Please, Let’s Control Ourselves

Recently, while standing in front of the Lopez Village Market, collecting signatures for the Storm Water Referendum, I was again impressed, as at many similar situations, by the knowledge, understanding and concern of the average person about the application of political power both locally and globally. Equally impressive, however, is their flat refusal to become involved in any way with our existing ruling institutions. Clearly, something new is needed to allow people put their knowledge to work.

People are not apathetic or ignorant, as the conventional wisdom would have it. Their disgust with the existing power structure is well founded. It’s an ineffective system to begin with, but it’s also biased against the interests of the vast majority of people.

Take global warming for instance. Here is a perfect example that shows more clearly than anything so far the complete inability of existing institutions to clean up the messes they make.

Can anyone seriously imagine governments, political parties, NGOs, financial institutions, etc., etc., actually doing anything other than attempting to profit from this situation while making it worse? All these structures were created to cause and profit from the very disasters we see happening every day. It’s as if we are thrown into a situation of needing to plant a garden, but our only tools are bulldozers!

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