"An End To Need and The Politics Of Greed."

 -from the Tears For Fears song Sowing The Seeds of Love

In the late 1990’s my cousin won $175k in the Florida Lottery from a scratch off ticket. She and her husband were a young married couple who lived very modestly in three rooms of her parent’s house which had been converted into an apartment. After collecting her winnings, they were very smart and frugal with the money. This was a time when their money went a lot further than it would now. They were able to buy and furnish their own home, and decided that they could now afford to start a family. I was so happy for them.

Something like this should happen for every young adult. To receive enough money to start your life and establish a secure base before you have to face the many adult struggles to come would most likely keep you from having to compromise so much of who and what you are as a person in trying to attain a sense of security. While the US spends a great deal of money to support other countries with their individual issues, people young and old here could use a grant in a comparable amount to jump start their lives again now when loss is and has been for some time the only thing that we see on the horizon for us. But it would not be enough to just give the money/resources to the people and expect that to stabilize them. You would also have to call a halt to the capitalist/corporate invasion that would immediately follow the distribution with their hands out raising prices and withholding the necessary goods and services that we need to make sure that they profit enormously from what the people receive, rendering it impossible to benefit from the help as well as they ought to.

Author and Journalist, Chris Hedges said in a speech once how the money our government gave to US banks in 2008 after the housing debacle could have been used to help and support the American people by establishing a national health care system, giving all citizens a basic income and offering tuition free college plus many other systemic changes that would make a stronger society for a fraction of what they gave to bail out the rich. Why they never understand that stronger citizens make this a stronger nation makes absolutely no sense. When there are 1500 vacant properties in San Francisco for every 1 homeless person in that city it is ludicrous that anyone should ever be homeless here. I am told that the situation is very much the same in New York City, Toronto, Canada, and many other places.

It is only greed and ignorant public policies that make something like this possible. So how do we change the selfish and incompetent policies toward our people? Some would tell you that only public protest on a large scale would change it, but I truly do not believe that it has to come to civil unrest or civil war. What we really need is a change in prevailing thought and government representatives who can put ego aside and understand that we have been breeding fear and ignorance in this country for far too long. A few representatives have already come to that realization but they are in the extreme minority.

This country needs to be re-educated in the basic decencies of human rights and the benefits of strengthening the people who live here. It isn’t rocket science. It is only coming to understand that each country is a family and how you manage the family has to be for the benefit of the entirety. You would not feed and house a few of your family members in luxury and throw the others out to starve and die. In the 1970’s tv miniseries Centennial, this actually was shown to be the way the Arapaho Indians dealt with a woman in the tribe who had lost her husband. In their culture this was considered to be the best way for the entire tribe to survive without having to care for individuals who were deemed to have no more worth once the family patriarch had passed on. The children were taken in by others in the tribe as they assumed they might still have some worth in the future. This is basically what we have allowed to happen in America. It would seem that it doesn’t happen here if you don’t look very closely, but our policies toward humans who don’t look like they can produce wealth or create a façade of superiority are being allowed to live on the streets and in dangerous homeless shelters. Many have children with them. Many others, such as immigrants are put in to virtual prisons rather than try to place them somewhere safe and help them establish a decent life. We are not being taught or learning not to act in inhumane ways anymore.

Who will write a new Bible for the 21st century? Who will write the primer for the processes that will bring us out of the cesspool that we have created for ourselves? The Holy Bible was written centuries ago as a guide for balanced living - at least the New Testament was. Much of the Old Testament is a telling of history and the prevailing laws at the time. What we are experiencing now requires updated thought and laws that can be applied today in a world with a much different mentality. Who are the Scribes and Prophets in modern times with the knowledge and the expertise to advise and reach our people with a message of what needs to be done and how we can accomplish it?

It could not be written by one person. There would need to be many writers, just as it was for the Bible. Experts from many different fields would need to collaborate to assemble volumes on psychology, economics, civics and political structure, history, and sociology. It is a tall order but we have gone beyond the simple answers on how to restructure into a workable society. Thousands of books have already been written on these subjects, but separately and individually they are not capable of speaking to the masses as a whole. A Netflix movie dramatizing the information would also be a tremendous help. Distorted values are already out there and making a mockery of all that doesn’t suit selfish purposes.

The Bible has never been embraced by the entire world, but it has resonated with enough people to make a huge difference in how we came out of dark times to do better. Many people have forgotten or discarded the principles laid out there. Hence, the need for an updated system of thought and action is sorely needed. Can such a book go viral again as the Bible did? I believe that it can.

Most of the struggles that we have are born out of doing our damnedest to avoid fixing anything and, as any neglected house would, it is coming apart at the seams. Will it take a deity coming down to earth and separating the good from the bad as the Bible says to call a halt to the tragedy that we have become? Will the makers of chaos and inequality have to be cast into another dimension such as a hell to save us, or can we as thinking human beings make it so on our own?

At a time when some Americans are frantically doing their best (actually, their worst) to eradicate books that they object to on the grounds that their little darlings are troubled and being corrupted by truth telling regarding whitewashed history and alternative thinking, we desperately need a new and updated accounting of what it will take to break down the walls that we have built in to our society to divide us into a class system that is choking the life out of America. I don’t think that we need more of the news that we are in the crapper here. If you are paying attention, you have already figured that out.  Now that the truth is out there as far as what we have destroyed, there needs to be a step by step guide as to how we can fix up “this old house” and make it livable. We are at the point where you either bring in the wrecking ball and level the place to the ground or you bring in a Bob Vila and some contractors to assess the damaged structure and draw up the plan for remaking the house. I see a lot of “home inspectors” who are telling us that the house is no longer inhabitable but I see very few who are proffering a real set of blueprints for starting construction. In the film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,  Tina Turner sang a song called We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) during the end credits of the film. In the lyrics, she sings, “We don’t need another hero. We don’t need to know the way home. All we need is life beyond Thunderdome.”  If you have never seen this film or the precursor to it, Mad Max, I would recommend that you do so because you will see how a society that does not give a damn about its citizens can evolve into something so terrible that the people become savages fighting for every scrap of resources and decency that they are being denied. At the time that these films were made, it may have looked like pure fiction and an impossibility for us, but look around you now. We need a life beyond what we have created here. And we must have leadership that will help us bring it to pass. When you realize that there is a hole in the roof you cannot just sit there and say, “Yeah, there’s a hole in the roof.” Somebody has to get up and get a bucket, because the rain is coming in! And we are drowning in the deluge.

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I would like to include here a thank you to Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, Tears For Fears, for calling attention to the many problems that have plagued humanity as far back as the 1980’s in their songs such as the one I cited above. We may have been listening but I wonder how many of us took the messages to heart? One of my favorite songs of theirs was called, Change.  In the lyrics, they say, “When it’s all too late, you can change.”  Too often, this is the case. Pray that it isn’t now. With their music to remind us, it may not be. Listen to them again, and remember how to care.