I'm Not Falling for The System

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”
―Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

There are words that the dreamers are called often… ‘idealistic,’ ‘foolish,’ ‘native,"‘… etc. which are soon followed by the statement, “thats not how the world works.” I’m not falling for it anymore. The truth is that the corporate economic system is built on infinite growth within a finite system. The earth cannot expand, grow, or be more than it is. The earth is currently the exact size that earth will always be, with all of the materials for our survival on board. Why then, am I called an idealist when all I want is to be able to exist in this world with this life and these people, while the money-mongers go on grasping at a disturbing allocation of wealth that is not representative of the resources that are literally diminishing underneath our noses.

It is not idealistic to want to have food security, and a safe home, and the safety of my friends and family… and it shouldn’t be a privilege. There is enough technology to send people to the moon, there is enough technology to feed the people on this earth. We spend so much time looking at the global systems and trying to fix the nations across the world from us, without addressing the problems on our own soil. America is a place with vast swaths of arable land, and yet we have replaced the beauty of biodiversity with machines that pillage the soil. We ask the land to provide for us without giving it time to take care of itself.

The problem is that we silence the dreamers and idealists because they illuminate a way of life that involves a compromise of this ‘infinite experience,’ and ‘immediate satisfaction’ culture we have blooming under our feet. We have cut ourselves off from the process of self growth, the process of food growth, and the process of connecting the dots between ourselves and our impacts. It is not hard work to understand that eating meat is a silent agreement that you are okay with killing an animal. It is not hard work to understand that the cheaper your coconut cream, the more exploitation there was in the supply chain. It is not hard work to examine your life and decide what you are and are not okay with.

I am not okay with using my one wild life to sit idly while the world explodes in splendor. I am not okay with a government that prioritizes economic growth above the welfare of its people, and I am not okay with a government that does not protect all of its people. America is beautifully diverse, and our diversity is our strength. We need each other and we need to raise the welfare of all people. I believe the playing field needs to be evened. I believe that the work of the farmer is more important than the men in fancy suits throwing fake money across screens. I believe that the wealth of our nation is a fake security, and that when we pull back the layers we see what we have forgotten.

We have forgotten how to teach our children the flowers. How to connect with the physical land that holds our bodies. How to look each other in the eye and understand how deeply important every life that we pass by is. We need each other, and we need to feel needed, and we need to make ourselves needed. Right now we need an intersection of the financial markets to sway towards goals that address the physical constraints of this earth in order to sustain the human population in it. It is not an extremist rally cry, but rather the truth we are unwilling to admit to ourselves.