Ian David Reid
Hey Dave
Hope things are going well and you're enjoying your holiday period.
I was wondering if you could do me a favor in the next few weeks or so. I'm putting together an outline on several categories, in order to help myself understand a bit better how certain things work and how they might be able to work better. Could you ask some of your 'occupy' peoples this for me?!?
'Can someone please explain to me how money systems work these days?!!? As in; how does world finance work?!?! how does country finance work!?! and how do they tie in together?!? Is it based on what resources each country has, what is in demand, what?!?'
Would really like to get lots of different peoples thoughts on this subject at the moment. Also, any ideas on how governments work or could work would be awesome too!?! Thanks mate
------------------------------------
Hey Ian, I'm really flattered that you'd ask ... as you know, I'm very passionate about this stuff and I believe quite sincerely that this is the most important fight of our lifetimes. The outcome will determine the quality of life for most of the folks in the world for the next century, at least.
Having said that, I'd like to include a couple of disclaimers:
1. What is true in the U.S. may not be true in the rest of the world.
2. There are as many opinions on the questions that you just asked as there are people.
I'm a 'big picture' sort of person. I don't necessarily believe that the economic problems we face will be necessarily solved by economic solutions. In the U.S., the chief problems, as I see them are a the lack of citizenship and the lack of compassion. It's the lack of citizenship which is the more immediate problem, so I'll deal with that here.
It's a common myth in the US (maybe true) that the President of the United States is the most important man in the world. Whether you believe that or not, you may not realize that in our lifetimes, there has never been a presidential election in which more than 60% of the electorate turned out to vote. Boris Yeltsin got a turnout in Russia of over 97% the same year that 56% of Americans turned out to elect Bill Clinton.
When I was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, we had a course in school called 'Civics'. It was a class specifically designed to teach kids about government and civic responsibility. Things like serving on a jury, taking the time to be aware of local politics and voting. As near as I can determine, this doesn't exist anymore. Apathy rules the day and citizenship has been replaced by consumerism.
Consumerism is a kind of religion. Like 'that old time religion' it relies on two things : fear and ecstasy. In religion, they gave you the fear of God and the ecstasy of redemption. In the new Consumerism, it's the fear of terrorism and the ecstasy of the X-box. Either way, it's designed to distract the 'consumer' and prevent her from thinking critically. Critical thinking is the opposite of apathy. It is the thing that marketers and politicians fear the most.
The Consumer can be likened to a monkey. He cowers in the corner of his cage, grimacing and baring his teeth to hide the fear he feels. He chucks his feces at the people walking by and it makes him feel righteous and helps to assuage the helplessness that he feels. He is so concentrated on his fear that he fails to notice that the cage door is hanging open. He could walk out any time and be one of the people he is so afraid of. But to do that, he would have to put aside his fear, and many are incapable of that.
In a sense, the monkey problem was created by my generation. We were given the tools to recognize the deception; but our in our laziness and greed, we chose to ignore it. Many of us looked at the changing world around us and chose to retreat to the false comfort of religion. Some chose drugs and alcohol, others chose techno-fetishism. In my own case it was righteous indignation combined with a false sense of intellectual superiority. My drug was cynicism. Whatever it was, it manifested itself in apathy and the country is paying for that now.