We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, December 16, 2011

The Truth Hurts–And Heals

Click here to access article by Charles Hugh Smith from Occupy Wall Street News.

Participants in the Occupy movement in the US are now beginning to discover some truths about the system that governs their society:
There is a system of government in which rule of law is merely a propaganda screen, where financial and political Elites run the show and escape the consequences of their actions: it’s called tyranny. The truth is that we live in a financial tyranny.
However, the solution, a truth commission, that this blogger recommends demonstrates that there are many more truths which will need to be uncovered in order to create a healthy society; and I have no doubt that they will be. The most fundamental ones that I have in mind are: money cannot be under private control, socially produced wealth cannot be appropriated by private interests, and what is produced and how products and services are produced must be under genuine democratic control.