Yale, apparently to gain in formation that would help it steal
top applicants away from its rival.
Scandal also touched government agencies. Where was the
Central Intelligence Agency, the public demanded to know,
when terrorists with expired visas were taking lessons at Ameri-
can flight schools in order to crash into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon? Where was the C.I.A., for that matter, when
two of its agents spied for years for Moscow? And the Federal
Bureau of Investigation didn’t fare any better. It, too, failed to
prevent the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the deadly mailing of
anthrax-laden letters that followed. Perhaps most shocking was
the failure of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or
FEMA, to provide services for the mostly poor minority resi-
dents who remained in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Bodies floated in the flooded streets for days, while clueless
public officials congratulated each other on a job well done.
We see these things, and we lament them, but what do we do
about them? What canwe do about them, caught up as we are
in the context of our own professional and personal lives? For
the most part, our lives are busier and more demanding than
those of any generation in recent history. Thanks to ubiquitous
cell phones and other forms of instant communication, we are
tied to our workplaces as never before, immersed in a context
that is volatile, turbulent, ambiguous, and all but impossible to
escape. That we often feel oppressed by that context is evident
from the desperation with which so many people dream of sim-
plifying their lives. But we must master that context if we are to
solve our own problems, let alone societal ones, and to do that
we must first examine it. Unfortunately, looking at our own
context is as difficult for us as it is for fish to look at water.
Mastering the Context