The Current Economic Crisis and Our Work

Greetings fellow travellers,
Over the past week, I have had many thoughts about the dynamic factors currently affecting work life and living.Previously reasonable assurances about the rewards of hard work and dedication, have been thrown into a tailspin by tremendous upheavals in the global economic system. The belief that an individual could attain economic security and a decent quality of life which came in the form of access to education, rewarding employment, guaranteed comprehensive health care and affordable housing is no longer assured. There has been much brilliant analysis about the cause of what may well be a global recession and one candidate for blame, was that class of homeowners, who participated in the so called sub prime market and supposedly fueled the foreclosure crisis. To me it is troubling that observers were so quick to label those in this predicament as greedy and irresponsible, willing to gamble away their financial well being on inflated housing market prices. Interestingly enough there has not been much questions raised about the role of those elected to look out for and protect the interests of the common people. It does not seem unreasonable to expect that they should have been at least a little more vigilant and noticed that the ice floating on top of the water was actually the tip of the iceberg and sounded the alarm to take the economic survival of the nation out of the hands of money drunk vultures. I believe that people were doing what they would do, in any market place where the maximixazation of profit is valued as an expression of individual worth and acheivement and rewarded at the highest levels of society. In this context the challenge of work, life and living is very complex and daunting, as the cost of education soars, basic needs for food and fuel carry obsence prices, pension and other retirement plans disappear and health care, like housing becomes a privilige or luck and no longer a human right.
I believe that the current economic situation threatens the human rights of the working people of the world and places our ability, to work for a better life and to enrich our living experience, in serious jeopardy. These developments instruct me that we must deveop alternative, more valid models for work life and living and a few identifiable characteristics seem to be evident. In our current market driven lifestyles, we will continue to pray for, or search for some entity or individual leader that will deliver or save us, another St. George to slay the dragon. Yet there seems to be much evidence that if the forces, that we look to for economic salvation, the rulers of the domestic and global market place wanted to save us, they probably don't even know how and even if they did know, I wonder if they have the moral will and actual resources to help us. In any case their unrelenting worship of profit, their committment to perpetual accumulation of wealth, would make their willingness to commit class suicide and redistribute the more than adequate resources for the common good hardly likely. They will help us, but not if that jeopardises their position of power. To me this situation calls for clarity about our identity within the global economic system, as the element that impacts most deliberately on our life experience. For example, fuel costs, the endless war of terror, the horror of ongoing slaughter of the people of Congo (DRC) that is fueled by economic rape of the human and mineral wealth of Africa. I have little doubt that we need to radically reorganize our economic activity, around our collective reality of being on a sinking ship, with those in chartge actually trying to push us overboard. One goal of our work, should be to identify and prioritize our collective and individual needs, audit our rersources and proceed to develop our solutions while we still have some "breathing space" to gain the initiative before we are faced with a "no choice" situation, like abandon ship. The organizing of our resouces into collectives/cooperatives, would demand the kind of paradigm shift, that can only come from serious work to liberate ourselves from the oppressive legacy and ongoing process that we have experienced. One of our primary tasks would be to restore the integrity of our culture, by developing trust, accountable and responsible relations between and amongst each other. Looking at the pace in which things are continuing to escalate, not in a desirable way either, it seems that we will have little choice but to turn to ourselves and honor the wonderful opportunities for us to overcome these survival challenges and create a more more nourishing lifestyle.