Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 56

There are so many obstacles to our moving forward. There are a lot of people who want to maintain the status quo. There are many others who are not really aware or informed about the conditions of our humanity. A lot of them simply don't want to know. Quite a few are too tired and worn out from the daily unforgiving grind of just having to survive in order to care. Others don't want to lose or share power, and they are the most despicable of a bad lot. I am thinking here of corporate and banking powerbrokers and the morally bankrupt politicians and governments they tend to endorse and support. We are living underneath the Sword of Damocles. It hangs by a rapidly fraying thread. Climate scientists say that we have but decades before the global conditions from climate change become so severe as to render large swathes of this planet uninhabitable to humans. We don't have a lot of time left and we have to start choosing very wisely. I see very few signs of hope. We have here in my own part of the world this ongoing quarrel between the government of my province (BC NDP) and the NDP premier of Alberta with the federal government on her side about constructing the Kinder Morgan Pipeline to open up another port of export to China for Canadian petroleum. No one who doesn`t live here seems to remember or care that this is a fossil fuel, the dangers of leaks and spills and environmental degradation are significant, and this is a fuel of planet death and the new emissions are just going to add to the carbon output into our air and help increase global warming, which is what is getting us into this predicament. But it`s all corporate greed drowned out by that popular conversation bomb hurled at random by rightwing politicians (and even by leftwing politicians when they want to get elected again, that shrill battle cry of "Jobs! Jobs!! Jobs!" similar to the infamous Auschwitz logo: "Work Makes You Free." Ignorance, genuine and intentional, is one of our greatest obstacles, along with the many powers whose vested interests are in keeping people ignorant. How do we educate people? How do we educate ourselves? What is it going to take for enough of us to begin to really understand and care enough? There are people moving forward, but nowhere near enough. There is something inherently sinister and destructive about this ethos of selfishness and competitiveness that our governments have opted for. Capitalism is not globally sustainable, and it is the galloping greed of our corporate masters that keeps getting in the way, as we are lured and threatened and tempted to remain trapped in this dance of consumerism, addiction and death. Knowledge and education empower us. Fear and greed make us weak.