The Meltdown

The cold, raw reality of our failing financial system is now bringing home a world of pain and devastation to millions of people around the globe who are losing their jobs, their homes, their savings and worst of all their sense of hope.

They look to their governments, the regulators, their financial institutions, the titans of manufacturing and wonder how it went so badly wrong. How could it all come undone? How could it collapse before our very eyes? We look to leadership and say, why.

It is interesting to note that at the very same time we are confronting a meltdown of our financial institutions the planet is confronting an even more severe meltdown, a dangerous warming of the climate. The two seismic events are not isolated but very much interconnected.

Since the dawn of civilization, man has been transfixed by power, territorial expansion and dominance. One tribe after another, one society after another, one state after another has attempted to exert its influence over its neighbors, mostly resorting to violence to achieve their goals.

Over the past century when we stabilize from our warring ways, after slaughtering millions of innocents, a new battle cry has arisen, one that hails industrial and economic growth, development and expansion. Laissez-faire capitalism and globalization has become the new clarion call but with it has come the destruction of land and sea.

The earth, a gorgeous, generous jewel of splendor, has been raped and pillaged by the industrial magnates seeking profits at all cost. Living in harmony with our planet earth has not been given consideration as we plunder the forests, the fertile lands, the minerals, the lakes, rivers and oceans so the captains of capital can claw and scrape the earth’s resources for the sake of massive profits to establish personal fiefdoms, build obscene mansions, fly private jets and devour every product at their disposal.

Consumption has become our religion. Society has been sold and has bought into the notion that we can always have more, a bigger house, another car in the driveway, endless new electronic contraptions because the earth will always give to us and we will always be able to take more from her and yet we give nothing in return.

Now we have reached a tipping point. The mass consumption that has been promoted so ferociously by our financial leaders, by our political leaders even by our religious institutions has come back to haunt us.

We have built enormous industrial facilities, mega power plants, created sprawling mega cities crisscrossed by thousands of highways and millions of vehicles.

We have poured billions upon billions of tons of carbon and other noxious chemicals into the very air we breathe and into the water we drink. We have savaged the animals who live on this planet giving them no place to roam, we have fished out the seas, we have strip mined the mountains, clear cut the mountain sides of trees and created millions of starving people all along the way.

But now we are reeling for from our harmful ways. This is not just about the credit crunch, sub-prime mortgages and foreclosures. This is not about the superpower politics, it’s not about the United States, China, Russia or Brazil. This is about our lack of spiritual connection to our earth and to us!

If we step back for a moment and look at the devastation we have created not just of our planet but the hundreds of millions of people who have very little or nothing to eat, a lack of clean water and no hope for education then we have to ask ourselves, have we succeeded as human beings on this earth.

It is time for the madness to stop. How can we go on killing each other? How can we go on degrading the very land upon which we depend? How can we reap vast riches and let babies starve in their mother’s arms?

It is time for a new social and corporate culture to emerge from the ashes of what we have created down through the millennium.

It starts with each and every one of us becoming aware of his or her place on this planet as a temporary visitor, a guest who will leave at some point. What do we want to be remembered for? What have we contributed to societies well being? How can we improve our personal and collective environment? It cannot be about what we can obtain for ourselves but how can we collectively improve the way we all live.

Government and corporations must take the lead. The first thing that must be done is to bring integrity and honesty back. There is almost a total lack of trust in our institutions. We have been deceived, misrepresented, stolen from and asked to support unjust wars that have plundered our young men, women and our treasury. Collusion between the arms merchants, other corporate leaders who benefit from war and the government has become commonplace.

We need leadership to impose a new sense of transparency so we know the truth when we are asked to put our armed forces in harms way. We need to know that corporations are making safe products not drenched in dangerous chemicals before we put our families at risk. We need to know that executives are not being unjustly rewarded for failing. We have seen this with so many corporations this past year and the tax payer being asked to bail out the rich time and time again. At the same time the little guy, just trying to feed his family and keep a roof over their head is thrown out of his job and then his home.

It is time for all of us to stand up and become responsible citizens of this planet earth. Our leaders must lead; they must restore credibility, integrity, honesty, equality and a sense of justice for all.

This country threw off the shackles of tyranny more than 200 years ago but we have created a new tyranny with a system that robs from the poor and gives to the rich, rewards failure if you have the right connections and allows the desecration of our home, our planet earth, for the sake of greed.

If we cannot correct these wrongs then the meltdown we are experiencing both economic and climate will bring humanity to the brink. Mother Earth will adjust and move on!