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

Monday, October 19, 2015

Can’t Anyone Fix This?

Click here to access article by James Howard Kunstler from World News Trust

Please forgive me for running this article which is dripping with cynicism. You see, I, like you, have good days and bad days. Today I am having the latter. But don't worry, most days I try to be optimistic about the prospects for humans to take control of their lives, their societies, and change things for the better. There is one paragraph in the article that rang so true with me, and I couldn't resist posting the entire article.
What perhaps ought to be more alarming is the way that the two major parties are lining up to be a men’s party and a woman’s party, a perfect acting-out of psychological archetypes in a society churning out millions of lost souls year-by-year. The American people apparently want a Daddy to fix all the broken systems and they want a Mommy to reassure them that everything will be all right. Hillary, of course, wants to be both, but her problem is that a lot of voters won’t accept her as either.
Do you get the feeling that our capitalist masters are playing the Americans for fools? And are we?