FIGHT FOR THE DREAM!

WHOEVER HAS A VISION CAN BE A PHYSICIAN

By Marc Batko

Whoever has a vision and can see new paths can be a physician. Whoever has no vision should run to the physician, Thorsten Hild said in “Economics, Politics and Society” http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2010/03/398044.shtml.

Who would have thought the work for peace could be so lonely and the transition from consumer to citizen so tedious? Thanks to the 30 year neoliberal anti-social revolution, we have missed forming a world against fascism and against privatization, a world of community centers where knowledge maximization triumphs over profit maximization and ignorance and not immigrants are fought.

We are called to plant the seed, to break with the myths and live lives of truth-telling, social justice and intercultural learning and not worry about success.

The social state, solidarity, social justice and sharing open doors while laissez-faire trickle down economics leads to exploding inequality and disappearance of public spirit

Rethinking should be the command of the hour. We have been psychologized, brainwashed or dummified

to think economic problems are temporary, personal motivation or industrial accidents and not systemic and structural,

to identify with the elite instead of the poor,

to confuse means and ends, part and whole, personal and private and real and imaginary.

In a “bright-sided” culture enamored with credit-bubble prosperity, short-term constraints trump future necessities as ideology trumps structure in a post-democracy (cf. Barney Frank and Thomas Frank). The dark side can be repressed and the bright side exaggerated. Rufus Keller wrote about this in “Deadly Progress and the Shadows” when Switzerland was turned into a sky circus and only beautiful women dominated car shows without a word about the deaths and destruction http://216.139.253.38/newswire/display/35102/index.php.



In a thought-provoking age, we have lost the ability to think (M. Heidegger) and the ability to remember and mourn. In a consumerist society, memory and hope are threatened along with festivity and fantasy (cf. Harvey Cox “Feast of Fools”).

The present is more than the present since it includes the promise. The future should be anticipated and protected in the present, not extrapolated from the present. (J. Moltmann).

Language can break the frozen soul (F. Kafka).

In an elite post-democracy, forms and institutions exist without substance, passion and conviviality (cf. I. Illich). As having can prevail over being, people can be enticed to surrender their freedom for authoritarian protection (cf. E. Fromm, “Escape from Freedom”). Services can serve themselves; people can be afraid to walk around the block without a doctor’s prescription (cf. I. Illich). The paper chase, the race to resume heaven, can replace real job creation where universities, the media, the church and unions bereft of their independence confuse the race to the bottom and the melting of the dollar with reducing working hours and exchange of roles.

In a culture of vulgar materialism and appearance, time is saved to be killed. Privatism and consumerism are stylized as ends and not decried as traps and blindnesses. Narcissism is an epidemic that can be overcome just as prejudice can be overcome (cf. Jean Twenge, “The Narcissism Epidemic”).

Christians and lovers of life should be alarmed

at the fading of the social state, at the redefinition of justice as “rewarding achievers” instead of distribution justice,

at the transfiguration of the corporation and mistaking the arsonist for the firefighter and the goat for the gardener,

at the return of the “No Nothing Party” as the Party of No

at the emergence of nitwit politicians with contempt of international law and the daily deaths of 100,000 (one child under ten every five seconds)

Elite consciousness is a frozen consciousness where there are no alternatives and bankruptcies are only normal business practice (cf. C. Boylan on CFRO Vancouver coop radio, www.coopradio.org).

Security, work, strength and health must be redefined. Albert Einstein lamented that the atom bomb had changed everything except the way we think. The one thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history (cf. A. Einstein). Normalizing war, militarizing foreign policy and waging wars of adventure in endless Vietnamization are signs of that learning incapacity.

The me-society, the majority society, has lost its way and needs the immigration society. Sustainability means not taking chances from the coming generation and seeing nature as our mother and partner, not as a free good, external or sink.

Economic rights are at the core of human dignity. Fight the war on greed; do something for the inalienable rights:

http://warongreed.org/dreams.php

The empire can become the republic (cf. Chalmers Johnson, “Nemesis”). The welcoming tradition of the US can supplant the tradition of fear as the free moral state can supplant the national security or police state.