With the Nation-wide debate over the debt ceiling and the economy at large raging across the country, I figured I'd put my two cents in while it's still worth, well, two cents.
It's seems it's been the job of pundits and "experts" on ideological teams to classify exactly who is at fault during this debate, and who is the champion of "right reason" (right as in correct). The line of victims and perpetrators has been laid out, and depending on your personal world view, you have a clean path drawn for your fingers to point to villains and poor innocents alike. It's become so easy to tell who you root for and who you despise that we're collectively tottering on the edge of a cliff, feeling perfectly justified in our righteous indignation for "those" who are causing the problems.
So, what do we do when everyone's right and the problem still exists? Re-adjust our thinking and support people with real ideas for solving these finite problems? Nope... We turn to divinity!
Governors all over our country are meeting with religious leaders and calling for days of prayer for intervention in the debacle that men created by fooling the trusting majority, who counted on these "leaders" to keep us from having to make that ethereal 911 call. But with so many factions and entities to choose from, which agent of the divine do we pick for our heavenly national audit?
Well, of course there's Jesus and the big man in the sky (ala Zeus/Jupiter), his half-brother Mohamed, or the Hebrew father of them both, Yahweh... er Abraham maybe. We could lean east and pick one of the many Hindu gods or goddesses, but just who would be best suited?
Since, by the extreme percentages, around 135M people world-wide would physically assault someone for the words they speak about these entities, it's worth realizing, regardless of your personal beliefs, all these expressions, these apparitions, these deities, these examples of divinity... all these gods have power. People have proven themselves again and again fully capable of killing and/or being killed in the names of the divine.
Bearing this in mind, I propose a new suggestion. Actually, a very old suggestion. Ma'at.
Ma'at "was the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice." In the grand scheme of things, a little Ma'at could go quite a long way. This deity is depicted wearing the "feather of truth" in her headband, and basically called things like they actually were.
If you dance near a cliff (to continue a metaphor), Ma'at says there's a chance you'll fall off. If you smoke cigarettes (which I sometimes do, sadly), Ma'at says there's a chance you'll get cancer or emphysema. If you do something that increases your risk of calamity, Ma'at says there's a chance you'll experience just such a calamity, and rightfully so. That is the way the universe works.
Now I know that very few people even know the name Ma'at today, but that wasn't always the case. The whole Egyptian empire (millions of people) knew her well for nearly six thousand years. Even with this day's population, on an individual basis, I'd bet as many people have channelled Ma'at through time as have any other idealized figure.
Based solely on the concept, though, it's hard to argue that having our society focus on the truth of our situation, thereby marginalizing the spurious sales pitches, wouldn't be a good thing.
The facts as I understand them are these. Around 3M Americans over the past 30 or so years have set a system in place whereby they make extremely vast sums of money, largely at the expense of people who don't know what they are doing. They made sure no one knew what they were doing so well that many of them couldn't help in the current fiscal situation if they wanted to... which most don't.
The giant wealth factory that is America has been shaped and shifted to funnel the results of the average person's lifetime straight back to those 3M Americans. All the value. All the worth. All the savings and security oozes ever so unnoticeably from the embattled to the jackals who've spent so much time and effort making permanent changes to the rules of the house. (Duh, winning)
I call them jackals, but they're really just people taking advantage of the board they set up for as long as they can. More the problem now, and what could use the benevolent help of the Ancient Egyptian goddess of truth, are the pitch-men selected for there ability to talk for hours and not say anything. Our politicians.
All sorts of descriptions get tossed around when discussing this class of individuals. I prefer unscrupulous, but then I've known a few in my day.
They will brood for hours, days or even years in order to come up with a way to say that a yellow bucket is green... and they do it so well they convince half the country it is so.
And, as always, here's where the factioning comes in. Our national conversation goes from whether a bucket is yellow or green, or whether 3M Americans are now holding more wealth (without creating jobs) than some 290M other Americans, to whether or not two dudes should be able to get married, or whether anyone should pay any taxes at all!
Politicians have tried to make this a battle over ideology, but it's really not. It's a battle to control the public perception of "truth." The people with the money have hired a giant PR firm calling itself a political party to sell the American public on the idea that they're supposed to want to work until they die for two weeks vacation a year and a flat-screen.
My revolution in thought is simple. I don't want to work for a robber-baron or a central government. I just want to work the with people around me to make a stable and secure world for my children and all the children of the world to inherit. That starts in the void left by lust and greed. Rather than being greedy for a personal wealth, I'm eager for the well-being of everyone... after all, many hands make light work and we've got a job to do.
