To be or not to be...

To be or not to be…

How are you doing? Ready for the holidays? It's that time of year again, when we reflect on our nuclear families and express our affections for same. It is also the time of year to reflect on the past, take a moral inventory and begin anew in the coming year. Consider this: Many thousands of earthquake victims in Pakistan and Kashmir continue to be left to die. The refugee camps in Darfur in the Sudan continue to be attacked as hopes for peace fade. Malaria continues to kill children all over the globe and scientists are warning of an impending viral pandemic. Environmental degradation is increasing at an accelerated pace. And, of course, the war of terror in Iraq continues to claim lives every day. The congress in Washington needs more money in order to continue the war so it is cutting spending on programs like food stamps for the poor. They hope to stimulate the economy by extending the tax breaks for the wealthy… Am I getting through? These are just the headlines; the stories present an even darker picture.

I assert that in the face of these conditions we are misusing our resources. On a local level construction is mainly oriented toward larger and larger individual homes and away from affordable housing. Community growth rarely centers on establishing public transportation but instead continues to center on the individual automobile model. Encroachment continues on our watersheds and woodlands. Is your town different from mine? The singular argument for the propagation of this 'business as usual' form of development is unfettered capitalism. Well folks, the market will not solve your problems. The one thing that is true of unfettered capitalism is that capital will be used as those with capital choose to use it and they are using it to increase their own wealth. The new gilded era is less ostentatious than the last but more insipid because it is much more widespread. This is not a model for economic growth-- it is a model for wealth enhancement; e.g. the average pay for a CEO is 500 times the wage of the average laborer. Economic growth requires that everyone benefits from development and I see the opposite happening on a local, national and global scale.

Is the capitalist economic model an absolute good and the communist model an absolute evil? Our current model says that this is true. With this view, the cold war will continue even beyond the destruction of its antithesis--just because it has become 'business as usual'. This motion will continue, as Newton pointed out, "…until it is acted upon by an outside force."

Here is the choice that we face in this holiday season. Shall we follow the leaderless model over a cliff like the lemmings or will we "Rage against the dying of the light," as Dylan Thomas put it. Before you choose I ask that you think (if I can save a lemming or two with these words I will be elated): Beyond good and evil is reason. Is it reasonable to assume that our current economic model is improving our lives? With all the talk of cataclysm and the apocalyptic predictions it is hard for me to believe that this is so. How are you doing?




P.S.: You might consider actually reading something by Karl Marx. If so I have included a brief link: The Civil War in the United States. You might also consider reading Adam Smith and how he fails to foresee the advent of the global corporate entity and how his descriptions of stores and factories are quite quaint in retrospect.