Are We Good And Mad Or Just Sinking Into Madness?- Video and Commentary

If you have wondered, like I have, what Occupy is all about consider this video and we’ll talk after you’ve had a chance to watch it.

There are many issues facing our societies today including: unemployment, the environment, collapsing economies, insufficient regulation of some sectors of the financial services industry, government inefficiency and lack of vision. These are serious issues and will take serious measures to correct them but the kind of thinking demonstrated in the video is more aligned with the thinking that got us into this mess than the thinking required to get us out of it.

I’ve talked to many in the Occupy movement over the past few months and while I have found some to be thoughtful and justifiably frustrated with some of the issues they are protesting, I have also found too many who were ill-informed and just along for the free-ride.

As the young man in the video indicated, all of his information about who pays what in tax comes from the Internet and you can almost bet it comes from those sites which confirm his beliefs rather than provides broader information that might challenge them.

It will take more than expressing our anger
to fix what is broken

The Occupy movement is not going to solve anything. It will continue for awhile, may even get more violent this year than it was last fall but in the end, it isn’t going to solve the issues we face and the reason is obvious. It is comprised of too many who don’t understand how economies work, who have no control over economic levers and who have turned their back on the political system which while it is in desperate need of reform, remains the one vehicle with real opportunity for effecting change. It is the political system that legislates law and it is law that can bring about the change we need.

Unfortunately, it isn’t just Occupy that has it’s head in the sand. Too many on the left and on the right are demanding quick fixes to complex issues and are clinging to the misguided idea that one person in the form of a president or some other leader is going to make things better again.

It doesn’t work like that.

photo: randsco.com

We watch hundreds of millions being spent to win elections while children go to bed hungry. We watch politicians argue over minutia as the economy crumbles and thousands lose their jobs, their homes and their hope. We're angry and we're frustrated and in our frustration we look for scapegoats and conspiracies. We blame this group or that political party; this person or that economic strata but at the end of the day, it's all of us and until we realize that we are all in this together, it is only going to get worse.

It’s going to take everyone working together to pull our societies out of this mess and until we stop baiting each other and accusing others of being the problem, we have no hope of coming together in a united cause to overcome the issues we face.

Calling President Obama an agent of Iran or Mitt Romney a corporate serial killer as some have achieves nothing but further division, anger and frustration. The end result is young people in the streets like our friend above who figure that if the rest are doing it, he might as well shout out for something too.

"One person can make a difference
and every person should try"
- John Kennedy

It was an American president who said once, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Those words were immortalized around the world and were emblematic of some of what made America great. Too quickly those words have been drowned out by the yelling on social media and it’s a shame because there is more truth in those words today than ever before.

If there was ever a time when our democratic countries needed us, we the people, to step up and accept responsibility and come together in common cause to resolve our differences and the issues we face , it’s now. If we don’t, we will fail and we will all pay the price for it.

When he is my age, I often wonder how my grandson will look back on our time and what he will think of us and how we faced times of great challenge.

Will he think we rose to the occasion and look at us the way many of us look back at those who created our democracies or will he think we sank into madness and all but destroyed ourselves and the opportunities we had?

© 2011 Maggie's Bear

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