“Don’t play the victim to circumstances you created.” I saw that statement on Facebook and it hit me like cold shower. Wow. So simple yet so profound. I would alter it some to read; “Don’t play the victim to circumstances that you helped to create.” The latter statement sums up what is going on with the issue of illegal immigration to the U.S. The U.S., as a nation, is experiencing the consequences of decades of supporting tyrants and greed in Mexico, Central and South America and elsewhere. Everyone who believes it is too much trouble to pay attention to politics needs to wake up, politics can and will affect your life!
What do we expect when some U.S. corporations have been engaging in profiteering too often at the expense of and to the detriment of the common people in several Central and South American countries. While, concurrently, the U.S. government has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting leaders and methods which render countries unlivable for vast numbers of the populations of those countries?
We cannot as a people continue to ignore a simple reality; we need to be working to build a culture which is supportive and nurturing of whole and healthful human life. And we need to support such efforts elsewhere. What we are doing now, as a matter of national policy and culture is worshiping the “bottom line”. It’s all about the money. We have become a species in which too much of what we, as a species, are engaged in seems hellbent in destroying our environment…and ourselves. Often or always in the name of corporate and/or personal “profit”. It seems too many in positions of political and industrial power have narrowly defined “profit” to include only monetary or material gain. This is proving to be a very costly error in reasoning.
In order to correct things one thing is certain, there needs to be balance brought back into our economic reality. There is an absolute need for us, as a species, to recognize our mutuality and keep each other’s well-being in mind.
Why focus on something so mundane as money rather than lofty sentiments about love and/or spirituality? Because what is happening with the material wealth we possess is a visible measure of what is happening with our spiritual reality. I don’t think that we’re all greedy, or callous to the well-being of our neighbors, however, look at what’s happening in so many places around the world. No matter all the high platitudes being written and spoken, platitudes about love and beauty, the truth is how we treat each other speaks much louder than the words in book or magazine or the music on the radio.
We usually think of external/worldly change happening as a result of an internal change, however, the reverse can also be true. Sometimes when we realize the absolute need for an external/worldly change, and act upon that realization, the dynamics precipitate a fulfillment of the change within our psycho-emotional make-up.
So, as we look around at the increasing poverty and suffering of the many on one side of the scale and the extravagant, inordinate wealth of the few on the other, isn’t it obvious what needs to be done? The only question is how is it going to happen? Because when things get too far out of balance, the natural tendency toward a viable balance will assert itself, that’s as inherent a reality as gravity. (As above so below, as below so above.) Will it happen in a caring, thoughtful manner or in a chaotic, traumatic series of events? Like so much else that happens in this world, it’s all up to us.
July 2017: I need to add that the predatory exploitation of developing and/or “third-world” countries has not been limited to individuals and/or corporations headquartered in the U.S. Nor is the government of the U.S. the only government which has a history of supporting, even subsidizing such exploitative activity. And finally, the problem of refugees and immigrants from countries which are suffering in significant part as a result of such exploitative activity is not limited to the United States.
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