Social Justice
Haven’t seen any posts on Tumblr about this, so I will ramble about it for awhile. If you look at your life here in the Western world, you feel something. Beneath whatever standard of living you have, what religion, what color of your skin, what your lineage is, or what your thoughts are about what is going on right now: You feel that something is wrong with the world.
You might not be able to put your finger on what it is, but you must acknowledge that there is something fundamentally wrong with how the world works. We see it from time to time, as the media permits to show, that there are people who are poor, hungry, thirsty, war-stricken, persecuted, and a myriad of other things. Even in the western world, there is crime, lack of education, loss of jobs, high prices for fuel and groceries, mistrust of authority, etc. What do all these things have in common? Why do they exist? Why isn’t anyone fixing this? What can I do? What are the root causes? All these questions are a natural outcome to what we see. Each problem is complex, and I hate to oversimplify things, but it all comes down to economics.
If we look at the problems today, it has at least some component based in economics, or more accurately, unfavorable economics forced upon populations. Gang violence as an example has roots in broken homes, access to education, drugs, turf wars, and a cyclical system of incarceration. To fix any one of the causes individually is a fruitless fight. Bring these populations (I’m just discussing hypothetically and not solutions, per say) out of poverty, and these problems would decline if not fade away.
So what is the economic climate? I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, because I don’t really subscribe to many so called facts that group put forth, but a small group of people have made it so. And I’m not saying there is a secret society of the Illuminati that control leaders like puppets, but a small group of people have installed an ingenious system that makes economic and social injustice SYSTEMIC. Instead of willingly destroying the middle class and increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots, the system is set up to make us unwilling partners.
I’m speaking to all the 20-30 year olds. When you go to your job, what are you worried about? “Will I lose my job tomorrow?” “I’d better not do anything to get fired today.” “I can’t afford to miss work, or I can’t pay my bills.” Do these ring a bell? We in the west are plugged into the system, and our lives are intimately tied to the way it works. Is it a good system? Is it fair? These questions are drowned out by the fear of getting unplugged. We’ve put ourselves into debt, and are now slaves to earning wages to keep up. If the system collapsed, we would descend into chaos. So with all that, do you think we have time to think about much else?
Above all that, there are the distractions. 18-21 year olds have no excuse. If you’re 13 and love music, TV, movies, celebrity gossip, award shows, then bless your heart. You simply don’t know any better. You aren’t plugged into the system as of yet. But if you are between 18-21/college aged and you are distracted by the same things, then you are falling into their trap. Powerful people have little tricks that they like to play on the population to maintain the status quo. The only difference nowadays is they’ve managed to make the trick so gradual that we don’t detect it. Divide and conquer, an environment of fear, patriotism/nationalism, economic terrorism, propaganda: the oldest tricks in the book. At an age where you are not yet plugged into wage slavery, when you are most open to hearing different opinions and supporting a cause, you are loaded with debt and being sold a broken, outdated dream that if you get a degree = get a job. That model, as it seems, does not hold true anymore. Yet college kids buy into it.
That brings up another subject, which I’ll touch on only briefly: Change. Science and common sense shows us that change is a natural law, and true in every case. I’m sure someone will beg to differ, but for human perception nothing is static. Nothing maintains it’s current state forever. And this is another point about the system. Thing are set up in this western system to try to unnaturally arrest change. Whether it be economic, social, or environmental, people in power are necessarily against change, because they are tied to it just as we are, except they are getting the better end of the deal.
So the powers that be have succeeding in keeping the population sedated and preoccupied. Still, this question of social justice can be forced upon you. Again, when the media so decides, you see pictures and video of all these other places outraged at leadership, and mass movements of people uprising in protest against them. Democracy at work, so it seems. When you read about what really started these uprisings, it is again economics. Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia, Bahrain, all with collapsing economies. Inflation. When staple foods cost an absurd amount, it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Imagine if bread was $5, milk was $7, and gas was $10 a gallon? Those are made up figures, but high prices such as that would price out a big portion of society and there is no choice but to protest. And that is what we see happen. Brutal regimes are one thing, but when you effect survival on a day-to-day basis, you no longer fear the brutality.
So, getting back to social justice, what is it’s role in today’s global world? How can I think about it when I’m worried about losing my job and sinking in debt? What I say is that it effects you right now, and you’d better act now before you are forced to by the deteriorating conditions.
Let’s get this clear, we are not practicing pure capitalism in the west. We have some unfair hybrid that allows risky gambling and no fear of failure. In a capitalist economy, if you gamble and fail, you go bankrupt. You aren’t bailed out. The government doesn’t step in to save your drycleaning business if you open up a store next to a nudist colony. If you make risky decisions, you either win big, or fail. Big companies have made risky decisions “good business practices”. They have made the laws of this land in their favor, and in turn run the government. You think it matters who is in the oval office?
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”~Mayer Armschel Rothschild.
Social justice: Pursuit of life, liberty, happiness. The American dream. Freedom. Democracy. Basic necessities of food, water, shelter. The opportunity to work hard and be whatever you want. These things seem like ideals the founding fathers wanted. And they did. The constitution for the most part guarantees it. But there are people who enjoy the wealth of this world by systematic exploitation of the poorest of the poor, enslavement of the wage earner, and mismanagement of the world’s resources at the expense of Mother Earth.
What can you do? If you got this far, you have the tools to find out. The Internet is the last form of connection we have. People can band together separated by thousands of miles with like ideas. Use it for more than posting pictures and commenting on irrelevant stuff. You can also:
- Take your money out of large banks - Put it in a community bank. Bank of America and Chase amongst others are the problem.
- Don’t join the military - It’s unreasonable to say not to support the military. If you’re in, fine. If not, stay out. If you have family that are in, support them, but encourage them to get out.
- Get rid of the Federal Reserve - This one takes the puppet government to accomplish, but Ron Paul should get your support. The “Fed” is not for the benefit of Americans. They make money out of nothing, force the government to buy bonds with interest, and grow the deficit while bailing out the rich. It’s a farce and should be abolished.
- Ignore the distractions - They are just that, distractions from the real problems.
- Encourage the youth - As we’ve seen in the Middle East uprisings, the youth is the driving force behind the movements. Our college-age brothers and sisters should be exposed to all sorts of ideas and encouraged to take part in activism.
- Donate - Time, money, brain-power towards social problems. The smaller and more local the better.
- Change the laws - March, phone, write, all those things. The system is benefiting the few at the expense of the many. It has to change.
- Talk about it with others - Raise awareness. Openly critique these people.
That’s it for now. Thank you for taking the time to read, and I welcome comments.
