heart of darkness

I've been trying to get at "the heart of the matter" now for a while. Time constrains me, as you. I want to write thousands of words about Hercules and Hearts and Hydrogen, but am not there yet. I also want to finish my essay about the "synchromystic blogosphere", the "real" Watchmen. That will come. For now though, my aim is to really get at "the problem".

I've had a page dog-eared now for a year or so and think that it is time to share. I'm prompted as I've been taking in a lot more news lately, and it seems that now more than ever news = finance and economics. We really do worship GOD: gold, oil, drugs (guns for g works too.) In God WE Trust, on our note of faith, the dollar.

Anyway, the book is Tony Hillerman's People of Darkness. Chee's uncle gives him some advice about white men here (which is particularly meta because Hillerman is white--Hillerman, the "voice" of the Navajo people, which is a whole other topic for conversation).

"Don't think a man don't care about one goat because he's got a thousand of 'em," Hosteen Nakai would say. "He's got a thousand because he cares more about goats than he cares about his relatives." In other words, don't expect the rich to be generous [emphasis mine]. . . And when Chee could offer no answers, Hosteen Nakai would smile at him and remind him of what he had told Chee a long time ago. He'd told Chee he had to understand white people.

So then, what is "the problem" as I see it?

I think that everyone in this country makes too goddamn much money. And because everyone is paid too much, everything costs too much. And because everything is so expensive we think that we should be paid more. But for balance, there are those who are paid nothing, and they are literally killing themselves for just a little slice of our pie. And come to think about it, things are pretty cheap, it's just that we want so much of it. We are an empire of greed, and we consume, waste, and throw away most of the world's resources. We live on this impulse: Want, Buy, Have.  And capitalism's mantra is: more, better, cheaper, faster. 

This prompts me to quote from a blog by Eunus Noe: 

Remember that you vote everyday with your money. And the most important decision you make is how you eat. Live and eat local. Instead of more, better, cheaper, faster, try seasonal, fresh, local, organic--in that order. Don't support Mr Potter. Make him irrelevant. Be a part of your unique community. Grow something this year. Grow the New Earth.

What's in your heart?