Image via WikipediaI've reached the point in my life, where I need to do something. Anything? But, I can't bring myself to settle in some corporate hierarchy, with which I fundamentally disagree. Again, I'm neither unique nor special. So, why do I hold out? Why have I let myself sink into this rut?
I know that I can't live with myself if I feel I'm a cog in a machine. I realize my role, I understand life goes on without me, as it would without anyone else and even without our species. I fear, this is the fundamental issue.
To survive we need adequate food, drinkable water and security from destructive aspects of nature. As a whole, we have been marvelously successful in achieving all 3 essentials. Food exists in such abundance, that obesity has become a problem and anorexia a bizarre & twisted reaction to that unnatural abundance. Potable water exists in such quantity, that we create golf courses in deserts. Finally, throughout the developed world, we're essentially divorced from the natural world, living in cities of steel and concrete.
Basically, we've reached a plateau, where the human race has moved beyond barely eking out survival and is in fact thriving. This may not be the land, but this is assuredly the time of milk and honey. Each of us living today and that will be born in the foreseeable future, lucked into this abundance and relative security.
Yet, we are not born with equal access to the benefits of this era ─ wealth is largely inherited ─ many of us are (seemingly) systemically denied the bounty of the time ─ however we consistently yield to the standing corporation-centric economy, despite our personal interests being at odds with the current structure.
We do this (in part) out of fear: socialist and communist revolutions have ultimately yielded fascist states, so that any notion of socialism seems to be inexorably linked with totalitarian fascism. The capitalist system, as it stands, also offers a certain naïve hope, that we (or our heirs) might be able to bootstrap our way out of poverty into the middle-class, or from the middle-class to the rich-elite. Never-mind that the odds of this are approximately the same as our odds of winning the lottery ─ besides which, in a capitalist nation, one persons good fortune is nearly always dependent upon another's bad fortune ─ the essence of capitalism being the uninhibited flow of wealth between individuals.
Trouble is, wealth doesn't flow without inhibition. In fact, wealth tends to pool amongst a small minority ─ controllers of industry and their families ─ while the common man works for a pittance.
Modern Western law and culture, is predicated upon beliefs in the innate equality of individuals, their right to self-determination, balanced by personal accountability. The current capitalist financial structure, seems to run contrary to these ideals. Inheritable wealth undermines individual equality, disparate pay negates individual liberty, while the poor and working classes are often held to higher standards of accountability.
I was born middle-class ─ I could embrace that lot ─ go to college ─ work my life away ─ generating wealth for others, while barely scraping by myself. Experience tells me, that way yields naught but frustration, personal anguish and a languishing of the spirit: while such complicity with the capitalist status quo, is in utter violation of my conscience, even if seeming inevitable.
Ultimately it seems unconscionable, that we allow such disparate divisions between economic classes, let alone hunger and homelessness, to persist. Imperatively: I retain some degree of self-determination, the freedom of expression, and the right to vote. So, I can choose for whom I work and from whom I buy. I can publish my blog. I can work and vote for change and shared prosperity. As we all do, can and ought.
Amazing piece. It puts the essence of my thoughts feelings on corporate America into words that I never could.
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