Social values

The riots in Great Britain speak to me on a visceral level.  They are the voiceless and unheard poor and disenfranchised finally rising up and fairly screaming to be heard.  They have had enough of a set of social values that basically say that if you are without money you are to blame and are somehow inferior to anyone who has been "blessed" with money.   If you re poor, you have no value as a human being;  this is the overriding message of capitalism and religion in the West.  Helping the poor is seen as a weakness; we applaud it with our mouths while we kick the homeless out of their homes for lack of a job or money.  We downgrade an individual's credit score for being unable to pay her bills on time even when that was caused by a greedy corporation laying her off.  Why doesn't the corporation, the shareholder,  have their credit score downgraded for causing the worker to lose their ability to pay?  We punish the innocent and glorify the villain.  We claim to follow a man we call The Christ while doing the opposite of his purported teachings.  


No one is willing to really SEE that these things are the symptom of a disease called capitalism; which is an ideology of every-man-for-himself but white men get everything.  
Let's blame the victim for his or her calamity.  The average human being has allowed those who own everything and who control everything to incite us into fighting amongst ourselves for the crumbs they leave us (begrudgingly as best) in order to divide and conquer and keep us so busy scrabbling about gay marriage or abortion so as to miss their thievery.  They have us brainwashed into believing that if we work hard enough, we can be like them, rich and powerful.  So people actually argue to preserve the rich and their way of life because secretly, they hope to be just as nasty, rich, and powerful as their masters are.  They in essence have allowed the wealthy controlling class to dictate their values and what values they are:  money over humanity, profits over people,  power over  compassion.  In essence, people want to BE the very thing they say despise:  rich, greedy, powerful, and ruthless.  What is it in humanity that makes us so?    


Somewhere in our genetic code there are genes programmed for survival.  Yet on those genes I would guess there are markers which cause us to be greedy, grasping, and ruthless toward our fellow human beings.  We have learned to temper those urges because we found through the ages that we all survive better in a group than living solo but the urges are still there.  These urges rear their ugly heads  and we seem unable to stop them.  We are even our own undoing because so many of us never learn compassion when we experience harm;  instead we lash out first and never develop empathy.


The very thing several historical avatars (Christ, and others) promoted; compassion and caring for one another, has been perverted in the name of feel-good, prosperity religions who enjoy excluding anyone they feel is unacceptable.  How is this Western concept of Christianity any different from the banned but still practiced caste system in India?  Generations of people are born into the belief system and propagate it with high birth rates and fervor.   Yet they scream that they are persecuted.  


When will humanity figure out that we share the same DNA, have the same desires and needs, and need each other more than we need to be rich and powerful? 


I have seen in my own family the results of someone placing money above all else.  My sibling makes about $20,000 a month.  He has made making money his prime goal in life and now he is realizing that his kids are not doing well.  His oldest was on drugs and got pregnant; her baby was born addicted to methadone.  His second child collects shoes and never thinks of the less fortunate.  His third child had OCD and bi-polar from the time he was a child; he is on medications and still has issues in school and at home.  His fourth child is ok for now but his foster child was running away and having oral sex at 15 years old.  He sent her back to her family where she is probably on the streets as an under age prostitute.  None of his kids value education, the environment, charity, or helping others.  He was raised to value education and charity but he placed money first and as such his kids think of nothing else because they have everything, every new gadget that comes on the market.  He suffers because the first born was in and out of jail and has psychiatric problems and behavior issues.  Now he is almost 40 and regretting things but he still doesn't see that his focus on money os not the best way to be.  


My other sibling also focused on money and he had a terrible accident which left him with a lot of money but physically unable to enjoy it.  He died of an overdose of pain killers at age 50.  


Money is ok but we as a society need to stop valuing it and start valuing each other.  We need to value caring, compassion, the environment and each other, no matter what color, religion, nationality, or class status. But we must not be fool enough to think we have to be all nice and sweet;  those who have power over us are like pigs wallowing in their own muddy values. Sometimes the only way to get a pig to understand you is to get down and dirty where he is at and speak in his language.  Doing so doesn't make you "as bad as he is" because you will not remain there; you only do it to get his attention.  That's what the rioters are doing; their ruthlessness is speaking the same language as the heartless wealthy puppeteers who wantonly destroy lives in pursuit of their own agenda.  We all must speak their language to get their attention and once we have it, we must send the message clear and home that we will no longer live by those misplaced values.  And we will no longer allow them to live that way either. 

The American Dream?

People these days, especially the Tea Party folks, are talking about "taking back our government and the American Dream."  They seem to think that social programs like universal health care will destroy the American Dream.  The problem is, they don't realize that the American Dream has already been eroded beyond their ability to understand it.  The American Dream was always to be able to open your own business, grow it and eventually become wealthy; this was the promise of democratic capitalism.  Little do most people realize that this dream is no longer available to most Americans and it is not because of "too much government"  or "too much regulation"  or "social programs."  It is because the huge and powerful corporation owners and shareholders have skewed the business playing field to benefit them and only them. 


When I was a kid in the 1960's, government regulation meant that big corporations paid 29% of all the taxes in America;  now de-regulation has allowed them to pay between 0% and 5% of all taxes.  Instead, small businesses now pay HIGHER taxes than big corporations. What's more, Big Oil, Big Pharma and many other big companies enjoy government "subsidies"  or better words for these  would be "corporate welfare."  These corporations have so taken over our government that they now get the laws they want and skew things to such a degree that the American dream of owning your own business and growing it into personal wealth has fallen to the wayside.


Small businesses as a group are the largest employers in this country yet they pay the highest taxes of all businesses and are government regulated to death, literally.  More small businesses fail within the first five years than ever before and the owners lose, their employees lose, we ALL lose.    


When will Americans wake up and realize that it isn't Obama, socialism, government regulation, universal healthcare, or big government that is stealing their American Dream; it is the big corporations and they need to be stopped?


Most Americans are too busy fighting about things like gay marriage, abortion and prayer in schools to realize that these polarizing issues were fed to us to divide us so we won't fight to get back the American Dream from the big corporations.  Divide and conquer, make people fearful with TV programs that spout doom and gloom, get people to believe in scarcity and they will fight like hungry wolves over everything.  Keep them busy fighting and tearing each other down;  keep them busy watching denigrating,  competitive television shows  so they don't see how their American Dream has been stolen from them.  Anesthetize them with superfluous and mindless "entertainment"  that dumbs them down and polarizes them. 


How do we stop this corporate robbery?  That's easier than anyone would think.  We the people vote and if we gather together instead of allowing those big media and corporate folks to divide us over polarizing issues, we can rise up and vote out every incumbent in office.  We can notify congress that each newly voted in senator or representative will only get six years to do the jobs we voted them in for;  two to get their feet wet, two to get some work done, and two to wrap things up.  After that, we elect new people and start the six years over again.  We TELL each newly elected congressperson that WE are imposing TERM LIMITS on them and then we STICK TO THAT. We tell them that we impose these term limits so they spend their time getting the work done that WE want them to do instead of pandering to special interests to get re-elected. We tell them that if they still pander to corporate and special interest groups, we will not even give them six years; we will vote them out sooner.   This means WE have to stop being complacent and  take responsibility for keeping track of each newly elected person and  re-elect them to the point that they get six years in and ONLY six years. 


The next thing we can do is STOP SPENDING.  Hop off the consumption conveyor belt and only buy what you absolutely need.  Use recycled things (shop at thrift and used goods stores) swap things (use freecycle online for that) and get good at being careful with what you do have.  Be less wasteful.  If we all stop spending, yes, some more people will be left with no jobs but as we get more self sufficient at growing our own food, recycling and reusing things, living simpler, being frugal, it will hurt us less if we do lose our jobs.
Big corporations will have to hear us because we will rob them by attrition of what they value most; MONEY.  Hit their bottom line and they will finally hear us roar.


If every American stopped wrapping themselves in some polarizing position and started doing this, imagine the changes we could make!
It is time for ALL of us to arise from our stupor of the past decades and work for the government we deserve and  stop the corporate take over via attrition.