What is prosperity?
If the balance of power is held by is held by a totalitarian, systematic human rights abuser, democracy is undermined. Trade is being used as a weapon. It is destroying the industrial capacity of the West and creating legions of internally displaced former members of the middle class. It is being used to coerce governments around the world to bend to the will of the Communist elite in Beijing. Take for example the recent decision of South Africa's ANC government to deny the Dali Lama entry to the country to attend the birthday of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The ANC once stood for ending apartheid when Nelson Mandela was at the helm. Now in a 180 degree turn it takes orders from the apartheid regime in Beijing. Human Rights have taken a backseat to trade for more than 20 years, it has not led to greater prosperity. Our current trajectory is not only economically unsustainable, but more importantly it is morally reprehensible.
As the world comes crashing down around us I think its time we did some soul searching and asked ourselves some hard questions. What is prosperity? Is it gadgets that track our every move and record our every conversation? Is is computers that log every article we read, and read our every thought? Is it the conversion of our our lives into fiat wealth of of binary digits? Is time money or as the philosophers of old whisper is money time? Is prosperity the destruction of the ideals that our civilization has held dear for two thousand years? Does prosperity mean forgetting the sacrifices made by millions of our forefathers in the great wars, that we may embrace the very thing they died trying to stop.
What kind of world do we want to leave behind? What if we could create an international system of trade based on human rights. What if business decisions were based on what is ethical, not what makes the most binary digits the fastest. What do we value? We need to look at the big picture now. We need to take into account the costs we choose to ignore. Change will come whether we like it or not. The future is a choice, and now is a time to choose.
The development of advanced means of surveillance, and therefore advanced means of control, is being coupled with the rise of a global totalitarian empire. Our language is being simplified, our young are not taught the ways of the old philosophers. Cultural decay, moral disintegration. Our growing dissident community lives in fear of what may befall them as the sun sets in the West.
It was foretold that without vision people parish. We need to lead with integrity. We need to protect the capacity of our nation to produce and the ability of our citizens to provide for themselves. We need to replace the WTO with a trading architecture that values human life. We need to stand up to the communist party in Beijing no matter how much they threaten to cut trade ties. The West is bleeding jobs and capital, we need to stop the bleeding. We should end all trade ties with those responsible for genocide. This is the way to have a future worth living. To live with compassion, love, and sacrifice. Every movement's objectives are labeled impossible, until its objectives are carved into history. I beg you now, turn the tide before its too late. We have the power.
How has it come to this?
How has it come to this. This corruption that permeates our every bit of being. The blood thats stains our collective consciousness and soaks every hand save none. How has it come to this. This machine that runs on moral compromise and misery. How is it that my hand steers it, just as every other hand that came before me.
We have created a global economy that appeases the most pervasive invasions of personal and collective decency. Liberty is laid bare upon the alter of progress awaiting the death blow. To the few who see it coming, it seems an inevitability. Whispers among the future dissident community speak of living in the last days. How much longer. The seed of hope has the potential to grow into something wonderful.
Tomorrow is the day that big brother has its hands on every nation. Upon the throat of every human voice, upon every breath. Today is the day that we do something about it, for tomorrow my friend, it will be to late. Open our eyes to the evidence around us and we will see a sickness our eyes perceive as normal. It is a sickness that has not yet reached its terminal stage. Tomorrow's terminal stage will become the new normal, just as today's.
Our economy is made in China. Each stitch carefully woven into the fabric of our soul. Every error, every tear in time loses more than nine. Factory cities build in the blink of an eye not to satisfy demand, but to force its hand. Demand, the hand that chokes the human spirit. Not indigenous to the tabula rasa, an acquired disease, a symptom of the sickness. Workers paid a dime for their time plus interest. Interest in the enumerable distractions that dull the mind and leave us feeling numb. Feeling nothing. When we don't feel we don't live. We don't take the time to make time, we always have something that demands our attention. We don't feel it is important to passionately caress every moment of the poetry that is our lives.
Our art is prewritten, forged for consumption, marketed as entertainment. Time is something to kill, what better way to kill our time than with some entertainment. No need to write ourselves, our world is written for us. Passified by the weapons of psychological war. Alcohol, our drug of choice to fill a void we can not explain. Sex, without a shred of love, to satisfy the demand of broken dreams. Demand that drives the factory cities, that pay the workers a dime plus interest, that create the goods that no one needs or wants, but demands. Goods that are loaded onto container ships and brought across the seas thousands of kilometres. Unloaded onto trucks and carried thousands more. Goods we buy, because after all they are good. It was prewritten in our entertainment.
And what of those who write themselves. The ones who choose to write their own destiny. Once more our final solution to them is made in China. We are networked now. We are all connected, not to each other but to the hand that deals the death blow. The hand upon the throat. Upon the airways and arteries that power the mind and feed the heart. The heart that doesn't have time to feel. The heart that does't love. The land that built the great wall, yet builds another. Walls provide the cover of darkness, within witch the machinery of the state can efficiently crush the human spirit, break the human body and sell the remaining organs to satisfy the horrors of demand. Blood turns the wheels of our existence. Blood fuels the machine that holds its hand upon our throat. Blood on our hands.
How has it come to this. Whispers among the dissidents that these are our last days. That tomorrow turns terminal. That the sickness has turned us blind, lying meek upon the alter. Awaiting the death blow. And yet in the story the prophets tell, that the meek and the humble shall inherit the earth, remains the seed of hope. The winter is coming. Beyond that, the spring. Hope is like a seed. It has the potential to grow into something wonderful. Let love nourish hope. Let hope inspire love. Let fate, all these things, bring.
Joel McLellan
