NEED IS A NASTY WORD
THE NEED FOR CONNECTION, FAMILY AND FRIENDS’ TIES WAS DRAMATIZED IN FRANK CAPRA’S CLASSIC “IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE,” WITH JAMES STEWART AS THE SUICIDAL GEORGE BAILEY. The film resonated with audiences because it addressed a painful vacuum in American society, almost totally hypnotized with the pursuit of money.
BY SALLY ERICKSON
Dateline: May 28, 2007 | Recommended to CJO by Carolyn Baker, editor of Speaking Truth To Power
Sally Erickson, Producer of the documentary “What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire” writes of the extent to which we need each other in the face of collapse and how our programming for “rugged individualism” is not working and will not sustain us±CB
SAY HELLO to the last throes of America’s collective dementia. No amount of medication in the form of alternative therapy, I mean alternative energy, is going to repair the years of abuse to our collective body and spirit by the machinations of Empire. Antidepressants, I mean anti-inflationary economics, are rapidly losing their effectiveness. We’ve reached peak insanity. We’re sunk. Thank the gods. It’s all downhill from here.
We need help.
I come from a quietly dysfunctional, but highly functioning, middle-class American family. My brother and sister have both had incomes way into six figures for decades. I think. It’s not polite to discuss income so I can only presume.
I never had the guts to go there, to make a lot of money. I never felt I had the right to profit wildly from the abusive and exploitative system we call American capitalism. Well before I understood the nature of the crimes that American wealth is based on, I knew something was very wrong.
I traveled to India briefly during college. On my first day there I faced a tiny child who reached out with pleading fingers, still in her mother’s arms. I felt sick inside. What right did I have to live with privilege? America’s endless appetite left little to be shared. Members of the living community, human and non-human were suffering. Thirty-eight years later that little hand still tugs at my heart. [Read more →]
