eThoughts : Packrat Syndrome and an “Ownership Society.”

So, do we really want to be able to invest our future in the financial markets because they’ll do a better job of it than the government with our financial security? I wonder what we mean by a better job? What is the principle of the markets anyway—to allow individuals to invest and therefore propel business, which is what America is about? But if our real agenda is to open up a required withholding to a market that is really geared to buy low and sell high—to profit, usually at someone else’s expense, at least temporarily, are we then playing a kind of financial Russian roulette based on an ever-expanding market?

What if we try living below our means? What if we didn’t drive the economy through debt, except in very specific timeframes or for very specific reasons (if you’re going to borrow, make debt work for you, I once heard)? When we are a nation of borrowers, especially for consumables, or for speculation, we are taking chances with our future (and American debt is largely being serviced by foreign countries and foreign investors). And when we are required to withhold our money and then to invest in the speculation of business, we are assuming that everyone can be winners, eventually. I guess that being a loser in the short run is okay, if you can stand the heat. Hey, if your losses prop up the economy, then you’ve done a good thing, even if it wasn’t for you or your family. Hmmm.

Don’t get me wrong, as I’ve said before, I like money—especially as opposed to no money. But I think we keep losing our direction—money is not the issue, health and well-being are. If one plays chess and becomes engrossed in capturing the Queen, one risks losing—since the object is to capture the King. What we’ve got is a focus on the influence that money can bring—and that bolts up to huge reward centers in our biology.

Think about this at work folks. Think about parenting. Think about schools and politics and religion—we are a nation of people focused on gaining and distributing authority. How much in our lives do we belong to families, or to committees, or to organizations whose real goal is to make sense?

Nope. We are a nation bred to embrace winners and feel empathy with losers. And as someone once said, in such a set-up, the winner wins the loser. But, I suppose we can feel good by becoming rich at some else’s expense, and then becoming charitable.

Kind of backwards. What if we focused on health, well-being, and sense-making instead of our packrat syndrome for gathering and holding on to power and authority while limiting our distribution to the politics of influence?

We might need some programming all right, and that can be a dangerous thing—especially if we have hidden agendas about gathering power and authority. Maybe there’s actually a bigger threat than we’ve imagined. And maybe there’s a bigger reward than what we’ve being grabbing at.