overstuffed and misguided

We are all, by now, well aware of the financial woes lately visited upon Wall Street. I am by no means a business-minded person; I will be the first to admit that my cursory knowledge of the financial markets is suspect at best. Still, as I watch CNN and read articles online about the current instability and impending crisis, I watch without surprise. Perhaps I am part of a jaded generation.

After all, we have seen consumerism and materialism spread like cancer; we have watched Presidents boldly lie about issues large and small; we have seen the 4th estate become a morass of celebrity and sensationalism; we have witnessed unprecedented violence among children; we have stood by while our government redefined torture in its own self-interest; we have taken part in the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis in the name of national security; our jails swell but the streets become more dangerous; we pay more for education and healthcare because our tax dollars are heading overseas; we have been told that Osama Bin Laden is public enemy number one, only to watch Saddam hang from the gallows pole while Bin Laden becomes a side project; we have seen unemployment and gas prices rise; we have watched the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.Why should we be surprised when financial markets collapse? What else is to be expected from a society that has become the ultimate Lover of Money. The entire system is built on greed. I don't mean that far away, mystical place called Wall Street. I mean every street. It is disguised in new clothes and new cars, expensive haircuts and expensive luggage. We are conditioned to consume. We have grown morally obese. We lack the agility to change and we lack the self-perception to understand that we need to change.

And somehow, through all of this, we are expected to nurture the American dream, feeding it a steady diet of rhetoric, optimism, and a new manifest destiny. And somehow, improbably, a large number of us remain hopeful. I have been accused of hating my country, and this is not true. Perhaps it should be true, but it is not. I have heard the phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner" passed about among Christian circles, and I feel the need to bring that idea to light. I love my country, but God help me, do I hate where it is headed. I am unwilling to enter the American mainstream because it is polluted. The question is, how do we clean it up?

Since high school, I have become a firm believer in DeToqueville's statement that "small nations are the cradle of liberty." Nation or not, smaller is better. Those who know my political views may find this an odd thing for me to be saying, but it is not. I still believe that a socialist drift is inevitable, and I still believe that a reformed democratic communism should be the ideal. America has grown too large for pure capitalism to work effectively. If we continue on this current path, we will only see the gaps between rich and poor widen and injustice flourish. The dollar is not a fair master. I digress. What I mean when I say smaller is better, is that as citizens the burden of change falls to us. If we decry the horrors of corporate America, then we must not shop at Walmart. If we complain about the bias in media, then we must seek out better sources. Buy local. Join a protest. Recycle. Turn off the television networks and seek out a good journalist online. Turn off MTV and read a book. The change we seek is in the home and in the church. It is in our schools, and it is in the individual.

Smaller is better, and what we need is to form small subcultures. Become an outsider to the system. When the ship goes down, at least we won't be on it. I don't mean that to sound extreme or isolationist, but consider it. If the stock market collapses, only those who have invested their life and their work in that market will collapse with it. Find what is truly valuable in this life and pursue it. Forget materialism, forget image. Forget status, forget greed. Forget pleasure, forget comfort. Find truth. Find love. Find adventure. Where your treasure is there your heart will be also, right?

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