Begin Inward
We live in uncertain times. Fringe groups filled with hatred threaten our overall free ways of expressing ourselves within our home, in our communities and within our bodies. For example, women are currently at risk for having their genitals controlled by the right wing of the government. Are we going to return to a time of vaginal sewing where women are sewed up until their wedding day at which point their husband opens them with a knife? Yes, this has been reported to have happened in the past. Be you woman or man, is this what you want for your daughters or granddaughters throughout the next several generations? Even if its just a report, is the fact that such a thing is in someone's mind ok?
Meanwhile reigns are being loosened on the sociopath behaviors of corporations desiring slave wages with no benefits and a return to brutal working conditions. Is this also what you want for your children who are inheriting a potentially desolate Earth made barren by our greed for more and more things making the wealthy wealthier?
For whom does the bell of freedom truly toll? Those that labor in bringing new life in the world or those that labor in the stores, factories, warehouses and corporate farms? Or does the bell toll for the upper classes?
Is freedom truly in your hands? Will it be in your grandchildren's hands? What kind of future awaits us? Or are you just about your life in this world and the short time you have in it? As John Kay sings in Steppenwolf's "Monster," "American, where are you now, don't you care about your sons and daughters. Don't you know, we need you now, we can't fight alone against the monster."
Do you care?
Meanwhile, as you fret about paying the mortgage, the environment is showing signs of stress through mass extinction, there is continued talk about global warming, and there is less and less diversity of life on this planet due to corporate destruction of the natural habitats throughout the world.
If we are not already in the throngs of a perfect storm, there is one brewing quickly. If you can get past the surface news meant to entertain you and get into what is really happening, you will know we are in deep trouble on several fronts.
I bet you know it in your guts.
Would you like to be an instrument of change? Or, do you just ride along, protesting, writing and other well meaning activities while the police knock on your door at the beckoning of the corporation due to your expression of so-called "free speech?"? Try the free speech argument with a corporate bureaucrat.
How do you become the change you want to see in the world? These are deep questions that requires you to do some major soul searching. The question is, can you get past your conditioning enough to identify the changes you need to make? The point is, we are all conditioned to think a certain way and that way needs to be changed, otherwise, we stay stuck in a "meet the new boss, same as the old" scene. It's as the bumper sticker says, "Question Reality!" This is exactly what we have to do.
Even on a remarkable publication like Op Ed News I often hear well meaning people who ultimately just want the government and the ruling corporations/banks to behave themselves. Thus, just like the 60's, we may get some changes, but lo and behold, there will be those laying low until the time is right to get the likes of Reagan, Bush, and even Obama and Clinton into office. It's a game of give and take. Now we are in the time of taking away the benefits our parents and grandparents fought and died for in labor and social movements.
Labor has been abused for several centuries, both in terms of women and working classes (there is no more middle class). The primary driver, as I see it, is that we have allowed ourselves to fall into submission to what has been labeled by the makers of the movie Corporation as a sociopath system. Eve, be she in the form of a woman, or a worker/creative artist, needs to stand up and say to Adam, and his paternalistic god, "NO MORE!"
Are you ready?
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