Division

Why is there so much injustice and conflict in this world? What is the impetus that brings about such division? Perhaps better phrased "Impetuses"? Let's review three that come to mind:

Greed: Make more to make more, and take from those with less ambition.

Orthodoxy: My way is right yours is wrong (therefore you must see things my way).

Apocalyptic thinking, why fix it if it's going to be destroyed or renewed?

Starting with apocalyptic thinking, I wrote a blog titled "Rescue Theology's Impact to Culture" that is centered around this apocalyptic thinking, but let's explore a little deeper.

This way of thinking is not limited to religion. Some that believe in the existence of UFO's believe that before we destroy the world ourselves that an advance alien civilization will come down to Earth from outer space and stop us in our tracks. Some believe they have already been among us in ancient history, intervening back then. Others simply believe it is only a matter of time before an asteroid slams into Earth wiping us and most other life (if not all life) out. Then there are those that believe war will bring about our end, or, for simplicity's sake, categorically "By our own doing". There are fewer than you'd think that truly and cognitively believe things will continue on, and among those that do, many subscribe to the myth of progress. A myth in which our technology will come to solve impending problems that we cannot currently see through, like the limitations of fossil fuels which is simply another case of Rescue Theology only the idol of worship is technology. Why is this an impetus for division and conflict? First, it absolves us from doing anything to fix the problems we have. Not to say that there aren't people out there actively trying to make the world a better place, it is just that they are too few. Which really should surprise us. With all we know and all we have available with regard to philosophy we ought to all be moved to the selfless pursuit of ending things like hunger and war and squashing their causes. But apocalyptic thinking gives us an excuse to be lazy. It can also divide us when we are zealous about it, which leads me to the next impetus.

Orthodoxy

 The word Orthodox, for those that are not already aware, means 'right view', whereas the word Heretic means 'choice' or 'one who chooses'. One might think that orthodoxy, be it religious, political, or scientific, should unite us under one widely accepted principal. Well, that's the pitch anyway. If I tell you that A + B = Y and that you need to accept that, while you have always thought that A + B = C, you might get a little defensive of your position. If I go further and tell you that the resulting 'Y' is the ONLY correct answer and that those that assert otherwise are the intellectual equivalent of protozoa, your defensiveness might turn to anger. Furthermore if I tell you that you are going to suffer greatly via some presently intangible doom(that you brought upon yourself), well I might get punched in the nose! Now you might think that I am ridiculing religion or a particular religion, which a I won't deny, but the same could be said for Global Warming, err, uh, climate change theorists. That's right, theorists. It is a theory, and a difficult to prove one at that. The point is that these divisions based on 'my view or stance is right and yours is wrong' causes natural division.

So what do we do about it? Do we concede that we are wrong, or are never right about something? No, absolutely not! We should cease the behavior of forcing our views onto others, and stop the binary thinking associated with the simplistic 'right or wrong'. We have free will and diversity of thought for a reason, it gives us an evolutionary advantage seen in to other species on Earth. If we all subscribed to one set of orthodox views we would never grow outside them. We would never evolve culturally. Think about history. How many times has "One View" been adopted by a government or ruler that ultimately resulted in the oppression or homicide of others? How many times has it lead to war? Perhaps easier to answer; how many times has it NOT lead to war?

Greed

Of course there's greed! This is undoubtedly the biggest reason or causation for human suffering on planet Earth. Some have attributed many wonderful advancements to the presence of greed, claiming that modern medicine is a direct result of it, along with all the technological marvels that we can no longer live without. I challenge that thinking, we all should. Certainly medical advancements would not have happened as quickly without someone funding the research as an investment into future profits. But they still would have happened. Of course if you are going to credit greed for such advancements then greed must also accept responsibility for the overwhelming costs of these advancements and their availability to only a few on earth lucky enough to be born in a country with a health care system (even the bad ones) and fortunate enough to be covered by such a system. Iniquities galore!

What if, say by 1000AD, the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, and others like them had reached every corner of the Earth -specifically the teachings instructing us to not form attachment to Earthly possessions and material wealth. And that such teachings were taught to all, generally accepted by all, do we think that we would have had something called a world war? Maybe, maybe not. It is hard to spread such philosophy without falling into the trap of orthodoxy. What must be avoided in unifying behind such philosophies is the imposition of a singular application of them. The most renowned of philosophers agree that human happiness, or a general state of joy, will always be out of the reach of those that relentlessly pursue the accumulation of wealth and define success as the incremental advancement in wealth, influence, and/or recognition of accomplishment. This is evident in our lives, particularly those in western society. I have watched friends and family pursue this accumulation, every time they acquire a new toy someone else in their circle gets the newer bigger better one. They then begin to look longingly at this new acquisition and always find some justification for the need to "upgrade" to the latest and greatest. It's as if there is some hole within themselves that they try and fill with "stuff", but I don't know if that's the proper prognosis… at least not unanimously. For some I think that their own self-worth is defined by their possessions or by their ability to participate in every event that comes along. Indeed "missing out" is no fun, but if you feel like you might lose respect or diminish in status when you are "missing out" then you too are trapped in an abusive relationship with incremental displays of success. It is just another form of greed.

There is of course the ample existence of folks working hard and succeeding, acquiring modest possessions and securing a comfortable retirement whom avoid the traps described above as well as some not included above. With such individuals there is some measure of "head-in-the-sand" syndrome. The cost of their comfort and success is that somewhere there is someone (or many people) that are being denied opportunity and some of the most basic things that we all take for granted… what I'm getting at is that the greed associated with their success, be it the products they help bring to market for the consumer or what have you, this has a negative impact elsewhere in our world. Too vague? Say that CompanyX makes product 'XYZ'. Product XYZ is used in the homes of 80% of people in Western Society and 40% of developing countries, though it is something that we all could easily live without. CompanyX has now gone public, a product of this course of action is a responsibility to shareholders. Shareholders, by nature of being a shareholder, are only interested in profit margins. They are not interested in company ethics except where it might impact profit margins. Such companies as CompanyX that are publically traded are depended on continual growth, meaning that if they are a $100M company in 2015, they need to be a $105M in 2016 for their stock to be something to be desired or retained (by the shareholder). In order to maintain profitability they need to increase revenue, a common means of doing such is to reduce the cost associated with generating their product. With their loyalties favoring the shareholder over quality, CompanyX closes some factories in the U.S. and opens a new factory in a developing nation abroad… moving thousands of jobs… laying off people in the U.S. Meanwhile the staff associated with designing the product is reduced by 10-30%, required to produce twice as many product designs in half the amount of time. It's known as 10x, the engineer or designer today is doing (or required to do) 10x the work as did 10 years ago (or maybe even 5 years ago in some cases). In this case the quality of products suffer, as do the lives of all involved. Some lose their jobs, those whom still have a job do nothing else but work. They are very often required to automate some aspect(s) of their job to meet requirements. The more we automate the less we need people. I wonder if, at some point, we will automate so much requiring less and less staff that we begin to impact the consumer base for which we sold our product? If the product of CompanyX is not something we need to live then they may just do that. Better make it cheaper, and cheaper, and faster… what a cycle?

To cope with the stress many end up on some form of medication… enter the pharmaceutical companies (also publically traded). Bleak.

But back to the folks that lost their jobs. Don't buy the jobs reports you get from the government, they cherry-pick the data to look good. Actual unemployment is over 23% of working-age adults in the U.S. A statistic we never see is that many that lost the "secure" corporate jobs are now working a part-time job, or two, or in some cases three or more. Such people have been forced to down-size their lives, make certain sacrifices we cannot imagine until we too are faced with a similar situation. Many have given up on trying to find a job, did you know that government jobs now exceed manufacturing jobs by 9 million+? Good blue-collar jobs in the U.S. are shrinking. There is division in the U.S. right now, a lot of it has to do with lack of opportunity to much of the population. Some blame racism, or some other bigotry but the root is the inequities resulting from greed. So the few can get richer the many must suffer, and this is just domestically. With all of the above in mind consider what has happened in the world over the production and control of oil. Bleak indeed.