Exaggeration? Hyperbole? The title sort of sounds like it, doesn't it? Unfortunately, I don't think it's all that far off the mark.
Think about it: most of us "have ours" (whatever that really means) ... we've got a job or a decent retirement, a house, a nice car, decent prospects. If nothing really bad happens, we'll continue doing OK. Life can be tricky, we all know that, so purposefully rocking the boat may not be Option #1. Admit it. That's how most of us think.
What most of us don't think about, however, is that we make up a rather small minority of the world's population. Oh sure, we'd like to think that just about everybody in America or Europe is getting along pretty much like we are, but we know -- at least in the back of our minds -- that this is not the case. So, there's only 6% unemployment in the US these days; in Germany it's around the same; but, we all know that the way the statistics are counted is for the sole purpose of making things not appear as bad as they really are. We all also know -- whether we like to admit it or not -- that wages have been stagnating, that inflation is still making itself known, that the disparity between rich and poor is still growing steadily in the entire developed world. In other words, economically, we tend to put on our rose-colored glasses whenever we think about these kinds of things. After all, acknowledging that so many others aren't doing so well doesn't really do much for us when we're trying to be satisfied with ourselves.
And, in the back of those same minds, we know that the planet is warming, the climate is changing, and it doesn't really matter whether we humans are behind it or not. Any change, any significant change, is going to disrupt our peaceful, and rather oblivious, way of life. We know that we've got infrastructure problems, energy problems, that the housing and banking industries are still shaky, that the US, at least, as a massive crime problem ... in other words, the future is not exactly set on a positive trajectory. We know all of this, but still we act if there weren't any real problems at all.
Don't get me wrong, I know full well that many people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, that others are saddled with crushing debt (and not just students), that taxes keep going up for the most of us and that we are too often just busy dealing with the squeeze that all of us are feeling. And that's my point.
Let's be honest: as long as we're busy keeping our heads above water, we're not all that "worried" about the big picture. I, for one, can understand that, but it doesn't help. You don't have to be either a genius nor a conspiracy theorist to recognize that the more I have to deal with the details, the less I can deal with the big picture, and those who allegedly represent us have done so much to allow that big picture to fade, to ensure that we have more than enough details to deal with that things will most likely just keep going on as they are till they finally go down the chute.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that it will most likely take a catastrophe -- environmental, social, economic -- to get us motivated. I'm not talking about a scare like happened in 2008. That was a wake-up call, and guess what? we're still sleeping. Pleasant dreams.
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