In the last 40 years, media influencers, economists and politicians have been changing the religion of Western Democracy.Growing up I believed, maybe from Disney movies and television sit-coms (where I got my degree in nothing in particular) where I was very eager to express my opinion as if by doing so, the world would become a better place ... for me.
I believed that if I was polite to people I would be a success. Then I learned of global economics as far as what should I buy and not buy. Then I touched the surface of politics, and who should I vote for or not vote for.
Along the way I learned how to be safe in my white privilege and how to apologize for my bad opinions and to change them quickly.
Later on in this hyped century I discovered bad news that I could not ignore.
This involved doctrines around gender, skin colour, religion, politics, class and the pecking order.
I've wept over the news of how the First Peoples have been torn apart from their own lands, their dignity and their right to life. If some people can be raped, imprisoned and murdered without justice, our system that we call neo-liberal capitalism is a lie. Our democracy is behind the bars of the pecking order. Our news is hidden in the words chosen by corporate lobbies.
To be poor is NOT a sign of laziness. Addiction is not a sign of weakness. Life is sacred beyond the ways it can make profit for the few. Conservatism primarily is to conserve what we value, so life, all our lives must come first.
The children of those who seek to maintain their status and power, go to private schools where they learn to keep quiet about pain and replace it with the desire to control. So bullying is a value for the rulers. The colonialists put in place social orders to silence, ridicule and portray indigenous societies as backward.
People who want to rise up to the upper levels teach their children to never cry "unfair" for the answers that silence them is "the world is unfair", learn how to turn hurt to your own advantage.
The last piece of advice will encourage as all to feel isolated, unheard, and spiritually homeless. Even the wealthy designers and influencers are alone.
Scan the headlines of corporate news outlets: if it bleeds it leads especially if it bleeds to death. Now we have snippets of items about the violence done to those who are black, brown, female, Jewish or Moslem. Stories that indicate - it can't be helped, it's not good, but how, besides locking people up, can we create societies that are safe?
Close to these tidbits of sorrow are strongmen shouting into a microphone about masculine responsibility, the promise keepers, responsibility that comes with power and the stories of how girls are treated in such backward countries that were once part of the "commonwealth" but now free to return to savagery, to torment one another.
But what this hand-ringing never points out is, this is the boot on our face (Orwell), the kind of society manufactured by religions and beliefs based on colonial class systems and the addictions we called civilization and isolated egos competing for the most of what each of us wants (taken from a quote by a University professor whose name I cannot remember or find on the internet)
Ideas about systems make us feel we are worldly, educated and concerned.
Racism is on the rise and young strong men who cannot find women (who look like movie stars), join gangs of thugs to protest, shoot up and destroy cities and people to vent their rage.
Meanwhile the corporate media promotes the perfect man, the perfect wife, the "true religion" and all the things they could buy if they pulled up boot straps and got themselves a job that paid a living wage, in an age where good jobs have gone to other continents and where paying good wages is ridiculed except for the CEO.
The major crisis, in this economic climate, is, life made redundant, while money (power) is the only thing worth having. After all people are mortals but money lives forever until there are no people.
