The economy and our lives are inextricably linked. What we eat, who we see everyday working in the shops, where we live, what we see all around us is influenced by this visible and invisible force called the economy. To have a civilization, we must have trade or some way of receiving goods we did not produce. The systems invented to "facilitate" this type of exchange have sprouted up in different civilizations, with different faces and philosophies. We all know about socialism, communism, capitalism... But I hear responses like "oh socialism doesn't work, communism obviously failed and creates a controlling, all powerful government that does not respect the rights of their people". I hear arguments we must just accept capitalism because "it is the best we have, it was worked ok so far."
I know there are billions of people on earth, breathing right now just like I am but I can't ignore the fact that this system obviously does not work. I mean it works for the 1% but not for the 99% and especially not for the poorest among us. We cannot passively sit by and not touch the economy and try to fix it simply because it is too vast, complication and people are paranoid about socialism and dictatorships taking over the world. If we purely act from a place of love and caring towards other people, where will this dictatorship arise from? The soil from which these economies have historically grown from have been sad, angry, fearful soils full of bias, sexism and racism. What if the soil was love? Can hateful systems of oppression really sprout from that soil?
Human loving economics needs to be our goal and we need to work together towards it. It doesn't require much, we just need to switch to love and change the frequency of our minds, organizations and governments to operate on the frequency of compassion, generosity, fairness, beauty, love and peace.
Even if this is idealistic, isn't everything human-made an idea before it is made a part of our collective outside reality? Can you truly distinguish what will happen in the future? Or are we just scared that if we admit that this is a true need to change and that others suffer needlessnessly, we will feel inadequate, guilty and ashamed. Why else do people satiate themselves with material goods, so afraid to look into themselves and see what they have been avoiding.
Awesome post. I've been considering this a lot as well. Sometimes I think the root is a culture of 'me first' or 'look how i am better than you'. I talked about this with a friend on a walk this weekend. Imagine if the dialogue of our economy changed to 'let's work together so everyone can have what they need'. In very small ways, some businesses are doing this. One example is TOMS, which donates a pair of shoes for every pair bought (http://www.toms.com/our-movement/movement-one-for-one)
ReplyDelete