Our new God, Status Quo

Recently I wrote a blog about how energy is the big evil. And that may be true in the ways I delineated. But that is the physical side of things. The emotive side I believe, is status quo. Two small words. They sound rather innocuous, don't they? I always thought of the status quo as a good and proper thing.

How many things have been done under the paradigm of maintaining, or increasing, the status quo? How many unethical transactions have been perpetrated? How many people ruined or imprisoned? How many murders, how many wars?

When I look at our current crises, I find the same thing. Greed. But greed isn't so much gluttony, as it is fear and laziness. And an addiction to comfort. We all have it, to some degree. And it's a good thing, to some degree. But the degree to which it has become the standard operating procedure, is pathetic, and scary.

Strike that, it's terrifying.

I have seen Congressmen/women making decisions that include our country continuing on as we are, with the consideration of murdering thousands of people, or maintaining dictators, thugs, murderers, all in the sacred name of, status quo.

We find there are secret, behind closed door type meetings. Secret, because the moral of us might object to abusing people in other countries whom we may never get to meet personally. I know I have no desire to abuse people I have nothing against. But then, I don't like to abuse anyone, unless it is to get them to stop abusing me, or others. Yet we have paid people to do this kind of thing, for us. For... us.

How we have practiced all our lives through religion for one, to turn a blind eye, to turn the other cheek, to hypocritically ignore what strictures we have dedicated ourselves to believing and following. I have heard person after person say they believe in the bible and all it says, until I pointed out many, many things in it that they said they would not follow because they were contra-indicative, illegal, simply wrong as they know it in their "gut", or because they contradict the same stricture elsewhere in the bible.

And we have grown up with that from childhood. I asked my parents about something I read in the bible and their answer? Just ignore that. Shut up. Or you can't understand God's mysterious ways. Etc., etc., etc.

But this isn't about religion. It's about status quo.

It's about how we have ignored what our leaders have been doing, or not doing, for decades. For forever maybe. How did we get in this situation? Who allowed it? Who, is responsible?

In the end, we are. We all are. But then, we hire people do do what is right, to find out what is right, then make a proper and ethical decision and carry it out, and be responsible for their actions. But, do we? No, we let them make the wrong decisions, then get away with it, as they point to us and say to us that it's OUR Fault.

Uh, I don't think so. Sounds like obfuscation to me. Shirking their duty. And their responsibilities. Again.

We really need to start holding people responsible and having laws that allow us to do so. That latter part, is kind of important. Our laws are pretty screwed up. Our concept of Law is good, we just need to do something we seldom do, but it interrupts the status quo and it's expensive. We need to adjust once in a while and we need to wipe some laws off the books occasionally.

That's the small picture. The big picture has to do with nations, and people who are not American citizens. We need to go into their countries, we need to negotiate, we need to not abuse them. Make a good deal? Certainly. But rip people off? No. Because that in the end, as we've seen with the Middle East, is against our long term interests. And oh, it's wrong, too.

Yes, we need energy. But that isn't necessarily oil, okay?  We may need to make some drastic changes. But the funny thing is, we should have done this a long time ago. Who didn't do it? Our leaders. Gee, we keep coming back to that.

If and when you have a CEO who does a bad job, runs the company into the ground, what do you do? You fire them. What do we do now a days? We give them $10 million and send them on their way.Is that right?

Now tell me, does that really make any sense to you? I could go into how much more a CEO makes than a more lowly person at the bottom of the company, or the majority of the employees there, but let's not get off the track here.

We also need to not abuse our own Citizens. Something we're losing track of when it comes to fear and terrorism. We have been building our way around our constitution and the laws that protect us all for a while now.

How, I have no idea, but that seems to be the way of things lately. Why? To maintain the status quo, to continue to have safety everywhere in America. Well, I'm all for that, but then again, America stands for something and we need to stick up for that too, even when it causes us some grief, or pain.

If a bully beats you up, you fight back. If you don't, they keep doing it. When they stop, you don't keep beating them up. You don't keep harassing them every minute of the rest of their lives. You use reasonable responses. But you don't put up armed guards at the entrance to everywhere, just because one place has had problems. If there are problems there, you evaluate them, find out why they happened, ask if that can spread, what behavior is causing it to occur, are there socioeconomic elements that need to be addressed, and so on.

This isn't touchy-feely egg head stuff, it's cause and effect. And the fix, is hard to do and expensive sometimes, but we either do it correctly, or we do it wrong. And we've gotten into we either do it cheaply, or we do it wrong, also? What kind of thinking is that?

There is no answer here to give. We simply need to talk more about these kinds of things. When you find things in your life that are nonsense, speak up about it. People will look at you like you're nuts sometimes, but the more people talk about it, the more odd it will start to sound and the more people will want to make things right. Just pick a word, repeat it aloud or in your mind until it starts to sound, odd. Understand? The more we bring up these problems, sooner or later it will sink in, people will get the point, and start to wonder, to ask questions, to feel there is something wrong.

Koyaanisqatsi. Native American Hopi tribe for "Life out of balance". It certainly is.

What we need here isn't to suddenly make everything right. Frankly, I think that is impossible.

What we need to do is change our paradigm for how we make decisions. We need to change our way of thinking about things. We need to apply critical thinking against nearly everything. I agree that we need some fantasy in life, it is a basic Human survival skill and to lose that would be ludicrous.

But we need to start getting used to becoming adults in the modern world. We need to shuck off our childhood and deal with things in a critical fashion. If we run out of water, we die. If we pollute our environment, our social environments, if we don't start thinking world wide about everything, we're going to be in some tough ways; very possibly, far sooner than we think.

The days of just doing what is expedient and worry about the costs later, or let our children or grandchildren deal with it, are over. Very soon we will be making decisions on what will affect us within a few years. For many things, we are there now.

So the next time you hear someone in charge say they have done something very creative to maintain your statu quo, ask them what they mean by that. Question authority. Question too, the little guy, the "dumb" guy, because even the village idiot has his story to tell; question the guy who has nothing to do with it, but might himself have a creative idea, maybe one that spreads a positive influence rather than negative ones. Think outside the box. Think. Challenge.

But be ready. In the end, yes, it's all our responsibility. But someone has to be in charge, to push the buttons, give the orders, make the decisions, take the responsibility. That has got to mean something. And remember, we do not apply the status quo to everything.

When someone breaks the law, or breaks a corporation, or a country, they don't get a golden parachute and retire to Martha's Vineyard. They go to jail, they lose money; they do not make money, they stop doing what they are doing; others stop doing what they were doing. They get punished for their bad behaviors.

 Does maintaining the status quo sound now like the cool thing is used to be? This wasn't meant to be an ad for the Occupy movement, but they certainly have a point and I think I've just supported it in a way that has nothing to do with them. It just makes sense.

I suspect that statu quo was always this way. We just didn't see it all until we were better educated and the world continued to shrink for us until now, along with instantaneous communications, we have woken up from our intellectual slumber and have come to see reality as it really is. And it's pretty scary.

Status quo, sure, if you like; but it's at your, and all our our peril.