American Greed

Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back and I’m here to talk about the world we live in today. After reading the book “Detroit: An American Autopsy,” I was upset. The level of corruption in this story was heartbreaking especially when you see the innocent lives that have been lost because of it.

I’m sad because the men in power put their own greed above the lives of these people. That in a nutshell is what’s wrong with our world today. This feeling that there isn’t enough. We have to have more. Where did this come from?

I know it’s a competitive streak. We all want to be the best, but what determines the best? What magical standards are we trying to achieve? The thing is we’re all as unique as snowflakes. Let’s celebrate that. If we were all comfortable in our own skins we wouldn’t feel the need to keep up with the Jones. We’d be too busy wallowing in our happiness to care what they were doing.

Photo via VisualHunt

   That’s why we as humans must become internally oriented. We must decide what makes us happy and work toward those goals and allow everyone else the same freedom. We’ll be so busy making ourselves happy we won’t have time to see what our neighbors are doing. If we let go of judging other people and they in turn let go of judging us, we’ll have a happier society.

I know what you’re thinking. Sure that takes care of the neighborhood when times are golden, but what about when times are tough?  Like they are now. That’s a good question and I’m here to tell you that we need to make a major shift in our society. We see what’s happening in cities like Detroit and Flint. We see how corruption destroyed people during the housing bubble, we see how the market is manipulated on Wall Street. We even see how the Catholic Church covered up abuse in their hierarchy, but we don’t do anything about it.  When I think about all those priests who abused kids in their parishes and got caught. It makes me sick. It makes me even more nauseous when I think about how the church covered up the abuse. They moved these priests around. Not one priest went to jail. Not one. We should’ve been marching at the steps of Rome over that one.

Photo credit: Greg Hayter via VisualHunt / CC BY

   It appears to me, there are two sets of laws in our country. The people in power can break the law and no one goes to jail.  The average Joe pulls one of their stunts and it’s a totally different story. It’s in the papers and on the news.  This has to change. There’s one set of laws for all of us. All of us. And it’s simple. If you break the law, you are held accountable. There are no excuses.  How do you feel about that? Leave a comment. I’d love to read how you feel!

To learn more about some of the points I brought up in this post click the links below:

My Thoughts on the Movie Spotlight: Corruption in the Catholic Church

My Thoughts on the Big Short

My Thoughts on Money Monster