Sunday without sports

Not being much of a movie-goer, I decided to make it a double-feature yesterday ... but I was at home. There's way too much noise and confusion in the theaters these days. What an exciting time: explosions, theft, deceit, intrigue, obscure twists and turns, tension-filled climaxes and even the occasional ray of hope. Oh, what was the double feature? Inside Job and Capitalism: A Love Story.

OK, maybe "exciting" was a bit misleading, but I was on the edge of my seat ... mostly because I wanted to jump up and scream. Are these two films portrayals of absolute truth? Of course not. Are they particular views of recent events? Of course they are. So what's there to get upset about? It's simple: if any of it is true, we're in bigger trouble than we want to admit, and the integrity of everyone involved in perpetrating this trouble has disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Henry Ford once remarked that if the American people understood the banking and monetary system of the country, there would be a revolution tomorrow morning. For whatever distortions the film-makers may be accused of (and they will be accused, I am certain), either film (but better both together), can serve as an initial primer on what not only our banking and monetary systems have done to us, but on why capitalism does not really do all that much for us, but rather on how it does it to us.

Part of the difficulty in understanding that simple distinction lies in the fact that we moderns are having trouble finding an agreed upon sense of values. We can talk about social values or even family values, but in the economic ideology called capitalism, only one value counts: money. It's sad. As I noted last time, given how we've decided to slice up the world, money is as necessary to business as food is to people, but does it have to be the be-all and end-all of our lives? No. We should be eating to live, not living to eat.

When things can only be understood in terms of their monetary value, well, they really have no value at all. You can't put trust or truth or honesty or compassion on a balance sheet. Any accountant will tell you that you don't want them there. But, there are other ways to think about anything, but since it will bring no monetary gain, it is simply not worth talking about it. Yes, that's how far we've come, but we haven't hit bottom yet ... I almost can't wait for the sequels to both those films, but I may not even be able to watch them ... hell, I may not even be allowed.