But we're all acting in our own self-interest, because that's what makes Growth, um, sustainable, we're not responsible for the other passengers on the subway with nothing to eat cause they've nothing that sells because, um, our duty is to put our own mask on first I mean oxygen not N95, um, for the Common, um, thing. Right?
And if they get sick?
So now it comes down to which Common is the Common: everybody's personal wellbeing, or the so-called Economy. And they are: The. Same. Thing.
(That was the aforementioned Gotcha.)
It won't do. We're literally "all in this together." Ship-at-sea together. There are still Incontrovertible Facts even a "Rush" can't mess with, and this is one: what's happening now is happening to all of us. If there is a leak at my end of the ship, your end will sink too. That's the Common.
When the infamous business version of the cost-benefit analysis that now drives public policy neglects the Common, it neglects the Economy, everyone's wellbeing, and life itself. All the present upheavals we are all experiencing so disproportionately today trace back to this abuse of the Common as a commodity. The impacts of this are so awful that it qualifies as a centuries-old public health pandemic in itself.
Time's up! Fortunately, we have a choice.
We are not the pinnacle of Creation, or the high point of evolution, depending on your religious orientation. Or the descendants of extraterrestrials from Remulac. God, or Darwin, or Remulac, did not wind us up and set us ticking through the world repeating the same old crap under a different name, expecting different results. Each of these purportedly omnipotent sources is by definition way smarter than that.
Life is an interactive process. We change and are changed. We got here by diversity and adaptation, and as soon as we stop diversifying and adapting, we're history. Without us, not even history. This is the game we can really lose.
"Capitalism" is not the Law of the Jungle. It was made up by people. Some we could name. Now it has not just failed, it's on fire, and will burn to the waterline like a ship at sea. It's a great analogy: with a deranged captain still barking orders about imaginary borders or boarders or something, we cling to a burning, sinking derelict without rudder or compass, giving all our water to the officers while we die of thirst. Or we will crowd ourselves into a smaller boat, and head out into the trackless unknown with little else but hopeful hearts.
The longer and harder we cling to the past, the worse it gets.
(Article changed on June 14, 2020 at 19:23)
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