Forum Post: Time to redefine the 1%
Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 29, 2011, 10:05 p.m. EST by npowell85
(249)
from Montana City, Mt
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Many wealthy and famous people are beginning to join the cause. I would suggest we be very careful not to exclude those in the top 1% income bracket who do what they can to protect the environment and give back to those who have helped them make their way.
Think of the 1%, instead of being the richest, as being the ones corrupting government and sacrificing the good of the majority for personal gain; think of those engaged regularly in human rights violation and destroying our earth to bloat their bank accounts. In my experience talking to people here, those are the ones this crew is fighting against. They are just not doing a very good job of expressing it.
Agreed.
I think of the 1% as those who use the system's deficiencies to carve themselves an even bigger slice of the pie, environment and citizens be damned.
For example, the BPs of the world who make sure the regulations for offshore oil rigs are nice and loose, for example. (http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/MMS-2008-OMM-0003-0011.1.pdf)
The financial world is rife with examples, of course. (Here's a thought: we could make a list of specific incidents where a big company influenced the gov and the results were demonstrably bad.)
that a great idea. I think the more evidence you have to present to the curious-minded skeptics the more support we will win
agree people should not be judged by the size of their bank account, but by their actions alone.
I don't agree. Sure there are people in the 1% bracket that side with us, but this is the whole premise of the argument. The system has been rigged for the 1%. I am tired of listening to the 1% ers on this site trying to make themselves out to be the victims.
If they want to join. Fine. I have no problem with that. It's really none of my business but I wish they would stop talking about how they feel so abused and left out when this has nothing to do with what this movement is about. It's about fairness, getting corporations out of government. It's not about class war.
Ok then its official We're the 99.1%
:).
time to redefine what we do as being for the 100 percent.
i don't have any enemies really, just assorted types of potential clients.
honestly the best way to go about this is not to draw such lines. There are only victims. There is no thems. Just usses. All the way into the most evil of them- they are still victims of that evil. Like Star wars. The end game is to bring them to the light.. we can't do that if we have accepted the dualism that there is a villain which we fight against.
Agree. This system victimizes everyone, including what we think of as benefactors. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we'll be empowered to go after the culprit. Some call it evil. I prefer to call it delusion. The rich are subject to the delusions just as the shrinking middle class and poor. A materialist is a materialist whether or not he or she has the material.
Let me get a little spiritual up in this forum for just a moment. Have encountered a lot of good books and teachers in may day (total luck) and perhaps some of the following may be applicable.
To free ourselves and each other of materialism would certainly eliminate a lot of issues. As much as I like to push the list of demands (and I do think they or something similar to them could help real people), I know deep down that we are really struggling as a society with delusions about community. We have begun to discount its value and retreat to our gated communities (either literally or metaphorically).
Dostoevsky in his masterpiece "Brothers Karamazov" called it madness, believing that the security and happiness of the individual could be achieved by cloistering oneself off in separation with high walls and guards. Madness. The security of the individual can only be achieved by securing the whole. To paraphrase him, he said that they'll call us fools for saying so. But that whoever can do it, should muster the energy to "keep the great idea alive".
Martin King put it like this: "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. We are all inextricably linked."
I believe that wealth, the true wealth of peace and joy, only comes with that wisdom. And the sooner we all wake up to that new definition of wealth, the sooner we'll stop harming people collaterally as we flail about in pursuit of status and more more more. Paradoxically, the only way to get the good kind of more is to empty ourselves out of everything, hollow ourselves out so what mystics call the spirit (and the Jedi's call the force :) can fill us up.
Once we let go of everything, our fear drops away like water off a duck's back. And once fear is gone, we have no trouble judging ourselves by our own standards rather than the standards of Wall Street as communicated relentlessly by Madison Ave. ad men. Or maybe we stop judging ourselves altogether.
That's the point at which rising up becomes natural. You have nothing to lose because your peace comes from within. You've stopped chasing your thoughts (sorry provocative TV ads) and fears and started to trust your heart. No regime can hold back a nation of citizens that have learned to trust their hearts.
I have to disagree here gawd. If they wish to come "to the light" then they will have to make a concerted effort to stop polluting and no longer be involved in the business of bribing politicians or taking advantage of the poor. Those who commit these injustices are not victims in my opinion, but oppressors.
you are missing the point. oppressors are still victims of their own trip. Karma is VERY effective at putting them in a private hell. Nobody does evil and lives happy unless they are a true sociopath and even then- they still need help. These are undeniably unfathomobaly evil people in many cases. That does not change anything. If we are going to make real change happen, we must at least go on a case by case basis, not a numeric statistical value. Beyond that we must bear in mind that even the most evil oppressor is a covictim of the system and ultimately is a client which we need to get services to. Not fight.
But some people don't find Allah or Buddha or God or services until thevy've been in jail for a couple of months or years. We do have to fight them until they see that what they are doing is wrong, until they see that greed is something to be feared.
Right now greed is their God. Maybe we can never get them to see that this is wrong because it ends up hurting others, but we can do everything in our power to prevent their greed from hurting others by demanding legislation preventing them from acting on their greed.
Do we all have sympathy for the pimp (who works 14 hour days and makes 250k a year) because he's accumulating bad karma? What about the jewel theif or the Ponzi schemer? Don't these people start from nothing (Madoff) go to school and work 14 hour days?
But if we really had compasion for Madoff and mortgage securities scammers, wouldn't the most compassionate thing to do be prevent them from acting on their greed, and thus prevent them from accumulating bad karma?
absolutely the most compassionate thing is to get them to stop.