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The Intermediate Version

This is the intermediate version of some of the issues and problems that affect our lives today and probably more tomorrow, with a few explanatory comments and questions. Part of our problem is a problem of belief. The point of this "Reasons Why" section is to persuade you, if you are not already persuaded, that our tendency to think or feel about one issue at a time won't/doesn't do, because it deceives us into thinking things are simpler than they are. Grouped together in one place, the dimensions of our reality and the issues are awesome, intimidating and, we hope, not ignorable. This list goes over it once, and lightly. 

• Unheeded warnings: People and groups, ordinary and expert, have been talking about some of these issues for a long, long time and little has been done. Loss of ozone is a mortal human threat, but the U.S. still has not signed on to do something active about it beyond talk.
• The System: President Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" has turned into a bastard marriage of politics, corporate business, government, big money, special interests, and media that in concert control and manipulate -- some groups contribute to both sides in an election contest just to make sure thay've got it covered.
• Population -- too many people: a large number of our current social problems in America and the world stem from increasing and burgeoning population pressures on resources, space, environment, and psyche.
  • United States
    • The population has doubled in the last 60 years. Psychologists proved years ago that overcrowded rats turned nasty: think about "road rage" as merely a symptom.
• Money
  • The present extraordinary unequal distribution of wealth: wages and salaries are no longer adequate to live on; 5% of the top = 80% of the bottom
  • What we owe -- the National debt: it's not the size, it's the interest -- some estimate that sometime after the year 2000 a time will come when all the government income from taxes will equal the interest payments, leaving nothing for anything else.
  • Poverty: growing
  • Military spending: we are at peace and the dividend has not materialized.
• The Economy: as one spcial critic (John Saul) put it, if economists could be sued for malpractice, we'd all be rich.
• Racism: pervasive, embedded and ordinary, in all directions
• Gender oppression: women are still not considered equal human beings with males nearly everywhere
• Elite Power Structures: who's in charge here? Tip: follow the money. Who profits? Why do CEO's of companies that are losing money get sky-high performance bonuses? What kind of system is that?
• Corporate Power and Tyranny
  • Monomaniacal insanity of the bottom-line
  • Lack of accountability
  • Cost
    • Welfare
    • Resources
    • Human relations
• Globalization
• Ecological destruction: the natural world is under absolute seige by human beings. That humans are the greatest predator on the planet is a cliche does not change the fact.
  • Air
  • Ocean
  • Water
  • Land
  • Energy resources
• Educational failure
• Erosion of citizen democratic power
• Media power
• The breadth and depth of personal addictions
• the various abuses
  • drug
  • sexual
  • child
  • domestic
• Violence
• Hunger
• Medical care

 

© 1997, C. Grigsby, All Rights Reserved. 2 Aug 1998

Comments? E-mail to: Channing