Maybe there's change in the air

Truth be told, I'm rather ecstatic about hearing that there are young people who aren't willing to worship the Golden Calf, even if most of them wouldn't know what that metaphor meant. There appears to be a growing number of young people who are realizing that what their parents and, maybe even grandparents, are telling them is hollow, empty, and untrue.

Let's face it, you can work your butt off and be let go at the very next downsizing. It's not personal, it's business. What you do doesn't matter. Only what the books look like matters. How much pain and suffering are inflicted upon how many people -- and I'm only talking about our oh-so-modern-and-advanced, industrialized West -- because of abject poverty or, what may be even worse, the fear of falling through the non-existent social safety net into that poverty? It is a well-know fact that fear causes stress and that too much stress will make you ill, if not ultimately kill you. Thankfully, more and more young people are realizing that the benefits never really justify the efforts. It's a gamble at best, and some people are simply dealt better hands.

On top of all of this, we're faced with too many unsolvable problems these days. Yes, there are political blockheads who will never cease trying to tell us there is no such thing as science and global warming and pollution and blood-for-oil and addiction to fossil fuels that hard work will make you rich. But it's too easy to see them for what they are, namely, ignorant, obsequious pawns of merely monied interests. This isn't a new phenomenon, by any means, for in my own time, many of us realized just how phony the obsession with money was. A good number just opted out of the system -- they were called "beats" before my time and "hippies" in my time, and while they got the point right, they never quite figured out the process. I'm thinking that maybe that's what's changing.

Though not in the headlines every day, where they should be, there is an increasing number of people who are simply turning their backs on the "system" and doing what they know is right. They are establishing multi-generational living spaces, cooperative enterprises, locally owned utilities, public initiatives that are helping themselves and those around them live better lives. Have they solved the problems of the world? Of course not, but they have realized how much can be done if you simply do it. All of these efforts are, of course, set up within the boundaries currently permitted, but they have effects beyond that.

What's different? The attitude. In each and every one of these successful projects, the primary concern is WE. None of them are single-handed, individualistic, only-me-benefitting undertakings. They are about getting together to do more than any single person can and in which no single person has any more benefit than anyone else. This is bad news for "the system", and the system knows it.