Is Government for the people?
By Garin Samuelsen
Sunday, January 3, 2021
A reminder. These are one’s perspective based on the dialogue. Please dive in and share your own perspectives thoughtfully to engage this dialogue into new places that may be uncharted and lead to new insights.
Our dialogue began with a question that was sparked by one of our members who watched two films: Citizenfour and the other Snowden. I highly recommend that you watch both.
The question was - is the US Government and our economic and hierarchical system really for the people? Is any centralized Government for the benefit of all of its citizens or for making sure that the wealthy keep their power?
I will just ask a few questions and you can ponder and see if that is the case.
Can the Government be for the people in a representative democracy where politicians accept the bribes of corporations?
Can the Government be for the people when it accepts a hierarchical economic system?
Can the Government be for the people if it sees corporations as people?
Can the Government be for the people when it allows for corporations to dictate policies and to override what its citizens want?
Can the Government be for the people when it allows for propaganda and misinformation to be dictated to cover up what it is really doing such as it did after 911 with creating the narrative that there were weapons of mass destruction to get us into a war with Iraq, or how the US Government hides information about critical issues that impact all of us such as the impact of herbicides and pesticides have on our health or on climate change?
“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.....The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people....There are growing domestic social and economic problems, in fact, maybe catastrophes. Nobody in power has any intention of doing anything about them. If you look at the domestic programs of the administrations of the past ten years-I include here the Democratic opposition-there’s really no serious proposal about what to do about the severe problems of health, education, homelessness, joblessness, crime, soaring criminal populations, jails, deterioration in the inner cities - the whole raft of problems... In such circumstances you’ve got to divert the bewildered herd, because if they start noticing this they may not like it, since they’re the ones suffering from it. Just having them watch the Superbowl and the sitcoms may not be enough. You have to whip them up into fear of enemies. In the 1930s Hitler whipped them into fear of the Jews and gypsies. You had to crush them to defend yourselves. We have our ways, too. Over the last ten years, every year ot two, some major monster is constructed that we have to defend ourselves against.”
Can the Government be for the people when it tries to suppress voters rights?
Can the Government be for the people when there are ongoing human rights violations and systematic racism that is consistently accepted and not looked at?
Can the Government be for the people when it does not teach about the atrocities of its past history, from the annihilation of indigenous peoples, to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the ongoing caste system that was perpetuated, to the horrors inflicted on other countries for pursuit of resources and wealth for the elite?
Can the Government be for the people when its education system forces children to learn a curriculum that has nothing to do with that child ad forces them to not have an authentic voice in their learning?
Can the Government be for the people when the educational system conditions children to buy into a consumerist hierarchical dysfunctional society? Does the Government care about children when it forces schools to have large class sizes without concern for each child’s unique ways of learning and of their wonders and curiosity about the world around them?
“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”
Does the Government care about the children of its communities when they don’t put the necessary funding to help new parents have time with their newborns without stress? What about the utter lack of funding for early childcare centers when it is known how critical ages 0-3 are for a child’s healthy development?
Does the Government really care about our children when the system only sees children partially not holistically?
Can the Government be for children when they use a grading system that pits one child against another, that pushes children to be motivated externally or make those that don’t succeed in the standardized way feel stupid and insecure and anxious?
If the Government cared about its children, wouldn’t all schools have the necessary resources to make sure that every child could meet their fullest potential?
Is the Government perpetuating an educational system that teaches its populace fear, ignorance and to obey authority? Are we all, by being forced to subjugate our wonder and voice, being imprisoned into our dysfunctional society?
“We ask children to do for most of a day what few adults are able to do for even an hour. How many of us, attending, say, a lecture that doesn’t interest us, can keep our minds from wandering? Hardly any. What is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear escaping them. It is these signs, in children’s faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad, destructive of their intelligence and capacity. The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner.....We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions — if they have any — and helping them explore the things they are most interested in.”
Does the Government really care about its citizens if the Government does not make sure all of its citizens have affordable health care - not only for when people get sick, but more importantly to learn about how to be healthy?
Does our Government make sure that all of its citizens have have time to be in nature, and to exercise, or does the Government promote sitting in front of desks, sitting in cars, sitting around a television and buying into materialism?
Does everyone have the same access to health care services?
Does our Government in any way think about people and their health - what goes into food production and the grave impact of the meat and dairy industry on other animals welfare as well as the health of people and the environment? Does the Government care about mental health and the impact of poverty, racism, sexism, environmental degradation, on stress levels?
Does the Government care about its citizens when it jails a huge proportion of its citizens and especially those of color for minor offenses? Does the Government care about is citizens when it uses prisons as a punishment instead of rehabilitation?
Does the Government care about its citizens or people in other places in the world when it uses its military might like a bully to get what it wants without concern for the trauma its violence creates? When the US Government uses drones to kill, does that not create anger, suspicion, and trauma? How does using terror stop terror. Does the United States care about this? Or is the use of our military really about gaining resources and more power for the elite?
The military budge is as much as the top 14 countries military budgets combined. Why? And how does this help anyone? How is it that our military makes us safer and creates freedom? Or is the military used to subvert other countries and use them for its own means? How does this help our citizens? The US used technology to spy on every individual. What for? Power, control, manipulation and in keeping the structure of hierarchy….?
Does the Government care about its citizens when it accepts pollution, it accepts herbicides and pesticides - toxins that impact not only the soil and water but also the interconnected web of life in which people are also a part of, and contributes to cancer and major health issues?
Does the Government care about its people when it ignores that rivers and lakes are poisoned to where we can’t drink out of them without getting is sick?
“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is — whether its victim is human or animal — we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.”
Does the Government care about its citizens when it accepts and continues to use fossil fuels in order to make profits without concern on the impacts on climate?
Does our Government care about the environment, people, or does it simply use and manipulate the environment to amass wealth for an elite few?
Does the government care about a huge proportion of their population being impoverished? Do they create a narrative that makes it seem that it is the poor’s fault in being where they are at? What would the Government do if it cared about all of its people?
“Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.”
From my perspective, these are but a few examples of how the US Government doesn’t really care about its citizens. Basically, we came to the understanding that the Government is not for the people. It is not about community. Its focus is on perpetuating the rift between the rich and poor, between those who have power and those that don’t.
We also talked about how our economic system that plays itself across the planet is not sustainable which means that at some point it must collapse.
Instead of feeling hopeless though - as that came through during our dialogue, we wondered about how we can make a difference and not be apathetic… Here are some ways…
“The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.”
1) Have dialogue’s with friends, neighbors and learn from each other. Rather than being polarizing by coming into a dialogue as a Democrat or Republican, or a Christian or Atheist, come simply open and ready to engage thoughtfully and non judgmentally with one another. Come join our dialogue groups or form your own.
“Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture?”
2) Get into nature. Take walks into nature and discover the unfolding magnificence of the interconnected beauty of ecosystems. Bring your children into nature so that they see how they are connected to the earth, not separated. Find ways to protect your local environment. Plant native flora on your land and create native habitats that provide opportunities for diversity.
3) Be present. Listen and don’t run away from problems nor create more energy around them by continuing them; rather, just be with it. By listening without the movement of thought what happens to the observed and the observer, to division, to egoic identification? Listen to someone else with compassion instead of judgement who comes from what seems to be a very different perspective. By being present, does true love enter the picture?
4) See our children differently. Trust them. Listen to their questions. Let them guide you to what they want to learn about. See that all knowledge is hitched together. Question the way we educate and question if this is really about learning. Let wonder and curiosity flow and if you allow their voices to be heard, a new way of culture may emerge.
5) model by the way in which one lives. Question what one is doing? How does the way one eats, buys, lives impact the world?
6) Start with the small. Be local. Decentralized communities give rise to voice, connection to the environment, and each other. There is more possibility for democratic, egalitarian, holistic sustainable ways of living that is in deep connection to the natural world. Begin to create that type of democracy and voice with where you live.
7) Begin to be aware of your own programming and see how culture is not outside oneself, but the very nature of our conditioned minds. We perpetuate our dysfunctional society by the way we think.
