Forum Post: Peace now!!!!

We are better than this. The American spirit is to come together during times of crisis, not to turn on each other as Wall Street reaps the benefits of our divided nation. People on the right think I'm a hippie, people on the left think I am Karen. We are making assumptions about one another that may or may not be true. Even if the worst is true about a person - it is up to each individual to lead by example and wear our integrity and empathy on display. We must never sink ourselves or destroy our belief systems in the expectation that it will create change. It does not work. It creates more division.

In our current times, the conversations we should be having are about the American quality of life and our work systems. Equity for all whoever we are. We can see that laborers are being undervalued. We can see that our working system refuses to acknowledge that as a species rearing children is part of our daily lives that must be incorporated into our jobs. We can see that passive income is creating an unequal cast system of haves and have nots. We can see that we are not taking care of nature and our planet. While we may not agree on everything - we as a country MUST come together to search for progress and find out where our values coalesce.

We must also as a species begin to understand the dynamics of empathy vs sociopathy. What do we do with people who lack conscience for their fellow humans? This is not a racial issue. The amount of sociopaths in each race is the same. This human trait is something we must begin to examine and this is becoming a conversation among groups online and a wave as large as the Paleo diet. Is sociopathy a mental disability and what do we do about it. What can we do to lessen the chances that children will grow up with this trait? Should we as a society begin to recognize the symptoms of sociopathy as a very negative human trait as a communal species? Trickle down economics of Larry Kudlow, Alec, and this administration has pushed the philosophy of sociopaths onto our society and now we are paying this price. The lack of good paying jobs, the consolidation of wealth into the hands of a few over the welfare and well being of the many, the lack of ethics in business, and the lack of concern for the labor responsible for the success in every business, human beings being seen not as individuals, but as pieces of a wealth generator to be used up and discarded. This devaluation of human life - is happening to us all but is especially happening in communities of color who are the majority of our labor force. In order for Wall Street to successfully exploit them, they have worked very hard at devaluing the working class, and by default communities and people of color. This is a fact. The outcome of Wall Streets devaluation of human beings is that our system of government which has been incorporated into the fold of Wall Street, is now doing the same thing, from schools, to police, to local communities, working class, people of color, and anyone not on wall street's ladder of success - has been silently sacrificed to service the machine. The propaganda has worked. We are being ignored. We are being called crazy. We are told to be silent. And now people are even being killed so often we got used to hearing about it on the news - some even scoff and say they must have done something to deserve it.

The breakdown of our system was inevitable. This was clear to me when Nafta was signed, and when Bush took office. Now that it has fortunately Hallelujah! happened we must come together and agree that we must move forward together pushing empathy to the forefront of our governmental system and of our society in general. We must value the individual and the well being of the masses in an elegant balance. We must also recognize that we can all have a decent quality of life. No person should be homeless in America. And no person should be as rich as Jeff Bezos. The strength of our country lays in our common sense ability to tell what is decent and moral. If we do not value that ideal within ourselves, then we can not promote that ideal in our society. We must spread love. If we want to end hate, then we must not hate. Feelings of injustice are not wrong. Feelings of anger are not wrong. Self expression is important. But how we carry ourselves and how we behave and how we treat others - becomes our true character. What is the character of America? I hope peace; To be peaceful and benevolent, and empathic, and reinforce our spirit of lifting others to the light, even when we don't like them very much. I hope our way of life returns to compassion. Not as martyrs, or with arrogance of who is better than who, but because we can imagine being in the life of another human being and feel and appreciate their individual experience as an individual doing battle with existence. We are all on that journey and it's a very short ride too. we must help each other along the way.