Meaning of this Economic Crisis: A Culture of Life Post

It is a truth explained in psychology and the wisdom traditions: when some aspect of your life or self needs to change, and you refuse, resist, deny that change -- events, conditions, actions beyond your scope of agency will force you into it. That you kick and scream will make no difference: you will have to change and grow, or you will suffer and you will make others suffer with you.

As with the spirit of one, so with the macro-spirit of nations, and now the integrated world. (The wisdom traditions infer this principle by resemblance of patterns.)

When we were fat and happy (or some of us were), we refused to take that advantage and change. We refused universal health care, we refused efficient cars, we passed risk downward, we lied and cajoled and stole and screwed over, we consumed unwisely -- sometimes borrowing on our home equity in order to support that consumption. We refused to start building the green economy we will need to survive in anything like comfort for more than the next hundred years, give or take. Some of us are still flying our private jets to DC to ask for money (as CNN reports the auto company CEOs did this week).

(My apologies to those who have conserved, bought local and fair trade, purchased a Prius, offer their time to those less priviledge, I am not talking about you. You are the change required.)

Today, it's reported that an UNexpected extra 500,000 people filed for unemployment assistance. So, it's getting worse faster than we thought. That downward spiral we have been anemically trying to pull out of ... I can hear Charybdis sucking on our boat (or was Scylla the whirlpool?... anyway.)

The money doled out to financial firms is not moving, and they're waiting for more in the form of lower interest rates. This is their refusal of the revolution. It is also akin to extortion.

This is not your average long, hard recession. This is the Memo From the Universe that we need to get our whole entire house in order, from the ground up, the top down, wall to wall. Our assumptions need revision, our modes of connection and economic flow need restructuring, our values as consumers and citizens need perspective and generosity added to them. Our Rich need to reinvest their profits into their own failing firms and thereby benefit everyone.

We are no longer allowed to live unconsciously. Halelujiah!

We need to save the auto makers. In the process of bankruptcy protection, they will dump their pension obligations. Those obligations will be picked up by what's called the Pension Benefit Insurance Program. It's a federal program that puts taxpayer money up to support pensions promised by corporations that offload their obligations in this way. For the auto workers alone (and who deserve their promised retirements) the bill could be as high 200 billion to the people. Floating the Big Three for a little while, giving them the chance to reorganize, to make consumers lust for electric and hybrid and hydrogen cars, is a much smarter move financially and spiritually. The people will get comparatively little by picking up the tab for the pensions.

We need to rewrite the corporate mandates so that consideration of political stability, of worker and environmental well being, fair labor practices, economic progress for more than 2% of the population are requirements of their citizenship. We need to make corporate citizens fulfill the duties of citizens -- which is a duty to each other, to the people. This is the opportunity.

We did not choose the revolution, but it is choosing us. This is how Kali works: refuse what is required of you, and she will break you until you learn. This terrible downturn, the fear and suffering of the people, the trembling we see in every sector of our economy, this is the call to courage and growth. Refusing it will prolong the suffering, damage, and pain to ourselves and everyone else. Accepting the necessity of the revolution will bring us closer to Shakti -- she rewards life-giving choices with more robust life. We are being called to a real Culture of Life -- a culture that takes the living of life as an end, not a means.