stella41b
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Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
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The lamb roams freely on the pastures together with sheep freely grazing. Ah but you know, the problem with freedom, is that in many cases it's nothing but an illusion. Ah yes, free to graze, free to reach the right weight and fatten up to it can be transported to a slaughterhouse, stunned, killed, skinned, disembowelled, hacked up and sold off - the best cuts to the supermarket chain (the lamb never was free in the first place), the other 'meaty bits' between pet food and meat by-product manufacturers (now you know why dogs really love Weiners) and whatever can be sold to be sold. All for a hamdsome profit by a farmer enjoying his relative freedom.
The above is but one example of just how much freedom there is in the 'free market economy'. Plenty for those at the top, but for you and me and the people we meet and greet on a regular basis hardly any freedom at all.
We are told that a recession is bad, right? Our current economic situation is being depicted as a crisis, and I guess this is true on both sides of the Atlantic. We are told that this is a negative occurence, to be avoided at all costs, and that we need to recover quickly and get back to 'business as usual'.
What this basically translates as, and means is that we are being asked to fatten ourselves up like the lambs, to keep the cogs of the machinery turning for that is all we are - cogs in a machine that makes money for those at the top. Our governments are urging us to earn, earn, earn, and spend, spend, spend - to remain on the treadmill and keep the treadmill going at all costs, no matter how ill we get, how sick, we are expected to keep our place on the treadmill going at all costs.
But what if the treadmill stops? What if the wheels stop turning? What then?
I'd like to ask each and every one of you to respond to this thread, in all honesty, hand on heart, and I want to ask you 'how is business as usual?' How is this 'free market economy' and 'business as usual' working out for you personally? Maybe it felt secure, familiar, comfortable. We knew what to do and how to get ahead, we knew the rules of the game, and perhaps the system has rewarded us with money, status and a glow of achievement.
But what about happiness? Have we been radically happy? Do we feel deeply fulfilled? Do you wake up in the morning full of energy, basking in wholesome contentment in the evenings?
You see I've never been too sure that this has ever been working out sio well for us pre-recession. If we care to look to our consciences, we know that grave atrocities were being done in the name of progress - unfair trade, exploitation, irrevocable damage to the environment, the stripping away of the livelihoods of many people, condemning them to welfare dependency, poverty, homelessness, destitution, and in some cases death.
And I wonder if the situation here was that great. Corporations got fatter, we worked harder (those of us who survived) - all to maintain perpetual economic growth.
I see the positive here, I see the current news to be good news, a chance for change, real change, and that good news is that we are finally being offered a way out of the enslavement of the earn-spend-earn-spend cycle. It's like we have come down on Christmas Eve night and seen our father scoffing all the mince pies and selection boxes and drinking all the booze. Suddenly the truth is out and has been exposed. We won't be fooled.
Changes can be scary. But let's allow ourselves to imagine, just for a moment, that the new ways could be preferable. Imagine an ecomony which feels equitable at local, national and international levels. One which involves creative, innovative ways of sharing and trading with each other, an economy in which everybody - everybody in the whole wide world can be a part of and take part in. An economy which is based on respect for our planet, and respect for each other, and one which honours our common essential needs as human beings.
I am not an economist, I openly admit to being a socialist, an artist, and a visionary. But this isn't so important, I am a human being, just like you, and I believe in freedom, and that everybody should have that freedom, freedom to live, freedom to be, that freedom for the fact that we are human beings, and not the relative freedom given for any particular aspect of our nature or any individual characteristic, but simply because we are human. But freedom carries responsibility, and I feel that we should be looking for a way where everybody carries a basic responsibility, a responsibility to contribute to a community, to a society, and to take care of this planet and the world we live in, and to have the right to share in the benefits of such a world, such a society, and such a community.
I am not an economist but I know I want something different - and that difference is that I want to see a world run not for profit of the few, but for the benefit of humanity, you, me, and everyone else on this planet. I see this recession as an opportunity to choose, as a society, a new model, a new way forward, something better.
A 'free people society' rather than a 'free market economy'. Something for everyone.
What about you?
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