Countries and systems don't fail overnight. There are warning signs. Red flags precede any kind of a decline.
Usually, these warning signs are dismissed as temporary obstacles on the road to unending success as we go whistling past the graveyard. Until one day the bottom falls out without any apparent warning. The red flags were always there - its just that nobody paid attention.
This first warning sign is a systematic decline in values to the extent that human suffering and inequities mean less than money. The scramble for money has already become so intense that physicians refuse to see sick people if their insurance isn't quite right (doesn't pay enough) such as Medicare, and even includes large companies such as Aetna, and United Health Care if they try to control costs too closely.
This insensitivity is called greed. Money rules the game, and all pretenses of caring for our fellow men and women go out the window. Even though the insensitivity is rationalized by the "tongue in cheek" argument that the more money there is, the better off poor people will be, this has proven to be a huge fallacy. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer until the system crashes. The latest financial crash and "recovery" is a sign that this kind of greed mentality has taken root at an intractable level; all the old abuses are coming back, and fast! Ponzi schemes eventually fail, and gamblers can never get enough.
And it will worsen. Greed is already permeating society at every level. Why is it that our companies in this country, unlike other countries where health care costs are spread evenly throughout the populace, are stuck contributing up to seventy-five percent of the health care cost? This is killing them as greed increases medical costs two or three times that of wages. How could anyone blame small and large companies when they replace full time workers with part time workers to avoid offering health insurance, or how could we blame them for not offering health insurance at all?
Greed will continue to grow with the health care industry at every level - doctors, hospitals, insurance companies - and as the back-breaking costs to the employers increase, they will have no alternative other than to cease and desist in all health care contributions to employees, which means that the health care industry will eventually price itself into oblivion.
All these cross-currents can be readily seen in the current fractionalized health care debate where money and institutions are considered more important than the well being of all Americans. It is all playing out perfectly regarding this first warning sign of greed, and greed will certainly be a major contributing factor to the eventual fall of the system as we know it. Money and influence rule the lives of the common man and woman now, rather than compassion and caring. And historically, that was a sure sign of any culture's eventual decline.
The second warning sign is hatred . If you look back over the history of our country, never has there been such openly expressed hatred toward those with dissenting opinions. It has deteriorated to the point that the president is no longer respected, cannot even civilly talk to school children without a violent reaction from the other side. This all indicates a deep and intractable hatred that is festering and will eventually ruin the country. This is a national Hatfield's and McCoy's. Can actual violence be the next move? Apparently; when men in congress can outspokenly call each other liars, violence can't be too far off.
And the third warning sign is our delusion regarding who we are as Americans. The world has an opinion of who we are, but our own opinions of who we are vary dramatically from outsiders who can objectively see what we are. While we see ourselves as fiercely independent, which is a consolation that results from a run of exceptionally good luck for a young (200 + years) country, the world at large sees us as arrogant, egotistical, spoiled, greedy, and insensitive to the world at large and even our fellow citizens, where America is living off of the world's back by borrowing money that we will never be able to pay back, in order for us to live rich and famous lifestyles far beyond the means of other countries.
But there is still time to save ourselves. Greed to get what we want regardless of everyone else - hatred of anyone who disagrees with us as if we know it all - and delusion about who and what we truly have become can all be cured. The problem is that the cure will entail a complete failure of the system before anything or anyone will change. This is the way we seem to run things here, complete ignorance of what is going on until it is too late - because no one can tell us what to do, and we refuse to take any advice. Are we fiercely independent? Or fiercely stupid?
Open mindedness and considering all alternatives would be the way to change things without an eventual failure of the system, but that probably won't happen. Large egos, closed mindedness, stubbornness - all will prevail if history has any relevance. So, as the oil filter company says, "You can pay me now or pay me later," we can start to set things right before they collapse and get back to our original values as a country, which were humility, hard work, freedom, consent and dissent, equality and equity, due process, toleration, privacy, the common good, and cooperation and compassion for each other, or we can continue down a road of selfish greed, hatred and delusion.
Whatever we decide - it must begin with the person reading this article.
anagarika eddie is a meditation teacher at the Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation Retreat Sanctuary (www.dhammarocksprings.org), and author of A Year to Enlightenment. His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Thervada Buddhist monk.
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. Hopefully people will awaken from their deep sleep, and changes will be made. We are coming to a crossroads, and that is why certain segments of society are getting scared. Just as other great movements slugged their way through the ignorant and obstructionists, i.e. slavery, the civil rights movement, etc., socialism will gain status once more as the fundamental failures of unbridled capitalism become evident. Health care companies will soon price themselves out of the market, because they are short sighted. Immigration reform will move good people out of the shadows to the consternation of crooked businesspeople who use illegals to make a killing. It's all changing, and those who don't like change (conservatives) are now in their final death throws. This is why you see so much insane reaction and vitriol; they are scared stiff that instead of having it all to themselves, as they have had it since Reagan, there will be a sharing of all the people. That's a good thing. Reagan was way off base, causing undue hardship for the middle class, He even hated and fought against medicare, one of the great social programs of our age. If you have time, take a look at my article dated May 24, 2008 "The Times Are a Changin" - -And BE SURE to catch Michael Moore’s new movie “Capitalism - A Love Story.”
Good to hear from you, Best as always...............e.
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You make some very good points in this piece. As far back as the 1960, when I was employed as a department manager in a large, well known department store we were given only 32 hours a week (full time) so that they didn't have to give even their managers insurance. They are still in business so I don't know if we were a cost for them sticking around or not but that tactic isn't new. I suppose I could have chosen to work somewhere else. Good points in your piece. thanks for writing it! Marijo (Mary Jo is how it is pronounced)
Thank you Marijo. Yes this happens (the part time ploy) all the time. Health care costs are gong through the ceiling because there is no control, and when the government or HMOs try to control them, the doctors refuse to accept the insurance, . . . or Medicare, and the rural patient is left with no where to go. I frankly see no solution other than complete socialized medicine with employers out of the picture entirely, and either salaried doctors or laws that prohibit doctors from cherry picking their patients. If doctors don't feel that they are making enough of a killing, then they should quit and go into some other kind of business, because they seem to enjoy business a lot more than healing. There are plenty of excellent doctors in India who would love to come over here and practice. Actually, many small organizations are holding costs down superbly and they are doing it with salaried doctors. The profit and bottom line mentality has to exit health care. If it doesn't, they - the doctors, Insurance companies, and everyone else trying to make a killing off the middle class - will. price themselves out of the market because employers can't pay anymore, and neither can employees. We're done! Then we will finally have socialized medicine, because the government will have to pick up the pieces when it all collapses, just as it did with the banks who gambled our money away. I think that the middle class is just now beginning to see how we have been played for fools for the last thirty years, since Reagan. Catch Michael Moore's new movie out Oct. 2 if you can. He was a visionary in his two other movies; about General Motors and health care.
Best.............e
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A fine piece of thinking, Mr. Rock. Thank you for speaking out.
This past week a news story came out of Massachusetts, where the Hyatt Hotel fired 98 house keepers. They were earning about $15 an hour, and were dismissed without any compensation, but replaced with other $8 an hour workers.
One fired worker said, "The Hyatt is still in business." I think she might have gone on to say that the top executives didn't have to worry about pay cuts or losing their jobs. This is simply a display of the unethical, non-family values the wealthy Conservatives aphoristically spout out of one side of their mouths, while practicing something else entirely. In a paraphrase of our President's words, it's time we call these subversive traitors to decency and family values out onto the mat for a good ass-whooping.
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