Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) to Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in The Dark Knight Rises. Photo by Ron Phillips – © 2012 – WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. AND LEGENDARY PICTURES FUNDING, LLC
There’s a storm coming. I can feel it in my bones.
(Dominoes tiles are, not so coincidentally, also known as “bones.”)
We live in an increasingly dynamic and dangerous world. Have you ever struggled to understand how the repercussions of disruptive events, like the dramatic drop in the price of oil, the expansion of global terrorism, the fiscal consequences of having an out-of-control national debt, or the environmental effects of global warming, will affect you, your family and your business?
While each of these challenges might have minimal immediate effect on your day-to-day life right now, the socio-economic chain reactions they set off will impact all of us, and our children, significantly. When the dominoes fall, will you be crushed or will you thrive?
Imagine never having to experience those frustrations again. Imagine being able to take control of your life instead of having circumstances control you. Imagine staying two steps ahead of the inevitable.
You don’t have to imagine it.
The concept behind The Domino Principle evolved from the now famous speech given by Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 7, 1954, in which he stated:
“Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the falling domino principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.”
While Eisenhower was particularly focused on the potential spread of communism in Indochina, the principle he describes, and which we have extended and used to name our new venture, has much broader applicability. The Domino Principle was launched to help people thrive and flourish by gaining a deep understanding of how events happening today will impact their lives tomorrow.
The world of 2015 is one in which our lives are being impacted by chain reactions that seem to occur at an alarming rate. It seems like no sooner does one wave crash down upon us then it is time to brace ourselves for the next one. Terrorism, environmental catastrophes, fiscal collapse, technological innovations, and Internet induced information cascades all lead to perfect storms of turmoil. The Domino Principle is about taking back control of our lives by creating our own chain reactions to produce desired future outcomes.
— Epictetus, a slave who rose to become a Greek philosopher during the first century A.D. Graphic via lpts.edu.
Sometimes our focus will be on setting up dominoes in our lives and our businesses to define and then take us down a desired path. Other times we will focus on events well outside of our personal control, learning how to recognize externally falling dominoes so we can best respond by anticipating things before they happen, leveraging events to our advantage or simply getting the heck out of the way. Yet other times, we will simply share stories of those whose lives have been touched by The Domino Principle, and how they are responding.
There’s plenty of room here to address a wide variety of topics. At times we might discuss things as broad as philosophical questions about what kind of futures for ourselves and our world are meaningful, desirable, and achievable. Other times we might address subjects as specific as how a certain event might impact the stock prices of companies in specific industries.
Our initial discussion will focus strongly, but not exclusively, on looking at how the recent drop in the price of oil is affecting, and may affect in the future, people’s lives here in Houston and around the world, and how we might respond to those changes. This particular topic is starting to personally affect many people whom I am close to, so it seems a great place to focus our early attention.
Soon, I’ll be publishing a post that examines why oil prices have dropped to current levels, and provides different points of view for how they might move in the future. After that, we’ll start looking at repercussions and responses.
I expect to be personally producing the vast majority of the content initially, with the hope that our readers will be adding their comments and perspectives on top of mine. There will surely be times where I’m able to put more time into it than others. Eventually, the goal is to bring onboard a host of additional contributors, with deep expertise on a broad variety of topics, to provide analysis and perspective, and to keep the discussion going regardless of my personal schedule and obligations.
A lot of what we publish will be as simple as collecting and sharing links to different topical articles that are already being published each day across the web, and perhaps adding perspective as to what seems particularly insightful or important, and what sounds like bullshit. But certainly don’t take our word for it… our goal will be to give you easy access to the information you’ll need. Make your own assessments from your own experiences and points of view. We expect to be doing posts of this nature pretty much on a daily basis.
This blog is only a small piece of what The Domino Principle is ultimately envisioned to encompass. Many of our readers are much smarter than I on many subjects. So I’ll also be using this blog as a sounding board to develop and mature ideas that might ultimately have a far greater reach than can be provided through the blogging medium.
Sound like fun?
Join us on our journey to understand consequences and apply answers and solutions.
“DOminoes are activists. Their first name is DO.“ I could use just a little help from my friends to enable The Domino Principle to gain sufficient critical mass to become more successful and useful. Our readers, like you, are influencers, and YOU can DO something quick and easy that would use your influence to help us out. Below each article we publish on The Domino Principle blog (like this one), you’ll see buttons to share the article on social media. Please use these buttons to share our articles, especially the option to share our articles with your friends on Facebook. It will really help spread the word of what we are trying to accomplish!
And if you missed it, please be sure to also read my previous post, which described the journey leading up to launching The Domino Principle.
–Cliff
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