The Occupy Wall Street movement is exposing a glaringly obvious evil in our society. A hypocrisy so vile that none of us should sit quietly by and let it pass unchallenged. We all know it, we have all seen it, and on some level we have to understand that we are the problem.
The irony is that the problem is us, the 99%. In the U.S., Western Europe, and Canada (“the West”), homelessness is less than a quarter of one percent of the population. That means over 99% of us have, what much of the world would consider; opulent accommodations, ample food, a plethora of mindless entertainment, and an excessive amount of free time to enjoy it all. Let’s not even start on running water and flush toilets!
In The West, 80% of the population is on the internet. Let that really sink in... that means not only the disposable income to afford a device, be it PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet, consol, or let’s be honest, a combination of some or all of the above... but paying for the connection. And what do most of us do with the internet? Chat, games, or shop! Pure conjecture here, but I’d guess that of the 20% that aren’t on the internet, for many it isn’t because they can’t afford it, but because they’re like my parents, and consider computers to be rather expensive paper weights.
Now consider the flip side... We’ve all seen the stories and heard the statistics. Nearly half of the world population is living on less than $2 a day (and none of them living in The West...or Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia). So if you take the population of 1st world nations out of the equation (about 30%)... that means 70% of the remaining 5 billion people “out there”, are living a very meagre existence by any standard.
I know, I know, they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Don’t give them fish, teach them how to build ipods. Been there, thought that.
Really though, things have been improving. Slowly but surely, as global GDP climbs, way more people are living on 2 to 4 dollars a day. Unfortunately, that’s still not quite enough for a broadband connection, let alone one of the smartphones they’re building for us. But a nice hut with a tin roof and rice enough to get them through a 14 hour work day? You betcha!
But really, we can’t control the corruption in Sudan, the labour laws in china, religious oppression in... well, anywhere. I’m not going to quit my job, give everything away, join the peace corp, or go off the grid and live in a commune. Although there are days when I think it would be soooo nice.
But we need to think. Really ask ourselves honestly. How would historians centuries from now, or aliens visiting earth, view our society?? We allow the corporation we buy from and own stock in to act as our proxy tyrants exploiting the labour camps and natural resources in the rest of the world. It is what we are allowing to be done in order to satisfy our “needs”, that is truly reprehensible. The 1% within our society? They are merely working the game. But there would be no game if we were not complicit in consuming the product of corporate exploitation. We demanded more, cheaper, better, ....they delivered. We put a price on our labour that sent corporations to countries that didn’t allow their people the right to make such demands. And we never thought twice about the bargains or the repercussions.
This should be the point of Occupy Wall Street. Not the whiny complaints of how we don’t have enough yet. We could stand up and shout with a morally justifiable outrage, demanding fair practices for all. Offering to pay fair value for the luxuries we enjoy. How much would that flat screen tv cost if fair compensation was paid to those that extracted the materials and assembled the components? If Western standards of human rights and working conditions were applied to all?
And if we can afford fewer toys, or lesser toys under these conditions, perhaps we could still get by. And if it no longer was as cheap to exploit the 3rd world, perhaps there would be more manufacturing again closer to home. Less waste from shipping our crap around the world. Less landfill from throwing away our too cheap cell phones, televisions, and games, when the latest models come out.
How unrealistically utopian of me. Really... we at the top of the pyramid, the gods of Olympus, living the most luxurious life the world has ever seen, will surely get what we deserve. When either we decline, or the rest of the world rises, we can pray their morals are better than ours.
