My apprenticeship with Elephant Journal has forced me back into the world of news a bit, and immediately I am overwhelmed with the shallow understandings and reactive dynamics of our population. It is no wonder our politics have become so volatile. Our "sharing of opinions" has become reminiscent of the asinine arguments of children. Gone are the intellectual debates that we so sorely need to actually sort out our problems.
Slinging the same mud back and forth has become our means of conversing.
Watch as both sides make excellent points about each others arguments but nobody solves one damn problem.
https://www.facebook.com/journalpoems/videos/926035810829348/
https://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks/
Fighting fire with fire burns us all to the ground. It is pointless, frustrating, and a complete waste of time. It leaves us all feeling self righteous in the moment, but drained and hopeless in the long run.
The truth is that until we:
- Agree to hear the points from a neutral place.
- Work together to systematically gather and consider the complications of our proposed solutions.
- Compromise on a workable agreement where both sides give a little.
What exactly am I saying? Our country is a lost cause? Society, humanity? Yes.
We stand to lose everything. We are already far into sacrifice: peace, freedom, morality, law, justice, integrity... We are not even surprised when the next corruption scandal breaks anymore. I believe the degradation of morale stems from this mass of negativity. Feelings of injustice and victimization are bleeding into the entire culture. Everything we do now seems to have an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that permeates our work, home life and health.
We all know this isn't working and yet we just keep plugging along. Under some self soothing delusion that once we get the next guy into the White House everything will magically be right.
It isn't the man. It is much, much bigger.
The elephant in the room is that we are operating from a fundamentally broken system. It may have had a good start, but over the years changes have slowly eroded this system of government into a dysfunctional money laundering scam. Voting is not going to fix that. Battling each other will not fix it. Destroying ourselves and and world at large will not fix it.
Hope is in: Conversation. Commitment. Compromise. OPEN-MINDEDNESS.
As long as seething anger is tainting our work, relationships and health we will continue to kill ourselves. It is affecting the very core of our souls so deeply that even the Earth is bleeding from our callousness. Everything we touch we are now tearing apart.
“Hurt people hurt people." Will Bowen
Dave Canterbury once said the perfect thing, "My Dad always told me just go sit down if you are mad. Come back once you are thinking straight."
It is imperative that we all step back and consider our circumstances more impartially. Change arguments into discussions.
Let's get clear and point the finger at the real problem rather than each other.
We are overtaxed and underpaid which leaves us ready to pounce on each other. There is plenty of waste and corruption that has nothing to do with us- the general public. Putting non-opposing issues as pitted adversaries we are cutting each other's throats. Blame is more productively placed on policy than people. We can and should turn our attention to that elephant in the room.
