The Sage Observer

Have You Been Looking?

          I don’t know how old you are or your station in life. Neither do I know your intellectual level nor how you think. Well, maybe that’s not quite right. In general, overall, I do have a pretty good idea of how people think, i.e. make decisions, reason, judge, arrive at conclusions, etc.; but, specifically, we all vary in our application of such (You might want to refer to my posting to this blog on August 09, 2013 titled, Who Am I? [Just scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on “older posts”.]). Just speaking in general, however, don’t you think that, for the most part, most all people think and act in terms of just their own world, that which concerns only them? Think of death and dying. Isn’t it true that the closer your relationship is with the deceased the greater is the grief you suffer and, the further away, the less? Stay with me now–I’m going to get to my point. I’m going all the way around the “rosy” to say, we all live in our own little world. The further away something–anything–is from us, the less attention we direct to it. So it is with the world in which we live. And, yet, that world with which we have little or no concern may be about to blow up in our face. Don’t laugh. This has happened frequently throughout history. This thought, though simple, is important. The more comfortable we are with our current status, the more apt we are to be surprised and or shocked when something unexpectedly happens.

          For just a moment, let us back off from our own little world and, from our experience, study, reading, etc., try to picture in our mind what life has been for people, as a whole, on this planet for the past couple hundred years or so. You don’t have to work at it. Just draw upon your knowledge of history as brief as it might be (Nobody is exempt from that affliction unless they are a historian or something like that.) and what you know or have experienced. I submit to you that, our present problems notwithstanding, that, during the past seventy years or so, the people of the United States of America, as a whole, have lived and experienced a quality of life and prosperity rarely seen throughout history. For a multitude of reasons, including an explosion of technology, we have lived as if there is no tomorrow–so to speak. We have lived “high on the hog”. Our nation has been, and still is, the leader of the free world–the richest, most prosperous, most powerful civilization in the history of mankind (I’ll look forward to arguments on that from historians). Think about that. As has been said many times, we have five per cent of the world’s population and consume twenty-five percent of the world’s resources (to the exclusion of many across the planet who are completely destitute and starving). Our poor live better than the poor in many of the other countries.

Living in our own little world(s), most of us have failed to recognize and give thanks for how blessed we really are. Not giving it a moment’s thought, we take for granted what we have and, generally speaking, have come to believe we are entitled. In all honesty, as a nation, since the great depression of the thirties, we have become fat, lazy, and spoiled, i.e. narcissistic. Why, therefore, do we wonder why many in the world don’t like us? Perhaps it is because we have been the spoiled rich kids on the block, too often living at the expense of others. Does this sound like our leaders, the Corporatocracy and Power Elite, the very rich and powerful–the one percent, five percent, or whatever? Doesn’t it, also, sound like those at the bottom of our society who think the world owes them a living, are entitled, and collect benefits when they could be working instead–those who refuse to go to school, run in gangs, will not work, and are completely unproductive to society. Understand! I’m not talking about those who really can’t find jobs because there are none. I’m talking about those who won’t work even when they are able and jobs are available.The point here is that there is enough blame to go all around. Some of our poor have some of the same afflictions as some of our rich who, also, lie, cheat, steal, and exploit others (Again, let’s set aside our own little world for a moment and look at the big picture).

I don’t know how much longer this is all going to go on, but I think the jig is about up. The party is about to come to an end unless we the people, the responsible people get our priorities in order and take back our government. For the past seventy or so years, we have been living in a false economy–a false prosperity based on war, greed, borrowed money, excess, and narcissism–not very unlike the final days of the Roman Empire. The rich have sucked our middleclass and poor dry and their house of cards is coming to an end, leaving our children and grand children with the bill.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net