Rebuilding before the fall

Reading up on the Occupy Wall Street movement and I am struck by one thing. While I belive the system is broken in many ways, if you tear it down and don't have anything to replace it with, what is going to happen? The same people who were influential will continue to be influential.

We must build something altogether different. We want more jobs, we must look at creating our own. We must look at buying from eachother, selling to eachother, and helping eachother learn. Sometimes we must take a hard look at ourselves, we created this system, perhaps not directly, but our nature did it. I sometimes find myself envious of the 1% wishing that I could have what they have. This is what has fed it, wanting more rather than wanting enough.

What is enough? What is a living wage? What has created the broken system? These are questions that the occupy wall stree protesters seek to answer, but mostly, seek to ask. They want us all to think about what has created a system in which our power as a people has been co-opted by those in power.

We are powerful, but protesting must end at some point. At some point the revolution turns and the work must begin. We must build an alternative. We must find a way to create a new system, to help address the issues of the old. We must find a way to balance the system so that those in need are helped, but no one takes advantage. We must find a way to balance the system so that people are rewarded for their work, but power and wealth do not concentrate in the hands of a few.

We must understand that no system will be perfect. However good we want to be, we are flawed. We will always have greed, and laziness. We will always have selfishness. We must find ways to balance this in ourselves, and within the system. Let us begin work on the rebuilding, and let us begin it today.

Wally

www.uncommonskills.com