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Wall Street Will Be Back For More
Corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation-personal power and wealth-as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not. And these corporate heads, isolated from the mass of Americans by insular corporate structures and vast personal fortunes, are no more attuned to the misery, rage and pain they cause than were the courtiers and perfumed fops who populated Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us.
These companies exist in a pathological world where identity and personal worth are determined solely by the perverted code of the corporation. The corporation decides who has value and who does not, who advances and who is left behind. It rewards the most compliant, craven and manipulative, and discards the losers who can't play the game, those who do not accumulate wealth or status fast enough, or who fail to fully subsume their individuality into the corporate collective. It dominates the internal and external lives of its employees, leaving them without time for family or solitude-without time for self-reflection-and drives them into a state of perpetual nervous exhaustion. It breaks them down, especially in their early years in the firm, a period in which they are humiliated and pressured to work such long hours that many will sleep under their desks. This hazing process, one that is common at corporate newspapers where I worked, including The New York Times, eliminates from the system most of those with backbone, fortitude and dignity.
No one thinks in groups. And this is the point. The employees who advance are vacant and supine. They are skilled drones, often possessed of a peculiar kind of analytical intelligence and drive, but morally, emotionally and creatively crippled. Their intellect is narrow and inhibited. They rely on the corporation, as they once relied on their high-priced elite universities and their SAT scores, for validation. They demand that they not be treated as individuals but as members of the great collective of Goldman Sachs or AIG or Citibank. They talk together. They exchange information. They make deals. They compromise. They debate. But they do not think. They do not create. All capacity for intuition, for unstructured thought, for questions of meaning deemed impractical or frivolous by the firm, the qualities that always precede discovery and creation, are banished, as William H. Whyte observed in his book "The Organization Man." The iron goals of greater and greater profit, order and corporate conformity dominate their squalid belief systems. And by the time these corporate automatons are managing partners or government bureaucrats they cannot distinguish between right and wrong. They are deaf, dumb and blind to the common good.
These deeply stunted and maladjusted individuals, from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Robert Rubin to Lawrence Summers to the heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, hold the fate of the nation in their hands. They have access to trillions of taxpayer dollars and are looting the U.S. Treasury to sustain reckless speculation. The financial and corporate system alone validates them. It defines them. It must be served. This is why e-mails from the New York Fed to AIG, telling the bailed-out insurer not to make public the overpaying of Wall Street firms with taxpayer money, were sent when Geithner was in charge of the government agency. These criminals sold the public investments they knew to be trash. They used campaign contributions and lobbyists to turn elected officials into stooges and gut oversight and regulation. They took over retirement savings and pensions and wiped them out. And then they seized some $13 trillion in taxpayer money so they could lend it to us with interest. It is circular theft. This is why we will endure another catastrophic financial collapse. This is why firms like Goldman Sachs are more dangerous to the nation than al-Qaida.
"The psychology is about winning, and winning is marked by the level of compensation and bonuses and the power you have within the firm," Nomi Prins, the author of "It Takes a Pillage" and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, told me by phone from California. "Every investment bank is like a mini-country. The political maneuvering and the differences between individuals who run certain areas and move up the ladder of the company are not necessarily decided by a vote. They move up depending on how close they are to the person [above them]. If that person moves up they move up with them. A certain set of loyalties get created. It is an intense competition all the time. You have trading and doing deals with clients, but the result is to push people up the ladder and to make money."
How you make money and how you climb the ladder of the corporate structure are irrelevant. Success becomes its own morality. Those who do well in this environment possess the traits often exhibited by psychopaths-superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. They, like competitors on a reality television program, lie, cheat and betray to climb over those around them and advance. These demented individuals are admired and envied within the firm. They achieve heroic status. The lower-ranking employees are supposed to emulate them. And this makes Goldman Sachs and other speculative financial firms upscale lunatic asylums where the inmates wear Brooks Brothers suits and drink expensive chardonnay. Our problem is that the lunatics have been let out of the asylum. They have been empowered to cannibalize the government on behalf of the corporations that spawned them like mutant carp.
These corporations don't make anything. They don't produce anything. They gamble and bet and speculate. And when they lose vast sums they raid the U.S. Treasury so they can go back and do it again. Never mind that $50 trillion in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including $7 trillion in the U.S. stock market and $6 trillion in the housing market. Never mind that the total amount of retirement and household wealth trashed was $7.5 trillion or that we saw $2 trillion in 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts evaporate. Never mind the $1.9 trillion in traditional defined-benefit plans and the $2.6 trillion in nonpension assets that went up in smoke. Never mind the job losses, the foreclosures and the 35 percent jump in personal and small-business bankruptcies. There are bundles of new money, taken again from us, to make deals and hand out outrageous bonuses. And when these trillions run out they will come back for more until our currency becomes junk. Not that any of these people have thought this through. They are too busy focused on the pathetic, little monuments they are building to themselves and the intricacies of court intrigue.
"There are always internal conversations about taking credit for certain trades and deals," Prins said of her time at Goldman Sachs. "It is childish, except there is so much money at stake and so much power within the firm at stake. Power in the firm allows you to make money, but it also provides a certain status that everyone looks up to and covets. There can be a period of a month or two at the end of the year where closed-door conversations occur between managers and people who work for them about compensation. In these conversations they go something like: ‘My group did that trade.' ‘I did that trade.' ‘No, that was my money.' ‘No, that was my profit and loss.' ‘That's my client.' ‘I know the other group said that it was their client but actually I had the relationship first.' A lot of these petty conversations go back and forth. All of it to attain money and acquire power and influence within the firm."
Those who advance in these institutions master the art of looking like they are doing more than they are actually doing. It does not matter who does the most. It matters who can take credit for doing the most. And that often means poaching someone else's work. Friendship becomes a meaningless word. So does compassion. So does honesty. So does truth. By any standard comprehensible within the tradition of Western civilization these people are illiterate. They cannot recognize the vital relationship between power and morality. They have forgotten, or never knew, that moral traditions are the product of civilization. Existence, for them, boils down to one overriding imperative-me, me, me.
"The people who get the higher bonuses are not getting them because they are quietly doing whatever work they are supposed to do," said Prins, who also ran the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London. "They are getting that money because they are constantly able to promote themselves."
"The environment is very insular," Prins said. "It is all about what is happening in the firm. Who said what. Who is doing what. What did they say about you. How does it affect you. How does it affect your group. How does it affect the people above you and below you. It destroys individuality. You learn there is a certain way you are supposed to act to be successful. If you are not doing that, if you are fighting too hard to do something you believe is right, but your managers don't want to do, you defer. Or you fight and it gets marked as a stripe against you. You don't discuss interests that are counter to the firm's interests or the firm's positions."
"You are not thinking whether it is ethical to dump a bunch of loans into the street or repackage them and re-rate them better," she said. "You are only thinking about getting the deal done. You don't think about how issuing certain securities or structuring certain deals will impact people [around you]."
"When you are living, competing and winning in an environment where it is all about the money and the power, it creates a dividing line between you and the rest of the world," Prins said. "You do not bother to look over the dividing line. Your world is on your side of it and the rest of the world is on their side of it. You are not looking at people being kicked out of their homes and being foreclosed. You do not see the crying, the anger and the children in the street because [those in government] decided to give money to bail out Wall Street firms as opposed to renegotiate mortgage principals so people can continue to live their lives. You can be callous about it because it does not impact you. It is not something you notice. You might read about it. But you don't feel it, watch it or go through it. You are detached."
Banks are continuing to have hemorrhaging in consumer portfolios including mortgage loans, auto loans, credit card loans and other loans. Bankruptcies are endemic. Toxic assets if properly assessed would mean that many of our largest banks are insolvent. But the profits from the trading revenues and bonuses have climbed back to near-record highs. The sick mentality of the game, the one that created the first worldwide meltdown, dominates the nervous systems of our elite the way cravings overtake heroin addicts. They can't think of anything else. They do not know how. No one goes to Wall Street to further the common good. People go to make money. And money, like power, is a potent narcotic.
"You don't think you are doing anything wrong," Prins said. "You are working. You are making money. You are trying to have your bosses like you and pay you. You run things by legal [the company's legal department]. You run things by compliance. You don't believe you are committing a crime. You are just doing what you are doing."
"We will have another crisis," she lamented. "I don't know when, but it is brewing. If you don't fundamentally change the foundation of the banking system you are piling on capital and time into something that is faulty. This does not result in decades of stability. They are banking on trading. Nothing has changed. The rest of the consumer economy is continuing to deteriorate. These losses go into banks. You gain on trading and lose on more solid practices. The foundation has not changed. The regulations are bullshit. The old assets are still crap. The new assets created off the old assets are still crap. The banks are still levering them and still doing the same practices they did before. We will have another liquidity crunch. Banks will again stop trusting their assets and each other. ... The buying of complex assets will stop, although this time more quickly. People will remember what happened before. You will have a repeat of credit constricting between financial institutions. It is already constricted on the consumer side. The banking system will use up this federal capital and then go back for more."
- Posted in
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149 Comments so far
Show AllIs Chris implying here that Wall Street has left, even if momentarily?
Great article describing today's corporate culture. It is worst in finance and the military contracting fields I suppose, but the culture seeps down to less pathological enterprises.
In the 80's there was an influx of young employees who bought into an amoral Ayn Rand philosophy. Winning counts and that's all that counts. Now we are reaping the results.
I feel sympathy for young workers who are entering a culture in which production of useful things and concern for the common good have almost disappeared.
Joe
By the mid 1990's the corporate culture the author describes migrated into academia and some public sector institutions and is now rampant therein.
It's everywhere. It's in America's movies and TV shows, its music, its news broadcasts, its newspapers and magazines, the food we eat, the products we buy. Face it, almost everything and everyone you come into contact with on any given day is radiating corporate sociopathy. The only exceptions are what little nature or art you can find that hasn't been affected yet by the all-consuming cynicism.
America is a continent-wide junkyard of soulless greed.
It was already all there in the ruthless, talentless pop star Madonna's 1980s song, "Material Girl." I was dismayed then, am more dismayed now, but there is no satisfaction in knowing I was "right."
And how long will nature remain viable? We used to be easily confident that spring would come and everything would be renewed. Now all of nature reminds me of "Ode on Melancholy".
..."Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;"...
Only now, it is not just the individual that will die but likely whole species and ecosystems. I cannot look at at a frog with his jewel-tone eyes, or watch a bee among the warm flowers without great sadness that they may not be here for much longer. Species extinction and ruination of the oceans and water supplies take away the last comfort about the future.
Joe
"...firms like Goldman Sachs are more dangerous to the nation than al-Qaida."
------------------
The above should've been the headline of the article.
Every progressive radio and t.v. host, if they were smart, would have Mr. Hedges on their program today and pound this point home.
If they don't it will be further testament to the stranglehold these sociopaths hold on the media.
"Wall Street" knows damn well how teetering our eco-financial state is. They will therefore try to get more as long as it is available which may not be much longer.
I agree, and there is nobody to stand in their way.
They see it as an opportunity, not a problem.
Joe
jclientelle: I agree!
The other evening, I was walking up Lexington Avenue in NYC, and a couple behind me, a male and a female, were discussing education and banking -- in this case, the female was telling the male that although she graduated from Mellon University, in economics, a degree from HBS (Harvard Business School) offers much greater opportunities to graduates looking for work in investment banking.
I actually turned around to look at the couple -- thirty-ish, in corporate attire.
mis post....sorry
You're absolutely correct. Understanding the problem and making necessary reforms in the financial sector is useful for the evil and the righteous. The righteous will use that knowledge to protect the planet and it's species. The evil will use that info for last minute profit.
The US dept of Treasury is staffed by wall Street. of course they will be back with the blessing of OBMA
Man did Hedges ever nail it with this article. I had well over 20 years working in some very large corporations and every word he said is true. I also noticed that over the last 10 years I worked in that environment things were definitely getting worse. I'm so glad to be out of corporate Amerika. I don't think I could ever work in it again.
A while back there was a piece on NPR about the real life story behind the movie "The Informant". The movie is about an insider that becomes a whistle blower against a white collar crime in his company. One thing I found that was very insightful was one of the FBI agents said after being part of the investigation for several years. He said that corporate crime is so rampant that if you ever see a bunch of middle aged white guys in suits, having a meeting in a hotel lobby you can be pretty sure something illegal is going on.
Mr. Hedges best column in a long time. At my last job there was a creep who so worried my female colleagues that they formed a buddie system so that they wouldn't be alone with him, he was arrested in Japan while on company business after being found with an underage prostitute(sex slave), had no conscience and was hated by everyone who knew him yet because he was a toady he steadily moved up the corporate chain. This column vividly decribes the culture that allows animals like this to prosper.
"This column vividly decribes the culture that allows animals like this to prosper."
Hey, wait a minute! Aren't you being unfair to animals? How 'bout "monsters" instead?
point taken
"...these corporate heads, isolated from the mass of Americans by insular corporate structures and vast personal fortunes, are no more attuned to the misery, rage and pain they cause than were the courtiers and perfumed fops who populated Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us."
Hmmm.....is there a suggestion of kill or be killed? Is there a suggestion of revolution?
Seems to me that the time is near.
From Democracy Now! this morning: "Wall Street Employees Grumble Over Bonuses"
"In other economic news, Wall Street firms are preparing to give out billions of dollars in annual bonuses. The average employee at Goldman Sachs is expected to receive a bonus worth nearly $600,000. Many executives will earn far more. At JPMorgan the average bonus is expected to top $450,000. But the Wall Street Journal reports many employees at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and other firms are grumbling because much of this year’s bonus will be in stock instead of cash."
The time is near? The time is now!
They're 'grumbling' because they know their stock bonuses will be worthless in a couple of years...
Aside from his usual eloquence, wasn't this column just a statement of the bloody obvious? Even so, I guess it's all worth repeating.
Great insights as always from Hedges!
Reminds me of how odd I thought it that Bush the Lesser and other rethugs would continually refer to someone as a "good man." Now, I know that is simply mafia talk for "he's one of ours."
Colin Powell is the perfect example of such a "good man." He made his bones by attempting to cover up My Lai. Thereafter he enjoyed a meteoric career rise...culminating in his screwing over the American people with his lies to the United Nations to justify the US invasion of Iraq.
Sad thing is that people such as Powell, War Criminal Henry Kissinger, and Madeleine Albright ("500,000 dead Iraqi children was worth it" in referring to sanctions) remain respected by the public, while true heroes such as Hugh Thompson (the American helicopter pilot who, along with his equally heroic crew, intervened to save some civilians at My Lai) are unknown generally.
"These deeply stunted and maladjusted individuals....hold the fate of the nation in their hands....They have been empowered to cannibalize the government on behalf of the corporations that spawned them like mutant carp". Brilliant writing, Mr. Hedges!
Tony Vodvarka
This is so true, just so true. We worry about terrorists, when these guys are wrecking our country. I always though we should just send the bankers to Iraq and Afghanistan armed with some pencils and wait a few years......
Mike
Sounds pretty bad...
The corporate culture even trickles down to the minimum wage earners in America. Whether you're flipping burgers at McDonald's, serving a Latte Grande at Starbucks or selling cars to people who can't afford it at your local Chevrolet dealer, everyone is expected to put profits above everything else. This corporate embrace scares the hell out of sane tourists who visit from places like France or Germany. Nowhere in the world is the idolatry of money greater than in the good ole U.S. of A. Yet our corporate sponsored government continues to praise the benefits of corporatism adnauseum.
Education continues to be the mantra of success, yet the only education valued is the one that launches you into a career of corporate servitude. Gone are concerns revolving around the welfare of our neighbors, the health of a nation or the morality of fighting illegal wars. Instead it is all about chasing the almighty greenback.
If anyone really wants to see an example of how sick America has become (and why the religious right fears so-called "Liberals") read 'Jenna Jameson', a book about a porn star's "success" growing up in that epicenter of culture and morality... Las Vegas. In this disturbing book, the porn star gives tips (presumably to young readers aspiring to fame and fortune) on how to fuck your way to the top, earn big bucks, achieve international recognition and raise a normal family simultaneously. In any sane society, this book would be considered profoundly perverted, but in America it has a serious mainstream following. Just like the immoral Wall Street psycopaths, the culture of celebrity has permeated every strata of society.
Until we can get the majority of Americans to reject this narrow minded approach, we will continue to elect corporate America's lapdogs to run our affairs.
Your post reminded me of a time in the late 70's when I was a resident of Cleveland's east side. I went to "little Italy" for the Feast of the Assumption and there on the street was bingo, poker and many other gambling games. The culmination of the party was when a life-sized figure of the Virgin Mary was paraded down the street, her outstreched arms loaded with ribbons of taped-together dollar bills.
It ain't just in Vegas, Wall street or the hearts of whores.
"Until we can get the majority of Americans to reject this narrow minded approach, we will continue to elect corporate America's lapdogs to run our affairs."
As so many have previously pointed out, the majority of Americans worship these motherfuckers as heros and aspire to become the same themselves thinking it possible through hard work and honesty. (They seem to believe that the wealthy become that way though hard work and honesty?) In fact, these two qualities are in direct opposition to achieving the desired ends.
Until the elite are exposed as the liers, theives, murders, and morally bankrupt excrement that they truly are, they will continue to worshiped as heroes and as such, elected to public office.
In December, Chris Hedges spoke at the New School here in NYC. To watch the video, you can go to:
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/chris_hedges_on_obama_michael_jackson_empire_of_illusion_20100108/
I am inclined to agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Hedges, except;
Back when 401k's were first becoming institutionalized, I smelled a rat. The premise of removing money from the economy, ( to avoid paying taxes ) so each of us could gamble with it instead, seemed to me to be a sly attack on Social Security. This is also true of many health insurance schemes.
I still have no reason to doubt that the so-called meltdown wasn't (and will not be) merely another manufactured scheme to suck the life out of Social Security. No one can really prove the panic wasn't just a ploy.
The minds behind all of this are NOT merely numbed by the narcotic of greed. I agree that the majority of people who actively participate in these schemes are desperate fools, but I very much disagree that this is true of all. There is an ages-old SADISM behind this corruption and it is insatiable.
One of the most glaring recent examples is the case of the whisle-blower from UBS who is being punished with a jail sentence because he FORCED the Attorney General's office to have to investigate blatantly illegal tax evasion by THOUSANDS of multi-millionaires and UBS. The AG's office under Bush did not want anything to do with investigating this corruption. It was up to the current Attorney General, Eric Holder, who (as Juan Gonzalez on "Democracy Now!" reported) used to be an attorney for UBS, to find a way to punish the whistle-blower for returning BILLIONS of tax dollars to the economy. No wonder Eric Holder is the Attorney General - this administration knew they would have to deal with this corruption - so they needed the right puppet in the office of Attorney General.
Obama's playpal Eric Holder also recently deliberately mismanaged the case "against" Blackwater (for the Nissor Square slaughter in Iraq) so that the judge in the case had no option but to throw it out - providing murderers with more time to escape justice.
I had a telephone call from D.C. this morning; from an aide to the Congressman of the district I live in Republican Jeff Fortenberry. I had written to him and to Nebraska's 2 senators about the UBS whistleblower. Fortenberry's aid said the man had just started his prison sentence. I said this whole deal was a threat to and blackmail of other potential whistleblowers and that I hoped and expected to see Congressman Fortenberry stand up in the House and ask "Why is this man in jail?"
Now I'm waiting to see what happens.......
Please, don't hold your breath.
Thats why Obama always says that we need to look forward not back. When you look back you see all the illegal things that happened, and then you are required to do something about it. So if you don't look back, you have nothing to worry about! It's just business as usual.
Or, as someone said on one of these threads a few months ago: How can we look forward, when the mountains of evidence of crimes block our view of the future?
"Back when 401k's were first becoming institutionalized, I smelled a rat. The premise of removing money from the economy, ( to avoid paying taxes ) so each of us could gamble with it instead, seemed to me to be a sly attack on Social Security. This is also true of many health insurance schemes.
My take on the 401k is that it wasn't put into practice as a way to attack Social Security, but instead as a way to eliminate pension plans. If the big corps. could eliminate paying big bucks into pension plans and instead make a minor contribution to a plans in which the employee also contributes, profits go up and taxes go down. If you will remember, pension plans used to be a fairly norma perk with a big corporate job. Now they are almost unheard of and those that do still exist are bankrupt for the most part.
There is now some talk of the government requiring you to convert some of your 401K to an Annuity. See it at the following link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=aR9zVMXzOeX0
Thanks for the link!
Hey, why not? They can regulate or require We The Pe..(insert own letters) to do anything they want. But try to tell the banksters to ease up on the billion dollar salaries? I guess that is too much to ask.
Gawd bless Amerikkka.
"aussidawg"
Yes, you are correct about the pension plans.
That was the easier manuever up to now.
Sort of like an appetizer.
It was only part of the meal.
The author writes;
“The sick mentality of the game, the one that created the first worldwide meltdown, dominates the nervous systems of our elite the way cravings overtake heroin addicts. They can't think of anything else. They do not know how. No one goes to Wall Street to further the common good. People go to make money. And money, like power, is a potent narcotic.”
Not quite, (I think) the market masters in local heroin markets know that there has to be a drug drought once or twice a year to keep the memory of the drug Jones fresh in the minds of the junkies. Even when the world’s economy was teetering on the brink of collapse I doubt that these privileged power punks ever felt to cold sweat of involuntary withdrawal trickle down their brow.
In fact comparing the Wall Street predators to drug addicts unfairly denigrates addicts. Addicts wreak havoc upon themselves but by and large, that’s where their destruction ends. The Wall Street punks have no qualms what so ever in savaging society as they savage their own souls.
edit
Actually, the addicts wouldn't even be wreaking havoc on themselves if they could get a clean product that wasn't cut with such nicities such as ground up glass, brick dust, and anthrax spores (the latest plaque to hit heroin users in Scotland.) Pharmeceutical grade Heroin (trademark of Bayer Pharmaceutical) is basically harmless physiologically (barring overdose.) So why isn't a clean product available to them? Because it is illegal and kept that way so as to make black market prices possible.
So, one might ask...how is this relevant to the topic at hand? Anybody remember the headline a month or so back on how the illegal drug markets may have kept big finance from crashing?
No, you cannot compare addicts to bankers as many of the former are indirectly victims of the latter. Ahhh, capitolism. Ain't it great!
LOL. Indeed. At least there is the possibility of recovery for a drug addict. For a sociopath who works for GS, I doubt there is such a hope.
The real irony, or course, is the radical difference between the punishments meted out to addicts versus those leveled on GS and other bottom feeding corporations. But when you look at it from the point of view of the moneyed class, if you're drinking and drugging it up, they aren't making as much money off of your labor as if you were a good little slave. So I consider all these outcomes to be 'By Design.'
The public mistakenly thinks the War On Drugs is to protect their health, safety, and welfare, when in reality, it is to protect the health of those who depend on the black market prices generated by drug prohibition. In turn, the public fails to see the damage prohibition causes by curtailing their rights and liberties (IMHO the WOD was a preview of Patriot Act I), *DIRECTLY* creating criminal activity (anyone remember Al Capone's rise along with alcohol prohibition?) and negatively impacting the health of drug users and those around them with drug deaths caused by unregulated drugs of unknown strength and purity and HIV transmission. Who benefits from drug prohibition? The prison/industrial complex, rehabilitation industry, law enforcement (asset forfiture and grants from the federal govt.), banking industry (through money laundering as well as legitimate sources), and the government (especially the financing of black or covert expenses that they want kept from public scrutiny.) Who loses? We do...big time.
Sorry...got off on a tangent, but this tangent is directly tied to the complete and utter corruption of "our" government by big money.
duplicate post depleted by author.
The next time I duplicate a post I will deplete it as well!
Lol. Sorry...
I hope that depleted posts don't cause birth defects! I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for anything like that.
Triplicate post deleted by author.
The misunderstanding of the corrupt system and the problem with individual players in it, as Chris points out, is what is really terribly wrong in public America. Alarm bells of the level needed would go off in the minds of America if they knew the crew was aboard this titanic country, but no one in a position to, has the capacity to safeguard it's direction, no one stands at the proverbial helm. Nobody. We collectively cruise forward relying on the fact that their ignorance and immorality, a burning black matter made up of pure luck, speculation, and greed, devoid of love and truth, will destroy a way forward until we hit the limiting event that is awaiting on the horizon. We have elected leaders that are incapable of the level of leadership in demand for our current and future times. We have education systems, moral systems, and family systems that function under a limited and unhealthy power structure that was made for an earlier less complicated time. Mix the social knowledge and wisdom of that time with the social structure that exists now and you have a very deadly combination. You have "leaders" that could lead if they lived one hundred years ago, corporations that would not hurt this cripple this country one hundred years ago, but now, their outdated practices are like a cancer eating away at the bones of our democracy. Blinded morality clogging our social guts, calcified creativity clogging an already exhausted heart long trapped in overdrive. I don't know about the rest of you but while these other folks are busy with the work of self destruction, I am not willing to waste my time trying to convince them of what I know they are doing. The nature of their actions guarantees they cannot see, not what I see, and the onus is not upon the blind to make the changes that are necessary but upon the seeing. I would not ask someone missing their legs to walk again, and I will not ask individuals missing leadership and morality to guide me. Because that is what is really wrong, and that is what is happening right now. The doors to leadership and morality, vital organs of the mind and spirit, like our bodily organs which cannot be bought at the local dime store, have been blown shut and the key thrown away with our divisive warring ways. These organs of mind and spirit, normally instilled in us through our life experience, healthy family, community and governing organs cannot be evidenced in the actions of our current system and our acclaimed leaders who run it. A people that holds as sacred certain key aspects to life and living, and passes that knowledge from generation to generation is with whom such actions of life and leadership abound.
It may seem as though all hope is gone at this point in history, and darkness and despair prevail. But this is the exact point where something magical and mystical can occur. A reawakening of a human organ that can save us all. Chris alludes to it time and again in his article above with one word that will work as well as any to define it, to point us again to safety. That word is "creative" and the power that lies mostly dormant in us all, once activated in our society, can and will clear up all this confusion and point us back to safe waters. Through the patriarch, through the history of man, this word has had other names, and under that guise, has been manipulated to serve darker purposes. Something named to represent a vital organ has been used instead to represent it's opposite, used to shut down, and stop up that organ. We are at the cusp of this awareness. After wandering lost in the desert of our times, we are about wake up and find again the oasis of life giving sustenance. What will save us has been lost to our conscious mind, but it is not until we loose all faith in that current model of salvation, that we will find our true saving grace. It is hard to say how bad things will have to get before we remember, before we finally turn our heads and turn ourselves around. My dream is that this time around we will remember before mass suffering visits us, because for the generation that must walk through such horrors, just so humanity may remember it's true course and calling, there will be little comfort in remembering and then knowing we waited a little too long. In fact the only comfort for us then will be in our children, the only ones who will not be responsible for the facts of the past that will haunt us on that judgment day. But for now my dream remains that we can avoid such suffering, and instead change for the good that is still within us, in the time that is still remaining for us.
Speaking for myself, I am teaching myself to find that inner voice of wisdom and love, allow and encourage that creative energy to act in my life to be the good leader that I cannot find. Every day I have more reasons to choose that path and I can only hope my little bit will help make a difference, I can only hope that I can change myself before it is too late. This is the only option open for us all from what I can tell and for any of us willing to invest in it, we can collectively become a social power for change that will make the difference we are all waiting for.