-
The Tragedy of the Commons
: Bush and his corporate cronies are exploiting the fact that
only a few underfunded social and environmental groups care enough and know
enough to try to block Bush's all-out assault on the environment and on
public property and public institutions. This is at once the most dangerous
aspect of Bush's ideological extremism, the one hardest to undo and the
one getting the least attention. Its sheer scale and underhandedness are
unprecedented in the history of humanity.
-
Underemployment:
Nothing contributes more to the feeling of uselessness and
helplessness of human beings than knowing they're doing a job far below
what they are capable of, qualified for, and interested in doing. It's soul-destroying.
- Poor Education
*: The public failure that makes the dumbing-down, alienation, disenfranchisement
and consumerization of whole nations of citizens possible. The disgrace of
the Western world.
- Dishonesty,
and Ends Justifying Means
: Governments (notably the Bush administration), corporations (like
Nike) , and now even pressure groups (from the NRA to PETA) cynically distort
and disregard facts, prey on public fears and hatreds, and outright lie to
people, to exploit prejudice, ignorance and emotion, to achieve their ends
dishonestly. What does all this lying say about our society?
-
Economic Disparity & Rich/Poor Segregation:
The poor in Western society have not participated at all
in the economic booms over the past three decades, and have become steadily
poorer, especially single-parent families run by women. And even the domestic
poor are completely invisible to the rich, who take private transport everywhere,
send their children from their exclusive neighbourhood homes to their private
schools, and get cared for at private medical facilities. How can we expect
the power elite in our society to realize the desperate situation of the
poor, and of public institutions, when they never see them?
- Our Separation from Nature: And how can we expect people
who spend their entire lives in cities and indoors to appreciate the incredible
beauty, ecological and spiritual importance and fragility of the natural
world, and how much it is threatened with extinction, when they never see
it? Nature is something most of us just see on National Geographic.
- The Endless Tide of Violence: Buried inside the walls
of abusive homes, factory farms, prisons, workplaces, schools, laboratories
and institutions, and overtly displayed in inner city streets and throw-away
third world countries, an endless litany of violence, physical and psychological,
personal and institutional, plays out millions of times per minute as the
miserable signature of humanity. Instead of addressing the causes, we chalk
it up to the devil's handiwork and escalate the violence with incarceration,
victimization, retribution and pre-emptive aggression.
- The Hardening and Disengagement of Our Hearts: We read
fewer newspapers each year, and we change the channel when we see things
that show us too clearly just how desperately we need to fix the problems
that threaten to overwhelm us all. We turn away. We don't want to know. We
don't even see the homeless people we step over and drive by, and if we do,
we convince ourselves it's their fault, it someone else's responsibility,
there's nothing we can do. We become emotionally detached from everyone,
everything outside our private circle, and sometimes even from them. Reality
has become unbearable.
- The Ridiculing of the Disadvantaged: In reality TV, in
modern situation comedies, in our coarse jokes, we are increasingly asked
to laugh at people because they're stupid, or ignorant, or uneducated, or
untalented or inarticulate. What's so funny about this? Is it meant to make
us feel superior? It's mean humour, and it desensitizes us.
- The Legacy We Leave Our Children and our World: Regarding
the nine things above: How do we dare hope our children will be able to cope
with what we're leaving them, with what we've given them to cope with? They
have every right to hate us for what we've done. What we've done is unforgivable.
* Permalink broken -- scroll down to May 29 for the article
in question.
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MADE IN CANADA
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