Why We Can't Have Nice Things

A couple of independent social media posts lamenting the lack of social safety nets and related communal benefits here in the United States prompt me to offer a potential answer, or at least an opinion based on personal observations. The potential is there to take our collective power back, if we recognize how it is being taken from us.

Altered image from Komal Tyagi on LinkedIn

The theme the two posts have in common is that we are quick to come to the aid of friends and neighbors, and often strangers through news stories and crowdsourcing platforms like GoFundMe, but we refuse to unite in support of single-payer healthcare and other measures that would alleviate much of that suffering and financial stress. Why is this so? Why must we plead for our lives when faced with a medical emergency that we cannot afford to treat? Why are some so opposed to universal healthcare?

We all know the slogan “justice is blind,” and it should, ideally, apply to charity and generosity, too.”

My initial reaction, and belief, is that it comes down to personal choice. I am not speaking merely of a choice in medical providers. I am talking about a desire for control of who receives those benefits. We do not like others deciding our fate, yet that is exactly the kind of power some people want to have over others. The polarized political landscape only fuels that view, and adds to the intensity of its anger.

A good case in point is donating blood. I try to do this with some degree of regularity. The thing is, I do not get to decide who receives my blood, much as I sometimes wish I had that authority. It could be going to a drunk driver, or to their victim. It could be going to a drug addict, or to a priest. My blood could save the life of a gay man suffering from hemophilia, or to a straight woman. My red blood could go to a deep red Republican gun advocate or a dyed-in-the-wool blue Democrat who might otherwise lose their child to gun violence. That is the blessing and curse of relinquishing my desire for control. We all know the slogan “justice is blind,” and it should, ideally, apply to charity and generosity, too.

There is another insidious barrier to reforming all social programs. We are led to believe that capital is scarce. Money is not scarce. It is being hoarded by a small percentage of our population, or in the case of the U.S. government, by the Department of Defense. All media are guilty of purporting many myths about this. Excessive wealth is celebrated everywhere we look. We are instructed that this lifestyle is the one we should aspire to, and that if we work hard enough, we can attain it. We are led to believe that wealthy people earned their status and influence. We (White people, mostly) believe that financial resources are distributed equitably, and any attempts at “redistributing wealth” are sacrilegious.

None of this is true. We should be aspiring to financial balance, with enough extra to travel, educate ourselves, gift to others, and occasionally indulge ourselves. The rich and powerful of today did not earn their wealth. They either inherited money, or achieved their profits on the backs of laborers working under them, or both. Wealth is not distributed fairly; it is protected where it is through tax laws written by (surprise!) other excessively wealthy people we elect to office. Our capitalist economic system further ensures that wealth is already redistributed vertically upwards, not horizontally over the human landscape.

We can change things, fairly rapidly, if we recognize our power as consumers. Drop out of the corporate marketplace as much as you can. Reward excellence with your dollars, starve businesses that treat labor, consumers, and the environment poorly. Put at least some of your money in a credit union. Speak out and speak up for what you believe in. Let no one wonder where you stand. Remember that your experiences and knowledge are currency, too, far more valuable than paper or coin. Above all, be generous, even to strangers. Live a good example and others will follow. Don’t boast, simply act.

Our Tax Dollars Are Being Used Against Us

The primary objection to democratic frontrunner candidates for President of the United States appears to be the idea that they would increase taxes, perhaps drastically. The problem stems from interpretation of “taxes” as strictly, or mostly, income taxes; and the belief that our current taxes are being spent as they should be. Neither of these assumptions is true.

© Atmmarketplace.com

The most extreme opponents of taxation view the practice as “theft,” the robbing of your hard-earned wealth. In theory, taxes represent your contribution to the public good, services and products shared by the citizens of your municipality, county, state, province, and nation. Unfortunately, that reality is changing, and the disbursement of your tax dollars is becoming larcenous at a grand scale.

….I look at increased taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations as an opportunity for atonement. Call them reparations for having enslaved labor and jeopardized our collective health, both physical and mental, over decades if not centuries.

As one who will be seeking professional help with his own income tax for 2019, I am in no position to comment on the collection and disbursement of any other form of taxation. However, there are plenty that come to mind immediately: estate taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, taxes on interest income, and excise taxes such as “sin taxes.” You cannot say that America has not been creative in ways to generate tax revenue. How to tax everyone equitably has been the challenge.

How is that revenue spent? Traditionally, tax revenue has gone to pay for such features as roads and other public infrastructure, public safety services (police, fire, other first responders), national defense, libraries, museums, parks and monuments, and salaries of government officials who represent you or otherwise serve you. The arts, sciences, and public television are also supported through government programs. Tough to argue against such vital foundations of our collective society, but some people do.

Perhaps this frustration is due in part to the fact that many of the projects related to these services are not performed in-house, in the public sector, but contracted to private companies. Some companies may not be eminently qualified to carry out the tasks, despite a low bid, and consequently the job must be re-done. That kind of redundancy and waste should be unacceptable. Other companies, more qualified and skilled, habitually overcharge or otherwise exploit the systems in place to milk as much profit as possible. Cost overruns are the order of the day, and apparently accepted as common practice by government agencies that engage in public-private partnerships.

Ok, but at least our tax dollars are ensuring our health and safety as consumers, members of the labor force, and guaranteeing environmental health, a free market, and all the other things we take for granted. Right? Wrong. That is the way it should be, but the opposite is happening instead.

We have to end the feedback loop of wealth accruing more wealth to be weaponized as an unfair tax burden against the poor and middle class for the creation of still more wealth for the wealthy.

Your tax dollars, instead of being spread widely for the benefit of the entire citizenry, are being funneled upward to corporations and individuals that are already enjoying a vastly greater degree of wealth than you or I. This takes the form of outright industry bailouts and corporate subsidies, plus loopholes in the tax laws permitting all manner of legal but unethical abuses. Industry then uses its protected and enhanced profits to lobby your government representatives for deregulation to further boost profits. This tends to result in fewer protections for labor, including union-busting and depressed wages and benefits, as well as erosion of consumer protections against faulty and dangerous products, and a decrease in environmental quality resulting from relaxed codes on atmospheric emissions and discharge of wastes and toxins into water resources.

The free market, though! Ah, if only that were true. If a free market existed, the U.S. would no longer have an auto industry, a coal industry, an oil industry, nor probably the enormous financial institutions we continue to have. All are consistently subsidized with your tax dollars. In the case of auto manufacturing and big banks, bailouts kept them from collapsing, for the time being. I guess we enjoy low fuel prices, but at what costs to the environment and our health? I guess we enjoy free bank….H-e-e-e-y, wait a minute!

Personally, I look at increased taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations as an opportunity for atonement. Call them reparations for having enslaved labor and jeopardized our collective health, both physical and mental, over decades if not centuries. We have to end the feedback loop of wealth accruing more wealth to be weaponized as an unfair tax burden against the poor and middle class for the creation of still more wealth for the wealthy. We have to tear down the dam that has resulted in hoarded currency, and restore the natural flow and cycle of money throughout the economy. Currency must be defined once again as energy, not power.

A Longing For Fairness

© Cortlandschools.org

Perhaps the one wish we all share in this holiday season, after world peace, is a more just and fair society. Even most of us with White Privilege have a sense of humility at this time of year, even if you are not the Secret Santa who passes out one hundred dollar bills randomly, or someone who donates to Toys for Tots, the local food bank, or some other charity on "Giving Tuesday." There is, however, a deep undercurrent of anger and misguided energy that surrounds our sense of injustice and unfairness, and that has to be addressed daily, maybe even hourly.

The statement "life isn't fair" always raises my own ire because it is an easy way to dismiss injustice and preserve the status quo for those who benefit by it. It is an excuse for inaction at best. Today, that statement of acceptance of injustice has been turned into a weapon that is being used not just for ignoring problems, but further punishing those already suffering. The idea that "life is not fair" now excuses greed, racism, bigotry, nationalism, and flaunting the rule of law, among other heinous behavior.

Blame and accusation are too often the overriding symptoms of unfairness, even if they are legitimate in their claims. When we start pointing fingers and raising our voice, then we are being "militant," "uppity," and unfair ourselves if we start making demands for change. The flip side of that coin is suffering, and collectively we have limited tolerance for that, too. Those who give voice to their pain are "whining" or "complaining," and we downplay the intensity of their desperation. We are thus dismissed as "radical" or "pathetic." Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Another symptom of the unfairness disease is an investment of emotional energy in matters that are trivial. I myself am guilty of this during football season. All my anger is channeled into hatred of dynasties like Alabama and Oklahoma football, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and other teams that have dominated the stage for decades. My dream? A different team wins the championship every year, spreading the wealth and joy. This is a horribly shallow and inconsequential desire when people are dying for lack of affordable healthcare, are homeless for lack of affordable housing, are hungry for lack of employment, and addicted because that is how they have come to cope with the unfairness of their circumstances.

Our blind hatred, even when directed at appropriate figures and factions, has allowed our sense of fairness to be corrupted in other ways. Many people view taxation as "theft," that the government is "stealing" your hard-earned money. So, when right-wing candidates campaign on a platform of tax relief and tax cuts, they are embraced with a zealous fervor that we usually reserve for athletic teams. The irony is that these candidates, once in office, effectively do steal from their citizen constituents, applying those tax cuts mostly to persons who are already wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. Candidates, and those in office already, conveniently fail to remind voters that their taxes pay for the common good in the form of roads, schools, libraries, parks, and many other amenities vital to our society. In fairness, it is hard to believe that given the state of our pothole-pocked streets, closing and failing schools, and desecrated parks. That is because government no longer feels the need to be accountable to anyone but the most wealthy.

It is inappropriate and inexcusable to point fingers at any "minority," race, ethnic group, religion, gender, or other convenient category of human beings and accuse them of being the root of all of your problems. We have to begin assessing individuals in power by their actions, not their platforms, by their behavior and not just their rhetoric, and take responsibility for our own actions. We can set an example through personal sacrifice, respect for others, and ceasing our aspirations to excessive material wealth. We can share our ideas for how to effect long-term change through our activities in the marketplace, our engagement with other citizens, and our commitment to personal and environmental health.

The next time someone says "life isn't fair," agree with them and then ask them "so what are you going to do about it?" Remind them that as human beings it is our obligation, indeed our duty, to try and make life more fair. Happy holidays.

Redistributing Wealth

Have you ever noticed that those who object most strenuously to the notion of redistribution of wealth are those who benefit from the status quo? Their hostility is espoused mostly from the pedestal of White Privilege, from offices on Wall Street, and it echoes through the halls of private mansions and country clubs. The ultimate source of their anger is, of course, guilt. They know they got where they are because of the toil of others. They are reaping their profits from uneducated consumers who fall for marketing campaigns. Their expenses are for lobbyists in Congress, if they have not paid outright for a Senator or Representative. Ironically, they have engineered a redistribution of wealth to themselves, so the idea of the reverse is repugnant.

We have had a redistribution of wealth for centuries. Slavery. The gender wage gap. Mass incarceration of minorities. Minimum wage. Credit that leads to bankruptcy. Failure to provide affordable healthcare and housing. Food deserts. Gerrymandering. Voter suppression. Government subsidies to corporations. Industry bailouts. Offshore banking. Tax breaks on investments. You don't think any of this has had an impact on who becomes wealthy? Really?

For our part as laborers and consumers, we yearn for financial freedom, still clinging to the belief that a bright future is all up to us as individuals, still pursuing the white picket fence and two-car garage. Society, we are told, gives you the freedom to do whatever it takes to get wherever you want to go. Yes, there are still some ways to attain wealth from the ground up, if you choose the "right" career, take advantage of existing financial structures for which it helps to be already wealthy....Where is the freedom in that?

If you do not believe we need measures in place to level the financial playing field, then you are either a diehard capitalist who cares not one whit about anybody but themselves, or you have bought into the fictitious idea that if you merely work hard you can still amass great wealth by climbing the ladder of success. Hogwash. We no longer have a Middle Class. We have not had that for quite some time. What we have is a Debt Class masquerading as the Middle Class. It is an illusion based on credit and other forms of borrowing. Our "portfolio" is a job, check cashing establishments, and the lottery. Ok, maybe two jobs or even three.

The ultimate question, of course, is why are we aspiring to personal material wealth in the first place. Who does that benefit except you, your family if you have one, and your heirs if you have children? Do you really want that small a sphere of influence? Dream bigger. Dream beyond money. Cultivate the currency of generosity instead of selfishness.

The solution to our enormous prosperity gap must come from both ends. Yes, to obliterate poverty the very wealthy must give up a substantial portion of their wealth. The remainder of the financial spectrum must cease to pursue the amassing personal material wealth as a goal. The new American Dream needs to be one of inclusion, with goals beyond ourselves such as renewable energy, preservation of biodiversity, acceptance (not mere tolerance) of alternative lifestyles, the abolishment of hate speech, enactment of affordable healthcare and housing, a return to small scale agriculture, and other communal and social endeavors. These are the things we need to commit to, not to our financial planner's idea of personal financial security, as if there is such a thing. Self-reliance is just a fancy synonym for pride, and putting pride as a priority has never ended well.

You want something to aspire to? How about this. How about we aspire to be like people who have lost everything material. People who have been through tornadoes, or hurricanes, or earthquakes, or fires, or even stock market crashes, who come back even stronger after the devastation because they know what really matters is not status or wealth but character and love and all those things you cannot measure in economic terms. Let us be like those who have been wronged, been cheated on, been scammed, been victims of violent crime, who come out of that trauma and still manage to trust other human beings. Let's be like that: all heart, soul, and empathy.

Is The Melting Pot "Full" Now?

© Valley News, vnews.com

The United States of America recently celebrated the 242nd anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from British colonialism. Since that time, our greatest assets have been the individuals and families from less fortunate nations that we continue to welcome, and a collective sense of empathy and compassion. The "rude" French even sent us a statue commemorating our ability to embrace everyone regardless of economic circumstance, religious belief, race, or gender. What happened to that?

We are suddenly a nation of intolerance, willing to literally wall ourselves off from the rest of the world, believing that what used to be our greatest strength is now our most pressing problem, our greatest weakness. We have already built walls around our hearts, hardened ourselves to misery greater than we will ever experience. We look around us and no longer see people who look like us. We no longer understand the words in conversations carried out around us. We feel eerily isolated in neighborhoods that have become unrecognizable. The houses look the same, but the occupants are different. It does not compute. Our accustomed level of comfort is becoming highly unstable, even if none of "them" are terrorists.

The extremely wealthy and powerful have taken note of our unease and amplified it into irrational fears as a way to manufacture an unnecessary political divide. This wedge being driven between us allows the continued redistribution of wealth to the very top of our economic food chain. We are told there is not enough to go around, and the problem is "those people" streaming across our border and "stealing your jobs."

No, the problem is in your corporate boardroom where you draw up plans to lay off your workforce if not take away their benefits, raid their pensions, and otherwise make the lives of labor intolerable such that your shareholders and executive officers reap obscene profits.

Those of us whole toil away at unpaid overtime, without union representation, doing the jobs of three other people whose positions were not renewed, are now left to our own devices. We are told we should get a second job, sell some of our belongings, continue to sacrifice for the good of the company. That is, after all, the kind of loyalty that built our most esteemed companies.

No, it is not. Henry Ford is widely acclaimed for having paid his employees enough that they could own the vehicles they were building. Loyalty is a two-way street. There is a reason there is an annual best-companies-to-work-for list.

So, given our personal economic woes, it is no wonder we are falling into a Kick the Dog Syndrome. Men, especially, want to express the pain and angst they feel, and do so inappropriately by inflicting pain on someone else. Maybe it is their spouse. Maybe it is their kids. Maybe it is the Mexican neighbors or those "uppity" Blacks down the street. We want to make tangible the intangible emotional pain that we carry hidden. How is anyone else to know our inner turmoil, our guilt at being unable to provide for our families, our utter failure to advance to the American Dream?

The answer, of course, is that the American Dream created unrealistic, if not outright false, expectations. The melting pot is only full if you believe that you are entitled to the spacious house, the white picket fence, the two-car garage, and all the other material amenities we were promised in the 1950s. We now have a segment of our population that believes they are entitled to mansions (several, in fact), private jets, private banking, and luxury at every turn. They "earned" that, naturally, from your labor, your blood, sweat, and tears. They hardened their hearts to you long before you hardened yours to today's brand of immigrants. Remember that. Stop participating, as much as possible, in the system that is disempowering you. Look for employers who are interested in seeing all of their employees prosper, not just the ones at the top. Become your own employer. Drop your bank for a credit union. Stop aspiring to excessive affluence and invest in organizations that help the less fortunate, protect consumers, the environment, and all of those things we hold valuable above money.

We need all the allies we can get to improve our collective society and culture, and those fellow soldiers are the new immigrants you want to blame for everything. Recognize your misplaced resentment and hostility. Channel it into something better for yourself and the other downtrodden.

A Wedding, Wealth, and Masculinity

© YouTube.com

It is perhaps tragically ironic that we have prom season and the royal wedding setting up the perfect storm of inevitable disappointment for the average high school male bent on wooing his dream girl. When you aspire to fantasy, have unrealistic expectations, and are more concerned with how you stack up to other male students, it is not going to end well for you. Meanwhile, women are collateral damage.

Our collective obsession with the royal nuptials Across the Pond is troubling if not disturbing. We revel in pomp and circumstance, and I dare say long for the rigidity in standards for what constitutes "marriage material" in stodgy old England. We want rules to be explicit, if only so we know when we are breaking them, but often because we have failed to properly construct our own moral compasses. We rely on externalities instead. America has few formalities, and even those may vary from state to state.

Consequently, our young men are left to their own devices, their own warped perceptions of idealism in the female form. How boys and men handle their romantic defeats is what should make you a gentleman or a loser. Here in the U.S., we do not learn how to deal with those perceived setbacks in any positive, meaningful way. At best our male students simply become more determined to achieve victory in the socio-romance game, and maybe set their sights on college coeds once they graduate high school. That simply perpetuates the cycle of reducing women to prizes to be won, by any means necessary.

The tragic part is that for men like this, women are a means to an end, the end being enhanced status for the guy. There truly is a trophy wife mentality whereby men measure each other by the....what, "hottness" of their spouse or girlfriend. Women cease to be anything more than an accessory to this kind of sorry excuse for a man. This is how we ruthlessly objectify women, and it does not even have anything to do with women. It is all about the male hierarchy.

At some point in our evolution did this become a strategy for becoming the alpha male? The accumulation of food and other necessary resources certainly made some males more desirable to females, but eventually there was enough to go around thanks to agriculture, improved weaponry for hunting, and the ability to preserve collected foods. What separates us now, then? We created the unnatural resource of money, currency that is not perishable, wealth that demonstrates you have risen above mere survival. We announce the existence of our fortunes through expensive automobiles, luxurious homes, second homes, yachts, jewelry, and other rare and precious commodities....and attractive, younger women.

Mating strategies in the animal kingdom are often complex, and none more so than in Homo sapiens. We point derisively to other cultures that rely on arranged marriages, that eliminate a woman's dignity through genital mutilation, or reduce her worth to her dowry, or enslave her in any number of ways by prohibiting her education and disallowing her consent to anything, but are we any better? American men who cannot achieve wealth, or cannot achieve it fast enough, try and bypass the implied route of success and just go for the hot chick. If he can get her, other men will assume he has something they do not. Women are the facade in the male social-success game. Debt is the facade we all use to project that we are wealthier than we are. We must stop kidding ourselves.

Let me repeat that: We must stop kidding ourselves. We must stop believing that we should be aspiring to great individual material wealth and the flimsy social status that comes with it. When we do that we start dropping pretense. We stop pretending. We start being comfortable with who we are. We start recognizing the matrix that is our unsustainable style of living and relating to each other. We stop shaming others. We stop feeling guilty for our excesses because we have realized the futility of indulging in them. We start having meaningful relationships with the opposite sex.

The revolution will be a long one. Men will not go quietly, willingly giving up the power that they have accumulated through greed and womanizing. We will have to overcome our biology and our social expectations, without the help of media and advertising that will even more stubbornly stick to the status quo, the old school rules of engagement. We have an opportunity here to advance civilization to a level of respect it has perhaps never enjoyed. Failure will mean its total collapse.

The Last Bastion of Legal Discrimination

A video making the rounds through social media these days asserts that "Diamonds Are a Lie." It points to propaganda by the diamond dealer De Beers that artificially inflated the value of the stones. This hit home for me for a number of reasons and reminded me to write about my long-held perception of the perils of wealth inequality as a whole.

My father earned his affluence by creating high end custom jewelry for wealthy clients in Portland, Oregon. This of course included diamonds and gold and other "precious stones" and metals. There is no question that our society has ascribed arbitrary monetary valuations to certain gems and other natural resources. It is perhaps a logical extension in our evolution for male individuals who want to set themselves apart from competing males by demonstrating financial richness in addition to physical prowess, intellectual superiority, and other characteristics attractive to females. Still, it has to stop.

Status has come to mean one thing: relative financial wealth. It is putting our entire human species at risk. We now have the human equivalent of the peacock, only instead of feathers it is funds, stocks, bonds, yachts, luxury cars, second and third homes, exotic vacations, designer fashions, and yes, pricey jewelry. We celebrate and idolize these people, mostly White males, in the Fortune 500, Forbes, and other periodicals devoted solely to wealth and how to achieve it.

Interestingly, we assign dollar values chiefly to inanimate objects, and non-living natural resources. Living creatures we conveniently refer to as "priceless." The insinuation is that people, other animals, plants, and other organisms are so valuable that it is pointless to put a figure on their worth. The reality is that the convenient priceless tag permits us to devalue life when it stands in the way of resource extraction or our personal ascent up the ladder of wealth. We have no trouble turning our backs on our brothers and sisters, let alone other entire species, if profit is to be had.

What is most staggering is the almost complete success of the brainwashing campaign that has convinced us that great material wealth is something we should aspire to. Why? Well, it is the carrot held before us so that those who are already wealthy can beat us with the stick. Drudgery is supposedly the price we pay for our income. We have apparently resigned ourselves to accept this scenario without complaint, even without union representation. We literally slave away so that company shareholders can reap ever bigger profits and reward the executives with bonuses.

We still believe that if we work hard we will one day own a home, be able to retire to a leisurely lifestyle, and still put our kids through college, too. No, we cannot. Wealth is now inherited far more than it is earned. We can always borrow, because the interest rate is so low. We no longer have a middle class, we have a debt class masquerading as the middle class. We used to be able to get ahead by saving money, but no bank product pays worth a damn because of the low interest rate. Your life is reduced to your credit rating, your ability to borrow.

Should everything be free? No, of course not, but there are entirely too many things we do not need at all. I speak again of objects and accessories that do nothing, or next to nothing, but flaunt our personal affluence. Why must we measure ourselves by dollars? Why do we continue to tolerate, even endorse, discrimination against others based on their inability to pay exorbitant amounts of money for exclusive this, or chic that? It is nothing short of shameful.

What interests me is not the prime rate, it is your willingness to share what you have. It is, as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. decreed "the content of (your) character" that should define you. Your currency of thought, and empathy and humor and empowerment of others is what interests me. Your refusal to judge others, or assume the worst without knowing them, is what sets you apart and makes you my friend. I have no desire to burden myself with material goods, or surround myself with elitist, snobbish friends. Neither do you, right?

Gratitude

I struggle with gratitude. It should not be a problem. There are plenty of friends and strangers who suffer more and never complain. In fact, they often offer words of gratitude in place of sharing their misery. Bear with me if you will, though, as there are reasons gratitude is difficult for many people to express.

Those who express frustration and despair at their financial, social, or physical circumstances are often shamed for it. Constructive criticism, if even warranted, has been replaced with indignation and hateful remarks. Civility is no longer the order of the day. Even well-meaning friends often couch their sympathy in religious, condescending tones that still imply that you more or less get what you deserve. If only you were more grateful, more positive, or more....something other than who you are, you would be happy as you are.

All of us are constantly bombarded with examples of material comfort and excess by the news and entertainment media, as well as advertising aimed at ever-wealthier consumers. We invariably either allow ourselves to be persuaded that material wealth is something we should aspire to, or we become despondent over our realization that we are in debt for things we already have. We compare ourselves to others and become depressed over our "failure" to provide for ourselves. It does not matter how unrealistic our views of ourselves and others, it is a nearly automatic response. Our work ethic erodes as we see ourselves as devalued, or at least undervalued, cogs in a machine that makes other people comfortable.

Meanwhile, we are still cognizant of friends and strangers who are worse off. The Facebook couple who were in a wreck that totaled their vehicle. The friend on Twitter fighting cancer with physical, mental, and emotional strength you cannot comprehend. The town erased by a tornado that you saw on the evening news. "Minorities" who struggle daily against intense public hatred, bigotry and discrimination based on attributes determined by genetics. You are grateful for your White privilege, your gender privilege, your "normal" lifestyle, but also ashamed you have not done more with it. Gratitude for your own condition seems somehow empty or false in the face of that.

A good many people were raised with the idea that one should suffer in silence, that it is not your place to disclose "personal" trials and tragedies. Exposing your vulnerabilities was inviting someone to take advantage of your condition. It was also considered poor taste to flaunt your good fortune. Modesty and humility were virtues that garnered respect. How times have changed. It is important to share emotions, even negative ones, because it helps ease stress and also opens the doors to treatment for depression and other psychological illnesses. You cannot receive professional help if no one knows you need it and you won't admit it. Unfortunately, we no longer have the same sentiments toward snobbery and irresponsible affluence as we did back in the day.

Personally, I have no desire for wealth. I would rather have fewer material possessions, in fact. Were I to want to become wealthier, it would be to help others a lot less fortunate. It pains me at least as much to be unable to donate to causes I believe in as it does to be scraping the bottom of my bank account to meet my own financial obligations. I do wish my wife and I could travel more, learning more about other cultures, other nations, other organisms we share the planet with. That is what life should be about, rather than status and luxury.

I will be the first to admit that I need to express gratitude more often, but you cannot coerce someone into gratitude. One way I am guaranteed to remember and express my "blessings" is when I see someone else setting the example by sharing what they are grateful for. Leading by example, being the change you wish to see in the world. Those credos are popular and longstanding for a reason.

Monopoly

Right now the board game Monopoly is making headlines because Hasbro, the company that currently produces the game, is asking people to vote for which game pieces they want to retain in future editions. So, if you like the thimble, or the top hat, or some other token, you are supposed to vote for it. Whichever piece gets the least number of votes will be retired in favor of a new piece “that’s more representative of today’s Monopoly players.” (CNN story). I wonder if the real question should be whether the entire game should be retired.

Aside from the question of whether anybody still plays it, one should be reminded of its origins. It was inspired, at the very least, by The Landlord’s Game, created by Elizabeth Maggie and patented in 1904. Its purpose was to show how rent enriched landowners while creating poverty for tenants. Eventually, the game morphed into the exact opposite, where the goal of each Monopoly player is to dominate their opponents.

Today, in the real world, personal material wealth and power are simply not qualities we should be aspiring to. We literally can’t afford to pursue capitalism at the scale we have now. The gap between the wealthiest few and everyone else grows wider almost daily. Much of the world resides in substandard housing (forget about rent!), and many populations are starving. Too many children right here in the U.S. go hungry every day. These situations are avoidable, and to allow them to persist is unconscionable.

So, my vote would go to abolish the game entirely. Scrabble is much more fun, but perhaps family nights might be better spent helping out at the local homeless shelter. Meanwhile, maybe UNICEF can come up with a game that rewards sustainability, charity, and volunteerism. I’d buy that.