Working Fer The Man

The Emperor’s Skivvies

It may seem like the world is falling apart and maybe it is. But is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I’ve been decrying the unsustainable nature of the economic system we have been forced live in for many years. I have sounded like lil’ ol’ Chicken Little to a lot of folks for a long time, but now it seems the sky may be falling after all. At least many of you now would agree that maybe the emperor is sashaying around in his skivvies after all, and it ain’t a pretty sight. Knobby knees, pimpled hairy legs and corns on his toes, that ol’ emperor has lost his elegance even though our markets still are free.

This goes to another pet peeve of mine. I’m tired of people thinking I’m a pessimist just because I clearly see that the way we’re living really sucks. I have always claimed optimism. I believe that everyday working folks can do a lot better job running the world than the all these so called elites with the Ivy League crests stamped on their butts. Where have they taken us? To wars, to poisoning the planet, to starvation, hunger and disease around the world, to horrible places far to numerous to list.

We can do better and in fact we must. It’s not going to be easy. It will require letting go of a lot of assumptions, assumptions we’ve held for many generations. It will require seeing ourselves and our neighbors differently. It will require seeing that “human nature” is not greedy, individualistic or violent. While it is true that these traits have been prevalent for thousands of years, they do not define us as a species. No friends for the vast majority of our existence on this green and blue planet we lived in cooperative groups — bands if you will – hunting, foraging, sharing both scarcity and abundance. This is not to say it was paradise, skirmishes were fought over land and resources, but that was because we defined our groups too narrowly. Our brains were not developed enough to see the larger reality and the connection we shared as species. Now of course we’ve risen passed the clouds. We see our planet as it is, and we see clearly that we all share it, that we indeed are all connected. We have the sight. It’s the vision we lack. We have the technology to live in harmony, to feed all of us, to provide the things that we need to all of us. We have the technology. We have the sight. We need the vision, the will and the commitment. We need to change.