He ended up explaining it by calling it a distention of the mind, “by which we simultaneously grasp the past in memory, the present by attention, and the future by expectation.”

The ancient Greek philosophers believed that the universe had an infinite past with no beginning. Medieval philosophers and theologians developed the concept of the universe having a finite past with a beginning. This view is shared by Abrahamic faiths, as they believe time started by creation, therefore, the only thing being infinite is God and everything else, including time, is finite.

So, the one view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe—a dimension independent of events— in which events occur in sequence. The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through," nor to any entity that "flows," but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is neither measurable, nor can it be traveled.

When I get tired of reckoning with the dusty minds of the past, I resort to the real world and philosophy of Dr. Seuss to shed some insight on the subject of time: “How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?” Then he goes on and quips, “They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!”

 

I started paying attention to the historic clocks as I traveled the world. I am totally rapt by Big Ben along the River Thames in London. The Salisbury Cathedral clock, built in 1386, is considered to be the world's oldest surviving mechanical clock that strikes the hours. I learned that Galileo first had the idea to use a swinging bob to regulate the accuracy of the clock, even though Christiaan Huygens was the fellow who figured out the mathematical formula that determined 39.13 inches was needed to be the length of the pendulum for the one second movement. He actually made the first pendulum-regulated clock in 1670.

Spring-driven clocks appeared during the 15th century. On November 17, 1797, Eli Terry received his first patent for a clock. Terry is known as the founder of the American clock-making industry. Starting in the U.S. in early decades of the 19th century, clocks were one of the first American items to be mass-produced and also to use interchangeable parts. About twenty years before the American Civil War, Alexander Bain, Scottish clockmaker, patented the electric clock. The development of electronics in the 20th century led to timepieces with no clockwork parts at all. Time in these cases is measured in several ways, such as by the vibration of a tuning fork, the behavior of quartz crystals, or the quantum vibrations of atoms. Currently, the international unit of time, the second, is defined in terms of radiation emitted by caesium atoms.

Albert Einstein once said, "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking . . .the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

I believe that what Einstein was saying was that since this phenomenon called time seems to exist for the convenience of mankind, it certainly stands to reason that the most significance connected to it lies with the heart and behavior of individuals. Each person has exactly the same number of hours and minutes in every day. Wealthy people can’t buy more hours, and even the smartest scientist can’t invent more minutes. Try as you may, you can’t save time to spend it on another day. The dazzling concept of time reminds us to cherish all the individual moments, because they will never come again. If you don’t value yourself and those around you, you won’t value your time. Until you begin to value your time you will not fully maximize it.

            There’s a clock on the wall and it’s ticking down; the time you have left ‘til
            you’re dust in the ground. How you love the people with the time you’ve got
            determines if you are judged as worthy or not.

William Penn said, “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” Had I understood that fully, even at a younger age, I probably would have joined Albert Einstein: “If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

PEACE

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

My weary eyes have seen too much war and genocide, too much evil manipulation and dying. I have taken my turn at the entrance of the Sandeman Hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, near the border of Afghanistan, and watched the hundreds of injured and sick lined up on the sidewalks with family members holding the heads of the wounded in their laps, and an intravenous contraption in their hands. There was no more room for the injured in the hospital.

I have listened to the words of the Marxist leaders in Africa, who were routing the frightened people from their villages to the newly formed refugee camps: “You don’t have to kill all these fish; you just have to get them to the lake and then drain the lake.”

I stood in the neighboring country of Uganda as the Rwandan radio stations screamed, “Pick up the machete now! We will have jobs, power, wealth, and homes as soon as every Tutsi in our blessed homeland is dead!”

I was born before the U.S. became involved in World War II. I was in grade school when the war ended. As kids, our time after school was spent going around the neighborhood on our bikes looking for discarded gum wrappers and foil candy wrappers. We would carefully peel the aluminum foil from the paper part of the wrappers. and put the foil into rolled balls of aluminum. The schools held contests to see who could collect the largest ball of “tin-foil.” What we had collected would then be turned over to the U.S. military in order to build peace machines, so that we could win the war.

After the war was over, it was announced that they were constructing a huge building in New York City called the United Nations. We were promised that there would never be another war again. Everyone who had a dispute would simply come to the building and discuss their problems and agree on a proper solution. Instead of collecting any more “tin-foil,” we put our efforts toward collecting “buffalo nickels,” and our class sent them to New York City to build the magnificent building with a flag of every country in the world in the front of the building. It seemed like we sent a lot of money, but we knew it would be worth it to always have peace.

It was hoped that peace would be a gradual process of changing people’s opinions and slowly learning how to tear down old barriers and quietly constructing new ways of thinking and new structures. It was hoped that the power of love would overcome the love of power, and there would always just be peace everywhere. They said that the old way of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was really ridiculous, because the end result would be that everybody would end up blind and toothless. So, peace was better.

Once we were informed that peace now lived in the big building in New York City, we began asking ourselves where war lived . . . what made it so awful and terrible? Was it possible that the awfulness lived inside us? Was it likely that war really grew out of the desire of certain individuals to gain an advantage at the expense of others? Had we forgotten the desire to make other people of our world better off?

We all watched the experiment of the UN take place in New York City. Albert Einstein reminded us, “Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.” There seemed to be a certain kind of futility in the thinking that the sheep could talk about peace with wolves. Peace had to be more than just the absence of war. It had to be a virtue, a state of mind, a spirit of kindness, justice, and righteousness on this earth.

Teddy Roosevelt had instructed us that, “Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another’s keeping.” That is why the slogan “peace at any price” won’t work. I have discovered while observing human nature in over 150 countries of the world that this particular doctrine of peace has done more mischief than any other espousal afloat. It has promoted more wars and strife than any of the notorious and ruthless conquerors. It has undermined and nearly destroyed the dignity and equilibrium necessary to the welfare and liberties of the world’s fragile cultures. If you can’t find peace within yourself, you will be frustrated to look for it elsewhere. It is always good to remember that peace won by compromise of principles will always be a short lived solution.

Before her death, Mother Teresa pointed out to us, “Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home there begins the disruption of peace of the world.” Thankfully, that dysfunctional cycle can be reversed. You can find and experience peace within yourself, peace within your family, and you can become a person who lives at peace with others. That inner peace can take root as you effectively embrace it regardless of all the dysfunctional circumstances. You will find the effects of that peace multiplying exponentially in your own life as you experience the joy of providing that peace to others. Blessed are the peace makers.

Probably, the most difficult thing you will experience in embracing and practicing your new life of inner peace is the readjustment of your heart and your head in order to calmly and gratefully accept the gift of peace that God wants to give to you. I like to think of it as an attitude of spiritual hospitality. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27). I am bone-tired of seeing and hearing the cacophony of strife and conflict throughout this otherwise resplendent world, and have concluded that to be at rest with God is to experience true peace. It comes from the inside and alters all things on the outside. The world is a beautiful place, and we can do something positive about the discord.

My prayer for you for the coming new year is that you will not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever; that a calm spirit will trump every ounce of disquietude, even though your whole world seems upside down. Let your heart reach out to others in love, warmth, and encouragement and expect God’s peace to surround and protect you. Be assured that whatever happens to you is less significant than what happens within you. Happy New Year!

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com