Enlightened Self-Interest

Wow, the whole world is going absolutely bonkers these days! With employment stagnating, the foreclosure crisis no better than it was three years ago, huge corporations capturing/buying the legislative process, and the environment burning down around our ears, all anyone can talk about is an artificially set limit to the amount of money America can borrow to pay for the things we already approved in our budget.

Madness, pure madness.

What I keep waiting for is a glimmer of sanity to peek through the fog of fear and vitriol, for somebody (*cough cough* our President *cough*) to point out that none of this bullshit is in anyone's self-interest. Actually, very little of what Americans seem to want is in their best interest. For instance:

* It is not in the banking industry's self-interest to water down regulations, because without regulations all you get is regular boom-and-bust cycles that destroy wealth and make it impossible to do business over the long haul. It was a decided lack of regulation that led to the Great Depression, and when we finally stripped away those regulations in the late 1990's and early 2000's, it wasn't long before we fell into the current Great Recession.

* It is not in the self-interest of the wealthy elite to block social programs, even if they are paid for with their tax dollars, because when the poor are more healthy and have more money to spend, the economy grows and more children go to college which gives us a highly trained workforce that powers innovation and the further expansion of wealth.

* Absolutely no one's self-interest is served by relying on fossil fuels for the cheap energy we need to power our economy, because fossil fuels pollute the air we all breath, warm our planet to the point of creating climate change disasters, and periodically dump toxic substances into our oceans and water supply. Of course, this is all pointless because if big oil companies diverted all of their investments into providing alternative sources of energy they would still make tons and tons of money.

* The American citizen is not served by relying on our medical enablers, who push exotic pills and expensive surgical procedures to alleviate our symptoms of disease without producing any long-term wellness. If we all took a little bit more time to make simple changes in what and how much we eat, how often we exercise, and how we deal with our emotions and stress, our health care bills would be getting progressively lower, not higher.

The list goes on and on. Ultimately, the point here is that when you make bad choices, you get bad consequences, and that is what we are seeing in today's America. If you want to make good choices, all you have to do is take responsibility for your actions, help those who are less fortunate than you (even if you feel like they "don't deserve" it), and stand up to those who would destroy themselves and take the rest of us along for the ride.

I can only pray that we as a people figure all of this out before the worst is upon us.