Excerpt #102 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Moneyed power has corrupted politics.
Governments have become corporate poodles rather than fulfilling their role to be arbitrators and counterweights to business and powerful privategroups.
Instead, governments (politicians) have allowed, even invited (by relying on private money to fund their campaigns) companies and wealthy individuals to manipulate them.
As a consequence, public faith in democracy is dismal.
Governments are being crushed, and so are the freedoms of capitalism and democracy.
The whole system is corrupt and dysfunctional.
Laws need to be made to provide public funding of political campaigns.
But who is going to make them?
The foxes guard the chicken coops.
THE WEALTHY CANNOT KNOW THE TRIALS OF THE POOR, ANYMORE THAN THE HEALTHY CAN KNOW THE SUFFERING OF THE SICK.
“It will come down to some very simple questions in the end. Do we want democracy and self-determination, or do we want oligarchic institutions? Do we want a world of uniformity where the road from every airport to every city center looks like every strip mall in the world? Do we want another world than the one envisioned by Monsanto, Wal-Mart, and Disney? Do we want our 9 year-old girls being lured by dolls with happy meals into McDonald’s to end up with Type II diabetes? Or do we want strong regional and native cultures proud of their heritage, devoted to their land, committed to true development and the future of their children? In short, do we want a world structured by rich, mostly white men, or a world that is an expression of the fabulous qualities of all human beings?” – From his lecture, “Dreams of a Livable Future” (Democracy, ecology, and cultural vitality depend on a new economic vision for the world) by Paul Hawken
Short-term “profit” is too often the sole motivating force for many who sacrifice human decency and environmental protection for personal gains.
We are driven by a surplus of greed and a lack of common sense.
Profiteers clamor for more and more.
Many achieve enormous wealth.
For each who has much, there are countless others who have precious little.
Religion keeps the poor from murdering the rich. – Napoleon.
Those who exploit innocent others and destroy ecosystems boast arrogantly of their financial and business “achievements,” ignorant or in denial of their violations and the eventual consequences of their actions.
MOST INFERIOR ARE THOSE WHO EXPLOIT THE INFERIOR.
When profit-taking replaces concern for others or for ecosystems, a perversity occurs whereby everyone and everything suffers.
At that point, we are not evolving but devolving.
Those who achieve power and allow the gap to widen between the rich and the poor promote inequity, desperation, conflict, ecological ruin, systemic distress, terrorism, and revolution.