The political machine is oiled with the blood of nature and the exploited worker. Our whole lifestyle is dependent on over consumption and the massive destruction on the only place that we can call home. In his ever depressing profile of the world and mankind's tragic treatment of the planet, biodiversity, each other, James Gustave Speth has graphs showing the corelation between happiness and average income (amongst other things). According to these, the United States fluxuates the most between the two other countries represented, (Japan, and the UK). American happiness shows somewhat of a corelation during certain years, however as it draws closer to today, the wage increases, but the happiness level is declining. Wait a minute...did I just insinuate that money is not synonimous with happiness? YES. Money only leads to wrong-doing and stress, which Speth says is also increasing as the years pass, (once again alongside increasing wages).
Though you may not want to believe it, you and I live in a spoiled society. It is to the point that our luxuries, are now viewed as nessecities. We often times say, "I need this," when we mean, "I want this". This thinking leads to overconsumption, and it is this thinking that is the gravedigger, who at this point has dug about 5 feet deep. With all of the luxuries that we have, one may forget that there are people who struggle for basic needs such as water and food. Folks in Bolivia for example, lived off of $2 per day, and were charged 1/4 of their monthly income for water.bsp;These people, and the downtroden in our own country starve or die in the streets, while the upper class have enough money to own palaces, and private jets. The world seems to have always been and will always be so... Why do some people have this thirst for acquisition, over their fellow man, and over our shared planet? Don't they realize that if we can't live on this Earth, than neither can they?
Most of us, being brought up in a society such that promotes competition and economic edge,are at some point or another are guilty of over-consumption. It is engrained in our blood, just like apple pie and baseball. In The Shaping of America Vol. 3, by Page Smith, she says that in the years following the Revolutionary War, "...the moral fiber of the American people...showed a distressing tendency to concern themselves with material matters to the exclusion of their civic duties." Now, put this in the context of today. Do you see any simalarities? How could we have come so far, only to become a lap dog for money, consumption, envy, and greed. Our crime rates are what they are because the mentality of our society. We are nothing more than our weakest link, and there are many links already broken, and sleeping in the park tonight.
The corporation owns the media, the government, and worst of all: most of us. They perpetuate this never ending want to obtain more and more junk that we don't need. According to The Story of Stuff, 99% of the products that we purchase, we do not have in 6 months. Instead it ends up one of the countless landfills across the globe. It seems time to me, that corporate lobbying and this obsession for wealth and accumulation need to cease all together. It is not money, which puts breath into our lungs. It is not our economic status that causes our heart to pump. No, all in all, wealth is not so important. Until we can all see that, I fear that we are doomed to find ourselves lost scrambling under an inevitably setting sun.
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