Thank you for sharing this, Felicia. For people with all kinds of life experience, it's all coming into focus. Finally.
We know something is wrong and we are finally realizing that it isn't US that's the problem. There's a problem that's much bigger than us.
The problem is that our civilization—and not only capitalism although that's the part of the iceberg that's towering above the waterline—is built on a foundation of excrement.
The values of our society are, in fact, greed and selfishness and an amoral cruelty. We think productivity is a god. And we don't really question the system—we try to figure out how to get "ours."
The system has had us right where it wanted us.
Until now.
More and more people are like Felicia. We are realizing that the game is rigged and stupid and destructive. We understand that bosses and leaders are clueless. We will soon recognize that even those in positions of power and privilege are also mostly just cogs. We understand that succeeding in this society requires us to fail as human beings.
Here's the key point: we are wasting our lives and we are destroying the planet and we are dooming our children. We are doing it out of inertia, out of sleepwalking through life, out of conformity, and most of all out of obedience.
The people who produce everything (that's ordinary people like you and me, folks) also bear an endless stream of abuse daily at our "work." We produce mostly garbage, shiny hyped up crap that ends up in landfills. In the process, we fill the land and air and water and our own bodies with toxins.
THIS is the system in which we live. It is not inevitable. It was chosen. And we reaffirm these cruel systems each day when we go to work, when we let newspapers and TVs and the internet determine the subject AND LIMITS of our conversation. In fact, our acquiescence and ongoing support is the only thing sustaining the abuse, the cruelty, the violence, the lies and the empty senselessness.
We can reject it by beginning to withdraw our support. We need to NOT be afraid. Why should we be afraid? The very worst is happening—climate collapse and a mass extinction that will include our own grandchildren—so why should we be afraid to object? To stand up and speak out? To band together with others, perhaps and billion or more others who care, who want to live, who value NOT hate and violence and greed and products, but choose love and caring and human beings and Nature and LIFE?
WE are standing up. WE are objecting. WE are planning a strategy to stand up, to speak out, and to end cruelty and stupidity and destruction by refusing to cooperate with it.
WE are following in the footsteps of Gandhi and King, wielding the unstoppable force of nonviolence and noncooperation to force the changes required to stop ecocide and establish (finally) a humane society.
WE are fighting the insanity and this isn't symbolic—we damn well intend to succeed.
Read about the (new) movement. We are small so far, numbering only in the hundreds. But our potential is huge—every sane caring person on Earth is a potential member. Everyone who is waking up to the fact that we are alive, that life is limited and precious, that we can honor this gift by honoring each other and our planet and the experience of living.
WE are The Saners. Read about us at WeAreSaners.org.
And, if you are ready, you can sign up for our email list at WeAreSaners.org/join.
