If I cannot remember the days when Mom and Dad fought with
each other—blamed each other—because they were afraid and poor, then I have no
business offering solutions to others who struggle now.
If I cannot remember how necessity bred creativity—with the
food we ate, and the clothes we found to put on our bodies, the places we
lived, and the fearful noisy streets we walked to gather those things that kept
our family together—then I have no right to play at theories and philosophy.
But if I can remember those times, then I will be able to
imagine how people today who feel powerless and out of control hope for larger
social systems to represent their interests, and to equalize the power gap
between private citizens and hugely wealthy transnational corporations. And
maybe, just maybe, if I remember my immigrant parents and their struggle to
make a life in this country, I will be able to persuade others to awaken their own resourcefulness and courage at a time when existing systems are
unlikely to help them at all.
Looking carefully at the situation our family knows, I see
that we enjoy a certain amount of personal freedom. My husband and I have jobs
and bring income into the family. We are free to apportion that income as we
think best for the family. We are citizens of the United States, and as such
have the right to voice our opinions—even when those opinions are very critical
of existing social and political structures. We are free to mistreat our bodies
by eating and drinking in ways that abuse our systems. And we are free to
choose the doctors who will ‘cure’ us of the ills we have brought upon
ourselves. We are free to worship as we choose, as long as those of us who make
minority choices in that regard don’t make too much noise about our practices.
And we’re free to have as many children as we want, even if our household
finances won’t support them, or our choices to have five or six kids will
increase the human burden on the planet. We are free to vote in elections,
though increasingly those we elect seem incapable of addressing current drastic
realities. These overt freedoms are truly ours.
Continuing my careful examination, however, I find that in
many ways we are not free. We must purchase car, home and health insurance,
even if we know that the insurance companies enjoy far more profit than they will
ever pay out to their policyholders. If we have retirement accounts, we must
leave the money there, or in similar accounts, until an age specified by law—or pay
significant tax penalties for withdrawing the funds before retirement age. In
this country, internet service is not provided by the government, so we must
pay for that access or go without the vast amount of information available
through the medium. Television is no longer free, and to have channels with
even a modicum of quality requires high monthly fees. We must pay for costly
phone service, sometimes to multiple providers, if we want to have dependable
access to this connecting technology. Increasingly, even our children's education is not free, as fees increase at public schools, or we opt for private schools, or we worry about how to pay for higher education. Our energy supplies, and perhaps soon,
our water supply have been privatized and we must pay for even these basic
necessities of life. And usually we must buy our food from large corporate
entities often unwilling to provide us with healthy choices.
In so many ways, our social freedoms are undercut by the
economic costs we must pay in order to be part of this ever more privatized
system in which we try to find meaning and a dignified life.
The parts of our lives that are circumscribed by forces
beyond any political voting right we might wield must also be examined. Our
civil rights largely disappear during those hours when we work for a corporate
entity—to speak our mind plainly at work would cost the vast majority of us our
jobs. And these powerful entities, our employers, direct their resources toward
transnational efforts to control what we eat, how we clothe ourselves, how we
build our dwellings, how we define and promote human health, and how we ignore
the interface between human choices that emphasize short-term profits even as
the choices foul our planetary nest. As private individuals, we have little
chance of effectively thwarting the aims and methods of transnational
corporations focused on the bottom line. They operate largely above a nation’s
political system. So in the world of work, we become part of systems that are
racing to put all life on the planet in peril—whether we agree with those
systems or not. And there seems to be no political activity at this time that
can effectively make these rapacious corporate entities accountable for the
harm they bring to us all.
We have basic social freedoms, but not economic freedoms
that would allow us to truly express our views in the way that corporations
understand best—in terms of profit and loss.
Or is that conclusion accurate? Maybe we could take actions
that would disentangle us from the suicidal course that is business as usual.
I have, from time to time, become involved in activist
efforts to stymy corporate aims. The work reminds of David and Goliath, only I
sometimes feel these groups lack the excellent aim with their slingshots that
David wielded. So this work can be discouraging, take a very long time to
effect change, and require living a double life: work an 8+ hour day and then
work another four to six hours trying to influence the very institutions that
pay our wages. And sometimes I feel that the activist’s internal position
implies that some power ‘out there’ will see the light after our protests and
letters. That some large corporation or branch of government will admit how
poorly it is behaving and devise a solution that will improve the lives of the
vast numbers who live within its sphere of influence. Always the focus is on
fixing what is ‘out there.’ And, truly, there is little will in the majority of
those businesses and government agencies to make the significant changes that
are needed right now. I do this work in spite of my misgivings, but I also
believe there must be other choices I could make.
What occurs to me is that large power structures are only
powerful because there are so many of us willing to play their game. If every
single person in Oz, for example, had seen the little man behind the curtain,
they could have quickly or slowly begun to change how they lived their lives.
And as they did so, the power of the little man behind the curtain would
have—slowly or precipitously—been diminished. The people of Oz kept the little man
in power because they did not bother to look behind the curtain. And in a myriad
of ways, their choices propped up the illusion of the little man’s power. The people of Oz were complicit in keeping the little man in power.
So how might we make new choices that revealed how little
men are truly all that exist behind powerful sounding corporate names? How
could we put our effort and our resources toward lives that gradually or
instantly unplugged from corporate institutions? If our governments won’t
reclaim the ability to control corporate entities, how could we stop waiting
for someone ‘out there’ to rescue us from these powers on paper and find ways
to walk away from them right now?
If you own a home with a mortgage, sell it and buy a very
small home outright, or one that will significantly lower your mortgage
payments.
If you are not healthy, and it is in part the result of lack
of exercise and a poor diet, change those behaviors and reap your right to a
healthier body.
If you are spending more money each month than you bring in,
make changes this month in ways too numerous to count.
Figure out how to live with one car—or no car at all, using
bikes and public transportation and your own two feet.
Relearn how to do things for yourself—fix things, build
things, create things of your own devising and be proud when they do not look
like things you would have chosen in a store. Begin to realize that "professional" is often another word for "corporate." Be proud of the nuances of objects that are hand-made.
Live and contribute to and celebrate your community. Support
its local businesses and manufacturers, craftsmen, tradesmen and farmers. You
can’t do everything for yourself, but when you have to spend money with others,
try to keep that money within your community.
Reexamine every insurance company with whom you do business.
Choose those companies that seem aware of the need to change how they do
business to address current global realities. There is green car and home
insurance. There are insurance companies that cover alternative health
approaches. Find them. Do business with them.
When we become hypnotized by the countless glistening
messages that promise us happiness if we will only buy more things, we are
truly fools. Our expenditures keep us enslaved to an economic system careening
out of control. All we have to do is step away from this game that brings
anxiety, not happiness.
But if we are a little better off, if we have a retirement
account, for example, or a stock portfolio, or investments of some kind, we can
reinvent our country’s concept of patriotism. We can pay the 10% early
withdrawal fee, we can pay the taxes, and we can take the money we have left
after those ‘costs’ and apply them to investments that will actually help us.
Look at it this way. If extreme weather and its costs
continue to plague our planet, and to ravage the bottom lines of corporations
and governments, how likely is it that our retirement ‘savings’ will be there
for us to spend in five, ten, fifteen or twenty years? When corporations continue to expand
as if oil supplies are not dwindling, how long will it be before Wall Street
crashes again? When we fear the ‘penalties’ and leave our retirement funds in
existing corporate structures, we fund Wall Street, we fund business as usual,
and participate in creating our own demise.
With the money you pull out of your retirement account or
investment portfolio, you could:
Pay off your home mortgage?
Install a solar array on your roof?
Improve a vegetable garden and put up a small greenhouse?
Significantly improve your home’s insulation, windows, and
doors?
Invest in a local business?
Help out one or more people in your community who are not in
as good a position as you are?
Or if cashing out your retirement account, in whole or in
part, is a course you just can’t take, find an investment counselor who will truly
invest your money according to your ethical principles. In that way you can
contribute to the social good and provide for your retirement.
The diseased Land of Oz that our country has become is
counting on us to be afraid of making drastic changes. Its corporations are
counting on our desire to stay safe and secure within systems as they currently
exist. We need to make choices based on our understanding that the status quo
is not designed to keep us safe and secure—it is simply designed to maximize
profit for corporations. And corporations, which are not people, are not
capable of the complex thought that we can muster. Corporations focused only on
profit don’t seem to realize that they are designing their own destruction,
even as they insist we keep them company as they crash to the earth.
We don’t have to play according to rules devised by those
who are incapable of rational choices. Our system has become insanely greedy.
We, as individuals supporting each other, can make the rational choices. We
don’t have to wait for someone ‘out there’ to make it all better. We just have
to make choices based on a careful examination of what is really before us. We must keep up the activism, but revise how we live, too. We have options. We can change
our world one person, one home, one street, one town, one state, and one
country at a time. Don’t wait. Begin.
