we see various crisis in America and around the world…
we see climate issues and crime issues and income inequality issues
and racial problems and a whole slew of issues and problems
that threaten to overwhelm us…
so what is the solution? seeing what the real problem is…
we are holding attitudes and feelings and idea’s that are
issues themselves…
for example, Gloom believing that people wanting to be treated with
value and respect is “radical”… how is that a “radical” position?
human beings wanting to be treated like human beings… that isn’t radical,
that is a basic, fundamental right and should be our guiding motto,
not to be considered to be “radical”…
for example is the modern world treatment of its workers… the capitalist
belief that workers are expendable slaves… who have no value or rights…
that is one of the fundamental problems in the modern world…I am
treated like crap as are my fellow workers and as are millions of working
Americans… used, abused and left for dead after 40 years of creating profits,
and once we no longer create profits, we are nothing more then garbage to be
taken out…capitalism devalues and dehumanizes human beings…
we wonder why children can so easily kill… it is because they have
already learned the lesson of modern society, that as human beings,
we have no value… no point of existence outside of creating profits…
what is the point of existence if not to create profits?
that is the question? what is the point of being? why exist if
all we do is create profits? those profits created don’t benefit us,
they benefit our corporate masters, but we get, if lucky, crumbs off
the table of the corporate overlords…Trickle down economics is
basically that the worker gets the small, leftover portion that the
masters so grudgingly give us… just enough to avoid, for some of us,
starvation… the fact is millions of Americans live below the poverty
level… and Gloom thinks that is quite alright… because it doesn’t affect
him…there is no crisis if it doesn’t affect you, right?
and therein lies the second problem, we can’t see a problem unless it
directly affects us…people starving, don’t care because I am not starving…
it can’t be a problem unless it impacts me somehow… and that is part
of the crisis in modern society… we are connected, in fact interconnected
so that something that impacts one part of society, does impact us directly…
so if people are starving in New York, that impacts me in California…if
people are starving in India, that impacts me as an American…we are not
so isolated that we cannot be impacted by events that happen around the world…
so therein lies an aspect of the modern day crisis, we don’t or cannot
understand that we are connected to each other… if one person gets hit,
we all feel the pain…
and it doesn’t matter if you believe it or not, it is what happens…
am I my brothers keeper? and the answer is yes…
and within that can lie, if we so desire, to remake ethics/morals…
to know that our actions impacts others and that their actions impact us,
can become the basis of a new ethics/morality…that we are tied to one
another can be the basis of a new understanding of how we should treat
one another…
capitalism failed or has failed because it has failed to understand this
basic concept…that we are tied, connected to each other,
if we treat people shitty, we are just treating ourselves shitty…
to make people an means to an end, people’s only value is to create profits,
that is their only value, then we have failed, in a very basic way, to
understand the connection that ties everyone together…
understanding that people are not an means, but an end… that would
be a start, and just a start, to a new engagement with who we are and what does it mean to
be human…
instead of running around “doing” things, we should start with working out
who we are and how to be human…for we are not human if we don’t
treat people in a human manner… and one might ask, what does it mean
to treat people in a human manner? and finally, we get a question worth
asking…and answering…
instead of trying to become something, rich, famous, with titles,
powerful, let us try something new…let us explore what it means
to be human…what does it mean to treat human beings as a human being?
not as business does, as cattle or something to be used and abused until
discarded… but human beings as having value and worth…
is that really so radical? to be treated as a human being with
value and worth? and not just as a number or as one who only
value is to create profits, but as a human being, with dignity and honor…
Kropotkin