I can’t help but wonder how many of us have given up our pursuit of happiness in exchange for a pursuit of hatefulness? While hatefulness can provide short periods of joy and schadenfreude it is impossible to be truly happy when we are holding hate inside. With so many people and the media making sure that we are angry and fearful it is really difficult to realize that an ‘eye for an eye leaves everyone blind”. Fear anger and hate tend to overshadow reason and gets people to believe that things they don’t, and never will, understand, (like LGBT) are evil. Happiness is a personal decision that relies on gratitude, satisfaction, compassion and love. Hate is an emotion that is triggered by anger, fear, ignorance, and others ‘ hate. . Happiness requires you to live in the present. Those pushing the past by placing blame never seem to look for solutions to problems. Those promising a future are usually grasping at straws. Those living in the virtual world don’t even know what’s real. We must remember that life is a journey where we all share the same destination. Happiness happens along the journey, not at the destination.
The real question is; ‘who benefits from all this hatred”? Those in power or those wishing to gain power and money are the main benefactors. We’ve been taught that one of the best ways to gain power is to “divide and conquer”. Hate begins by pointing out our differences and then generalizing that all individuals in a group are the same. While this has been done for generations, the most recent tactic is to try to make everyone believe that all Jews support the Israeli government and that all Palestinians support Hamas. This followed the semi- successful campaign of trying to turn all Muslims into terrorists. Dividing is best done by making one group feel they are the victims of another group. They have also found out that if you repeat a lie often enough people will begin to believe it is the truth. The ‘if your’ not with us 'your against us’ attitude leads too many of the clowns now in congress. I am reminded frequently of the saying ‘if you’re going to be stupid, you better be tough’. Lofting personal insults and nasty name calling is a surefire way to tell if someone is trafficking hate. Those who criticize without suggesting improvements are just plain sad! I’m personally sickened by both political parties’ campaigns resting on the cry that your guy is worse than our guy. Hate can come quickly and overpower us without warning. Many of us end up wanting to be a bigger jerk than the guy who just wronged us.
“Your guy is worse than our guy! If he gets elected the whole country is going to collapse. You can’t be safe if you don’t own a gun. Your children are going to turn into (name your horror here) if we don’t pass more restrictions on their education. The media is all trying to brainwash us. Those people are going to ruin the country. If you’re not with us you are against us. Oh by the way send a donation.” Blame and name calling make up our political discourse right now and I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of it. Can we please stop obsessing about words that either have no meaning or different meanings to different people. “Woke” is either a compliment or an insult. Somehow the whole country has taken the belief that the purpose of government is to provide jobs, either private or public. The exception to this is those deplorables that believe government should not exist at all. The ones that complain the most about the poor performance of the government are the same people that are not willing to pay the taxes necessary to have a high performing government. The pursuit of power and celebrity has become more important than providing a well functioning government.
Most Americans believe in the dollar more than they do in the traditional religions. It’s the dollar that gives us our food, shelter, all the things that we find useful in life. This new religion of the dollar, whose high priests are the investment bankers and economists, is based on several beliefs that we tend to accept without logically looking at what they really mean. One refrain I have heard several business executives express is ‘that if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist’. This attitude negates all of the emotions and is a handy excuse to do the profitable thing over the right thing. All of us seem to believe that our time is worth some monetary amount that is generally agreed to be the same for similar activities. Without knowing when we will die, we all have a different amount of time on earth, making an hours’ worth of life worth a different unknown amount for everyone. Another large lie, loved by the money managers, is that the purpose of a business is to make money for the owners. They seem to not have any concern about the customers at all. While it is true that making money for the owners is a requirement for a successful business, no business would exist without providing goods or services to customers. As a society we believe that people with a lot of money are better people than people with no money. There is a private sector belief that private industry can do anything better than the government. This has led us to accepting that business’s can alleviate pain and suffering while still paying dividends. The Citizens United case even gave the dollar rights of its’ own. Polluting industries have much to gain. There are really no climate change deniers; they are really climate change profiteers. As a society we both praise those that create jobs and those that eliminate jobs. People don’t realize that the winner of the rat race is still a rat and that dying with the most toys doesn’t get you into heaven.
Those with political power or economic power have very good personal reasons to maintain the status quo and will not look at ideas that would challenge their understanding of the roots of their power. We seem to currently believe that we are operating within one of two social contracts; Capitalism or Socialism. An investigation of both of these economic theories will show that our current situation combines both. They have become terms for insults without substance. Capitalism calls for “to each according to their abilities, Socialism calls for “each according to their needs”. Surely America is rich enough to affect both of these 19th century ideas. When I hear these terms today, I hear ‘socialism is the government giving someone else money’ and “capitalism is the government giving you money. We are so dependent on our employment for our security we will not entertain any thoughts that may change our relationships with our employers, public or private. Employment at will provides immense insecurity to many of us.
In a social contract we as individuals agree to curtail certain activities so that we can benefit from living in a group. Our traditional social contract has the government keeping us safe from violence, criminals and invaders, while employers provide us with food, shelter, healthcare and entertainment. If we had a social contract that was effective we wouldn’t feel the need to own firearms or staff food banks.
I believe we need to undergo a paradigm shift in the thinking about what is important to us and actually shift that 20 cents from one pocket to the other (pair of dimes). Things we are already paying for could be paid through a different means that would eliminate hunger and homelessness in this country
During a long career helping people find security in the life, annuity and health insurance business I developed several ideas that made me think I was insane. Now after a decade of unemployment I have decided that the psychologists were right; that the insane always think that they are sane. It’s our western society that has become insane. The purpose of a society is to provide security to its’ members. The authoritarian viewpoint is that you get security from doing what you are told to do. Security in a society that values individual freedoms comes from capital: both the individuals and society’s. The “great American Dream” has evolved from; a chicken in every pot to a car in every garage and is now simply MORE. Our economy has gone from agrarian to manufacturing to services and is now one of leisure. Witness our obsession with Hollywood and gaming. The insane part is the belief that we are entitled to prioritize our wants over others needs
I would like to paint a picture of the world I would like my grandchildren to live in. Our Governments main concern should be providing for the citizens security. Measuring our progress would ignore GDP and other dollar measurements and would use counts of our hungry, homeless, mortality and morbidity instead. Our inalienable rights of Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness will lead my imaginary world.
Life requires: food, shelter, healthcare, clean water and air. Everyone with a Social Security number would be able to claim a ‘hotel room’ accommodation with shared kitchen and laundry facilities. Of course, if they wanted to they could live anywhere that they could afford by giving up their claim to a shelter. Similarly everyone would receive a debit card with $300. Each month it would be brought back up to a $300 balance but would never exceed $300. This card could only be used to purchase food that was grown, processed and packaged in the United States. Dependants’ money would be credited to the responsible adults account. A single payer healthcare system would pay all medical costs for everyone up to and including the ‘usual and customary’ charges for medical services. Should a provider wish to charge more than this amount, they would be able to, with the amount coming from the single payer being reduced by the same percentage that the provider charges over and above the posted reimbursement. You would be able to choose your own doctor, if you can afford them, and the doctors could charge what they wanted to. Private insurance could be designed to pay these providers.
Without adequate capital, (in a country where about 40% of the population can’t come up with $400), you can’t have security without a job. Millions employed as parasites in the Health Care industries would lose their jobs with a single payer plan. Climate change deniers (profiteers) know that their jobs are on the line because they make money on the internal combustion engine and single use plastics. Petroleum producers and refiners would lose many jobs if we got rid of single use plastics. We could get rid of millions of tax preparers if the IRS could administer taxes without us filing returns. Extractive industries would see their profits plummet if we were effectively recycling. Regulatory reform could get rid of millions of jobs if we put offenders in jail instead of fining shareholders. We are stymied in all these reforms because the special interest groups won’t allow their members to lose their security. How then do we define what our government should be doing?
A truly functioning government would provide not only police and military protection but also food, housing assistance and healthcare to all. It would also not allow dividends to be paid on services that cater to those who are sick, suffering, disabled or imprisoned.
Liberty has many definitions that include the right to go to hell if you don’t hurt others. It also includes the right to be you even if you don’t fit in with societal norms and are not ‘normal’. What is forgotten is that you can’t have liberty yourself unless you let others have liberty also. We have given the governments responsibilities to our employers, which has made having a job the prerequisite for security. It’s our employers that provide food, shelter, and healthcare turning us into job slaves. With basic needs taken care of, we wouldn’t need many jobs that only make our oligarchs richer and the world more polluted. Remember who wins the rat race!
The Pursuit of Happiness is largely what we call the American Dream. I used to hear that called “a chicken in every pot” then it was a “car in every driveway” and now it seems to have morphed into “MORE”. A better definition is the ability to pursue your passions. Most professionals and many craftsmen are currently doing that, but many of us have passions that don’t pay. Insecurity is the enemy of happiness and being an ‘at will employee’ who could lose their income and healthcare any time is not a means to happiness. With basic security taken care of, creativity could take flight.
We currently have a lot of people that are so narrow minded they can see through the peephole with both eyes. They think the job of educators is to teach children what to think. We have to let educators do the job they were trained for and that is to teach children how to think. A good education requires knowledge of many trains of thought both good and bad, and how to assess each of them. It doesn’t require people to hide who they are; it allows them to become who they want to be. Education should also be provided for firearm safety, driving safety and personal finance.
The worship of money has become a defining characteristic of our society. We have come to measure a persons’ worth by their net worth. Somehow we went from looking at money as a means to an end to being the end itself. We are now attempting to build a leisure society and can’t get very far due to the reliance on jobs to provide our security. Basic security includes the ability to eat, have shelter and healthcare and security from malefactors. Agrarian society met these from the farm. Food was grown, housing was on the farmland, and healthcare was rudimentary and if not payable in cash could be paid with farm produce. The government took care of the invasion and criminal risk and the rest wasn’t a concern of the government. The move to a manufacturing economy rested on the employers providing either the money for food and lodging or directly provided both. As healthcare got better and more expensive, employers provided access to that as well. As we got more and more dependent on jobs, we forgot to look at whether some jobs should be necessary. We now have many jobs that have no bearing on our ability to feed, house, care for, and entertain us. We are unable to reform our medical, legal, regulatory, and other harmful industries because of the loss of jobs or income. With approximately 40% of our population not working, it is time to stop worshiping job creation and start looking at income sufficiency.
