Oh Man - Wake Up

I got good and incensed today. It had to do with the health care reform noise in America.

First, a general comment.

Under the capitalist system, anything that generates economic activity is Good. So, ill health is Good: all those drugs and tests, and insurance policies, and high-end goods and services generated for high-spending 'health care' professionals...the oligopoly is truly well served by such a system. But not The People.

Next, a specific comment.

According to the business community, the private health care sector "is fast becoming America's No. 1 industry".* Employing more and more people...all Good, according to the capitalist scenario.

People, people...Stop. Think.

Only in such a system would heart disease be a Good Thing (and thus preventive measures to the condition a Bad Thing; to be suppressed, except for generalized, relatively bromidic advice). And cancer. And...and......

What's wrong with this picture?

The system is wrong with this picture.

People making money on other people's misfortunes; and the bigger, the more...

...except woe betide you if you have a pre-existing condition...

...and private, for-profit prisons, so that the more prisoners, the better...

...and Halliburton-like no-bid contracts for servicing wars...and......

What a spectacle.

Which it's time to look closely at, and put an end to.

Fortunately, some good thinking is taking place in this regard. I have recently referenced some of this good thinking in my blog 'Moving from the Old Paradigm to the New' (29 August). But let's 'go for broke', so to speak. Think big. Think globally.

We can get our act together on this lovely planet, and leave this kindergarten stage of our social evolution behind, one way, and one way only. And that is to acknowledge - really acknowledge - that the universe has purpose, and that purpose is Good.

And that is the real Good that we should be talking about. And acting on. The Good, that there is a plan and purpose to life, and thus life has meaning, above and beyond merely the creature level; the material level; the process level.

For if you don't believe it, then it's each man for himself and look out: nothing matters but Me.

As we have, and are living by, today.

But which level of consciousness is not going to be sufficient for us to qualify to start exploring our solar system, and physical universe, more fully.

We have to prove, first, that we are responsible enough to slip our earthly bonds and do so.

And we're not going to be able to do that by living by the tenets of the capitalist system, which keep us - hold us bound - in thrall to the concept that we are separate beings - to do to each other, and practice oneupmanship over - rather than being 'a piece of the continent, a parte of the maine,' in the words of the thinker and poet, John Donne.

Listen further to wisdom: 'The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit againe, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.'

Listen for your minute; be aware of your occasion. And join the move into the New.

And not before time.



* Lawrence Kudlow, 'The Government's Insurance Option is Dead', Sept. 14, on Moneynews.com. ("It's an economic-recovery sector.")