My outlook for 2011 has taken on bulwark characteristics as I gird up to wade through another annual calendar.  The same thought just keeps rolling across my mind, like the CNBC crawl.

Embrace what is ahead, and adjust your sights accordingly.

Economically, the last two generations which includes myself and my children, have fallen behind. Our economic machinery has stalled, our government is in trouble, and our world power status is declining as other countries are on the economic rise. 

As a nation, we never had a birthright to success, although I don't think most of us believed that, but whatever upward spiral we were on is now unwinding, in complete unity with the Laws of Nature and Gravity - what goes up, comes down. 

We are see-sawing on the age old dilemma of rise and fall,  teetering back and forth on the shifting growth of economic productivity, and the exponential cost of armament and war.  Military strength and economic strength are always inverse, as one either focuses on military might, draining economic strength, or we free up resources to be used for other 'goods' which increase national prosperity. It's an eternally delicate balance, and one we have been uniquely privileged to watch closely in the past 100 years as Russia, Britain, the US, Japan, and China have alternately built up, and dismantled, arms and economies in our collective lifetime histories over the past century.

Power balances are altering and shifting before our eyes, in accordance with the changing military and economic policies of nations.  To paraphrase Bismarck, all world powers are "traveling on the stream of Time, which they can neither create or direct, but upon which they can steer with more, or less, skill and experience", and the outcome depends largely on the responses of governments as the international scene emerges and shifts, kaleidoscope style.

In a recent interview, Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, expressed his belief that our most urgent need is to determine what is beyond our reach, and to deal with those things that we still have some ability to influence, the things we have the power to change.  Reversible problems include education, what we do with our national budget and with our technology. The rest, the irreversible stuff, leave it behind.

Simplistically speaking, Reinhold Niebur was right. Things will start looking better if we accept the things we can not change now, and have the collective intelligence to change the things we still can control, and figure out what the hell is the difference. 

Otherwise, we're f*cked.

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To those who take away 'abandon hope, all ye who enter here' from this post, read through the comments before making this assumption.  It just ain't so, Spanky.  Hopey New Year!