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The Suicide Solution
A few days before Congress passed its Housing Bill, Carlene Balderrama of Taunton MA found her own solution to the housing crisis. Just a little over two hours in advance of the time her mortgage company, PHH Mortgage Corporation -- may its name live in infamy -- was to auction off her home, Balderrama killed herself with her husband's rifle.
This is not the kind of response to hard times that James Grant had in mind when he wrote his July 19 Wall Street Journal essay entitled "Why No Outrage?" "One might infer from the lack of popular anger," the famed Wall Street contrarian wrote, "that the credit crisis was God's fault rather than the doing of the bankers and the rating agencies and the government's snoozing watchdogs." For contrast, he cites the spirited response to the depression of the 1890s, when lawyer/agitator Mary Lease stirred crowds with the message that "We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out.... We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary..."
Grant could have found even more bracing examples of resistance in the 1930s, when farmers and tenants used mob power -- and sometimes firearms -- to fight foreclosures and evictions. For more on that, I consulted Frances Fox Piven, co-author of the classic text Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, who told me that in the early 30s, a number of cities were so shaken by the resistance that they declared moratoriums on further evictions. A 1931 riot by Chicago tenants who had fallen behind on their rent, for example, had left three dead and three police officers injured.
According to Piven, these actions were often spontaneous. A group of unemployed men would get word of a scheduled eviction and march through the streets, gathering crowds as they went. Arriving at the site of the eviction, they would move the furniture back into the apartment and stay around to protect the threatened tenants. In one instance in Detroit, it took 100 cops to evict a single family. Also in Detroit, Piven said, "two families protected their apartments by shooting their landlord and were acquitted by a sympathetic jury."
What a difference 80 years makes. When the police and the auctioneers arrived at Balderrama's house, the family gun had already been used -- on the victim of foreclosure herself. I don't know how "worthy" a debtor she was -- the family had been through bankruptcies before, though probably not as a result of Caribbean vacations and closets full of designer clothes. It was an Adjustable Rate Mortgage that did them in, and Balderrama, who managed the family's finances, had apparently been unwilling to tell her husband that their ever-rising monthly mortgage payments were eating up his earnings as a plumber.
Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock's brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. "All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once," Scurlock told a gathering of the National Assocition of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in 2007. According to the Los Angeles Times, lawyers in the audience backed him up, "describing clients who showed up at their offices with cyanide, or threatened, 'If you don't help me, I've got a gun in my car.'"
India may be the trend-setter here, with an estimated 150,000 debt-ridden farmers succumbing to suicide since 1997. With guns in short supply in rural India, the desperate farmers have taken to drinking the pesticides meant for their crops.
Dry your eyes, already: Death is an effective remedy for debt, along with anything else that may be bothering you too. And try to think of it too from a lofty, corner-office, perspective: If you can't pay your debts or afford to play your role as a consumer, and if, in addition -- like an ever-rising number of Americans -- you're no longer needed at the workplace, then there's no further point to your existence. I'm not saying that the creditors, the bankers and the mortgage companies actually want you dead, but in a culture where one's credit rating is routinely held up as a three-digit measure of personal self-worth, the correct response to insoluble debt is in fact, "Just shoot me!"
The alternative is to value yourself more than any amount of money and turn the guns, metaphorically speaking, in the other direction. It wasn't God, or some abstract economic climate change, that caused the credit crisis. Actual humans -- often masked as financial institutions -- did that, (and you can find a convenient list of names in Nomi Prins's article in the current issue of Mother Jones.) Most of them, except for a tiny few facing trials, are still high rollers, fattening themselves on the blood and tears of ordinary debtors. I know it's so 1930s, but may I suggest a march on Wall Street?
93 Comments so far
Show AllI have said for many years now that there will be a tremendous increase in the rate of suicide amongst baby boomers when they start retiring and figure out they cannot afford to keep body and soul together. And THAT was before the latest mess with mortgages and other COL increases. As someone who believes we have the right to take our own lives and that it should be available to us in easily located medical facilities, I can thoroughly understand why someone whose house was being taken from them and who had nothing else left would take that route. I understand it and expect to one day face the same decision.
I lived in Colorado when then-Governor Richard Lamm said "the elderly need to move over and make room for the young." I was young at the time and understood it then; now on the other side of the window, I still understand it. It's the act of a responsible person in a world overgrown with human flesh and not enough resources or caring to go around.
Peace.
"The alternative is to value yourself more than any amount of money and turn the guns, metaphorically speaking, in the other direction. It wasn't God, or some abstract economic climate change, that caused the credit crisis. Actual humans — often masked as financial institutions — did that, (and you can find a convenient list of names in Nomi Prins's article in the current issue of Mother Jones.) Most of them, except for a tiny few facing trials, are still high rollers, fattening themselves on the blood and tears of ordinary debtors. I know it's so 1930s, but may I suggest a march on Wall Street?"
Sounds like a better start to a solution than voting for straight Democratic or a straight Green ticket to me.
He (or she) who has nothing to lose can be potentially very dangerous. Now imagine such people, instead of disappearing individually, decide to start organizing...is 30s style activism around the corner?
A march on Wall Street would be just about as effective as the marches against starting the Iraq war.
The fat asses in the big offices understand debt very well, and they don't care. They also understand death, but they believe they are immortal.
If you want to change their ways, you need to disabuse a great many of them of the latter notion.
It's reasonably certain that government will do nothing to change the ways of the money people. Government is on its knees before them.
If the country continues as it has for the last several years, there will be blood.
I think there is much more going on with the cited suicide cases than merely debt.
I'm retired. Although I own my little townhouse (987 square feet) I know that eventually I will be taxed out of my home. It has been my plan all along to commit suicide when my funds are no longer sufficient to eat and pay my taxes. However, my plan differs somewhat from Carlene Balderrama's scenario. My exit will be accompanied by arson and taking of the lives of at least two of bastards approaching to evict my ass.
Rather than suicide, my plan is to become a successful, upper middle class author from an elite university who writes about the poor in socially-liberal magazines and on progressive web sites.
cicero confused July 28th, 2008 1:00 pm -- is 30s style activism around the corner?
No. The revolutionary spirit that was once the hallmark of a nation dedicated to individual liberty has given way to acquiescence, conformity and, in many cases, total indifference to a corporatized state. In some other cases, where the individual may be more aware but feels equally ineffectual, the result is suppressed rage and quiet desparation.
The sad truth is that Americans have become accustomed to living in fear, not least of which is fear of their own government and its institutions. Although most Americans prefer to think of their attitudes as loyalty and respect, their government's trampling of the nation's constitution and its founding values make it quite clear that something quite different is involved in their failure to resist in any meaningful way.
"The alternative is to value yourself more than any amount of money and turn the guns, metaphorically speaking, in the other direction."
Metaphorically? And what are the options? Angry letters to our so-called representatives who continue to bail out their friends who continue to screw as many constitutants as possible? A protest in front of the local Fannie-Freddie offices as each dishes more millions into the pockets of anyone who can help them continue the pyramid scheme?
What "metaphorical gun" do We The People have, exactly, to turn in the other direction???
Not to advocate violence or anything, but if one is planning to go out, maybe taking a few of the thieves with ya isn't such a bad plan... maybe when said thieves see that their heinous, heartlessly greedy behavior has dire and ultimate consequences, they'll learn a much needed f**king lesson...
I am not sure Ms. Ehrenreich's connection of suicide trends with the banking/mortgage crisis holds up. This seems, like much of her writing, to be somewhat facile. She takes a catchy thought and spins it out in a basically superficial way.
(her book, 9 to 5 was very shallow . . . I say that as someone who has actually had to live poor. . .the way she 'played' at being poor, with credit cards always at her disposal, it was so facile and it still irritates me that so many people think the stuff she wrote in that book reflects what it is really like to live under grinding poverty in this culture ... guess what, Barbara, truly poor people rarely make the dopey choices you made as you 'researched' that book. . . you made choices that quickly put you into economic stress and then you could write about the stress . . . but if you were really poor, you wouldn't have made those choices . . . . sorry, everytime I see her name, I get re-irritated by 9-5)
Suicide has always been ONE possible choice to a stressor. Suicide has always been ONE possible response to economic stress. Is Ms. Ehrenreich's representation that more people are taking the suicide choice in response to economic stress than they used to an accurate representation or is she guessing and spinning and projecting? I think she spins and projects.
Just as I have a close experience/reality as a real-life poor person, I also have personal experience with suicidal ideation. I have made several attempts to take my life. (NOTE: I am doing great these days and I don't think I will ever consider suicide an option again, just in case someone reads this and worries about me.)
I am uneasy. I don't like the way Ms. Ehrenreich has said suicide in reaction to economic stress is on the rise. I don't like how she vaguely attributes her belief that suicide-because-of-economic-stress to the cultural phenomenon of our banking/mortgage crisis. It just seems very intellectually lazy and columns like this impact our culture, shape our collective consciousness. Many people nowadays feel a growing anxiety about how we humans can inhabit this shared space called Earth and we are all aware that our collective values seem to degrade. Many are anxious at the way corporate values are shaping human life. Nobody quite understands how a greedy bank executive in North Carolina can choke the culture of my daily life. . . each time a human being performs an action that affects other human beings, all of us are affected.
We've all heard the saying that when a butterfly moves its wings in Tokyo, the movement of that butterfly wing shifts energy all around the earth. Well, a greedy banker skimming equity from people who can't really afford his adjustable rate loans, which is just like skimming cream off a jug of milk, . . that banker's greed affects everything. Sitting here in Silicon Valley, I am affected by a Florida corporate shareholder's greed, just as I am affected by the butterfly in Tokyo.
When do we stop allowing small acts of greed to pollute and corrode the fabric of humanity?
I don't know the answer. But I have vague hunches, intuitions, much like everyone else. One of my hunches is that we need to begin to uplift our thoughts. We need to focus on our positive aspirations, steadily holding uplifting expectations. The simple act of thinking/feeling is a way to bring about change.
I am putting this here, on common dreams, because commondreams is a platform where we can begin to have uplifting, positive, appreciative conversations. Reading the obituary of Lisa, one of the founders of common dreams yesterday, prompted me to think about commondreams in a new way, as a gift, an opportunity for collective uplift.
I may sound like a pollyanna. I know there are many, many needs in all cultures, not just in the USA and activists need to get down in the muck and deal with ugly realities. I know there are lots of wrongs/injustices.
I spend a lot of time trying to 'see' how to shape a better human future. There are many, MANY things that might be done. But today, I am playing around with the idea that I can change the world, little old ordinary powerless aging disabled poor lonely me, by holding uplifting thoughts.
And I think that people blessed with the amazing platform of being able to publish their thoughts in writing ought to use their sacred, magical platform. I refer, for example, to Ms. Ehrenreich's column: she could decide today that she will only write columns that uplift her readers thoughts. She could decide right now, quietly inside herself, that from now on, instead of writing about what is wrong, she wuill only write about what is right and what positive thoughts, hopes and expectations she holds for the human future. It would be very hard at first to do this. But it would grow easier. And if other writers and thinkers joined her, I sincerely believe that we could shift culture all over the planet.
A positive thought in Silicon Valley can affect a town council meeting in rural Burundi.
I know my cluttered comments might not 'belong' here. . . so why have I been prompted to write in response to this column? Well, I think suicide is a very serious stream in the overall 'stream' of humanity. It is dark and risky. I think it should only be discussed with sacred reverence and love.
And that reminds me of another thing I think is missing from our public discourse: love. Let's bring love back into the progressive element of society. Any activist who gives up dinner with her kids to do volunteer work for a community cause is really practicing love, right? Let's bring more light and love into our public discourse.
jakenewton suggests, in his comment, that something else must have been going on when Carlene Balderrama took her own life. Thanks for saying that, Jake. The fact of the mortgage foreclosure did not cause Carlene's suicide. I know trying to kill one's self is a different inner experience for each different human. . . I know that Carlene's inner thoughts and feelings as she decided to make that ugly choice would not be the same as the thoughts and feelings I experienced when I tried to take my life . . . but I am willing to guess that I have a good idea of what was going on with her. She was unwell. She was disabled.
We have all had the experience of getting a shot of adrenalin course through our bodies. Some outer stimulus, whatever, happens and our body is triggered with adrenalin. A healthy body and mind is not overcome with a shot of adrenalin. I imagine that Carlene experience wave after wave of shocks/stressors, not just the mortgage foreclosure. Maybe one of her kids is struggling socially and maybe her neighbor nagged her about the barking dog. . . maybe she had countless little stresses, just as we all do, and then some of her stresses got bigger and at some point all she felt was shock and stress. Imagine being in a hot adrenalin rush for days, weeks, even months because stress upon stress, wave upon wave of stress keeps coming at you.
Something like this happened to Carlene. I am recalling the saying 'it only takes one straw to break the camel's back'
It is, as I said at the beginning, facile to 'blame' the mortgage industry for Carlene's suicide.
It's funny what a growling, hungery stomach can do for the revolutionary spirit. And when enough of those hungry stomachs realize that the only way to sate their hunger is by joining together, then the revolution starts in earnest. And it ain't going to be with pitch forks this time.
Unfortunately, the powers that be saw this one coming. Not only will the revolution not be televised, neither will the mass round-ups and incarcerations. Do you know where your nearest Haliburten internment camp is?
My only hope is that none of us dies silent and alone like Carlene Balderrama. Better to stand together than to die on our knees at the alter of the have-mores and their inhuman greed.
TreeFitz - I hope those "happy thoughts" of yours are edible and shelter you from the cold. Because now that our democracy is toast and the rule of law has been laid to waste, your good thoughts are all you have to protect yourself with. At least you will die with a quiet mind knowing that you did nothing while your country was going down in flames.
LOOK, JAKENEWTON, YOU'VE MADE A FRIEND! YOU AGREE ABOUT SUICIDE!
jakenewton July 28th, 2008 1:10 pm
"there is much more going on with the cited suicide cases than merely debt."
TreeFitz July 28th, 2008 2:17 pm
"jakenewton suggests...that something else must have been going on when Carlene Balderrama took her own life. Thanks for saying that, Jake...mortgage foreclosure did not cause Carlene's suicide...Carlene's inner thoughts and feelings as she decided to make that ugly choice would not be the same as the thoughts and feelings I experienced when I tried to take my life...but I am willing to guess that...[s]he was unwell."
"jakenewton suggests, in his comment, that something else must have been going on when Carlene Balderrama took her own life. Thanks for saying that, Jake."
Thanks for your contribution.
"Because now that our democracy is toast and the rule of law has been laid to waste, your good thoughts are all you have to protect yourself with. "
I wonder what *I* am using for food and shelter?
This should make John McCain happy - one less to collect her hard earned Social Security.
The problem is BIG GOVERNMENT and CORPORATE AMERICA are UNITED AND FUCKING YOU ALL TO DEATH !!! WILL THE GUN TOTERS PLEASE FUCKING UNITE AND TEAR DOWN WASHINGTON AND FORCE CORPORATE AMERICA TO BLEED TO DEATH ?!?!?
Funny the haliburton internment camps were mentioned. My thought has been, if push comes to shove, I'll commit some crime that doesn't hurt anyone but carries a good amount of time (not that difficult these days) and retire to prison. It's one alternative to suicide. Hell, I really don't know.
"Funny the haliburton internment camps were mentioned. "
Urban legend.
Of course suicide is a solution. It's our last available expression of free will. I'm sure there are always myriad factors in making that decision, as TreeFitz pointed out re: the proverbial straw. As shocks & stressors pile up, quite possibly the proverbial straw may be some dick cutting you off in a line-up...whatever. So, Rebel Farmer, kindly show a little compassion & appreciate that, for many, it's simply what one can bear.
And Frederick Johnson – I hear you loud & clear. My goodness, honey, you're going to blow a lung. So how 'bout it, huh? General strike on 9/11/08? Remember "Johnny Got His Gun" (Dalton Trumbo)?
In a twisted way, I'm looking forward to finding out how long SS and Medicare will keep me sheltered and healthy. When I can no longer afford to live in the cheapest possible place, I'll live in the car. When the car stops working, I'll learn how to be homeless. Eventually my immune system will break down to the point at which I'll just die. I like this plan better than worrying about how to "maintain my current lifestyle" the rest of my life.
americans, remember your heritage and the tyrants you have felled.
Wow, an article about a woman who takes her life because she is about to lose her home to the system seems to be responded to here, by and large, with a shrug of the shoulders - things are worse than I thought. I hope Ms. Ehrenreich reads the responses her article has prompted.
People apparently have, indeed, given up on "fixing" the system. It seems that the only 2 choices people think are appropriate are killing the bad guys or killing themselves. But it may be true that the longer we wait to fix the system, the closer we will come to the point where these ARE the only choices we have. I think we should fix it pretty soon before it claims more victims....
^^^ Rebellion against tyranny does not necessarily mean "killing the bad guys", but it's clearly impossible to fix the system while they remain in control. It should be very clear by now that they're not going to allow it voluntarily. Nor can one fix a corrupted system merely by repeatedly applying and following the same rules and processes that those "bad guys" have established to perpetuate its corruption.
Frankly, I'm very doubtful about seeing any kind of real rebellion against ongoing tyranny in the "land of the free and the home of the brave", but other than simply surrendering to its inevitable continuance and deciding your own fate accordingly, what's the other alternative. If you don't agree with "only 2 choices", what's yours?
I think most of us here on CD are just playing with ideas. Sure, one always has the final choice. But me, I will always wonder WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? One of the great human questions, the heart and soul of science. For example, I have recently acquired a brand new great-granddaughter. Now she's pretty cute and I want to stick around and be a part of her life. But then it doesn't take much to make me happy - we have hummingbirds at our feeder and Bach is playing on the radio. So what more do I want?
(I also have a computer, of course!)
When I was going through all that, I learned to work the system, dumpster dive, share around and network. When that didn't work, my mind conveniently blanked out. I still don't know what I did for nearly a year and a half as my husband got sicker, the disabled child demanded constant care and the other sons did...what? They were in school. It got better. I learned to pray and use the power of that prayer and begged, bringing help to save our little house twice. The third time around, I had a kind of break down, then rallied and worked the system again. But now we have these loose systems beginning to come unglued. There will be more challenges. My disabled kid, now a man, costs our goverment, federal and state, over $100,000 per year. I'm taking care of my mom and doing well pooling our SS and some Medicaid help. I still work the system. My advice to anyone who is not dying is to network, not kill yourself. Find other options. Help other people. Too many of us are too isolated. Many of us don't have enough community. Get involved in living.
URTHSONG writes: "My disabled kid, now a man, costs our goverment, federal and state, over $100,000 per year."
If that is what he needs to survive due to his disability, then it's not a cost, but an income he deserves.
The rich, and the corporations they work for, avoid and evade over $400 billion a year in taxes. THAT'S A COST! And it's equivalent to handing them one million homes worth $400,000 each - each and every year!
We pay for their greed one way or another. And, as corporations get their money from the public, corporations that do not pay their fair share in tax - which is most of them! - are stealing our money.
It is easy to blame the government agencies and the lending institutions for all of the housing woes in this country. However, people must take their share of the blame because they did not read the terms of their contract and could not expect that it would be possible to make their payments when the interest rate reset at a much higher rate.
The root cause of the problem began with the absurd notion that a bigger house with a three car garage full of new gas guzzlers would make anyone happy. For many years now, people have fallen for the advertisers telling them they need all of the consumer lifestyle that their wealthier friends have.
Regardless of the greedy lenders and businesses promoting their products, it comes back to the simple solution, just spend a little less than you make and think twice before taking on enormous debts that only lead to what we are seeing now.
The fact that someone has committed suicide should not come as a shock. Many do in the U.S. Worldwide, over 60 million people attempt suicide each year. "Only" around 1 million never get to breathe air again.
That's the only thing that would make me hesitate to kill myself if I had no reason to live: doing it right, so I didn't wake up in hospital maimed for life, paralysed, brain damaged, etc., or enduring a slow, painful death.
I hope that the president and vice president will read this article.
Kernel writes: "It is easy to blame the government agencies and the lending institutions for all of the housing woes in this country. However, people must take their share of the blame..."
Nonsense, Kernel. You clearly haven't studied Banking. Institutions that lend money to others are lending the money that savers have given them. They are under an obligation not to take undue risks with other people's money. This is why regulating financial institutions is so important. And this is where the government failed so badly; and why the government MUST take responsibility.
You obviously haven't heard of "moral hazard" or "adverse selection", have you, Kernel? Look up the meaning of those terms. It's the responsibility of lending institutions to reduce moral hazard and adverse selection.
I recommend "The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets" (it's over 700 pages long!) by Frederic S. Mishkin, Alfred Lerner Professor of Banking and Financial Institutions at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. "He has been a consultant to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the world Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, as well as to many central banks throughout the world."
I think my information on this subject comes from a reputable and knowledgeable source. :)
D'accord, Grandma, there's the rub. Simple needs, simple pleasures & appreciations (not to diminish the advent of a brand new great-grandkid, of course). For me it's pretty much books, flicks, pets, nature, the colour of light...and Doonesbury.
This culture of fear, mass gluttony, xenophobia, the maxim of "bigger, better, stronger, faster" that we've engendered has fueled the fires of violence & war, the "they've got what we want" snarl, climatic decimation. More more more. Mouths wide open.
But evidently that's the human condition. Otherwise, everybody'd back off & enjoy a peaceable co-existence of laisser-faire. Obviously too much to expect at this stage of our so-called evolution. But you & I have it figured out, yes?
Oooops, sorry. Didn't intend get back here...Luddites R Us...
Whats' wrong with this idea?
Instead of just handing billions or a trillion or two to the stockholders of Freddie and Fannie, why not take that same amount of cash and pay down the mortgages of every mortgage account on a primary residence in the U.S. Give everyone a fair share of the money that is intended for Freddie and Fannie along the way?
That is, pass the money through the mortgage accounts so those debts are lowered on the way to the big lenders. That would put real money in the hands of real people. Their debts would be reduced, so they could refinance and have more money to spend each month. The capital problems at Freddie and Fannie would be fixed. And mortgage brokers and other lenders would make big money with all the fees related to the resultant refinances.
This would also be a windfall for the Federal budget, because mortgage interest is deductible, so with lowered debt, people would be paying more taxes to the IRS, lowering the federal deficit which would strengthen the dollar, thereby making everyone better off.
Why just bail the big lenders without passing the money through the mortgage accounts on the way? It could all be done electronically, and the IRS already has all the information necessary to do it.
Sometimes suicide is an act of love to protect others. If dying was the only way to provide food and shelter for a loved one, it might be considered to be an altruistic act.
There is too much Oprah type thinking - such as, anybody can have anything they want if they just get the correct mind-set. Remember how Oprah peddled the book "The Secret". Just think good and happy thoughts and you can get anything you want....That is very destructive thinking. Imagine having cancer and being told that it was your fault because you were not thinking the right thoughts.
The US has become amazingly lacking in empathy. People ignore the homeless, blame the poor and hungry for their plight - our foreign policy of killing at will in other countries seems to be coming back home to devalue lives here.
My sympathy goes to the family of Carlene Balderamma. Yes, it might have been better if she had pointed the gun at a Hedge Fund manager or oil speculator, but then she would die in prison and her family would be homeless. Why aren't we doing something to control the Hedge Fund managers and oil speculators? Maybe we just don't have enough empathy and humanity to go around in the US.
Death by capitalism will be on the rise.
heav y runner: "Instead of just handing billions or a trillion or two to the stockholders of Freddie and Fannie, why not take that same amount of cash and pay down the mortgages of every mortgage account on a primary residence in the U.S. Give everyone a fair share of the money that is intended for Freddie and Fannie along the way?"
And undo years of work, transferring wealth from the poor to the rich? Have you lost your senses?
Suicide is a natural, and ratonal, reaction in a society that has replaced all meaning and all that is holy with the worship of profit and wealth.
Soon, debtor's prisons will be restored. The Wall Street establishement has been preaching that people who can't contribute, can't pay their bills and aren't young, healthy and expansive consumers are unwelcome in our society.
I can garden, and I know how to build a comfortable log or stone cabin, using basic hand tools.
See the article posted on CD about the lowering of general intelligence for why this seems to be so uncommon.
Sherra - Thanks for your support of the "simple life" idea. You mention "the colour of light" - is that your idea or an Impressionist painter's whose name I can't recall? Maybe Monet? And what is the color of light, anyway?
I agree that we live in a society that has gone mad for owning "things." I'm not sure when we changed - but we must change back again to a people who love the earth and all it holds.
Historians noted that while there were protests during the Great Depression, people tended to blame themselves for their plight--not corporations, not crooked financiers, surely not thoee fat men who kept saying, "The economy is funadmentally sound!!" This is a return to that frame of mind and an indication we have learned nothing, because our school teachers bought the masochist argument as well. There is no lowering of intelligence: it was never very high.
If anything we are more stupid than then, because then farmers (and homeowners) banded together and refused to take crap from the money boys who got them into the mess. We stop putting up with it, they"ll get the message and change their tune. But we have to change our tune first!!!! THEY have to learn WE are boss, but we have to be willing to rise hell to succeed.
staying sane (or is it insane)___ We can all see now that you are a great authority on all monetary matters, and I agree that the government agencies fell down on the job since we are getting rid of governmebt supervision. Also the lenders are guilty of greed and misleading uninformed borrowers.
I wonder, though, how the banks and other unethical lenders could have played their greedy game of risky loans if no one had requested a loan that had no chance of working. That is why I maintain that the borrowers have to take their share of the blame for the mess we have.
Suicide may not a "solution" as most consider the word "solution" to mean, but it is one choice we CAN make for ourselves, and one we have every right to make. If you're done, you're done, and when people have reached that place, it is cruelty beyond measure to prolong a life they no longer want to have. As a Buddhist, this is not an acceptable position for me to hold, but I DO hold it and support anyone's right and choice to make that decision for themselves. (And, of course, to accept and be responsible for the consequences arising from that act.) We are in control of very little in our lives, and what little we are in control of is decreasing day by day - but if we choose to end our lives, that is, I firmly believe, our right. The criminality of the ARM program, for I believe it to be just that, has to a large degree caused the grievous death of Mrs. Balderrama, and our own insane desire to own things we don't necessarily need is the root of despair such as hers. We're going to see a lot more of this kind of thing unless we learn to share with and protect one another, and it has to start with each one of us. The materialism in the world is killing us - when a Hermes handbag costs $40,000 and that same $40,000 could feed and clothe God knows how many suffering people, the purchaser of that handbag needs to rethink his or her priorities. We ARE each other's keepers, and we'd best start getting with that program.
heav y runner July 28th, 2008 6:58 pm
Whats' wrong with this idea?
Absolutely nothing, in fact its brilliant, and a perfect example of "thinking outside the box." Of course the right-wingers will find lots of ways to pick it apart.
Stop being a thing-oriented society and start being a people-oriented society. Dr. King was saying this 40 years ago and a sizable percentage of Americans were listening to him.
Yes, the level of apathy in our society is absolutely amazing. I don't think we'll ever see the activism of the 1890's or 1930's. Back then, just about everybody in town was in the same economic boat, and there was perhaps a clearer distinction between "us" and "them." Today, most people in my neighborhood keep on consuming--and assuming that they'll eventually become one of "them" (the super-wealthy people we despise). That is, until they lose their job at 50 and find out that nobody wants to hire an "old" person. Or they get sick or disabled. Or disabled just enough that they can't handle starting over at an entry-level job (but not disabled enough to qualify for disability benefits).
I agree with r jackowski that there is too much "Oprah-think" in our culture. The only people who really benefit from this belief are the people selling those frowns-into-smiles books, tapes, etc. For everyone else, it creates unrealistic expectations, self-loathing and victim-blaming.
Changing my mind-set will not make me younger or change the perception of the person on the other side of the desk during a job interview. Nor will it reduce gasoline prices, health care costs or food costs. For most people (including myself), it's not about, as Kernel put it "...a bigger house with a three car garage full of new gas guzzlers..."
Of course, there are people out there who are in trouble because they think more "stuff" will bring happiness and contentment, and they end up going way over budget. Sherra writes: "For me it's pretty much books, flicks, pets, nature, the colour of light...and Doonesbury." There's something to be said for enjoying life's simple pleasures.
However...
It's hard to enjoy those things without a roof over your head, heat in the wintertime, three square meals a day...and your health. And the cost of maintaining all of that is becoming very difficult for a displaced worker who had to take a job for 25% less pay a year after 9-11. Even those books and flicks are becoming an unaffordable luxury. Cable TV? Forget it! I can't handle another monthly bill. I hang on to my internet service because that's how I found my last two jobs.
My heart goes out to all the Carlene Balderrama's and their families. I guess I would agree that unscrupulous bankers don't "cause" suicide. The same could be said for oil speculators. But these are just two of the fixable problems in our stressed out society that is pushing more people to the edge. I'm getting closer to that edge, and I just hope that I can hang in there (financially and psychologically) long enough to outlive my two remaining cats. After that, I guess it doesn't matter too much what happens to me.
If Louis Farakhan can organize a million-man-march (for what I don't know), why can't there be a million-oppressed-citizens' march?
Well-said fivecorners,
One of the basic and primary reasons so many are suffering today amidst so much evident wealth and plenty has less to do with positive thinking and more with the continued sucess of the dominant paradigm.
We can envision a better world, we can even find small pockets of real-life utopia (or near-utopia). We can't replicate this on a large scale because the dominant paradigm is just that, dominant.
Indigenous people are pushed aside or slaughtered. The natural world is plundered and poisoned. Goverments, churches, institutions are corrupted or co-opted.
Why do conservatives worship the Invisible Hand of capitalism? Because the Hand is an irresistable force. It crushes everthing that stands in it's way. The Hand eats the souls of men for breakfast and the spirit of democracy for dinner. Moral Hazzard and Adverse Selection are like a mid-afternoon snack.
There will be ebb and flow. Boom and Bust. Bull and Bear. War and Peace. But in the end the Hand will choke this world to within an inch of it's life before those who are left realize that their survival depends on chopping the fucker off. In the meantime I'm keeping my axe sharp.
Someone posted a comment on the weekend CD that asked "what has been taken away from you through greed and corruption?"...I think there are answers in many of these posts.
"when a Hermes handbag costs $40,000 and that same $40,000 could feed and clothe God knows how many suffering people, the purchaser of that handbag needs to rethink his or her priorities."
You allude to "greed" I assume. The problem here is that greed is almost always an attribute assigned to someone else. Who is to be the arbiter of this?
grandma (July 28th, 2008 5:27 pm) says:
"But me, I will always wonder WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? One of the great human questions, the heart and soul of science."
Grandma, think about that great-grandchild before she was born. All comfy, no demands, fairly quiet, floating... and then BANG, CLANG, she's here in this world! Bright lights, no floating, people yelling, slapping, wiping, and expecting her to become someone, learning, making mistakes, etc. Here's WHAT I think HAPPENS NEXT.
Life after death is to life before death as life after birth is to life before birth. Life after death is an order of magnitude more complicated and less comfy and more demanding and more rewarding than life before death, just as life after birth is an order of magnitude more complicated in every sense than life before birth. Look at the universe. Look at microorganisms. Evolve, evolve, evolve.
I don't know exactly what life after death will be like, but I believe it will be thrilling and challenging, and I'm getting ready. One thing about which there is no doubt in my mind: knowing how to accumulate wealth and possessions will have no value or use.
Lambsie
After the second world war, US citizens have slowly changed from citizens to consumers.
The change was executed by those whom control the social reward/punishment system: corporations and the wealthy.
Because our national psyche has been radically transformed, many of us don't know how to deal with other people and organize to change the above reward/punishment system.
Many of us don't know our past and it doesn't permeate the increasingly virtual, electronic culture we live within.