In Search of Our Humanity

Never has that bumper sticker saying been more true, "If you're not upset, you're not paying attention." Those in the streets with the Occupy Movements have simply been paying attention. Our political and economic systems are corrupt, dysfunctional and imploding on themselves. Nowhere is the evidence of this more stark than in the virtually complete absence of ethics and morality in the actions of our political, economic and cultural institutions. Corruption? How did that whole financial meltdown treat you? Dysfunction? How is that Congressional "super-committee" working out for you? Implosion? Virtually half of the population of the United States, arguably the richest country on the planet, is now economically insecure, meaning that while technically above the so-called poverty level, they struggle to regularly find the resources for the basics of existence; food, housing and not to mention health care. This is beyond shocking. Yet, in the face of this evidence both major political parties are pushing austerity, a further cutting back of resources, as the solution, and one of these Parties is so corrupt, immoral and self serving that it wants to further reinforce the political priorities that brought about this state of affairs, ie., further slashing of spending, and cutting taxes on the wealthy even more.

The higher up the power ladder one goes the more widespread is the moral vacuum. There is a vast chasm between how I believe most of us act and wish to act in our private lives and how the institutions of power force and mold us to act. These are ostensibly our institutions but we have completely lost control of them. The priorities and values that they have set, that they continue to set, within our political and economic systems are completely at odds with those, for example, that the overwhelming majority of us would wish to pass on to our children. We want our children to be fed and clothed, educated and cared for. We want the sick treated. We want to live in a peaceful world, to see, in the words of Bob Dylan that the "cannonballs are forever banned." And we want to see this also for our neighbors. Yet these priorities are now almost completely absent within the institutions we have constructed, particularly at the highest levels.

The levers of power are now firmly in the control of those who view human existence as a struggle to amass ever more wealth, power and control, who view their fellow humans as simply means to the end of domination and control, and not ends in themselves. This is the culture of empire. It is rooted I believe ultimately in the psychology of fear. The access routes to its institutions are carefully guarded and there are powerful incentives to not "rock the boat," or upset the status quo. Only those who are properly conditioned before hand can reach the upper echelons. You must first demonstrate your "seriousness," your ability to cast aside the ethics that you were most likely raised with, and make the tough but "pragmatic" decisions in service of empire. If you can't, your conscience gets the best of you, or you decide to act on what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature," then there is no shortage of remedies, from loss of your job, to a jail cell, or a shower of pepper spray to the face. You have to show the proper allegiance to the propagandistic symbols of control, wear your flag pin, beat your chest and rah-rah the troops, proclaim the greatness, indeed, the exceptionalism of your tribe, and never, ever, examine your own conduct and that of empire.

There is a long struggle ahead to reform our institutions and take back the levers of power to the service of humans as ends and not means. The Occupy Movement is an example of this struggle, but events over the last year have clearly shown that the struggle is indeed global. The dominant economic system of limitless capitalism has entrenched our culture of empire, and it is ultimately at the heart of our moral corruption. But so as its guiding principle is to consume, and then consume more, it will also eventually consume our own humanity, and we will have destroyed ourselves, or at least that which is best in ourselves, in the process. Redemption lies in freeing ourselves from this culture of empire, in reclaiming our collective humanity. The path has already been laid out, by those such as King and Ghandi, we simply need to find it again beneath the wreckage of our own fear. The Occupiers have found that path and we need to start walking it with them. It is the only way to a future with any real freedom.