Insanity

INSANITY

The whole crazy system needs to be reconstructed. Recently, across the nation, there have been reports that people are blowing-up the sky with fireworks in anticipation of the 4th of July holiday. It’s become a real problem in some communities, with fireworks keeping people awake well into the morning hours.

So let’s think about this for a minute. I don’t know anything about the fireworks industry so I’ll make a few speculations about the industry which could be wrong, but regardless, will help drive home the point. I imagine a fireworks factory where some wage slave earner makes 10 or 12 bucks an hour, or an equivalent amount of Yuan, to produce fireworks. This hypothetical person has a family so this person works as many hours as he or she can because at 10 or 12 bucks an hour she or he is about a half week away from homelessness. This person will have no discretionary time to advance their education or enhance other skills so he or she will likely get stuck in this hard life for the rest of their life.

Life is tough, I get it. What I don’t get is why we make it tougher. Why should a worker suffer the dual fate of low wages and possible contraction of a potentially fatal disease while at work, so some person with too much time and too much money on their hands can plop down a couple grand to blow up the sky and keep people awake at night? This is insanity and irrational to a degree which can only serve to blow our collective minds.

The whole system is dependent on this shenanigans so if we fail to engage in this mindless consumption, private firms will default on loans, banks will fail, the private firm will fail, and subsequently the whole system will collapse. It may collapse anyways. The question is, going forward, collapse or no collapse, will we create a sustainable and meaningful model or will we merely repeat the cycle which inevitably leads to our destruction.

We are so addicted to pointless consumption in this Country that we willingly risk a workers life in order to indulge our insatiable quest for satisfaction which will likely never be found in the discretionary material realm. The whole system needs to be dismantled and reconstructed on a value system which respects the individual: not as a consumer, but as an individual with spiritual, intellectual, and artistic gifts: gifts which should be cultivated for the good of that individual and the good of the rest of society.

The resources directed towards fireworks production and the countless other mind numbing unneeded items of consumption would be much better directed towards education, or towards public jobs programs which serve broader public needs and which are designed in a manner which are safe for the worker and those they serve.

“The Times They Are a-Changin’ ” and the trajectory of our future course has not yet been determined. We need to express a vision of the world which eliminates the environmentally and spiritually depleting forces of a consumerist society which has led us to class conflict and constant war. We need to express a vision of society which serves the base material needs of all people, which protects the environment, and which encourages full individual development. We can not allow the powers-that-be to continue to lead us down the path which has brought us to our current despair: more of the same, will get us the same. The time for spiritual and ideological transformation has arrived.

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