{"id":34047,"date":"2011-02-05T07:11:54","date_gmt":"2011-02-05T12:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=34047"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:04:21","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:04:21","slug":"rethinking-the-right-thing-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/rethinking-the-right-thing-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking The Right Thing To Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

America needs a new dream. The old one, based on ownership and standard of living, is more elusive than ever these days, perhaps even obsolete. Learning to live without our cornerstone mythology — that each succeeding generation does better than the last — is taking its toll on our mental and emotional health. I think of it as necessary growth, and yes, it’s painful. The isolation most people feel, trying to balance their obligations against their dwindling paycheck, is a heavy burden. If we had invested more in community, we might have somewhere to turn now that ‘stuff’ is going by the wayside and safety nets are failing. If we felt as if we were a big American neighborhood, all pulling together, perhaps we’d be less cynical about topics like health care reform and reasonable taxation, less preoccupied with notions of debt and deficit in the face of so much public loss and suffering.<\/p>\n

I don’t think this nation set out to institutionalize greed, but it’s a human failing to fall into the “gimme” trap. We had already lost our way when we enshrined the notion that the one with the most toys wins and we embraced the Gordon Gekko mantra, “Greed is good.” Balance is required between wanting and having, between taking and giving. Those born to wealth are surrounded by the ambitious who are looking to become the next founder of a financial dynasty, but only some of us are prepared to swim with the sharks on Wall Street and compete for the golden rings of financial excess. Not all of us want to live like royalty, even though we have a romanticized relationship with the possibility. Unfortunately, those who do are willing to sacrifice anything or anyone upon that altar. Look around you and you’ll find the ramifications of that kind of thinking. All around us are reflections of plenty gone amok.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum. Although we’re being told that the Great Recession is over, there are 14.5 million unemployed men and women in this nation. That doesn’t count the under-employed, those working several jobs to equal the decent job that disappeared earlier in the decade, or the “missing workers” — some 4.4 million who don’t show up in the statistics, unable to qualify for help or find work. I count friends and family in this last demographic and I can testify that their dilemma keeps me awake at night. None of us, no matter how personally secure, exists in a vacuum.
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\nEven the hardest heart should be moved by the plight of our needy citizens, but alas, it isn’t so. Some of us turn our heads and rationalize our emotions, whittling them down until they could fit in a tea cup. We tell ourselves nationalistic myths about the founders pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, about a lazy, drug-addled low-life working class, and eventually we comfort ourselves with another maxim — made famous in the film, The Godfather<\/em> — that some of us accept without question: it’s not personal, it’s just business<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s just business if good American jobs go overseas to more competitive labor markets. It’s just business when we slash domestic programs to the bone while making sure the rich get their tax break. It isn’t personal when the banksters foreclose on our homes in staggering numbers, although they themselves promoted the bogus loans that lured us into purchasing. The millions lost by trusting investors didn’t impinge on J.P. Morgan’s business model as they continued to throw money at Bernie Madoff, even while suspecting Bernie of running a Ponzi, because, well — it was just business.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it’s business that drives us, nationally, to embrace and support dictators like Mubarak in order to prop up our imperialism and, in Egypt’s case, pacify Israel and ensure steady oil transport via the Suez Canal. How might changes affect us? According to financial analysts, a 10 percent rise in the price of oil that lasts as long as a year would cost the American economy more than a quarter million jobs. Like it or not, our system is so dependent on business concerns, our economy so entangled in a worldwide system of payoff and manipulation, that the nation itself has become a virtual corporate entity.<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s not how we think of ourselves, nor how we see the world. We personalize these things because it’s our nature; it also protects us from thinking the worst of ourselves and makes it easier to demonize and finger-point than to accept responsibility for political and economic concerns that few of us understand. Coming to grips with who we actually are, instead of who we THINK we are, is a big project.<\/p>\n

Most Americans just want to do the right thing and hope that common sense will prevail. This poll suggests<\/a> that we know what’s in our best interests and are able to make pragmatic (domestic and foreign) decisions about the national budget. Despite rumors, we’re not shirkers or freeloaders, we want satisfying work and the self-esteem that comes with pulling our own weight. Still, the system is not our friend. Even when the economy was stable, the average American made no income gains. The last decade has been called a ‘lost decade’ for the working class, and it compounds prior decades that saw only marginal advance.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we need to rethink what is truly the right thing to do when the system is gamed against us like this. I read an interesting piece on foreclosure the other day that highlighted the moral questions of walking away from underwater debt; if you have thought about doing something like that, you might want the reference.<\/a> Almost a quarter of homeowners now have a house payment greater than their house is currently worth, an amount increasingly difficult to pay. This is complicated by our personalization of “home” as opposed to, say, income property. We aren’t able to utilize the “it ain’t personal” guidelines when we talk about the old homestead, and too often such thoughts are a salvo aimed at our self-worth, our feelings about what “good” people would do. Only deadbeats would walk away from their obligations, right? Yet I promise you, honoring debt is no longer a priority at the political or business class level. We need to rethink our own moral as well as financial obligations.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the answers we decide upon could change everything in this country. Nothing can change unless we’re willing to think outside the box; nothing will shift until we open ourselves to see things differently and act. They know that in Cairo. They finally had enough of unresponsive government, unemployment, high food prices and glaring inequality. And would it surprise you to know that here in the US of A we suffer larger socioeconomic inequality than Tunisia, Yemen or Egypt? Could it be that we need a democratic movement of our own?<\/p>\n

We spend too much time in our heads, too little in our hearts, but it seems that lately everything is calculated to make us feel, even when we don’t want to. Everything’s changing and, believe it or not, that’s a reflection of our own internal growth. As the old passes away, we need to rethink the right thing to do. We may be surprised what our heart has to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves America needs a new dream. The old one, based on ownership and standard of living, is more elusive than ever these days, perhaps even obsolete. Learning to live without our cornerstone mythology — that each succeeding generation does better than the last — is taking its toll on our … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34047"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}