Reply #20: Are we waking up? [View All]

[chervilant]

I've been a closet economic anthropologist since my days at University. I assert that we humans are our own worst enemy, because we blithely and greedily engage in economic behaviors without examining the import or the impact of such behaviors. Our economic behaviors have become more important and more influential than ALL of our other behaviors, comprising the framework within which we do all things political or spiritual. Please note that I mean WE as in our entire species.

Humans are now a systems-stressing economic resource, yet we seem incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. All other economic resources are being taxed beyond the system's capacity, yet we sustain a rhetoric that smacks of the blame and shame game--warring with one another, blaming others without examining our own roles--when we should be seeking ways to fix the problem.

A great philosopher once predicted that capitalism would eventually collapse, and that economic behavior would evolve into a more egalitarian, cooperative means of production. Capitalists, politicians, and others with a vested interest in maintaining an oppressive status quo promoted a pejorative meme that taints this great man's scholarship to this very day. We should take note of the enormous energy expended to denigrate this man's collected works.

We too can attack Karl Marx on the strength of his detractors' red herring meme, or we can emulate his courageous endeavor to examine human economic behavior as it exists today and envision the changes that MUST occur if we are to progress as a species. Do we have to throw out the baby (capitalism) with the bath water (Corporate Megalomaniacs)? Is communism the inevitable alternative to capitalism, and would that really be a bad thing? Can we continue to subsume our spiritual selves in servitude to the almighty dollar?

Change is often a big scary barrier to personal growth, isn't it?

Still, as another great philosopher said, "We MUST be the change we wish to see in the world."

So, this starts with me. My awareness of the core issues described herein above shapes and informs my activism every day. I refuse to buy into the divisiveness that the Corporate Megalomaniacs promote to keep us from examining these real issues, and that includes divisiveness predicated by education, status, or any other hierarchical measure. We The People are on the verge of a major change--perhaps cataclysmic--and we have the intellectual capacity and the spiritual framework within which to propel ourselves into an amazing future.

FURTHERMORE, to those who vilify, parody, ridicule, or otherwise denigrate the unfortunates among us who are factually challenged, please bear in mind that at least 40% of our adult population is functionally illiterate. Of those who can 'read,' another 60% cannot comprehend what they've read, nor can they give a defensible synopsis of the material they've read. Many of these unfortunates cling tenaciously to their world views, because fear--and the other visceral emotions that drive them--is a great motivator. Furthermore, any measurable self esteem in these pitiful individuals is often a thin veneer over a seething cauldron of insecurity and doubt.

The Corporate Megalomaniacs know this and use it well, both through their propaganda tools (the MSM, lobbyists, and paid political hacks) and through their skilled sustenance of the 'wealth carrot meme.' Moreover, the Corporatists continue to divide and conquer, regularly promulgating their partisan red herrings (which quite a number of us snarf regularly--regardless of party affiliation).

That old chestnut, "Ignorance is Bliss" carries new meaning for me. Perhaps, "controlled ignorance is bliss" might be a better way to look at it. I beg the non-ignorant among us to focus your energy and your analytical skills on ways we can help the unfortunates among us (variously labeled Teh Stoopid, teabaggers, right-wingers, DINOs and blue-dogs) to understand who is the real threat to their financial and social well-being.

Oh, and--at the risk of getting more backlash from some for whom this post resonates--our networking efforts need to intensify. Our efforts to work together to effect change MUST focus on stopping the exponential success of the Corporate Megalomaniacs, or we'll find ourselves hiding behind closed doors, avoiding any mention of a world view that challenges the controlling uber wealthy elite. Actually, how many of us are already there?

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

(These 300 economists are not the only ones who see the writing on the wall...)