Have you ever noticed how often you say to yourself, "How did I get here"? It's like you wake up one morning and wonder how did whatever (credit card debt, personal relationship problems, etc.) get so messed up. The truth is it was happening all the time. But it was unfolding step by little tiny step, so maybe you did not really notice it -- just a niggling feeling in the back of your head. So you just ignored it and lived in denial until THAT morning (like we all do). But as always happens, unless we deal with these whatevers they have a way of reaching critical mass down the road. And THAT morning was your day of reckoning and at that moment you became conscious -- and the pain and anxiety started, because you knew you must do something.
How did we get here as a society? The seeds for these changes were sown over the past several decades. Little by little our sense of shared societal beliefs and moral attitudes changed. And just like in our personal lives when we did not deal with a problem when it was small, it only continued to grow and become bigger.
Is it time to recognize how we have allowed the media backed by large corporations with their mass marketing and television programs to define what is acceptable in our society. We began to believe that we needed more "stuff" (consumer goods) to make us happy. And we bought it -- bigger houses, nicer cars, a myriad of things -- women went to work in droves in order to be able to afford this level of conspicuous consumption. And via the movie Wall Street with its Gordon Gecko in 1987, we learned that "greed was good".
Television, corporations and politicians continued to shape our beliefs. In 2001 the Survivor series started and through it we learned how to form alliances; we also learned that by being conniving and treacherous one could be rewarded. It was acceptable to pretend to befriend someone and then stab them in the back -- all for personal gain. It was about the individual and not the collective whole. Many supposedly "reality" shows have followed. In fact the media has dominated our every thought and shaped what we believe across the board -- what we buy, the way we look, what we watch on TV, which politicians to vote for and what is right and wrong.
The worst part of all of this is that we are all accomplices. By watching these shows, accepting explicit lyrics in our music, and by thinking that we are not good enough unless we get more "stuff", we are all guilty. Big money is supporting all of this -- and we are supporting them. If we did not watch all of these shows, did not buy numerous products, or buy the lies that are told to us, this could not be happening. We are our own worst enemies!!! While we have been lulled into submission by mindless entertainment, our corporations, leaders, politicians and wall street have been living by that motto that greed is good and it has been for them. We have been robbed of our jobs, our homes, our savings, our children's futures and even our culture.
Is it any wonder that this country is in a crisis and so are our governmental institutions, our corporations and even our families. We have been distracted by the the wrong things -- the greed instead of the good, the ME instead of the WE -- we thought we could fill ourselves up with stuff instead of what is inside us. How wrong we were -- but we have an opportunity now for a collective change. Let's seize THIS moment!
Stay tuned....
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