Countries and systems don't fail overnight. There are warning signs. Red flags precede any kind of a decline.
Usually, these warning signs are dismissed as temporary obstacles on the road to unending success as we go whistling past the graveyard. Until one day the bottom falls out without any apparent warning. The red flags were always there - it's just that nobody paid attention.
This first warning sign is a systematic decline in values to the extent that human suffering and inequities mean less than money. The scramble for money has already become so intense that physicians refuse to see sick people if their insurance isn't quite right (doesn't pay enough) such as Medicare, and even includes large companies like such as Aetna, and United Health Care if they try to control costs too closely.
This insensitivity is called greed. Money rules the game, and all pretenses of caring for our fellow men and women go out the window. Even though the insensitivity is rationalized by the "tongue in cheek" argument that the more money there is, the better off poor people will be, this has proven to be a huge fallacy. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer until the system crashes. The latest financial crash and "recovery" is a sign that this kind of greed mentality has taken root at an intractable level; all the old abuses are coming back, and fast! Ponzi schemes eventually fail, and gamblers can never get enough.
And it will worsen. Greed is already permeating society at every level. Why is it that our companies in this country, unlike other countries where health care costs are spread evenly throughout the populace, are stuck contributing up to seventy-five percent of the health care cost? This is killing them as greed increases medical costs two or three times that of wages. How could anyone blame small and large companies when they replace full time workers with part time workers to avoid offering health insurance, or how could we blame them for not offering health insurance at all?
Greed will continue to grow with the health care industry at every level - doctors, hospitals, insurance companies - and as the back-breaking costs to the employers increase, they will have no alternative other than to cease and desist in all health care contributions to employees, which means that the health care industry will eventually price itself into oblivion.
All these cross-currents can be readily seen the current fractionalized health care debate where money and institutions are considered more important than the well being of all Americans. It is all playing out perfectly regarding this first warning sign of greed, and greed will certainly be a major contributing factor to the eventual fall of the system as we know it. Money and influence rule the lives of the common man and woman now, rather than compassion and caring. And historically, that was a sure sign of any cultures eventual decline.
The second warning sign is hatred. If you look back over the history of our country, never has there been such openly expressed hatred toward those with dissenting opinions. It has deteriorated to the point that the president is no longer respected, cannot even civilly talk to school children without a violent reaction from the other side. This all indicates a deep and intractable hatred that is festering and will eventually ruin the country. This is a national Hatfield's and McCoy's. Can actual violence be the next move? Apparently; when men in congress can outspokenly call each other liars, violence can't be too far off.
And the third warning sign is our delusion regarding who we are as Americans. The world has an opinion of who we are, but our own opinions of who we vary dramatically from outsiders who can objectively see what we are. While we see ourselves as fiercely independent, which is a consolation that results from a run of exceptionally good luck for a young (200 + years) country, the world at large sees us as arrogant, egotistical, spoiled, greedy, and insensitive to the world at large and even our fellow citizens, where America is living off of the world's back by borrowing money that we will never be able to pay back, in order for us to live rich and famous lifestyles far beyond the means of other countries.
But there is still time to save ourselves. Greed to get what we want regardless of everyone else - hatred of anyone who disagrees with us as if we know it all - and delusion about who and what we truly have become can all be cured. The problem is that the cure will entail a complete failure of the system before anything or anyone will change. This is the way we seem to run things here, complete ignorance to what is going on until it is too late - because no one can tell us what to do, and we refuse to take any advice. Are we fiercely independent? Or fiercely stupid?
Open mindedness and considering all alternatives would be the way to change things without an eventual failure of the system, but that probably won't happen. Large egos, closed mindedness, stubbornness - all will prevail if history has any relevance. So, as the oil filter company says, "You can pay me now or pay me later," we can start to set things right before they collapse and get back to our original values as a country, which were humility, hard work, freedom, consent and dissent, equality and equity, due process, toleration, privacy, the common good, and cooperation and compassion for each other, or we can continue down a road of selfish greed, hatred and delusion.
Whatever we decide - it must begin with the person reading this article.
anagarika eddie is a meditation teacher at:
http://www.dhammarocksprings.org/ and author of "A Year to Enlightenment"
His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk.
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