For years now we’ve been experiencing a boom in productivity. Much of our economic growth over the past several decades has been a direct result of those gains. While increased productivity seems like a wonderful thing, when we place it in the context of an eighteenth century economic model we discover that our modernization of manufacturing without a concurrent modernization of the consumption side of the equation is the cause of much of our present misery.
Productivity gains occur when fewer people produce more goods in less time. Industrialization, technology and computerization have all contributed to the shift toward higher automation and more rapid product production. The advantages for businesses are clear: machines don’t require wages, get sick or need benefits, and they can be counted on to produce quality standardized items day in and day out.
The advantages to the average human being of increased productivity are less clear. Certainly more goods are available at lower overall prices, which is helpful to consumers. What sometimes gets lost though is the high quality craftsmanship that used to be the hallmark of our human creativity. While cheaper goods seem to offer us better value, in many cases they just cheapen society by creating more landfill and waste. Sure, a two-dollar hammer may be appealing if I’m low on cash, but if the head falls off and I have to buy ten cheap hammers in my lifetime as opposed to one high quality twelve-dollar hammer, who has really profited – other than the company (likely overseas these days) that produced the two-dollar hammers?
Another problem we’re facing is the fact our economic model was constructed around the idea of people working for wages they could then use to buy those things they need. As we eliminate jobs by the hundreds of thousands, either through increased productivity or by exporting them to cheaper labor pools overseas, what gets forgotten is that the local laborers we’ve cut off from wages today are the very consumers we’re hoping will purchase our goods tomorrow. Productivity has overwhelmed jobs creation – not because we’re a nation of slackards – but because our very industriousness and technological savvy has outstripped our need for manual labor at an ever-increasing rate, even as our population rises and our productive life expectancy increases. Our system is failing because to date it has failed to take into account the need to place cash in the hands of all people, including those whose jobs have vanished, those working less than the standard forty-hour week and those who are reaching adulthood only to discover high paying jobs are fast disappearing – no matter the level of education attained.
We can’t modernize half the economy (the production side) without taking into account the effects those choices have on the other half (the consumption side.) Profits are suffering because too many people can’t afford to buy all the goods we’re now capable of producing. For years an increase in service jobs has helped ease the pain of lost manufacturing jobs, however many service jobs aren’t provided by for-profit businesses but by government. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, DMV staffers, social workers and so forth all perform vital community services, yet we’re cutting back on their numbers and salaries because we can’t collect enough income tax revenue to support them. And how could we, when our tax roll base (a function of real wages) continues to precipitously decline?
It’s clear our economy needs an overhaul; one that ensures consumers are able to afford the goods we’re producing. At the very least we need to ensure that all people – particularly those presently disenfranchised from the labor pool – can at least afford to eat, provide a roof over their head, heat or cool their homes and access clean water.
These aren’t easy challenges and may require us to take steps quite different from the way we’ve envisioned our present economic system. To continue to ignore them, however, won’t make them go away. Nor will clinging tenaciously to an eighteenth century economic wage model resolve the problems we face in our twenty-first century high technology world.
(Next column we’ll suggest some potential approaches to address these challenges.)
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Supreme Idiocy
The recent (five votes to four) Supreme Court ruling granting “free speech” status to political campaign contributions will likely go down in history as one of the worst decisions to ever come out of our federal judicial system. This ruling takes us back to those unenlightened days when people of color were considered three-fifths of a person, by effectively declaring that the people with the most money are entitled to carry far more political weight than those without. Money, at least in our nation, flows to the highly successful few: to the uber-rich, the large institutions and the corporations that already wield too much power over the average American.
Are you aware that a mere one percent of Americans already own ninety-five percent of this nation’s wealth? That leaves the other ninety-nine percent of us scrapping over the five percent of wealth the uber-rich haven’t happened to get their hands on yet. Not that they’re not trying; the financial debacle of 2008 exposed the lengths to which some corporations are willing to go to capture greater profits for the power elite.
Gifting the wealthy elite – including the mega-corporations they own and operate – additional power to impact the political process is like inviting a convicted pedophile to baby sit your children. The risk far outweighs any possible short-term benefit. Just consider the kinds of mischief that can be made under this new ruling. Hard as it is now for small businesses to compete against mega-corporations, imagine how much harder it will be once those same corporations have the power to make unlimited campaign donations to the individuals who write the legislation that can grant them special favors? Once Wal-Mart can pay off a multitude of city councilmen, state legislators and local congressmen with unlimited amounts of campaign cash, how easy do you think it’ll be to block their expansion into our neighborhoods? How much clout can a small business owner’s political donation provide against such a massive tide of funding?
The beautiful thing about free speech, and the reason it’s been so cherished and protected by our democratic society since the founding of our nation is that it’s FREE. Everyone – rich or poor, black or white, immigrant or citizen, religious or non-religious, man or woman, ideologically popular or ideologically reviled – has the power to exercise it. Information is power, and to be able to communicate with each other lies at the heart of our political process.
We are a nation founded on ideas, built on ideals, and dedicated to the people. Our forefathers grounded our Declaration of Independence in a reverence for life itself – the right to life being foremost of their three most cherished ideals: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we now allow nonliving institutions to subvert the rights of the living by favoring profits above the quality of our own lives, we’d best acknowledge we’re also subverting the very values and ideals on which our nation is founded.
The profit motive is fundamentally amoral. Profits can be derived, as any good businessman knows, through moral means or through immoral practices. Therefore, elevating the power of profitability over the power of genuine free speech raises an amoral process above our value system. For the most part our nation’s policies reflect our collective moral compass. This latest decision however, made by five men in black robes, vacuums the morality out of our political process so rapidly we can almost hear the “whoosh” of our conscientious input being extracted from the system.
The solution is simple. Whenever a system tips too far in one direction an equal and opposite reaction will occur. Already grassroots organizations are gathering steam to create a constitutional amendment that explicitly denies personhood status to corporations, thus restoring a living person’s status as the thing that we most value. Please visit http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/user/register for more information if you’re interested in participating or supporting such a movement.
And remember, free speech has always been free. When money is free, perhaps it too might be reasonably considered free speech. Until then, let’s call it what it is: legalized bribery.
Are you aware that a mere one percent of Americans already own ninety-five percent of this nation’s wealth? That leaves the other ninety-nine percent of us scrapping over the five percent of wealth the uber-rich haven’t happened to get their hands on yet. Not that they’re not trying; the financial debacle of 2008 exposed the lengths to which some corporations are willing to go to capture greater profits for the power elite.
Gifting the wealthy elite – including the mega-corporations they own and operate – additional power to impact the political process is like inviting a convicted pedophile to baby sit your children. The risk far outweighs any possible short-term benefit. Just consider the kinds of mischief that can be made under this new ruling. Hard as it is now for small businesses to compete against mega-corporations, imagine how much harder it will be once those same corporations have the power to make unlimited campaign donations to the individuals who write the legislation that can grant them special favors? Once Wal-Mart can pay off a multitude of city councilmen, state legislators and local congressmen with unlimited amounts of campaign cash, how easy do you think it’ll be to block their expansion into our neighborhoods? How much clout can a small business owner’s political donation provide against such a massive tide of funding?
The beautiful thing about free speech, and the reason it’s been so cherished and protected by our democratic society since the founding of our nation is that it’s FREE. Everyone – rich or poor, black or white, immigrant or citizen, religious or non-religious, man or woman, ideologically popular or ideologically reviled – has the power to exercise it. Information is power, and to be able to communicate with each other lies at the heart of our political process.
We are a nation founded on ideas, built on ideals, and dedicated to the people. Our forefathers grounded our Declaration of Independence in a reverence for life itself – the right to life being foremost of their three most cherished ideals: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we now allow nonliving institutions to subvert the rights of the living by favoring profits above the quality of our own lives, we’d best acknowledge we’re also subverting the very values and ideals on which our nation is founded.
The profit motive is fundamentally amoral. Profits can be derived, as any good businessman knows, through moral means or through immoral practices. Therefore, elevating the power of profitability over the power of genuine free speech raises an amoral process above our value system. For the most part our nation’s policies reflect our collective moral compass. This latest decision however, made by five men in black robes, vacuums the morality out of our political process so rapidly we can almost hear the “whoosh” of our conscientious input being extracted from the system.
The solution is simple. Whenever a system tips too far in one direction an equal and opposite reaction will occur. Already grassroots organizations are gathering steam to create a constitutional amendment that explicitly denies personhood status to corporations, thus restoring a living person’s status as the thing that we most value. Please visit http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/user/register for more information if you’re interested in participating or supporting such a movement.
And remember, free speech has always been free. When money is free, perhaps it too might be reasonably considered free speech. Until then, let’s call it what it is: legalized bribery.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Where are we going?
So far, humanity really hasn't set a "vision" for where it wants to go or what it wants to become. Defining our own trajectory may be exactly what we need to propel us out of our present reality, which is powered by mass unconscious consumption, to a reality based on conscious creativity and grounded in a deeper sense of purpose.
We've been frantically consuming material resources for many centuries now, because in some part of our unconscious mind we recognize that consumption is part of what we humans have been chartered to do. Everything we observe in the universe consumes something and transforms it into something else; that's part of the grand recycling/evolutionary process of creation. Nothing gets wasted and everything eventually gets changed.
I suspect that what we've failed to realize so far is that we're not really here to consume increasingly more stuff until we deplete our natural resources and die off; we're here to consume just enough resources to enable us to live comfortably and sustainably while we create new life experiences for ourselves, which we can then consume and transform into higher wisdom. The nice thing about consuming experiences and transforming them into wisdom is that there isn't a top stop on growth anymore when wisdom becomes our focus. Consciousness doesn't take up any more room or require higher caloric intake as it becomes smarter. Willful ignorance uses just as many calories as does wisdom! In fact, the wiser we become about our world, the more likely it is we'll require fewer resources to function more effectively within it.
The key then is for us to be fully present to whatever experiences we're having and learn as much as possible from them. Don't sleepwalk through an experience while daydreaming about where you'd rather be or what you'd rather be doing - HAVE each experience fully and richly so that whatever it has to teach becomes yours to know. To do so requires courage, an openness to new ideas and the patience to "ride out" even the most difficult of experiences, while trusting that there is always something more to be learned from wherever we happen to find ourselves in life.
I'm so looking forward to seeing what evolves as humanity slowly opens its eyes to the need to set a course for our shared future. The process of "coming together" around a shared set of values and ideals may not be easy to undergo, but I suspect it's necessary for us to make the next leap in human evolution. It's time then, for us to begin talking about who we are, why we think we're here, and where we'd like to go as we journey toward the future.
I encourage you to think about these things whenever you're communicating or interacting with others, because the young people who encounter you will likely be searching for some greater sense of themselves. What are your words and actions saying to them about humanity, about its strengths and weaknesses, about its possibilities and problems, about your beliefs about us - and therefore about THEM? Even as you explore your own beliefs through your thoughts, words and deeds, know that what you are and do has the power to influence the thoughts and feelings of others. Take responsibility for your messages by anchoring yourself in your deepest truths about who you really are and what you're really capable of being, doing and creating. Express and BE that to the best of your abilities. Then you can rest assured that whatever you're bringing into the world and to the minds of other people will be a universal truth - because you ARE the universe in person.
We've been frantically consuming material resources for many centuries now, because in some part of our unconscious mind we recognize that consumption is part of what we humans have been chartered to do. Everything we observe in the universe consumes something and transforms it into something else; that's part of the grand recycling/evolutionary process of creation. Nothing gets wasted and everything eventually gets changed.
I suspect that what we've failed to realize so far is that we're not really here to consume increasingly more stuff until we deplete our natural resources and die off; we're here to consume just enough resources to enable us to live comfortably and sustainably while we create new life experiences for ourselves, which we can then consume and transform into higher wisdom. The nice thing about consuming experiences and transforming them into wisdom is that there isn't a top stop on growth anymore when wisdom becomes our focus. Consciousness doesn't take up any more room or require higher caloric intake as it becomes smarter. Willful ignorance uses just as many calories as does wisdom! In fact, the wiser we become about our world, the more likely it is we'll require fewer resources to function more effectively within it.
The key then is for us to be fully present to whatever experiences we're having and learn as much as possible from them. Don't sleepwalk through an experience while daydreaming about where you'd rather be or what you'd rather be doing - HAVE each experience fully and richly so that whatever it has to teach becomes yours to know. To do so requires courage, an openness to new ideas and the patience to "ride out" even the most difficult of experiences, while trusting that there is always something more to be learned from wherever we happen to find ourselves in life.
I'm so looking forward to seeing what evolves as humanity slowly opens its eyes to the need to set a course for our shared future. The process of "coming together" around a shared set of values and ideals may not be easy to undergo, but I suspect it's necessary for us to make the next leap in human evolution. It's time then, for us to begin talking about who we are, why we think we're here, and where we'd like to go as we journey toward the future.
I encourage you to think about these things whenever you're communicating or interacting with others, because the young people who encounter you will likely be searching for some greater sense of themselves. What are your words and actions saying to them about humanity, about its strengths and weaknesses, about its possibilities and problems, about your beliefs about us - and therefore about THEM? Even as you explore your own beliefs through your thoughts, words and deeds, know that what you are and do has the power to influence the thoughts and feelings of others. Take responsibility for your messages by anchoring yourself in your deepest truths about who you really are and what you're really capable of being, doing and creating. Express and BE that to the best of your abilities. Then you can rest assured that whatever you're bringing into the world and to the minds of other people will be a universal truth - because you ARE the universe in person.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Jobs or Work?
This morning we learned that the U.S. jobs market shed another 263,000 jobs in September, bringing the unemployment rate up to 9.8%; a 26 year high. By the way, that's not counting those who are employed only part-time because they can't find full time work, or those who have dropped out of the job market entirely. If we add them in, some sources estimate that we'd be looking at an unemployment rate above 15% of the able-bodied American population.
This problems begs an important question: how long has human society suffered from this thing called "unemployment" and what can we do to fix it? Why do we even have such a thing as unemployment, when there's clearly so much work that needs to be done around the place? We're all aware that our national roads and bridges have fallen into shameful disrepair; our sewer and water infrastructure is crumbling and imploding all around us; our energy delivery systems are at least fifty years outdated; our schools are suffering from student/teacher ratios as high as 40-1; essential services like police and firefighting are being slashed below safe levels; our elderly find themselves isolated and without appropriate home and/or nursing care; millions of our children are being left at home without adequate after-school care; we're still dependent on foreign oil sources that are rapidly declining; our food sources and manufacturing capacities have been shipped overseas and are out of our quality control; our medical facilities are overwhelmed, understaffed and incapable of handling the needs of the larger populace - have I missed anything here?
It doesn't take us long to realize that our early ancestors had no experience with unemployment problems. In a hunter-gatherer culture or an early agrarian culture, not to work meant certain death for one's family and for oneself. Our ancestors couldn't afford to wait for someone "in charge" to promise them a paycheck before picking up a spear, a hoe or a bucket to attend to their daily needs. They understood what mattered, and took care of life's business without worrying about whether their 401k plans were intact, whether they had medical insurance, if they'd been promised adequate time for their lunch breaks or whether their environment was a friendly place in which to work. What's happened to us? How is it we've lost touch with so many basic truths about what it means to be alive? We've been lulled into putting our need for money before our own survival, and as yet we don't even know it. We've become like frogs sitting in a slowly boiling pot of water - the heat is rising yet we're too sleepy and unaware to jump out of the pot and save ourselves from dying. At least we haven't woken up to the hard truth yet.
What it will take for human beings to awaken to the fact that we're slowly destroying ourselves with our unhealthy co-dependence on corporations to inspire us to work? Can't we see that by allowing our corporations to control our work ethic by using the bait of money, we've handed over to them the power to determine exactly what work gets done - that which is most profitable for their bottom lines - as well as how much of it gets done. Everything else - what truly benefits human society, what honors and supports our environment, our resources and the life forms with whom we share space - gets left behind in that endless corporate quest to earn a few dollars.
Our modern human family can no longer afford to view itself as "nuclear," and thus separate from all others. That's become a clear recipe for disaster in an increasingly shrinking world. What happens in the rest of the world affects what happens here, and vice-versa. "Their" pollution has become "our" problem; "their" suffering (political and social disenfranchisement) has become "our" pain (9/11). This breakdown of humanity into "usses" and "thems" must therefore end if we're to thrive. After all, we're sharing space on this planet and are in this life together, come what may.
What then, if we toss out our mortgages and money, our loans and debts and simply pull together as a species to accomplish our objectives for the greater good? How much more might we achieve if we chose to love and trust each other more than we depend on money to keep us safe from potential disaster?
I'm simply posing the question. For me, the answers are not to be found by studying my bankbook or brokerage account. They're in my heart, which knows the right thing to do. I'd love to hear yours.
This problems begs an important question: how long has human society suffered from this thing called "unemployment" and what can we do to fix it? Why do we even have such a thing as unemployment, when there's clearly so much work that needs to be done around the place? We're all aware that our national roads and bridges have fallen into shameful disrepair; our sewer and water infrastructure is crumbling and imploding all around us; our energy delivery systems are at least fifty years outdated; our schools are suffering from student/teacher ratios as high as 40-1; essential services like police and firefighting are being slashed below safe levels; our elderly find themselves isolated and without appropriate home and/or nursing care; millions of our children are being left at home without adequate after-school care; we're still dependent on foreign oil sources that are rapidly declining; our food sources and manufacturing capacities have been shipped overseas and are out of our quality control; our medical facilities are overwhelmed, understaffed and incapable of handling the needs of the larger populace - have I missed anything here?
It doesn't take us long to realize that our early ancestors had no experience with unemployment problems. In a hunter-gatherer culture or an early agrarian culture, not to work meant certain death for one's family and for oneself. Our ancestors couldn't afford to wait for someone "in charge" to promise them a paycheck before picking up a spear, a hoe or a bucket to attend to their daily needs. They understood what mattered, and took care of life's business without worrying about whether their 401k plans were intact, whether they had medical insurance, if they'd been promised adequate time for their lunch breaks or whether their environment was a friendly place in which to work. What's happened to us? How is it we've lost touch with so many basic truths about what it means to be alive? We've been lulled into putting our need for money before our own survival, and as yet we don't even know it. We've become like frogs sitting in a slowly boiling pot of water - the heat is rising yet we're too sleepy and unaware to jump out of the pot and save ourselves from dying. At least we haven't woken up to the hard truth yet.
What it will take for human beings to awaken to the fact that we're slowly destroying ourselves with our unhealthy co-dependence on corporations to inspire us to work? Can't we see that by allowing our corporations to control our work ethic by using the bait of money, we've handed over to them the power to determine exactly what work gets done - that which is most profitable for their bottom lines - as well as how much of it gets done. Everything else - what truly benefits human society, what honors and supports our environment, our resources and the life forms with whom we share space - gets left behind in that endless corporate quest to earn a few dollars.
Our modern human family can no longer afford to view itself as "nuclear," and thus separate from all others. That's become a clear recipe for disaster in an increasingly shrinking world. What happens in the rest of the world affects what happens here, and vice-versa. "Their" pollution has become "our" problem; "their" suffering (political and social disenfranchisement) has become "our" pain (9/11). This breakdown of humanity into "usses" and "thems" must therefore end if we're to thrive. After all, we're sharing space on this planet and are in this life together, come what may.
What then, if we toss out our mortgages and money, our loans and debts and simply pull together as a species to accomplish our objectives for the greater good? How much more might we achieve if we chose to love and trust each other more than we depend on money to keep us safe from potential disaster?
I'm simply posing the question. For me, the answers are not to be found by studying my bankbook or brokerage account. They're in my heart, which knows the right thing to do. I'd love to hear yours.
Monday, September 14, 2009
A Return to Sanity
I went utterly insane once, so believe me when I tell you I know exactly what it feels like. For a time during my experience I believed I was immortal and didn't need to ever eat or sleep again. I believed I could stare at the sun and receive cosmic information in the form of digestible light packets. I believed all I had to do was wish for something and it would come true for the world. I believed I could pick up an angry rattlesnake that had accidentally become trapped in our bedroom and lovingly set it free. (Thankfully for me, my husband nixed that idea and handled the snake with a bucket and pole from a distance!)
After a time my hallucinations switched from euphoric to paranoid. I then began to believe that roving gangs of murderers were chainsawing my neighbors to death. I believed aliens had landed, were capturing people, injecting nanobots into their bloodstreams and firing them off to "seed" distant stars with their spawn. I believed China had dropped nuclear weapons on major American cities, and that our world had been transformed into a poisoned, fiery hell. For a time I believed I was the only one left alive.
Being that crazy was not a pleasant experience. For much of the time I found myself unable to communicate with anyone, as I was completely lost in a mental landscape that no one else could visit, see or experience with me. In that sense I really was alone in the universe. At last, when I tried to steal an ambulance so I could go to the ocean and turn myself into a dolphin, the outside world finally recognized I was a danger to myself and possibly others. They hauled me off to the hospital for some much needed medical attention. After three days in intensive care and months of slow and painful mental and physical recovery, I gradually found my way back to sanity. In doing so I've learned some fascinating things about what insanity is. I'd like to share them.
Insanity, I've discovered, is a rejection of reality in favor of a narrative in the head. The man who insists he's Napoleon Bonaparte, the woman who talks to invisible people, the catatonic who curls into a ball and shuts out all sensory input - they're all having the same insane experience. It's only their story and method of holding onto their story that's different.
As a matter of fact, once I began to heal and look around the world again, what I noticed was that virtually every person I saw was having an insane experience to one degree or another. The only difference was with the narratives people were telling themselves. Interestingly enough, what I observed was that if the narrative a person substituted for reality was considered "socially acceptable" by his or her chosen peer group, then that person was considered sane, no matter how crazy or false their narrative might be. That explains how the "birthers" found semi-legitimacy through the news media, how creationists have managed to build quasi-reputable museums, how people have been able to stand outside health care rallies and with a straight face talk about Obama's "death panels." Insanity, it seems, is a matter of degree. The more persuasive a person who's telling a narrative can be, the more people he can convince to believe his story. The more people who believe in his story, the less likely that story is to be perceived as bat-shit crazy. And the more people who have forgotten how to do reality checks because they've been seduced their entire lives by easy narratives, the more gullible rubes there are for the storytellers.
Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Axis of Evil. Torture as a legitimate interrogation method. A suspension of constitutional rights in order to preserve our constitution. Nobody knew the levees in New Orleans could fail. Iraq and Al Queda were connected through 9/11. They hate us for our freedom. President Obama is a secret Nazi/Facist/Communist/Socialist/Muslim/Racist. Killing abortion doctors preserves our sacred right to life. We "can't afford" to reduce our dependence on oil.
Since when did we become a nation so obsessed with crazy narratives that we've lost the ability to get in touch with reality? I suspect it's been going on for years, and that this weakness has been built into the way we educate our children. We send perfectly good and inquiring minds to school, where we tell them the narrative of human history and grade them well if they spit it back to us without "error." Nowhere in that process is critical thinking, questioning and new exploration lauded - at least not until the narrative has been firmly imbedded in them.
And after all, we're also a nation primarily raised on Biblical narratives that include talking snakes, unseen demons and angels, a guy who put two of every animal in a boat and sails it away, whole cities that were leveled by the angry "finger of God" for their bad behavior. The list goes on...
One difficulty with changing all this is that as we've industrialized we've moved farther and farther away from our touchstone with reality - the natural world. We read about full moons and new moons in the weather section of the news, but how many of us can still look at the sky and know what phase of the moon we're observing at night? How many of us genuinely understand the Earth's rotation and spin in relation to the sun and seasonality? Perpaps our growing disconnect from nature explains why it's so easy for us to ignore things like rainforest destruction, the extinction of polar bears, melting ice caps, rainfall changes and the rising pollution and exhaustion of fish in our oceans. The narratives we're telling ourselves are so much nicer than the truth that we collectively cling to them in desperation, despite all evidence to the contrary!
During my wildly insane period, had I been able to stop the voices in my head and simply BE PRESENT with what was happening, I would have noticed that none of these things I believed were actually true. This, I suspect is what awaits humankind around a very near corner. Avoidance of the truth can only carry us so far, then the narrative will break down in favor of reality. Either we'll act out the narrative only to discover later it wasn't true, which is what led to the war in Iraq; or reality will crush the narrative, as will happen when twenty feet of water flood Manhattan and bury Florida when all our glaciers melt.
Letting go of the narratives we've all been taught to believe in can be deeply unsettling to the mind. It's even harder when the people you love don't want to let go of the stories. They'll try to drag you back into their shared belief system, because when something isn't demonstrably true there's a sense of safety in numbers. The more people who accept the narrative the more likely (or so people think) it is that the story is actually true. It's why religions are so fond of bearing witness and procreating - more little religious believers to promote the story.
The Flat Earthers didn't want to accept it when the news came to them that the Earth was round. It's what Holocaust deniers and alien abductees share; an eagerness to convince others that their narrative is correct and thus control the story.
Humanity, by virtue of its ability to tell imaginative stories, has the capacity to move information across the generations. Perhaps it's time we began to realize the weighty responsibility that attaches to that privilege. If we're going to tell stories to each other, let's at least make an effort to get our stories right. Worst case, let's freely acknowledge that a theory is still a theory, so the truth can always find an open window into humanity's psyche.
Anything less is utterly insane.
After a time my hallucinations switched from euphoric to paranoid. I then began to believe that roving gangs of murderers were chainsawing my neighbors to death. I believed aliens had landed, were capturing people, injecting nanobots into their bloodstreams and firing them off to "seed" distant stars with their spawn. I believed China had dropped nuclear weapons on major American cities, and that our world had been transformed into a poisoned, fiery hell. For a time I believed I was the only one left alive.
Being that crazy was not a pleasant experience. For much of the time I found myself unable to communicate with anyone, as I was completely lost in a mental landscape that no one else could visit, see or experience with me. In that sense I really was alone in the universe. At last, when I tried to steal an ambulance so I could go to the ocean and turn myself into a dolphin, the outside world finally recognized I was a danger to myself and possibly others. They hauled me off to the hospital for some much needed medical attention. After three days in intensive care and months of slow and painful mental and physical recovery, I gradually found my way back to sanity. In doing so I've learned some fascinating things about what insanity is. I'd like to share them.
Insanity, I've discovered, is a rejection of reality in favor of a narrative in the head. The man who insists he's Napoleon Bonaparte, the woman who talks to invisible people, the catatonic who curls into a ball and shuts out all sensory input - they're all having the same insane experience. It's only their story and method of holding onto their story that's different.
As a matter of fact, once I began to heal and look around the world again, what I noticed was that virtually every person I saw was having an insane experience to one degree or another. The only difference was with the narratives people were telling themselves. Interestingly enough, what I observed was that if the narrative a person substituted for reality was considered "socially acceptable" by his or her chosen peer group, then that person was considered sane, no matter how crazy or false their narrative might be. That explains how the "birthers" found semi-legitimacy through the news media, how creationists have managed to build quasi-reputable museums, how people have been able to stand outside health care rallies and with a straight face talk about Obama's "death panels." Insanity, it seems, is a matter of degree. The more persuasive a person who's telling a narrative can be, the more people he can convince to believe his story. The more people who believe in his story, the less likely that story is to be perceived as bat-shit crazy. And the more people who have forgotten how to do reality checks because they've been seduced their entire lives by easy narratives, the more gullible rubes there are for the storytellers.
Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Axis of Evil. Torture as a legitimate interrogation method. A suspension of constitutional rights in order to preserve our constitution. Nobody knew the levees in New Orleans could fail. Iraq and Al Queda were connected through 9/11. They hate us for our freedom. President Obama is a secret Nazi/Facist/Communist/Socialist/Muslim/Racist. Killing abortion doctors preserves our sacred right to life. We "can't afford" to reduce our dependence on oil.
Since when did we become a nation so obsessed with crazy narratives that we've lost the ability to get in touch with reality? I suspect it's been going on for years, and that this weakness has been built into the way we educate our children. We send perfectly good and inquiring minds to school, where we tell them the narrative of human history and grade them well if they spit it back to us without "error." Nowhere in that process is critical thinking, questioning and new exploration lauded - at least not until the narrative has been firmly imbedded in them.
And after all, we're also a nation primarily raised on Biblical narratives that include talking snakes, unseen demons and angels, a guy who put two of every animal in a boat and sails it away, whole cities that were leveled by the angry "finger of God" for their bad behavior. The list goes on...
One difficulty with changing all this is that as we've industrialized we've moved farther and farther away from our touchstone with reality - the natural world. We read about full moons and new moons in the weather section of the news, but how many of us can still look at the sky and know what phase of the moon we're observing at night? How many of us genuinely understand the Earth's rotation and spin in relation to the sun and seasonality? Perpaps our growing disconnect from nature explains why it's so easy for us to ignore things like rainforest destruction, the extinction of polar bears, melting ice caps, rainfall changes and the rising pollution and exhaustion of fish in our oceans. The narratives we're telling ourselves are so much nicer than the truth that we collectively cling to them in desperation, despite all evidence to the contrary!
During my wildly insane period, had I been able to stop the voices in my head and simply BE PRESENT with what was happening, I would have noticed that none of these things I believed were actually true. This, I suspect is what awaits humankind around a very near corner. Avoidance of the truth can only carry us so far, then the narrative will break down in favor of reality. Either we'll act out the narrative only to discover later it wasn't true, which is what led to the war in Iraq; or reality will crush the narrative, as will happen when twenty feet of water flood Manhattan and bury Florida when all our glaciers melt.
Letting go of the narratives we've all been taught to believe in can be deeply unsettling to the mind. It's even harder when the people you love don't want to let go of the stories. They'll try to drag you back into their shared belief system, because when something isn't demonstrably true there's a sense of safety in numbers. The more people who accept the narrative the more likely (or so people think) it is that the story is actually true. It's why religions are so fond of bearing witness and procreating - more little religious believers to promote the story.
The Flat Earthers didn't want to accept it when the news came to them that the Earth was round. It's what Holocaust deniers and alien abductees share; an eagerness to convince others that their narrative is correct and thus control the story.
Humanity, by virtue of its ability to tell imaginative stories, has the capacity to move information across the generations. Perhaps it's time we began to realize the weighty responsibility that attaches to that privilege. If we're going to tell stories to each other, let's at least make an effort to get our stories right. Worst case, let's freely acknowledge that a theory is still a theory, so the truth can always find an open window into humanity's psyche.
Anything less is utterly insane.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Magical money game
Isn't it fascinating how the banks have suddenly turned "profitable" after nearly going bankrupt less than a year ago?
Would that the average human being be able to pull off such an amazing financial turnaround! What, we must now ask ourselves, marks the magical difference between a regular person who, after suffering such a severe financial setback, finds themselves in a perpetual struggle to recover; versus the way the banks have managed to bounce back so handily from the brink of utter disaster?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we've treated our banks in ways they don't treat us. When we screw up it's "our fault." We've borrowed more than we could afford, failed to read the fine print, got too greedy too quickly, didn't plan or save well enough...the list of our human failings goes on and on. These are the harsh judgments our banks render to "punish" us when things turn south in our personal lives. They then jack up our interest rates, slash our lines of credit, demand payment in full for our outstanding debts and repossess our homes - and expect us to somehow pull ourselves back up by our bootstraps (assuming they've even allowed us to keep our boots) so we can get ourselves into debt all over again.
Meanwhile, back in banking wonderland, the federal government decreed last year that the banks - despite all their mistakes, their greed and their abuse of the trust of the American public - were "too big to fail." So we, the American people, were forced to lend those banks many billions of dollars and guarantee hundreds of billions more to enable them to get themselves back on track. (Wouldn't it be nice if our banks, as soon as they learned a customer was in trouble, slashed our interest rates to zero and lent us enough money so we could quickly get our families and our own lives "back on track?")
The worst part of our financial arrangement with the banks is we're lending them the very same money they're now lending back to us - the struggling American public. Only the money we're borrowing back from them is coming to us at a considerably higher interest rate than we're charging them to borrow it from us in the first place. Think about that for a minute - the American public is going deeply into debt to lend the banks money, so they can then lend it back to us at rates that put us deeper into debt. Then remind me again why we were so afraid for the banks to "fail?"
The details is where it starts to gets really fascinating. The Fed is lending our banks money at near 0% to "stimulate" credit and facilitate consumer borrowing. The banks however, are using much of the money they're borrowing from the Fed to purchase US Treasury bonds, which are guaranteed government investments that pay around 3.5% annual interest. That differential of 3.5% means a profit of $35 billion a year for every trillion dollars the banks borrow from the Fed - and by extension the American people, who are on the hook for that 3.5% interest - and lends back to the Fed through the purchase of government bonds.
How's that for one heck of a sweetheart investment deal? The banks take no risk, receive government guaranteed returns and bear no cost for the money they're borrowing to earn that guaranteed annual profit.
But wait - it gets even better! If you check your savings account or money market interest rate these days, you'll discover that the banks are paying us somewhere around .2% for the privilege of lending our hard-earned savings out to our friends and neighbors. At the same time, the interest rate on the average bank-issued credit card is pushing 17%, while the average home mortgage loan generates 5.5% interest for the banks. Those differentials amount to staggering profits for the banks' bottom lines, all coming courtesy of the general public - that's you and me.
Here's a thought: Why don't we just borrow all the money we need directly from the Fed at the same 0% sweetheart rate the big banks are getting from us? After all it's our money to begin with, since the money the Fed is lending out becomes a debt of the American people. If we bypassed the banks altogether and lent the money directly to ourselves, think how much money we'd collectively save in the way of annual interest payments! Plus, all those trillions the banks are investing in government bonds wouldn't need to be lent out in the first place, so that would save us billions upon billions in annual interest payments. That's more money we could use for our crumbling infrastructure, universal medical care, alternative energy exploration, education and a host of other real and pressing needs we face today.
Perhaps the "too big to fail" concept was flawed from the very beginning. Perhaps the real underlying issue we were terrified to face was what it would mean to our entire economic system if we actually had to do business directly with each other, without a mediator (a bank) to ensure we'd all play the game fairly. That's not a bad strategy, assuming we're still too afraid to trust each other and would rather put our faith in the integrity of a central mediator - at least until the mediator discovers the unfair advantage it holds by not playing fair itself, in order to turn a greater corporate profit.
When we see this, and transparency is becoming a blessing with the advent of the internet, we can perhaps begin to consider the value of remembering how to trust each other again. Certainly the placing of our faith in the integrity of our corporations hasn't benefited us overall. Can we stretch our comfort zones enough to consider helping each other without suspicion that we're being "taken advantage" of? Can we rise to the challenge and love each other enough to care less about the few bad apples we might encounter and focus more on the awesomeness of most people, when given half a chance to become the best they can be?
I suspect that's where the cosmos is pushing us, and it's where we need to go if we're to survive. Ultimately our elimination of both the mediator (the corporate institution) and the medium (money itself) would enable us to more freely exchange our infinite human creativity and advance our society in ways we've only dreamed possible. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll head in that direction sooner or later. Here's hoping it happens before we all go broke!
Would that the average human being be able to pull off such an amazing financial turnaround! What, we must now ask ourselves, marks the magical difference between a regular person who, after suffering such a severe financial setback, finds themselves in a perpetual struggle to recover; versus the way the banks have managed to bounce back so handily from the brink of utter disaster?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we've treated our banks in ways they don't treat us. When we screw up it's "our fault." We've borrowed more than we could afford, failed to read the fine print, got too greedy too quickly, didn't plan or save well enough...the list of our human failings goes on and on. These are the harsh judgments our banks render to "punish" us when things turn south in our personal lives. They then jack up our interest rates, slash our lines of credit, demand payment in full for our outstanding debts and repossess our homes - and expect us to somehow pull ourselves back up by our bootstraps (assuming they've even allowed us to keep our boots) so we can get ourselves into debt all over again.
Meanwhile, back in banking wonderland, the federal government decreed last year that the banks - despite all their mistakes, their greed and their abuse of the trust of the American public - were "too big to fail." So we, the American people, were forced to lend those banks many billions of dollars and guarantee hundreds of billions more to enable them to get themselves back on track. (Wouldn't it be nice if our banks, as soon as they learned a customer was in trouble, slashed our interest rates to zero and lent us enough money so we could quickly get our families and our own lives "back on track?")
The worst part of our financial arrangement with the banks is we're lending them the very same money they're now lending back to us - the struggling American public. Only the money we're borrowing back from them is coming to us at a considerably higher interest rate than we're charging them to borrow it from us in the first place. Think about that for a minute - the American public is going deeply into debt to lend the banks money, so they can then lend it back to us at rates that put us deeper into debt. Then remind me again why we were so afraid for the banks to "fail?"
The details is where it starts to gets really fascinating. The Fed is lending our banks money at near 0% to "stimulate" credit and facilitate consumer borrowing. The banks however, are using much of the money they're borrowing from the Fed to purchase US Treasury bonds, which are guaranteed government investments that pay around 3.5% annual interest. That differential of 3.5% means a profit of $35 billion a year for every trillion dollars the banks borrow from the Fed - and by extension the American people, who are on the hook for that 3.5% interest - and lends back to the Fed through the purchase of government bonds.
How's that for one heck of a sweetheart investment deal? The banks take no risk, receive government guaranteed returns and bear no cost for the money they're borrowing to earn that guaranteed annual profit.
But wait - it gets even better! If you check your savings account or money market interest rate these days, you'll discover that the banks are paying us somewhere around .2% for the privilege of lending our hard-earned savings out to our friends and neighbors. At the same time, the interest rate on the average bank-issued credit card is pushing 17%, while the average home mortgage loan generates 5.5% interest for the banks. Those differentials amount to staggering profits for the banks' bottom lines, all coming courtesy of the general public - that's you and me.
Here's a thought: Why don't we just borrow all the money we need directly from the Fed at the same 0% sweetheart rate the big banks are getting from us? After all it's our money to begin with, since the money the Fed is lending out becomes a debt of the American people. If we bypassed the banks altogether and lent the money directly to ourselves, think how much money we'd collectively save in the way of annual interest payments! Plus, all those trillions the banks are investing in government bonds wouldn't need to be lent out in the first place, so that would save us billions upon billions in annual interest payments. That's more money we could use for our crumbling infrastructure, universal medical care, alternative energy exploration, education and a host of other real and pressing needs we face today.
Perhaps the "too big to fail" concept was flawed from the very beginning. Perhaps the real underlying issue we were terrified to face was what it would mean to our entire economic system if we actually had to do business directly with each other, without a mediator (a bank) to ensure we'd all play the game fairly. That's not a bad strategy, assuming we're still too afraid to trust each other and would rather put our faith in the integrity of a central mediator - at least until the mediator discovers the unfair advantage it holds by not playing fair itself, in order to turn a greater corporate profit.
When we see this, and transparency is becoming a blessing with the advent of the internet, we can perhaps begin to consider the value of remembering how to trust each other again. Certainly the placing of our faith in the integrity of our corporations hasn't benefited us overall. Can we stretch our comfort zones enough to consider helping each other without suspicion that we're being "taken advantage" of? Can we rise to the challenge and love each other enough to care less about the few bad apples we might encounter and focus more on the awesomeness of most people, when given half a chance to become the best they can be?
I suspect that's where the cosmos is pushing us, and it's where we need to go if we're to survive. Ultimately our elimination of both the mediator (the corporate institution) and the medium (money itself) would enable us to more freely exchange our infinite human creativity and advance our society in ways we've only dreamed possible. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll head in that direction sooner or later. Here's hoping it happens before we all go broke!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Wants versus Needs and the Profit Incentive
Lately it seems many of our businesses aren't genuinely doing the jobs for which they were chartered. For example, our insurance companies aren't covering those of us who may need to file a claim; they're only selecting those customers who aren't likely to use their services. Our pharmaceutical companies likewise aren't curing us of disease; they're merely treating our symptoms of illness for years and years. Neither are our banks making it easier for us to save money; they're actually making it more difficult by charging us exorbitant fees, fines, interest rates and monthly service charges. On and on it goes, causing many individuals stress and suffering in virtually every arena of social life.
Why is this happening? Something is clearly wrong with the way we've structured our economy when our businesses are being rewarded for NOT doing what we believe they're supposed to do. To find an answer we must examine the corporate structure a bit more closely. In doing so we discover that, in reality, we're financially rewarding companies that are most successful at making money. The corporate priority is NOT to provide something that benefits society, but to turn a higher profit - however that looks. In other words, the key to making more money in our world is to make more money.
That formula emerged out of the thinking that human beings would work harder and achieve more in life if doing so enabled them to acquire more material comforts for themselves and their families. When people achieve more, society benefits. Thus to inspire people to provide what they want for themselves theoretically benefits society.
Material comforts can only be acquired with money in a modern society, therefore money has become the main reward we offer for human endeavor. Those endeavors include not only our individual efforts, but our corporate (collective) efforts as well.
When our businesses provide society with a product or service people want they are rewarded with money, which they then distribute among their owners (stockholders) debtors (bondholders) and employees. Theoretically at least, if our businesses don't give us what we want we won't support them, and they'll be replaced by businesses that do give us what we want. The money they earn flows back into the system and encourages other companies and people ,to consume the goods and services they need, as well as to provide the goods and services others want. In theory then, this strategy sounds like a good one.
In practice though, what we find is that this strategy has developed multiple flaws. For starters, what companies offer isn't necessarily what people want, but what they NEED. That fact alone eliminates the only power we have to vote against corporations with our wallets, which was supposed to be the "check and balance" part of the equation. I can ignore a want in order to punish a company for not behaving in a way that serves society, but I can't ignore a need. If by law I'm required to have auto insurance in order to drive a car, I must buy it even if I detest the way every company that offers it prices their product. Likewise if I need medical attention I can't quarrel over the doctor's price for the surgery I require. Nor can I argue with the banks over their high mortgage interest rates if I need a place to live and raise my family.
When companies are relieved of the burden of having to provide people with what they want in exchange for public support of their goods and services, they are free to force people to do whatever they demand in exchange for what people need. That grants companies enormous power to "squeeze" their customers for the sake of higher profits. The more money companies make the more they earn for their owners (stockholders) so the more support they get for their endeavors. Once one company has figured out a new way to "squeeze" its customers, other companies in the industry follow suit. Their motive is to stay financially competitive in the short run so they can survive, not to provide a better level of customer service in the long run so humanity and society can thrive.
As modern society has advanced, more and more of what used to be "wants" have become needs. If we hope to contribute anything of value to our society we must have access to advanced education, automobiles, computers, health care, groceries, water and electricity. The more who become disenfranchised from those needs the fewer who will have the capacity to offer the best they have to give to our civilization. Companies may therefore be growing richer, but the evidence is piling up all around us that our society is becoming collectively poorer.
The present recession we're in is a reflection of the fact that companies can't thrive (turn a profit) for very long when they're collectively making life harder for their own customers. Ship jobs overseas to cut your costs, and you've reduced the amount of collective wages available to buy corporate goods and services. Raise prices on your customers, and you hinder their ability to adaquately care for the children who will be your next generation of corporate employees and customers. Deny adequate health care to your customers, and you make it more likely the entire social base of employees and customers will either fall ill or be required to take care of someone who is. Clearly then, businesses that thrive on screwing their customers by withholding their needs or making them harder to acquire are ultimately screwing each other as well as themselves.
The moment we collectively convert an item from a want to a social need, we've surrendered our power to get along without it. Without a bank account, for example, we can't cash our paychecks or pay our bills, so we become marginalized by society. That pressure grants undue power over people to the corporations that provide us the necessary service. Our economic structure doesn't yet reflect this changing nature of human society, which is why so many of us are suffering because we're no longer able to meet our basic needs.
The first step toward repairing this problem would be for humanity to come together and discern what exactly are the things we consider needs, and which are wants that most of us can do without. To then reflect this difference in our economy by mandating public access to all the things we consider needs would help us to shift the incentives in the system and alleviate much of the suffering we're experiencing today.
The moment we differentiate between human wants and needs it becomes apparent that we need to shift corporate incentives. To profit off the needs of another is inherently immoral. How ethical is it for me to deprive a starving person of the food he or she needs to survive, in order for me to make more money so I can satisfy more of my wants? Needs and wants can never be equated, nor should they be. No business should ever have the power to turn off an elderly couple's electricity and cause them to freeze to death (or slow roast in summer) because the people can't afford to pay their bill. It's not a question of "efficiency" or "profitability;" it's a question of our inherent humanity.
What we choose to be, and how we choose to behave toward each other is the measure of our deepest human values. As Jesus once said, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That statement is a powerful pointer toward a single human ethic we could all live by. If every person in every encounter they have during every day would check himself by asking that simple question before he acted, imagine how swiftly the world around us would change!
What are we waiting for? If we wait for the "other guy" to act morally before we're willing to commit ourselves to the task, it'll never get done. We can each become the change we wish to see in this world by demonstrating the ethic that says every human being is entitled to have their basic needs met by society, and work toward that goal.
If we ask the question, "How may I serve the needs of my fellow man?" and let that be the guide to our actions, our corporations WILL change along with us, because they ARE us.
Why is this happening? Something is clearly wrong with the way we've structured our economy when our businesses are being rewarded for NOT doing what we believe they're supposed to do. To find an answer we must examine the corporate structure a bit more closely. In doing so we discover that, in reality, we're financially rewarding companies that are most successful at making money. The corporate priority is NOT to provide something that benefits society, but to turn a higher profit - however that looks. In other words, the key to making more money in our world is to make more money.
That formula emerged out of the thinking that human beings would work harder and achieve more in life if doing so enabled them to acquire more material comforts for themselves and their families. When people achieve more, society benefits. Thus to inspire people to provide what they want for themselves theoretically benefits society.
Material comforts can only be acquired with money in a modern society, therefore money has become the main reward we offer for human endeavor. Those endeavors include not only our individual efforts, but our corporate (collective) efforts as well.
When our businesses provide society with a product or service people want they are rewarded with money, which they then distribute among their owners (stockholders) debtors (bondholders) and employees. Theoretically at least, if our businesses don't give us what we want we won't support them, and they'll be replaced by businesses that do give us what we want. The money they earn flows back into the system and encourages other companies and people ,to consume the goods and services they need, as well as to provide the goods and services others want. In theory then, this strategy sounds like a good one.
In practice though, what we find is that this strategy has developed multiple flaws. For starters, what companies offer isn't necessarily what people want, but what they NEED. That fact alone eliminates the only power we have to vote against corporations with our wallets, which was supposed to be the "check and balance" part of the equation. I can ignore a want in order to punish a company for not behaving in a way that serves society, but I can't ignore a need. If by law I'm required to have auto insurance in order to drive a car, I must buy it even if I detest the way every company that offers it prices their product. Likewise if I need medical attention I can't quarrel over the doctor's price for the surgery I require. Nor can I argue with the banks over their high mortgage interest rates if I need a place to live and raise my family.
When companies are relieved of the burden of having to provide people with what they want in exchange for public support of their goods and services, they are free to force people to do whatever they demand in exchange for what people need. That grants companies enormous power to "squeeze" their customers for the sake of higher profits. The more money companies make the more they earn for their owners (stockholders) so the more support they get for their endeavors. Once one company has figured out a new way to "squeeze" its customers, other companies in the industry follow suit. Their motive is to stay financially competitive in the short run so they can survive, not to provide a better level of customer service in the long run so humanity and society can thrive.
As modern society has advanced, more and more of what used to be "wants" have become needs. If we hope to contribute anything of value to our society we must have access to advanced education, automobiles, computers, health care, groceries, water and electricity. The more who become disenfranchised from those needs the fewer who will have the capacity to offer the best they have to give to our civilization. Companies may therefore be growing richer, but the evidence is piling up all around us that our society is becoming collectively poorer.
The present recession we're in is a reflection of the fact that companies can't thrive (turn a profit) for very long when they're collectively making life harder for their own customers. Ship jobs overseas to cut your costs, and you've reduced the amount of collective wages available to buy corporate goods and services. Raise prices on your customers, and you hinder their ability to adaquately care for the children who will be your next generation of corporate employees and customers. Deny adequate health care to your customers, and you make it more likely the entire social base of employees and customers will either fall ill or be required to take care of someone who is. Clearly then, businesses that thrive on screwing their customers by withholding their needs or making them harder to acquire are ultimately screwing each other as well as themselves.
The moment we collectively convert an item from a want to a social need, we've surrendered our power to get along without it. Without a bank account, for example, we can't cash our paychecks or pay our bills, so we become marginalized by society. That pressure grants undue power over people to the corporations that provide us the necessary service. Our economic structure doesn't yet reflect this changing nature of human society, which is why so many of us are suffering because we're no longer able to meet our basic needs.
The first step toward repairing this problem would be for humanity to come together and discern what exactly are the things we consider needs, and which are wants that most of us can do without. To then reflect this difference in our economy by mandating public access to all the things we consider needs would help us to shift the incentives in the system and alleviate much of the suffering we're experiencing today.
The moment we differentiate between human wants and needs it becomes apparent that we need to shift corporate incentives. To profit off the needs of another is inherently immoral. How ethical is it for me to deprive a starving person of the food he or she needs to survive, in order for me to make more money so I can satisfy more of my wants? Needs and wants can never be equated, nor should they be. No business should ever have the power to turn off an elderly couple's electricity and cause them to freeze to death (or slow roast in summer) because the people can't afford to pay their bill. It's not a question of "efficiency" or "profitability;" it's a question of our inherent humanity.
What we choose to be, and how we choose to behave toward each other is the measure of our deepest human values. As Jesus once said, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That statement is a powerful pointer toward a single human ethic we could all live by. If every person in every encounter they have during every day would check himself by asking that simple question before he acted, imagine how swiftly the world around us would change!
What are we waiting for? If we wait for the "other guy" to act morally before we're willing to commit ourselves to the task, it'll never get done. We can each become the change we wish to see in this world by demonstrating the ethic that says every human being is entitled to have their basic needs met by society, and work toward that goal.
If we ask the question, "How may I serve the needs of my fellow man?" and let that be the guide to our actions, our corporations WILL change along with us, because they ARE us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
