Part 2 of the Interconnections: Healing, Reparation, and Realigment Series
In Part 1 of the Interconnections: Healing, Reparation, and Realignment Series, I wrote about the way physical injury to one part of the body can result in misalignment and injury to other parts of the body. Total healing requires a holistic view of the body and its interconnections, rather than simply focusing on the symptoms. We need to not only heal the original injury, but repair the misalignment and additional injuries resulting from it as well.
My experience with my shoulder injury got me to thinking about the healing we need to do at the national and global levels. One obvious example is what is going on in the financial arena right now. The corporate greed that led to taking advantage of individuals through predatory lending and other practices led to massive mortgage foreclosures. That injury led to the downfall of lenders and insurers. Their downfall led to panic in the market causing tightening of credit and plummeting stock prices. Finally, what started out as fiscal mismanagement and greed here in the United States is now causing trouble in other countries as well. No nation stands alone at this point. We are interconnected financially and otherwise in so many ways.
Western culture teaches us to analyze things by breaking them up into different parts and pieces. This method of analysis, however, makes it difficult to see patterns and systems and their impact. So, just as I needed to understand the relationship between my shoulder injury and my spine, we as a nation need to become aware of the impact our actions and lifestyle have on our nation, other nations, and the globe itself; we need to see the impact we have on the Quilt of Humanity.
Read about injury at the systemic level in Part 3 of the Interconnections: Injury, Reparation, and Realignment Series
Deb,
probing the interconnectedness is a great idea.
right now I’m thinking that everybody’s pointing fingers at mortgage brokers or investment banks – they’re the greedy ones. but the greed exists throughout our (and maybe most or all) culture, and in our selves. I mean it isn’t just “corporate greed”. Without people buying houses despite record high prices or crazy mortgage terms – blinded to anything but their hopes of selling it at an even higher price later, those greedy wall street types wouldn’t have been able to work their dark magic. and the “don’t regulate” government has been unable and unwilling to do anything that might impinge on both personal and corporate greed.
Hopefully this crisis can be leveraged to bring us back to to a more rational approach. We’ll see…
Ed,
There is no question but that our culture of greed and consumption – and the drive to get whatever is bigger, better and newer – played a huge role in this crisis. There are nonetheless a large number of individuals who lost their homes because they were specifically targeted by predatory lenders.
It would be great if this crisis served as a wake up call for all of us.
The current crisis is in many ways associated with a widespread belief that we can consume our way to happiness. We consume more than we produce and borrow from the Chinese to finance it (simplistic I know). As such we are interconnected but possibly in an unhealthy way.
I don’t quite understand corporate greed. Maximizing profits is a common motivation among people and businesses and is usually not a problem unless one pursues such ends in an unlawful or unethical manner.
Our financial markets, governments, and society are interconnected in ways we don’t seem to understand. The interconnections are so many and vast that we cannot regulate everyone’s behavior to a beneficial end. In my view we must anticipate the motivations and actions of people when we set up the system, its rules, incentives, and penalties. Much adjustment is needed. We need the proper regulation not simply more or less.
Aaron
You make good points, Aaron, but I view the ‘maximizing profits’ motivation as less benign than you. I see it as a major source for environmental disaster, for toxicity introduced disproportionately to poorer regions (nationally and internationally), and short term, self-centered, business planning, including small and large lay offs and ‘moving offshore’ in search of lower costs. Of course, some of this can be ultimately healthy, and maybe the rest falls under your “unethical” umbrella.
I agree with you about ‘proper’ regulation,as opposed to simply more or less.
Aaron,
I, too, see our our belief system as a major source of the problem. We are bombarded constantly with advertisements about all the “things” we need to buy to make us happy and satisfied with life.
As for maximizing profits, profit on its own is not the problem. What I see as problematic is when there is a continuing need to make more and more – never being satisfied with what is.
We need to exchange our focus on Gross National Product to the focus of the country of Bhutan on Gross National Happiness. (Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness)
Deb
Deb, I recently spent a month on a temporary job at Neighborhood Housing Services of NYC. Sure, our culture too often places material goods front and center and encourages everyone to spend, spend, spend.
But a lot of the people who got tripped up by predatory lenders were first time homebuyers. I hardly see these people as chasing the “bigger, better, and more.” Moreover, home ownership brings stability to a neighborhood. Talk about connections! Home ownership is associated with reduced crime and even reduced teenage pregnancy rates.
First we saw the pain of the victims of sub-prime lending suffer as they lost their homes. Now the whole world is feeling the pain. A better sense of interconnectedness might have kept us on a more ethical track.
Celeste,
I totally agree with you about those who were preyed upon by predatory lenders. They were not being greedy but were just trying to have a part of the “American Dream” of owning a home which is becoming more and more impossible for most people.
That’s why I see corporate greed as the main cause of all of this. It’s unfortunate that it took this state of affairs for many people to see where the drive for more and more profit takes us.
Deb
Deb,
Thanks for your encouragement to me and others to view ourselves as part of a bigger whole. Also, I appreciate the invitation to look at ourselves both horizontally as global citizens and vertitcally in terms of our interconnected spirits.
Go Obama!!!
Joe
P.S. And, I must express my sadness at the ever present homophobia and racism that continues to adversely impact our abilities in the U.S. to have “all hands on deck” to navigate ourselves out of this economic and political
tsunami.
Hey Joe,
I am still soaking up the enormity and beauty of Obama’s victory. It is sad to have it marred by the homophobic legislation that accompanied it.
Deb