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Values
This is a
good time to reexamine the values
Americans wish to present to the rest of
the world, a good time for the type of
serious introspection necessary to compel
the transcendence of culture that our
society desperately needs, and a good
time to look deeply into our hearts, to
determine, honestly,whether or not we, as
the world's preeminent civilization, are
on the right path.
We must
stop spending so much time worshipping
money, and start spending more time
worshipping each other. Our
hyper-adrenalized mad scramble for the
brass ring of trash-culture consumerism
leaves far too many trampled underfoot,
either unable, or unwilling, to compete
in a culture of false gods. It's
dehumanizing, and most of us miss the
brass ring anyway, leaving us, in the
end, bereft of both dignity and wealth.
So what's the point? We're worn out and
broken down by the long dash, and the
universe laughs at us for loosing the
wrong race. What's say we adopt values
that reflect a culture more in tune with
the "better angels of our
nature".
It is a
tenet of the Founding Fathers that all we
really have is each other, so they
constructed a government and society
based around the individual, in the hopes
that the common man, and not big
interests, would control that government
and shape that society. It was, and
remains, a valiant and revolutionary
effort to preempt the ego and greed of
elites who would stop at nothing in a
ruthless quest for more and more power.
Government by, for, and of the people was
the great equalizer, a conscious attempt
to avoid, at all costs, the stigmatizing
class system prevalent throughout
societies of the world. But, at the new
Millennium, what do we have? Big Oil, Big
Tobacco, Big Energy, Big Timber, Big
Money, small ideals, smaller hopes, and
dreams that sacrifice basic humanity on
the alter of False Promise. Robber
Barrons are charting our destiny, and
that's no way to live. If there's one
lesson we took away from Sept, 11, 2001,
it's that wealth won't protect you when
Fate is the hunter. There's nothing
intrinsic there, nothing your soul can
hang its hat on, a house of cards that
collapses at the slightest wind, as
evidenced by the demise of giant energy
vulture Enron Corp. It's based on a set
of values that earns us the scorn and
contempt of much of the rest of the
world, and it's not even real. Money
never is. But people are. It is,
metaphysically, our one true wealth and
resource. The great empires of human
arrogance (including Capitalism) come and
go with time. But our humanity remains
unbroken throughout, a beacon to our
clumsy attempts to embrace it, ending,
time and again, floundering on the rocks
of mortal hubris.
Can we
reverse this? Well, if you can't put down
your cell phone, the answer is probably
"no". The inconsequential and
superfluous will continue to take on
added gravity and prestige, until our
culture, corrupted, shallow, and
disunited, follows the Roman Empire into
history. Or, we can take this unique
opportunity for reflection to rediscover
how much we really need each other, and
just how fulfilling and joyful that need
can be.
Sept. 11
reminds us that the external world is
fragile, fleeting, violent and
dispassionate. Politically, we're still
in the cave, where the stronger man is
right, and shiny trinkets establish
"worth". That's ugly. But the
internal world of the mind allows us the
luxury of humility, respect, and
compassion, transcending the pain of
human weakness, releasing our hearts to
tend to the only lasting entity in the
universe....our souls. And that doesn't
take money. It takes only the realization
of human purpose in the cold cosmos. And
that would put us on the right path to
win the right race.
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