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 They buy into the same outdated and outmoded ideas that conservatives do.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?