It’s Just Money. Stop Letting It Run Your Life.
Time for us to deal with the really bad addiction ...
I know what it feels like to think I’m about to die. I know what it feels like to have my baby die in my arms.
I know what it feels like to give birth. I know what it feels like to have the just-born child on my stomach looking up, her crystal-blue eyes gazing into mine.
I wonder how many people out there know what real life feels like.
I’ve just read the absolute hysteria of the wealthy individuals who were terrified that they would not receive the full value of their deposits at Silicon Valley Bank.
They demanded “immediate action” and got it from the U.S. Federal Reserve and other parts of the U.S. government. Their deposits were guaranteed up to any amount. The bank’s failure caused them an inconvenience.
One that may have threatened to upend the entire economic system.
And what a system it is!
Every single day, there is a little girl or boy going hungry. In this country, the world’s “most powerful,” and “wealthiest.”
Every single day, there is still a young man or young woman rationing their insulin despite the complex and arcane efforts of the U.S. governmental bureaucracy and the 23 companies that make and sell it.
And of those millions of those people who must take insulin, the majority are required to take the absurdly expensive, simply-made medication, because they have Type 2 diabetes as a result of eating the foods that are commonly made and sold to us by people who must work double shifts for low pay in dangerous factories —
In preference to actual real, healthy, nutritious food.
But no one cares about that, right?
They care about the world’s biggest superyacht, right? I mean Jeff Bezos’ superyacht is only 430 feet long, while the really big one is well over 500 feet long —
They care about who won the Academy Awards (not really — viewership and interest is down).
They care that the people who have money they will never be able to use in a bank they’d never heard of before now will have all of their precious money back.
We’re living in a world where a supposed judicial body of the nation’s best legal minds has said that corporations have all the rights of human beings —
but none of the responsibilities.
That’s the reality for most of the richest humans. This has been the case for the humans who are obsessed with money and power, apparently since the human behaviors we call “civilization” arose — thousands of years ago.
And the thing is: it’s just money.
You can’t take it with you. You can’t cook it and eat it. It can buy many things, of course. If you worship money, it’s your God, it is your Friend, and maybe it’s your Mortal Enemy.
Money can’t buy you self-esteem: the false front it affords seems to be the exact opposite of real self-respect and self-love.
As to power? Power to do what? Buy millions of “followers” on “social media”? Power to have a “title”? How about “being in charge” — of anything.
That’s a blast, right? I mean everyone aspires to making life and death decisions for others —
These Silicon Valley Bank rich people, by their existence, are making sure that little kids lack nutritious food, and this whole sick, unhealthy, disturbed culture continues.
Bail them out. Guarantee their deposits.
But heaven forbid a little child should have a clean, warm bed to sleep in, decent shoes and clothes to wear, good food to eat, and time to play with their friends and learn.
Life is about how we live, each day of our lives.
We are all confronted with choices and some of us choose to pursue beliefs, behaviors, and activities that harm others as well as ourselves.
We condemn the drunk, the drug addict, and the petty street criminal.
We cower in fear and deny the crimes of the richest criminal who has less ethics and caring than any shoplifter or purse snatcher.
It’s just money.
It’s an abstract concept.
And it’s time that everyone has access to the “compassion” and immediate action and intervention the government authorities and Really Important Tweeters showed to Silicon Valley Bank depositors.
We do not need to take “money” from the rich. There is more than enough of this intangible substance — quite obviously — for everyone to have their basic needs met. Collective social attitudes — which are in the process of change — prevent this from happening.
No one should have to sacrifice 80% of their life and their physical and mental health to make Hot Cheetos or deliver them to stores so Warren-Fucking-Buffett can have another $100 million. No one should have to work 40 years at a non-essential job they hate just to survive.
Hundreds of millions of people, maybe even billions, understand what I just said.
It is the richest who do not. For obvious reasons. Why should their addiction be everyone’s addiction?
The fewer people worship and obey the rich and powerful, the healthier and better-off the larger body of humanity and the planet itself, will be.
Resist.