Power of Thought and Belief

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“Self-fulfilling prophecy” — you’ve likely read and heard this term before. What it means:

As it is known and taught today in management and education circles, the notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy was conceptualized by Robert Merton a professor of sociology at Columbia University. In a 1957 work called “Social Theory and Social Structure,” Merton said the phenomenon occurs when “a false definition of the situation evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true.”

A little like The Pygmalion Effect which, as applied to students, means that those who are expected to fail will likely fail, and those expected to succeed will succeed.

Applied in a more “global” or, at least, a national fashion could fall our economy.

Samuel Zell, billionaire chairman of Equity Investments Group and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other companies, says:

Obviously what we have going on is an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have two Democratic candidates who are vying with each other to describe the economic situation worse.”

Zell believes that the U.S. economy will avoid recession, as the housing market actually begins to recover this spring.

I’ve been around this planet for a few years, shall we say, and have noted that much of what occurs in terms of the U.S. economy has a great deal to do with The Pygmalion Effect.

In an even more global scale, on virtually every level and issue: we pretty much get what we want. So. What do we want?

BZ
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10 thoughts on “Power of Thought and Belief”

  1. Economy goes up and the economy goes down, it’s been doing it for 99,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

    When the winter came cavemen couldn’t hunt, they went hungrey. Spring came and they started hunting and all was well, that was their economy.

    Zell is right on.

  4. well, fred flintstone didn’t pay $100 to an unproductive arab nation for a barrel of oil to heat his home and power his car. preferring to use energy at his disposal for such things. much like the US used to just a few decades ago.
    explain to me how a dollar, that’s value is determined by market forces will hold value when we shovel them out of country as fast as we possibly can buying grossly overpriced oil on credit that we don’t have to?

  5. Mark: and who is it, do we think, that appears to stop us from even further discovering and utilizing what we already have at home? Even if we COMPLETELY did away with cars that use petroleum TOMORROW, oil is mandatory for plastics, chemical compounds, other lubricants, medicines, the list is endless.

    BZ

  6. who is it? why ourselves, of course. a fat,lazy, non-thinking electorate that will vote by emotion rather than any thought. even if a bit of thought would be to their advantage. if anything lasts longer than a soundbite, a video game or a movie people no longer have time for it period.
    why are we not employing americans to produce oil here in this country? because the electorate believes the sight of a cricket pump might distress a caribou, even though cricket pumps don’t seem to be any cause of concern to the deer and the antelope in the permian or up in wyoming. but they heard the little soundbite on cnn about caribou, and that, to them, is more important than whether their children can enjoy the cheap fuel they did. this electorate certainly would not want americans to have any good paying oilfield jobs either, because if american oil field workers were making good money, american oil companies (what few are left) would be making money too! oh! the outrage!!! can you imagine!! much rather give that money to the saudi sheiks, so the saudis can buy up what little bit of america they don’t already own.

    people are the cause of idiocy, politicians, as they are, are just an effect of that idiocy. who rises to the top in idiocy? idiots.

  7. I actually think a recession would be good for Americans. Too many are lazy and spoiled.

    You asked “so what do we want?” What both my husband and I want on a personal level we already have, because we have both earned it through lots of hard work and though we’re retired we are still working, not because we have to but because we want to. There’s a lot of satisfaction in hard work and in being self-sufficient.

    On a non-personal level what I want is impossible: A country populated by intelligent people who are able to see reality for what it is and deal with it to the best of their ability. A country where the people aren’t looking for free handouts from the rest of us, because after all the government doesn’t have any money except what it takes from those of us who actually work!

    It would also be nice for this country to turn itself around where morality is concerned. We are going down the tubes and we can thank the liberals for that!

  9. BZ,
    You are spot on in this. If we keep talking nonsense about how the economy is tanking and it is all over, then guess what, it will be. The reality is different as Zell stated and we need to choose what we are going to become. EXCELLENT post.

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