You are not trapped in a world that you never made. You help make it, we help make it the way it is.
We are unlike the other animals and species we share this planet with in that we make our own ecosystem. There is no economy, government, religion, culture, or any human system of power or wealth distribution or perspective that we ourselves have not created. We choose to make the world we live in, and we choose our outcome as a species.
I say this because whenever I have a conversation about what I see as the misplaced priorities all around me, the answer is typically a shrug, or some general sneering expressed at my lack of understanding regarding how complex "the system" is, and that thats just the way "it" works.
But we control "it" we decide "it"..so don't tell me how fucking complicated it is. At least share in the collective responsibility we bear in a world where -
We do the absolute minimum or less to work on stopping humanity from making our world less habitable for ourselves and the other animals who live on it.
We pay people on reality TV more than we pay teachers.
We pay a football coach more than we pay the dean of the school.
We value TV celebrities more than we value scientists.
We answer someone's hunger with a scramble to figure out why their hunger is their fault.
We let our government engage in wars that are about our own imperialism.
We let our racism and our prejudices define how we feel without acknowledging that racism and prejudice is something we all have, something we all have to learn to deal with.
We consistently devalue real labor, and increase the rewards for labor which does little to enrich the many, but much to enrich the few.
We are okay with giving for profit company's more money and more profit, funding wars and the largest military the world has ever seen, but FDR's four freedoms are unattainable, education, healthcare, freedom from hunger, better human quality of life issues..these are all unattainable for the majority...but certainly taken by the few.
We are okay with rhetoric that divides us..yet anyone who travels knows that individuals will always change a preconceived perception towards a group.
Don't say "we can't do it, capitalism..its too complicated..our government won't" ...etc, etc. Don't put the problem elsewhere. We're not trapped in a world that we never made. We've chosen this one.
We make it. We can change it. It's all on us.
