What's worth saving?

You might think this post will be a primer on taking care of your money in troubled times. You couldn't be more wrong. These past few hot and lazy weeks of summer have sent my thoughts to cooler climes. Well, cold, might be a better word. I can't help but think there are some cold, dark times ahead.

Those who know me also know that I'm not the world's biggest optimist. Oh, sure, there are those times when I am willing to admit that this or that will pass, regardless of how we feel about it, but the overall tenor of what I'm feeling these days makes me think these things will pass ... away.

Much of what I write is intended to rouse enough emotion that we pull together and go out there (wherever "there" is) and save those things that should be important to us: the arts and literature, education, society, our democratic systems of government ... you know, the usual suspects. Are they even worth saving?

The truth of the matter is that we value art based on its asking price in the market, not because of the insights it might provide into human nature. Who reads ... or can read -- really read, as in critically and thoughtfully ... and literary success is judged by the number of copies sold. Dan Brown and John Grisham may write entertaining and filmable novels, but what do they tell us about the human condition or show us about our common plights? What kind of education have we got when we've reduced everything to reguritatable facts and testable items? That's mere schooling, not education. What kind of society is it that is based on mistrust, dishonesty, scheming to gain advantage, securing one's own interests at the expense of others, wealth and prestige? And I don't even have to say any more about "democratic systems of government" when corporations and monied interests pick and sponsor the candidates and then tell them which of their own hand-written legislation to pass. That's simply not democracy anymore.

The disciplines and systems that we once held to be valuable have been degraded into consumable decorations. They exist in name only so that we can lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that what we do and how we live and where we live is still OK. It isn't.

Two-thirds of the world's population know that they live in abject poverty with little or no hope for improvement and that their lives will simply be painful, brutish and short. The other third's lives are not really much better, but they can deceive themselves into thinking that what little they have is worth saving, not realizing that they really don't have much of anything left to save.