Continuing on from my last post, I will reiterate my belief that the current financial meltdown is not due simply to people and institutions overextending themselves  financially. This meltdown is a consequence of attitudes which have included a chronic indifference to the wasted potential of our own people.

As a result of that indifference, the G.O.P. has won election after election, dominated Congress with its ideas, and advanced its agenda of steadily ridding the nation of social programs. It has convinced Americans to object to any tax or plan which does not benefit them directly and in concrete terms. Yet we are not islands. We are linked. What happens to others affects us all, as we are seeing now.

For instance, people need jobs – good jobs. With good jobs people buy goods and services, send their kids to college and pursue their dreams. Hundreds of thousands of good jobs could have been created by pursuing green technologies. That’s why Germany’s economy has been thriving.

Likewise, a quality public education has long been recognized as a great equalizer.

Yet we keep electing candidates put forth by the G.O.P. who seek to undermine and de-fund public schools. With the long-term goal of total privatization in mind, they have, likewise, rejected the need to change our economic model or recognize the dangers of pollution and Global Warming. 

They have been elected with massive help from the middle classes who have abandoned progressive thought even though progressive thought – which includes ideas about our human entitlement to equal opportunity, a living wage, quality education, a free and robust press, and the separation of church and state – brought their classes into existence and made their prosperity possible.

Yet the lower classes have done no better. They have consistently betrayed their own economic interests by not bothering to vote.

While we may not be aware of our complicity in our own poverty or in the poverty of others, our Spirits always know and this creates a great spiritual hunger, a yearning for spiritual authenticity and a need for congruent action. 

So we may be called to change. We may be called to be more generous. We may be called to do something, such as work for social justice. We may think about writing letters or making phone calls. We may think about talking to friends and family, about joining an organization, about committing our time and energy to some cause that does not appear to be of economic or social benefit to ourselves.

Yet we may choose to ignore these impulses. We may ignore the poor, ignore the “small voice within” that urges us toward compassionate action, and betray the love in our own souls. 

Yet should we have the time and the means and the ability to help even in a small way and still resist that call, then a part of us will be ashamed and feel guilt. This is what happens when we know we have the power to effect change, yet do nothing. It is not in our nature to be easy on ourselves, no matter how it looks from the outside.

Psychologists tell us that incongruence between identity and beliefs creates inner conflict. Inner conflict almost always leads to some kind of self-sabotage.

I would maintain that the economic problems we are having are the result of that self-sabotage. It is the consequence of being a wealthy nation that has been entirely self-absorbed.

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