November 7, 2002- Stewardship

In America, the populace is always told just how luck they are to be free and part of a free society, etc. Americans are told that they should cherish their freedoms, like the freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and so on and so forth. Every time that there is an American holiday of some kind, the politicians come out of the woodwork saying shit like this.Just the other day, America had what is supposed to be another freedom that they should cherish, the freedom to choose their own leaders by a free and fair electoral process. All across the land, there were offices up for grabs in the national Mid-Term elections. Since we now live in an era of unparalleled patriotism in America, it would stand to reason that the citizenry would have jumped at this chance and turned out in droves to exercise another of their freedoms. However, this was not the case, to no one's surprise. Like every election before it, this one set records for low voter turnout all across the land. Each time there is an election, there is not a side story about how it was rigged (well, maybe the last Presidential one), but rather a side story about how voter turnout was at an all time low. In many places across America, there was maybe 33% voter turnout the other day. Only one out of every three eligible voters bothered to come out and vote. In other countries, this would be looked on as a national embarrassment, and the leader would be trying to explain it all to the people. In America, it is just another Election Day. One out of three voter turnout has not been unusual in America for a long time now, and soon it will become one out of four not being unusual if the current trends continue the way that they have for many decades now, as they have done nothing but shrink steadily for years. It seems that Americans are not too concerned about exercising that freedom that they have. And why is that? It is not because that are against their country or system, in fact, like I said before, to say that you are not 100% behind America in every way no matter what is the norm these days. Rather, it is because most Americans just don't give a fuck about the election. They look at it as how does it affect me. Unless they truly feel that their jobs or families or way of life is really at stake here, they don't care. Most Americans are relatively sure that no matter which suit and tie politician makes his victory speech on Election Night, that their lives shall not be changed in any way. So they make no effort to go out to the polls on Election Day. They look at this freedom of voting not as one that is essential to them, but as one that is useful if it suits their purposes. If it does not, then it is not worth very much. This is a very self-centered way to look at a freedom. However, it is not unusual in the USA. In fact, every one of the freedoms that Americans have are looked on that way. When you ask an average American citizen what his (or her) freedoms mean to him (or her), you usually get answers like " I get to go where I want, and I get to do what I want and say what I want and live where I want and act like I want to, etc." Everything is about I, the self. There is almost never a mention of we, meaning the individual as a part of a larger society, which we all are. You almost never hear an American say that their freedom means that we have a society that does so well economically that we can help the poor and help eliminate the conditions that drag parts of our society down, like poverty and hopelessness and despair and the like, rather, we hear that the freedom means that I live in a society that does so well economically that I can get a good job and that I can make more money for myself, shit like that. Americans are trained to look at things this way by their society. Whenever children are taught all the reasons that they should be glad to be free, those reasons are always about them, not them plus everyone else. So, Americans are programmed to grow up looking at their freedoms in this self centered way from Day One. This is the type of thinking that is taught in the schools of the USA, not the concept of one as part of a larger society. Every American is taught to micro manage everything to the point where they feel that the only society that they belong to is the society of the self and none other. This sort of thinking is nothing new, nothing that America invented or started. It is the mindset that grows out of the capitalist way. AS I have stated in previous columns, the mindset of capitalism is this stupid fuckin' "survival of the fittest" shit. One where you are supposed to be most concerned about getting yours first, and the hell with everyone else. A ridiculous mindset that likes mankind to the animals of the world, creatures that were not able to become the dominant life form on the planet. Obviously, since mankind did become that, the ways of the animals would be of little use to him, or so logic goes. But someone seemed to have a fixation with the ways of the animals and wanted man to be like them. Probably a bestiality ( or buggery or zoophilia) freak of some sort. So he went and invented the capitalist way so that man ended up acting like the fuckin' animals of the world with a dog-eat-dog mentality. You cannot be successful at such a mentality without being as self-centered as you can be. When the object is to get as much for yourself as you can, you can only think of yourself. That is the capitalist mindset. Since America is a country where the capitalist way is equated with freedom, that selfish mindset becomes part of the picture. Americans are taught that the best thing that they can do is to be successful according to the capitalist way. They are also told that their freedoms are the way that they can get that. Therefore, they look at freedom in the same way that they look at money and material wealth. Since the totally self centered way is the surest way to success in the capitalist scene, Americans figure that is the way to success in terms of freedoms too. So they look at their freedoms in a completely selfish way. They are there if they choose to need them, otherwise, they don't really matter. This mentality has been death to American society. It has led to a society full of self centered people who care only about what affects them as individuals, not what affects them as a society. This is why the idea of freedom has become a sick fuckin' joke in America today, even more so than all of the restrictions on freedom that the President and his men have been putting on us all in the last 14 months.

For it is a fact that one cannot be free if one is totally self centered. That is because the idea of freedom is a stewardship, one that those that call themselves free have to execute carefully and responsibly. Americans have been doing none of those things for quite some time now. If you are to be truly free, you must have a sense of things other than the self. This is even more necessary when you speak of a society such as America, a huge , polyglot society that has so much wealth and power and prestige and influence in the world today. All of these things have come as a result of America's freedoms, so the conventional wisdom goes. It is hard to argue that fact either. The freedoms of America combined with the natural wealth that the land that the country sits on has, have made America a country unparalleled in the history of the planet. With all of this has come an awesome responsibility, the responsibility of properly stewarding all of this. Americans have failed miserably at that responsibility. That is because they are not truly free, they just think that they are. For the slavery to the capitalist ways forever keeps Americans from being free. As long as the ways of that scene are dominant, there can never be true freedom, for true freedom needs to be based on common sense, and the capitalist scene is not based on that at all. That scene is based on what is best for Mr. Businessman, whatever that may be, if it involves something that flies in the face of common sense, so be it. However, it is truly unreasonable to think that Mr. Businessman and the capitalist scene are going anywhere. They are far too entrenched in society for that to happen, probably ever. So, the only way to get Americans to be proper stewards to their freedoms is to get them to be able to separate they way that they think about their freedoms from the way that they think about their money and the like. They cannot be so selfish and not think of others. But there are all sorts of built in clashes in this. For America is set up in such a way that any attempts at expanding the ways that freedoms are thought of will come into direct conflict with Mr. Businessman and his capitalist ways. For example, if the people did start to think of America's prosperity as a way that they could eliminate shit like poverty and despair, that would come into conflict with the segment of Mr. Businessman's community that makes a lot of money of of poverty and despair. There are many segment of the business world that have vested financial interests in keeping people in poverty no matter what. The judicial system, for one. Without poverty and people being born into desperate, hopeless conditions, there are not endless numbers of people to feed the judicial system and its various departments. So they do not want Americans to look at their freedoms in a way that threatens their monies. These types are very powerful people in America, so they get their way. The fact that the result of all of this is destruction and deterioration of American society is insignificant to them. They make sure that their ways of thinking are the ones drummed into the heads of Americans. And since they get what they want, they have created a society of Americans that think of their freedoms only in the most selfish of terms. This, in turn, has rendered every one of these freedoms meaningless, reduced them to the level of meaningless talk. Americans need to realize that this is not a good thing, it is a thing that has been destroying their society for generations. Americans are taught that the capitalist system is the only system that works, that history has proven that others all fail. What they are not taught is that the capitalist system is as incompatible with freedom as any of these other systems are, at least in the form that it is in now. If it truly is the superior system, then it could be modified so that it would be compatible with freedom, but again, that conflicts with Mr. Businessman's agenda. Until things are modified, the self centeredness of the America people shall be their undoing. For being that way leaves you open to attack, something that Osama bin Laden and his boys proved back about 14 months ago. Besides that, a selfish attitude promotes decay from within the society, like what we see happening in America today. This process can be every bit as deadly as any terrorist attack. Americans are being told that they have to do whatever they can to prevent another terrorist attack. They should also be told that they need to stop this societal decay for it is equally as important to do so. They need to be told that freedom is not about having the right to be all self centered and selfish, although that is part of it, but rather that freedom is a stewardship that they need to exercise wisely. Americans need to be taught that the ways of the capitalist and the ways of freedom are two different things and need to be approached two different ways. If this can be accomplished, then the freedoms of Americans can once again be more than just mere words in a book or shit blathered by a speaker at a political function. These freedoms can once again become meaningful things, things that shape people's lives and mankind's societies in the right way, whatever that way may be. Until then, as long as most American only think of their freedoms in terms of themselves., the idea of freedom shall remain ever elusive, for freedom requires a stewardship, and stewardship requires the ability to think of something other than one's self. Until American can do that, they shall never truly be free, no matter how much they think otherwise.