Changing The System…Means Changing Ourselves
Sections within this article:
1. Should We Be Institutionalized?
2. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
3. Change in Less Than 12 Steps
4. Of Artists and Acrobats
5. Summary & Conclusions
When seeking the source of our troubles it is always easy to point the finger outward. The more challenging task is ensuring that our own house is in order. From Presidents to religious leaders to the guy in the mirror ‘Walking our talking’, avoiding hypocrisy, seems to be one of the most difficult and least undertaken responsibilities in life. With the new year comes the opportunity for introspection and resolution, so let us proceed with all enthusiasm.
Should We Be Institutionalized?
A century ago, with most of America still cutting it’s living on the rural farm, many folks could ignore “those damn city fellars and their high fallutin ideas.” As long as the rains fell and the winter wasn’t too hard you’d get by somehow. But today, in the modern world, life is very different. For most families, water doesn’t come from a well or a spring but a UTILITY. Chicken and corn don’t come from out back, they come from a SUPERMARKET. The home you occupy costs a bundle each month and offers nearly no productive value (beyond the shelter of the space you occupy within it). In fact, government zoning and usage ordinances are such that many people could not use their homes for their trade anyway. And, try as you might, it’s quite doubtful that the mortgage holder (or landlord), retail conglomerate, or utility company would allow you to perform work in lieu of cash payments… which are due every 30 days. When there is more month than money most of America turns to it’s credit capacity, until that too is gone. When our jobs are downsized, when wages plummet from an oversupply of overqualified workers, when even two full-time incomes no longer afford the “expected” standard of living, what will we do then? Where will we live? How will we feed our family? How low can we go before we are in a free fall? Let’s face it: Urban America has far too much overhead, far too little savings, and has thus painted itself into a corner.
Consider how dependant each of us has become upon disconnected institutions. Today’s jobs are largely abstract: You cannot eat information, wear technology, or store services for a long, cold winter. Tomorrow’s economics are just as questionable: Social Security will be valueless in our old age, pensions have become a relic of the past, health care is increasingly rationed by and for the elite, and the extended family has become extinct. The safety net of farm and family has been replaced by a jungle of profiteers and bureaucrats. Somehow, over the past few hundred years, humanity and its organizational systems have co-evolved into a dysfunctional Frankenstein. Humanity as a whole would never set out to consciously design what has, in fact, been created: Domination by soul-less corporations and institutions.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
True, the world has many inherently good and caring people; Perhaps they are even a large majority. However, too often these people are ignorant, shy, reserved, too polite, religious to a fault, or just too damned afraid to assertively point out the obvious: “The System” has become very corrupt and largely opposed to “the common good”. If we intend to think of ourselves as intelligent and civilized then “The System” will require fundamental change… and thus WE must also change ourselves fundamentally.
Let us begin by defining “The System” we are indicting. It is modern, abstracted, de-humanized. It is massive, global, institutionalized. It is corporate, bureaucratic, legalistic. It is brutal, hopeless, incomprehensible. It is power-oriented, profit-centered, technologically-enabled. It is cynical, ruthless, statistical. It is a method of control, constructed through repetition, packaged in fantasy. It is an impossible dream, promoted by liars, consumed by fools. It is the freedom to enslaved ourselves, to be depleted as indentured servants, to do as we are told. It is swallowing “The Third World”, bankrupting “The East”, and marketing “The New World Order”. Some call it Capitalism, others Free Markets, still others Human Nature. It is ostensibly centered in the U.S., largely controlled by families from the Old World and Orient, and wholly dependent on the Middle East. It is a sum more terrifying than its parts, a slope more tricky than slippery, a game of musical chairs which contains neither. It is a collection of rules created by the rich and powerful over the past 400 years to ensure that their positions are insulated, rationalized, and promoted by an array professionals, who are in turn paid handsomely for their service, complicity and effectiveness in controlling the mass of humanity, who are in turn too lazy, fearful and greedy to break their own chains. It is years of conditioning which enables us to easily justify our killings, which allows us to praise freedom even as we regulate nearly every aspect of each citizens’ life, which grants more rights and fewer taxes to corporations than to real humans, which has no solution to homelessness or lack of medical care but efficiently preserves the “life” of failing banks, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, utilities, weapons makers, airlines, and other private for-profit industries. It is indoctrination in place of education, hypocrisy in place of truth, and data in place of knowledge. It is life out of balance and it must be changed.
Alter-Nation’s self-appointed task is to impress this point, to motivate everyone to demand, “Change The System!”, which, of course, requires change within ourselves. As always, change can be painful and frightening. So people often try to rationalize their unsavory acts, or embarrassing lack of action, using facile excuses: “That’s the way the world works. That’s reality.” The inference is that only the weak or naive would avoid scavenging at the depths of the ugly deeds being justified or ignored. But those are simply convenient lies. In fact, the human world is only the way it is because of what we do (or do not). We create our reality. It is our fear, our greed, our laziness, our submissiveness, or our dedicated efforts which give us the world we live within. Our world can be different. We can set an example. We can lead. In fact, we must.
Change in Less Than 12 Steps
We start to realize that the political world churns outside our door. We start to admit that the facts are very real. We start to understand that our world desperately needs grassroots, word-of-mouth effort by each and every citizen. Now. This year! And the next! And the next! We see ourselves as world citizens, and acknowledge our responsibility to our fellow humans. Then, inevitably, we stop, saying: “Look, I’m just a normal schmoe. I gotta work all day. I’m not that smart or that rich. What can I do?” And usually that is the end of it. But, if we ask that last question with sincerity, there is an answer. In fact, several:
1. Get out of debt (…and change our lifestyles to keep it that way).
As R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe admonishes in “The Finest Worksong”: “The time to rise has been engaged / It’s better, best to re-arrange / What we want and what we need / It’s been confused and confused.” Rampant consumerism profits the owners of production not the consumers. Get a clue, do the math, we are only enslaving ourselves. We have enormous power (not to mention time) when we gain our financial freedom.
2. Be tolerant. In fact, be supportive of other people’s rights to make free choices (especially those you don’t agree with, but only, of course, if those choices do not actually deprive others of their own rights and liberties). Diversity is strength, and America was built on this diversity. We don’t have to all enjoy each other’s habits and customs but we all benefit from freedom and flexibility. Remember, if you believe you can take away someone else’s rights, then someone else can (and will) take your rights away.
3. Get educated and stay informed. Learn every day, and educate those around you. A quick scan of a daily paper (especially reading BETWEEN the lines) will allow you to make important mouth-to-mouth, grassroots conversation at work and around town. Why talk about soaps and sports when you can discuss your world and your future? Check out fun and enlightening music, movies, videos and books (such as those featured in Ater-Media). Have an open mind, and use it.
4. Promote a New System Based Upon Individual Liberty and Personal Responsibility. While this is a complex topic it suffices here to give a few logical rules: Be responsible in your life; plan ahead; help your family, friends and community; insist on maximum personal freedoms. Tell everyone you expect no less from them… especially our so-called “public servants”. Use the Alter-Nation “SPEAK!” utility to spread the word.
As usual, real change requires real effort, day in and day out… but doesn’t this seem worth the effort?
Of Artists and Acrobats
To motivate us along the path of positive personal change we can also trace the visions of artists who refuse to wear blinders, who challenge our spirits to see clearly what we must all know in our souls: We are the problem and we are the only possible solution.
The rock band U2, which hails from war-weary Northern Ireland, makes the point in its song “Acrobat”: “Don’t believe what you hear / Don’t believe what you see / If you just close your eyes / You can feel the enemy / …And you can swallow or you can spit / You can throw it up or choke on it / And you can dream / So dream out loud / You know that your time is coming ’round / So don’t let the bastards grind you down / Now nothing makes sense / Nothing seems to fit / I know you’d hit out / if you only knew who to hit / And I’d join the movement if there was one I could believe in / Yeah, I’d break bread and wine if there was a church I could receive in / ‘Cause I need it now / …And I must be an acrobat / to talk like this, then act like that / And you can dream / So dream out loud / And you can find your own way out / …And you can stretch and you can seize / In dreams become responsibilities / And I can love / Yes, I can love / I know that the tide is turning ’round / So don’t let the bastards grind you down!”
Alter-Nation is committed to providing provocative arts each month to spur us on, to encourage us, to motivate, to educate, to infuriate. The System brings us down, but that anger gives us energy. In turn, let us focus our energy on positive change within ourselves and within our system. Let us live life as though we are painting a work of art from a palette of actions on a canvas of time. Indeed, “Viver E Arte!”
Summary & Conclusions
If we are to ‘Change The System’ we must simultaneously change ourselves. We co-evolved with our systems to create the world we live in today, and now we must consciously co-evolve toward the new world we wish to inhabit tommorow. Therefore, as we demand change around us, we must also demand change within us.
Alter-Nation promises to put forth solutions not just problems. We dare ourselves and everyone else to live an example! We dare you to be noble and honest: To win in a manner worth winning; To stand up against corruption, cruelty and dishonesty. We dare you to dare to change the world. We dare you to dare to change yourself. Call it your New Year’s Resolution.
Then dare yourself to imagine…
Pausing to Consider The Path to Heaven
You were, it seems, always passing down this road
The turning points and chasms are not remembered often
But, at this instant, past choices confront you
Like deja vu recollections of long walks
Or were they dreams?
Winters never restrain your Spring into Summer
Yet the Fall always occurs
And you come full circle
Again
Life grants so few seasons
While we invent so many reasons
To stay at the spot we’d found years before
Safely
The shortest path is always the hardest
The mere thought
Of mastering the skills required to make that climb
Brings several alternatives to mind
Mind you
You have created alternatives before
You are creative
You have within you the power to create an array of realities
And you are free to choose any path you desire
Even the toughest path imaginable
Once again you stare dead ahead at the familiar circle before you
While threatening and severe slopes
As always
Present themselves at your side
Pausing to consider the path to heaven
You catch your breath
And realize
That you must risk your life
If you are to have one
(Copyright 1989, Dean DiSandro. Used here by kind permission.)
Happy New Year… and thank you for your attention, interest and concern.