What's the big deal?

Good question: what is the big deal? I mean, after all, we're all grown up, mature, and tolerant people, right? No, wrong. OK, we've got separation of church and state and the Constitution in the US, for example, guarantees that separation, right? No, wrong. Well, OK, we're all just good people; we know what we're doing, right? No, I'm sorry, wrong again.

We're not all that grown up or mature. Consider the fanaticism with which, say, Americans (or now the the European Soccer Championships are in full gear, we could use a lot of Europeans as a similar example) get absolutely rabid about sports. That's adolescent, I'm afraid. It's a my-team-is-better-than-your-team; my-dad-can-beat-up-your-dad mentality. Sports have their place, but it shouldn't be at the top of our priority list.

Well, OK, there's at least the separation of church and state, but that's an illusion, too. The moment Bush II can speak about faith-based initiatives from the bully pulpit of the presidency that line has been crossed. The moment that Falwells and Robertsons mobilize voters to vote their beliefs, not their reason, that line has been crossed. The moment it's about Biblical justification for the passage of laws (be it teaching of creationism or attacking Planned Parenthood), the line has been crossed. We love to point the finger at the Iranians, but it's not all that clear to me that America is much different in a lot of regions of the country.

But, we're good people, aren't we? Maybe. But how do we decide what is good? If the pope or the preacher or the evangelist shouldn't dictate what we believe, who should? Anyone? Should we really figure it out for ourselves? People like to rant and rave against Islam or Christianity, but when you consider how many Christian denominations are existant in the US (and yes, that is an American phenomenon), they can't agree on their religious beliefs, so why do we thing they would have anything to say about our moral positions? Right. We're back where we were with our thoughts about the state of political discourse these days: that would be nowhere.

Until we're ready to take "the other" seriously, until we're ready to truly listen to what someone else has to say, until we're ready to engage our discussion partner as an equal partner, we'll just keep yelling and barking and snapping at each other as we are right now. And, once again, look where that has got us.

Exaggerated?

Of course I have my own ideas of how things should be. And, yes, I have my own visions of what could be in the future. But -- and I think anyone who has been following the latest thread with a modicum of attention will agree -- I'm doing my best not to fix the blame, and I'm not trying to convince anyone that what they think is wrong. All I'm asking -- and this happens rarely enough -- is that you give some serious thought to what you do think. Why? Because it may be more important than ever.

Don't get me wrong, though I sound like it at times, I'm not really a doom-and-gloomer. I may not be the most optimistic soul out there, but I'm realist enough to know that what comes will come and we'll have to deal with whatever that is when it appears. I do believe, however, that we still have a chance, albeit a slight one, to do something about the future, even if the system itself can no longer be fixed. I'm sticking by my guns on that one (at least until someone convinces me otherwise). The point is, if you haven't engaged your brain before opening your mouth, you're just pumping out hot air, no more.

If all we have to deal with is hot air, we've got no chance at all. I'm concerned because when we distill the entire situation down to its essence, it's no longer about who's right and who's wrong. In fact, it's not about right and wrong at all. It's about good and bad: what's good for everyone, not just a few; what's bad for everyone, not just a growing majority. We're not dealing anymore with economics or politics or even sociology. No, we're dealing with morals: the most basic, fundamental understanding of what is good and what is bad. It's a matter of morality. And for that reason, our ability to reason and discuss is more important than ever. Morality can never be edicted, it can only be agreed.

But even here, in the most (in my mind, at least) important aspect of human existence, we have lost our ability to reason, discuss and debate. We've turned -- or are at least in the process of turning -- our morality discourse into another struggle for power. What the fewest people realize is that this is one of the most dangerous turn of events there can be. If we get this one wrong, we just could be doomed ... at least as most of us think we understand the term. There's simply a lot at stake.

And now what?

For those of you who have been following this thread over the past couple of weeks, I'm sure there are some who are now yammering about how it's all nice and well to complain, but how about suggesting a solution. I would just like to say that's anything but the way forward. Oh, sure, I know I could come up with suggestions. That's not the problem at all. The problem is that we need to find a way to start talking again.

That's the real thread I've been harping on: we can't or don't or won't talk to each other like reasonable adults, because, I believe, we have simply become unreasonable. There's too much nonsense in the discussion. I don't care if you think you're right or left ... everybody I talk to is in the center, or so they claim, and everyone else is "out there" somewhere. What kind of nonsense is that? I don't care if your for against anything, but I would like to think there's more to all of it than a simple well-that's-my-opinion-and-that-is-that.

The way I see it all right now, everybody's wrong; nobody's right. Why? Because as I noted a couple of weeks ago, we need to decide collectively what we want, and we have no real collectivity anymore. At bottom, it's all about values, and as I have been saying repeatedly, we have no idea of agreeing on values independent of some predefined position. The Fundamentalists (of all colors, shapes and sizes) will tell you there is no chance without getting You-Know-Who involved. The humanistically inclined will tell you there is no chance as long as He is. If religion has something to offer, then it has to be offerable beyond the confines of a strictly encoded doctrine or dogma. It has to be something to that appeals to the humanist as well as the "true believer". On the flip side, should any secular thinker have a suggestion, it must be frameable in a form that the religious individual can understand. In other words, we have to stop accusing the other and start listening to them.

But, I'm not convinced that this is possible anymore. I'm serious. I'm deeply disturbed by the low level of discourse that I experience every day. I'm deeply disturbed by the obstinence and intolerance of the participants. And, I'm deeply disturbed by the readiness and willingness for violence -- be it physical or psychological -- of too many in the discussion.

What we need to realize that the "system", if you will, is broken. It cannot be fixed. Yes, let me repeat, there is no way to fix it. The only chance we have is to change it. If we don't there is going to be more suffering than the world has ever known. You think I'm exaggerating? Just wait. You don't really want me to be right.

So what can you do about it?

There is no question that every country on earth spends more than it should, and there would be very little argument, I think, that just about any citizen of any country would tell you there is a lot of waste in his or her government. If we want to allege, however, that we, the people, have any say in the matter anymore, then we the people need to get back in the game. That's what the Occupy Movement was about. That's what the 99% metaphor is all about. That is what upholding democratic ideals is all about.

We're in a pretty awkward situation. There's no doubt about it. And, what is so frustrating is that it is obvious that the big guys are playing divide-and-conquer with the little folks ... again. If you don't want to be taken for a fool, my advice would be not to act like one. If you don't want to participate in crazy discussions, don't say crazy things. If you want a better deal for your neighbor and yourself, you've got to start talking to your neighbor again, and you both have to spread the word and get out and do something about it.

To me, the first thing that has to be done is to get money out of politics. As long as money is there, there is simply no room for anything or anyone else. Yes, your elected representative would have to bite the hands that feed them. Yes, those who opposed the biting would have to be the first to go.

The second thing that has to be done, as far as I'm concerned, is to start a reasonable, yet passionate, discussion about what is important to all of us? Each and every one of you is required to ask yourself what you think government is about, and what it should be about, and why it might be in everybody's interest if everybody's interest were put back into the political equation.

Will it be easy? Not on your life. Will it be fast? Hardly. Will we succeed? Maybe not. Is it going to demand sacrifice. Most likely. So perhaps, the first question you should ask yourself at all is whether your own well-being is worth the effort.

The crashes of 1929 and 2008 were warnings for those who were willing to listen. It was selected, specific, private interests that caused it, but it was unrestricted, general, public interests that paid for it. That can't possibly be right, and it cannot be sensibly argued by our free-market friends. But, then again, some people like to have it all ways that benefits them.

And who's going to pay for it?

It always comes down to who pays, doesn't it? Well, it is a legitimate question. Government live from revenues. When revenues don't cover what you want or have to pay for, you need to borrow to get the money you need. We all agree that this is how the game is played. We also most likely agree that there is a lot of spending that is unnecessary and if we could reduce some of this waste, we'd be generally better off, but we wouldn't be in great shape. Why? Because you can't starve yourself back to health. If you don't have enough to pay for what you want and need, you have two options: reduce costs (which will only get you so far) or increase revenues (which may not solve your problems, but could certainly help).

This is how most of us try to manage our family budgets, but for some reason, the national budget obeys different rules? I don't think so. It has been documented, repeatedly, that the Bush tax cuts did not do what they claimed they would do: increase investment and generate job growth. It has been documented, repeatedly and reliably, that the who idea of trickle-down economics is just as "voodoo" as Bush I thought it was before he was forced (?) to embrace it. It was Hitler's propaganda minister, Goebbels, who taught us that if you repeat the lie long enough, the people will believe it. And it would seem that even a vicious, twisted mind can come up with an accurate thought as well.

No, there's not way around it: revenues have to be increased and the tried and true way to do it is to have everybody pay their fair share. That's not what's happening now, and everyone who insists that's the wrong way to go has simply been proven wrong already. You can try to play the free-market card, of course, but the free-marketeers like to ignore the fact that good old Adam Smith was one of the first to propose and endorse the idea of progressive tax rates. It's just that simple. Even he recognized that unfair tax structures would disadvantage more people than they help. What is more – and this is something the free-marketeers will never tell you – is that Mr. Smith also said one of the primary roles of government (and he wasn't even speaking about anything democratic) is to protect the ordinary citizen from the undue, unfair, and most likely corrupt, influence of business. He firmly believed that if left unchecked, the big players would get together and destroy the little ones and take advantage of their customers. Yeah, but who reads all of Adam Smith anymore?

Whose job is it anyway?

It should be becoming slowly obvious to even the most contrary observer that a lot is not right with the way government works. It's not just the "little countries" like Greece or Spain that we have to whip into shape, the big countries need to be doing their part to show the way, to exhibit a bit of leadership, in getting things in their respective countries sorted. If you have sacred cows, however, they will not be slaughtered, or even touched. But what is the consequence of such?

The consequences are really quite obvious: if you have no money, certain things cannot be done. Who has decided that defense, for example, is inordinately more important than, say, communications or transportation or health? And what do you do about those things that simply cannot be solved by the ubiquitous, omnipotent market?

An Hungarian friend, a student of the infamous Chicago school of economics, recently asked me if I knew how many Chicago-school economists were needed to change a light bulb. Of course, I told him, I had no idea. The answer, he said, was "none"; the market will take care of it.

And there we have the rub (again). Whose job is it to ensure that the citizens of a country can be in a position to pursue their liberty or happiness? Who should finance the roads that everyone uses? Who should provide the infrastructure for communications that everyone uses? Who should be responsible for ensuring that every citizen has access to quality education? Who should be responsible for ensuring that those who have suffered doing something for everybody (like the military) are properly taken care of when they can't take care of themselves? Who should be there to determine what the minimum standard of dignity is for a resident of a country? Yes, of course, the government ... but the government in the form of an effective system of representation that sees to it that what is considered important for everyone – not just for a select few – is accomplished. And that's what we don't have right now and what we are having less of each and every day.

Safe from whom?

So, the ideal is more effective spending, but how does one decide what stays and what goes? One of the best examples of distorted priorities and twisted logic, of course, is US defense spending. Oh, sure, most Americans will tell you that it is important to remain safe, to be secure from military threats, but they don't often stop to ask who's threatening whom. What is more, they don't spend enough time thinking about what it means not only to be safe, but to stay safe and secure in the long-term. And, they certainly don't think about the price they actually pay for what it is they think they're getting.

In response to the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, one of the most cowardly acts of violence committed, a war was declared on terrorism. But like all the wars the US has waged on ideas before, like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, this one was condemned to failure before it even started. The US spends more on defense than the next 20 big-military spenders combined. That is, the next 20 countries, who even have defense budgets worth mentioning, all together don't spend as much as America. And what does America have to show for it? Nothing positive. The threat of terror is as large as it ever was. They have spent trillions of dollars they never had, incurring more debt than they will ever pay back. They are committing troops in remote locations that are either coming home in body bags or wounded in some way that they are hardly productive members of society any more (and of course, there's as good as no money to support them then). But most of all, most of the world simply sees the US as a big, tough bully that is simply trying to impose its will on other people. I'm not saying that they are; I am only saying what impression they make in more places than not (especially if they aren't a ally). So it seems reasonable to me to ask if you are really getting your money's worth. It doesn't seem so.

There are government programs that do no good and it is good and proper to reconsider whether they should be discontinued. The criteria for discontinuing, however, should never be political positioning, but instead, whether they do what they intend to do, and whether they are providing value for money. Anyone involved in the defense industry, I can assure you, thinks it's a good idea because they make inordinate amounts of money that they can then contribute to political campaigns to get the things they want. It is obvious that this is what is happening, but we find one euphemism after the other to simply lie to ourselves that it is the right thing to do. I'm not saying, of course, the whole defense budget should be eliminated, but if you want to trim fat, start with the fattest pieces.

What do we pay for?

Fortunately, for us in the West, some very bright people have thought about this already and have at least given us a place to start. We (supposedly) strive toward ideals such as "liberty", "justice", "equality", in the US explicitly stated "the pursuit of happiness", "safety", "security", and some form of "well-being". So, if we know what they are and agree what they are, what's this whole discussion about? Good question, but the truth of the matter is we don't agree, neither on the values nor about what they mean.

All of these concepts have been around for a lot longer than any of us who are reading this now. What went through Jefferson's head when he was drafting those concepts into the Declaration of Independence, or what Robespierre had in mind when the French were implementing their revolution were very different, though they were both claiming to aspire to the same ideals. Even more different is our idea of these concepts today compared to how they were being used 250 years ago. Liberty applied only to male landowners, and equality was defined in terms of fractions of human beings. It's not that those minds then were misguided, rather it is a simple fact that our understanding has changed. What is different between now and then, though, is that they talked about their understandings, they debated and discussed. And we don't do that much anymore. We say we know and the others have no idea. There is no agreement, no consensus, there is simply an attempted imposition of wills.

Far-fetched? I don't think so. Some of these words don't even mean what we think they mean anymore. Examples? We once thought that habeus corpus was an important right to ensure justice, but the National Defense Act effectively nullified it because you can be arrested and turned over to a military tribunal who is not bound by this ideal. All that's necessary is the suspicion, not proof, of having terrorist intentions (not deeds). Or "equality": we say we're equal but women still only earn 75% of what men do in similar positions; or it's just fine to subsidize Viagra, but not medications that women might have necessary to prevent more serious reproductive problems. And the recent debacle regarding extended health insurance coverage in America speaks volumes about how far we disagree on the notion of "well-being".

So, which of these examples are part of the public dialog? Where are the reasonable discussions and debates taking place that are forming our general consensus regarding these issues? Nowhere. Who has time? Who can worry about those things when you're trying to figure out what to do with your kids between your multiple minimum-wage jobs or when you've managed to finagle an earlier tee time? Exactly. Big-ticket items like what kind of country we want to live in don't even cross our minds. They're not on our list of priorities, so we leave them to the people we hired to do our thinking for us: our elected representatives. And look where that has got us.

What do we aspire to?

Fortunately, for us in the West, some very bright people have thought about this already and have at least given us a place to start. We (supposedly) strive toward ideals such as "liberty", "justice", "equality", in the US explicitly stated "the pursuit of happiness", "safety", "security", and some form of "well-being". So, if we know what they are and agree what they are, what's this whole discussion about? Good question, but the truth of the matter is we don't agree, neither on the values nor about what they mean.

All of these concepts have been around for a lot longer than any of us who are reading this now. What went through Jefferson's head when he was drafting those concepts into the Declaration of Independence, or what Robespierre had in mind when he was implementing their revolution were very different, though they were both claiming to aspire to the same ideals. Even more different is our idea of these concepts today compared to how they were being used 250 years ago. Liberty applied only to male landowners, and equality was defined in terms of fractions of human beings. It's not that those minds then were misguided, rather it is a simple fact that our understanding has changed. What is different between now and then, though, is that they talked about their understandings, they debated and discussed. And we don't do that much anymore. We say we know and the others have no idea. There is no agreement, no consensus, there is simply an attempted imposition of wills.

Far-fetched? I don't think so. Some of these words don't even mean what we think they mean anymore. Examples? We once thought that habeus corpus was an important right to ensure justice, but the National Defense Act effectively nullified it because you can be arrested and turned over to a military tribunal who is not bound by this ideal. All that's necessary is the suspicion, not proof, of having terrorist intentions (not deeds). Or "equality": we say we're equal but women still only earn 75% of what men do in similar positions; or it's just fine to subsidize Viagra, but not medications that women might have necessary to prevent more serious reproductive problems. And the recent debacle regarding extended health insurance coverage in America speaks volumes about how far we disagree on the notion of "well-being".

So, which of these examples is part of the public dialog? Where are the reasonable discussions and debates taking place that are forming our general consensus regarding these issues? Nowhere. Who has time? Who can worry about those things when you're trying to figure out what to do with your kids between your multiple minimum-wage jobs or when you've managed to finagle an earlier tee time? Exactly. Big-ticket items like what kind of country we want to live in don't even cross our minds. They're not on our list of priorities, so we leave them to the people we hired to do our thinking for us: our elected representatives. And look where that has got us.

What's it supposed to do?

I certainly don't want to get into the whole nation-state discussion, so let me say at the onset that we're talking primarily about what we call countries. Big or small, densely populated or not, we have these things called countries and somehow they have to be managed, but managed how, to do what?

A good friend recommended an opinion piece that talks about the fundamental ideas that I'm addressing, but takes a different, let us say, political tack. It is more than worth the read, for it helps put the discussion in a sound historical perspective, but I would like to direct our attention beyond the political to the personal. In other words, I'm trying to get you to think about what you think.

Maybe they don't need to be managed, maybe they're self-organizing, but I doubt they are. They must have some reason to exist, and when we know what that reason is, we can go about trying to figure out how to make them run most efficiently. No, the question is, why do we have them at all? Or, what do we think government should be doing"?

It's the answer to that question that we, as a society, probably disagree on most. We like to think that we know and agree, but the fact remains that we don't agree and we don't discuss it ... in fact, I don't think that many of you have given it much thought. Governments are so self-evident, we don't think much of them at all. They are bothersome, always telling us what to do, they want things from us, and whatever it is, it's always wrong, but that doesn't answer the question, it just expresses our personal attitudes.

Here is where our financial fans have to leave the discussion. The purpose of government cannot be expressed in terms of money; it is expressed in terms of ideals or values. These aren't things we can buy and sell, and they are certainly not anything the market can handle. As I've said before, there are some areas of life that can't be treated as, nor should they be treated as, markets. If you look at the Constitution, for example, all you find are principles of organizations. Whatever ideals or values may be there are implied. The bill of rights gets a little closer, there are some statements but mostly only hints in the Declaration of Independence, so what we are left with is what we might call general consensus. And if there has ever been a slippery notion, this one – consensus – certainly qualifies.

Whatever these ideals and values turn out to be, I would suspect that we all agree that regardless of what we may think government is, we think a good part of its job is seeing to it that those ideals and values should put into practice in some recognizable way. Oh, it is actually all so very simple.

What do we really want?

OK, let me take another run at this. I suppose I should be more patient. Let's start at a beginning ...

For simplicity's sake, we're going to start in the political realm, for no other reason than that's where we've been as of late. Of course, a long-lost friend of mine raised the question, so he got me thinking about a possible answer. What is more, we're coming up on elections in the USA and Germany, and Lord knows how much drivel, if not downright misinformation, is going to be spread around this time. And since the Americans are the first ones to go through this, we can use them as an example of what I'm talking about. So where do we start?

To my mind the first question we must answer is a very simple one: what do you think the purpose of government is? What my friend brought to mind was this whole idea of "big" government or "small" government or too much or too little government, as the case may be. I think what everybody wants is a government that does "what it's supposed to" (regardless of what we think that is ... we can get to that in a moment) and does it "efficiently" (whatever that might mean as well). In manufacturing, for example, some process are simply complex and large; others are smaller and leaner, but the goal toward which manufacturing strives is efficiency (economies of scale and scope), not size. To paraphrase a whole other area of human interaction: size doesn't matter. Some things have to be big to work. Other things need to be small to work. There cannot be one single size that fits all.

What all things can be, however, regardless of their size is "efficient". So, it struck me that this is one of those areas of life where size just doesn't matter. It really isn't about how big your government is, rather it's about how effective and (for those financial nuts amongst us) efficient your government is. I truly think that what everyone really wants (in this regard, at any rate) is a government that actually works.

You see, I told you it's a very simple question, and the answer isn't all that complicated either. The "problem" here, if you will, is that this question immediately generates a follow-on question ... a question that is perhaps more challenging: what's a government actually supposed to be doing? It would seem to me that a working government (or a working machine or process or ...) is one that does what it is supposed to do. So what is a government for? That's the real question.

Sick and tired

Are you ever just sick and tired of being sick and tired? I am. It's tough living in a mental institution. For those of you who think I'm just ranting around, read a little Goethe. The good man made the same observation 250 years ago. Well, truth be told, I borrowed the observation from him. After all, he was more intelligent and insightful than I am. Of course, he was shrugged off then, just as I will now. At least I can think that sometimes I keep pretty good company.

What is so frustrating is that we can all agree that things could be better, and we can all agree that things should change, but the moment the question arises as to change to what, the arguing starts. In reality, there is only one thing that need change, and that's our thinking.

That is hardest thing that we have to do. Now, I'm not advocating that you simply throw everything overboard that you ever held dear and start anew. That would cause many more problems than it solved. No, no ... I'm fine with small changes, but though small, they should nevertheless be significant. On more than one occasion in this blog, I have advocated just what that change should be, but I'll repeat it again, because it can't be repeated enough: you need to stop thinking about just you and think more about one other person than yourself. When I say more, I mean "more". Not only should you think more about someone else, what you think should be more than what you think of you. In other words, in regard to just one other human being, you make yourself #2. How hard can that be?

Well, truth be told, it will (or would be) the hardest thing that most of you will (would) ever try to do ... and that's precisely why I doubt that it will happen at all. Until we stop thinking that everyone else has something to do to make things better, until we realize that nothing will change if we don't change ourselves, until we take the first step, we won't be going anywhere but downhill. And as we all (or at least those of you who were awake in physics class that day) know, as the journey downhill continues, we'll simply pick up speed.

No, one of the things that I'm simply sick and tired of is having to say the same things over and over and over again. Things that are so obvious it cannot be that we don't see them. I know we see them. But I also know that too many just don't want to see them. If each of you who only choose to see what you wish were the only one affected by your actions, I don't suppose I would care all that much. But you don't. You affect not only those around you, but everyone else on the planet ... and not positively.

Mental illness

For those of you who think I've been overly hard on one side of the political aisle, I would hasten to add that conservatives are not the only problem. One of the most inadequate features of modern thinking is the unjustifiable notion that if you don't think one thing, you automatically think it's opposite. This is so widespread, especially in the USA (just listen to any purported political debates going on right now), that it is more than just disconcerting. It's almost frightening ... but that's a topic for another time.

As I pointed out a post or two ago, conservatism is not a political notion. It is simply an attitude that some people have developed. When seen from a political point-of-view, however, the so-called liberals are no better. Why? They buy into the same outdated and outmoded ideas that conservatives do. The conservatives don't want to change anything, and the liberals only want to change how you use money. The winners, in the end, are the same people: those who are keeping resources scarce, lending money, and pushing their political power around. In politics, everybody loses ... except the politicians and the money-people. Politicians themselves don't always win, but their money-people do. Regardless of what it will cost anyone else.

The problem with backward-oriented views and backward thinking is that they provide no solution for the problems we have today. Our biggest problem is that we fail to recognize what are major problems really are. Resource scarcity, debt, nationalism, war, aggression, terrorism ... none of these are the problems. No, they are symptoms. Anyone who has had a major illness knows that you can never get better if your doctor only treats symptoms. The illness has to be treated or things will only get worse. And that's all we do these days: argue about symptoms, but no one wants to get down to actually addressing the root causes, that is, the illness itself.

Our illness is a mental illness. Yes, in a sense, we're all just a bit sick in the head. Our problem is our attitude, no more, no less. We refuse to acknowledge a few simple facts, and as we all know, people who refuse to acknowledge reality are, well, mentally ill. For example, it is a fact that the level of debt in the world is higher than all the goods and services the world can produce. On the other hand, it is a fact that there are enough resources on earth to provide every inhabitant with much more than s/he needs. It is a fact that national interests cause more problems than they solve. It is a fact that private interests are in conflict with the public good.

It would seem, then, that the inmates are running the asylum. And we wonder why things are getting better?

Backward-thinkingness

For all of you who think I was too hard on such a large segment of our modern population, I would suggest you re-read the last post. I, for one, don't want things to stay the way they are. It is obvious to me that too much just doesn't work: income disparity is on the rise (a change, by the way, but not a welcome one), child poverty is on the rise (ditto), some resources are getting scarce (and some people's trigger fingers are getting itchy), too many people die of starvation or go hungry, too much of the world's water is polluted as is too much of its air, the polar caps are melting, and we won't fix any of it because we say it will cost too much. There is not a one of these things that I want to stay the way they are.

All of these issues are the direct result of backward thinking. There is much in the past from which we can learn, to be sure. There is much in the past that have had very positive effects, but wanting to turn back the clock ... well, that's never been a good idea. When something outlives its usefulness, it is time to trade it in on something new. I'm not talking about the built-in obsolescence that modern industry perpetrates on all of us. I'm talking about the natural course of things. There comes at time when what doesn't work needs to be recycled.

Candidates? What about nation-states? Born 1648 (Treaty of Westphalia), and I don't see the evidence that they have been a great boon to mankind: number of war deaths? cause of famine (usually as a result of wars), destruction, resource depletion, redirection of resources to non-productive ends (e.g. weaponry), not to speak of the taking of unnecessary human characteristics to new and hideous ends (greed, power-lust, domination, superiority, prejudice, hatred, just to name a few). It's a 450-year-old idea that has not proven its worth. So, it's time to get rid of it.

Or, what about debt-based economies? Even older than nation-states, and it's not clear to me that this idea has been very helpful either. Based on a notion of scarcity, but one that can only be created artificially (i.e. I'll steal this, you can't have it, so if you want it, you have to buy it from me). If you're honest, you have to admit that this is the fundamental premise. What has it got us: a fixation on money, death, destruction, greed, power-lust, desire for domination, superiority ... wait a minute! Where have I heard that before?

What too many folks fail to see that neither of these "things" are given realities as much as they are simply ideas. Ideas are not permanent, they are simply conserved. Why keep them if they are only causing us problems. We humans have the huge advantage of being able to change our minds. And that's what we need to change right now. After all, if you always think what you always thought, you'll always get what you always got.

The problem with conservatives

I once heard an advertising slogan that caught my ear. I don't know what was being advertised, and it doesn't matter, because the slogan itself was too big for the environment in which it was being forced to live. The slogan? "If you always think what you always thought, you'll always get what you always got."

It's clever, rhythmic, sonorous, memorable, and it applies to a lot of things, not just some silly product or service that someone is trying to hype. In fact, the meaning of that almost pithy phrase, borders on the profound, but most people don't get it. It's not that they're unintelligent or stupid, it's because it describes them, so they just don't notice the phrase, or what it means.

The person being talked about is the conservative. This the person who just doesn't want change. This is the person who wants things to stay as they are. Oh, they might tell you that they embrace technology (washing machines, refrigerators, toilets, maybe even computers), but only if it doesn't change anything else. In other words, they want things to stay the same, hierarchies to remain the same. They want disadvantages to remain, and poverty, and disease, and oppression. Sound drastic? It is. Because while some very few have too much, the vast majority of humankind does not. If you are conservative, you want it to stay that way. That's just what conservatism is. And, it's sad.

Self-centered change is not change at all, it is simply an intensification of what is already. Conservatism is not a political philosophy. It is neither political or philosophical. There is no love of wisdom in this thinking, there is only love of self. Conservatives are people who don't want to share, because they think that when things change, they will have less.

Far-fetched? Over-the-top? Prejudicial? Cranky? Cynical? Not-guilty on all counts. Not wanting change is simply unnatural. Everything changes all the time. Thinking you can stop change isn't really thinking at all.