The
Violence That Rocks American Society:
How We
Did It to Ourselves
by Pastor
Paul J. Bern
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To
start off this week's commentary, I will spare you the cliche's about
the constant presence of things that money simply can't buy.
Hopefully everybody knows that, or if not you sure do now. We find
ourselves living, however, in an unbelievably corrupt society that is
governed in large part by criminals, although there are plenty of
good people mixed in with that. We also live in an unbelievably
violent society where we have mass shootings that occur with alarming
regularity. I even got a passport last winter, just in case of
possible civil war, another thing being disseminated on social media
with similarly alarming regularity. If a 2nd US civil war
breaks out, or if martial law is ever declared, I'm leaving (for how
long I can't say)! In between it all is the verbal machine gun fire
of commercial after commercial. I got so sick of all that I
terminated my cable TV subscription 6 years ago.
The
Bible, our owner's manual provided by God, has plenty to say about
violence, and how it will escalate here in these last days. Jesus
himself prophesied: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring
peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I
have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her
mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man's
enemies will be the members of his own household.' Anyone who loves
his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who
loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and
anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of
me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life
for my sake will find it.” (Matt. 10, verses 34-39) Now hold
that thought for a minute.
Is it
any surprise, then, that we find ourselves surrounded by so much
violence? OK, now here's an important question – why are there so
many violent people? Saying they are simply evil, or that they were
abused themselves as children, are simplistic answers and therefore
insufficient. There can be no question that we find ourselves in an
epidemic of mental illness, but that is a topic I'd rather leave to
trained mental health professionals. But I also think we are living
in times of great deprivation that is being experienced by the vast
majority of people. During these times of extreme inequality, a lot
of people are feeling like they've been cheated, abused,
disenfranchised and impoverished. That's because they have been
subject to all of the above. So I am not at all surprised that some
people snap under the pressure.
“Do
not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not
come to bring peace, but a sword.”
When Jesus walked the earth he was called, among other things, “the
Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9: 6). But that was 2,600 years ago. That
was then, but those words of our Lord and Savior concerning the
future are about to become spoken in the present tense. When Jesus
returns, he will not come as the Lamb of God as he did before. He
will come as a conqueror on a white horse (see Revelation 19: 11)!
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses
his life for my sake will find it.”
Those who pursue wealth, success and fame can achieve them all, but
the price tag may turn out to be unbearable. Hollywood has countless
such examples, as does the pop music scene. It all amounts to
organized crime.
Wall
Street itself operates as a criminal syndicate devoted to the theft
of that to which it has no rightful claim. It then bribes politicians
to shield the looters from taxes on their ill-gotten gains and to
eliminate social programs that cushion the blow to those they have
deprived of a secure and meaningful means of livelihood. In the big
picture, the Wall Street one percent has divided society into a
looter class that controls access to money and a producer class
forced into perpetual debt slavery – an ancient institution that
has allowed the few to rule the many for thousands of years. The
immense burden imposed on the 99 percent by public debt, consumer
debt, mortgage debt, and student loan debt is the outcome of the Wall
Street assault on justice and democracy, while maintaining a system
of enforced inequality. The resulting desperation and loss of social
trust account for the many current symptoms of social disintegration
and gun violence.
I grew
up in America during a time when we took pride in being a
middle-class society without extremes of wealth and poverty. In part,
we were living an illusion. Large concentrations of private wealth
were intact and systemic discrimination excluded large segments of
the population —particularly people of color – from participation
in the general prosperity. The underlying concept that the good
society is an equitable society, however, was and still is valid. And
from the 1950s to the 1970s the middle class expanded. But not any
more. Extreme
inequality as perpetuated by Capitalism, is both a source and an
indicator of serious institutional failure and social pathology.
Economic and social inequality are detrimental to human physical and
mental health and happiness – even for the very rich.
Relatively
equal societies are healthier on virtually every indicator of
individual and social health and well-being. In highly unequal
societies, the very rich are prone to seek affirmation of their
personal worth through extravagant displays of excess. They easily
lose sight of the true sources of human happiness, sacrifice
authentic relationships, and deny their responsibility to the larger
society at the expense of their essential humanity. At the other
extreme, the desperate are prone to manipulation by political
demagogues who offer oversimplified explanations and self-serving
solutions that in the end further deepen their misery. Governing
institutions lose legitimacy. Democracy becomes a charade. Moral
standards decline. Civic responsibility gives way to extreme
individualism and disregard for the rights and well-being of others,
up to and including gun violence.
Within
a political debate defined by the logic of living systems, such
measures are simple common sense. Within a political debate defined
by conventional financial logic, however, they are easily dismissed
as dangerous and illogical threats to progress and prosperity. So
long as money frames the debate, money is the winner and life is the
loser. Wall Street interests would have us believe that the best way
to save Earth’s ecosystems is to put a price on them and sell them
to wealthy global investors to manage for a private return. Rather
than concede the underlying frame to Wall Street and debate the price
and terms of the sale, North American indigenous leaders, the Occupy
and 99% Movements, and environmental groups drew on the ancient
wisdom of indigenous peoples to challenge the underlying frame. They
declared that as the source of life, Earth’s living systems are
sacred and beyond price as a creation of Almighty God's. They issued
a global call to recognize the rights of nature, which I view as a
form of obedience to God.
In
current practice we give corporate rights precedence over the
property rights of individuals. We give property rights precedence
over the human rights of those without property. And we give human
rights precedence over the rights of nature when it should be the
other way around. To put it bluntly, America's leadership and the
financial “elite” who are running our country into the ground
have their priorities backwards. Moreover, we – the 99% – will
continue to pay a terrible price so long as we allow the deeply
flawed logic of pure finance to define our values and frame the
political debate. Therefore it is up to us, the 99%, to get these
priorities put back in the correct order by any means necessary.
As of
this writing, we Americans are still not doing enough about our
plight to settle this peacefully. Hey, we haven't even learned to
live peacefully with each other! After all, the only remaining
alternatives are anarchy and revolution, and I have been convinced
for many years that one of these will be the ultimate outcome. I'd
much rather have the latter than the former. But, there is no magic
bullet quick fix. We must re-frame the debate by bringing God back to
the forefront and turning the prevailing wealth hierarchy on its
head. The rights of nature must come first, because without nature,
humans do not exist. As living beings, our rights are derivative of
and ultimately subordinate to the rights of Earth’s living systems,
all of which are God's creations. Human rights come before property
rights, because property rights are a human creation. They have no
existence without humans and no purpose other than to serve the human
and natural interest. Corporations are a form of property and any
rights we may choose to grant to them are derivative of individual
property rights and therefore properly subordinate to them.
The
step to a peaceful human future and a clean and balanced environment
requires that we acknowledge life, not money, as our defining value,
accept our responsibilities to God for one another and to nature, and
bring to the forefront of its Creator. Replacing cultures and
institutions that value money more than life with cultures and
institutions that value life more than money is a daunting challenge.
Fortunately, it is also an invigorating and hopeful challenge because
it reconnects us with our true nature as living beings and offers a
win-win alternative to the no-win status quo. The only two
alternatives are revolution (when all other means are exhausted, and
we are pretty much at that point now) or human extinction.
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