In the book `The Tipping Point` by Malcolm Gladwell, he describes a scene of violence that took place on the New York subway system in 1984. A `Normal` Caucasian man entered the subway and sat down by 4 young black males who were not ebing sat next to by any of the other passengers on the train due to their rebellious nature. One of the teens asked the white man for five dollars…he demanded it, “Give me five dollars”. The elder man then got up and shot the four young blacks. He was fed up with the lack of justice in the subway system at that time, violence and crimes were becoming more and more, to which the white man shot four teens who were rebellious. He then goes into the history of both parties. He describes the background of each of the four youths, and the man who shot them. He describes the environment in which they were in. In those days the subway system of New York were splattered with graffiti and trash, the turnstiles for the subway barely worked. The environment in that time was in chaos, thus the chaos was represented in the behavior of the people on the subway.
What happened next is interesting. What most advocates of justice etc. would propose, is to place more cops in the subway system, to enforce more laws onto these people, but that is not what happened, what happened is that the person who became in charge of the subway system went an entirely different direction. He painted all of the subway again, he got them much cleaner, he enforced the law of turnstile jumping much more, and what happened at that time is that the crime started to diminish heavily. Only through the small acts of changing the environment and enforcing a law which many officers did not care about because it was only about $1.50 for each person jumping the stiles. Through the enforcement of the law of jumping the turn stiles they were able to catch much more people who were carrying knives, or guns, or drugs onto the subway system and within that effectively diminished crime. Through re-painting the street cars they were able to make the environment much more approachable and appealing for people who would have rather walked when the street cars were filthy.
Malcolm then goes on to describe that people see us only in certain aspects of ourselves, yet many of us are that aspect and as well the opposite. Meaning that to describe a friend we can say that they are an `honest person` yet we do not see them in times of dishonesty due to the circumstances of each event. He then goes onto explain that if he went though the childhood despair that the man who shot the four youths did, and was placed in the same environment and context as that man, he would most likely have shot those four youths as well.
This is an important realization as it is a realization that we are no different than any other person on this Earth and to believe that we are is absurd. It is only the experiences that we go through, that we hold onto that come to define us and how we act, or approach any given situation. And this is currently what is happening in the occupy wall street movement. We are not realizing that if we were to place ourselves in bankers positions that we would absolutely act the exact same way that they have, we would be no different than them because of their upbringing etc. The movement is only saying that they are greedy and they have fucked us over when in fact we have all accepted this fuck over. We accepted people having more power than others, and thus within this the movement is attempting to state its power because the `1%` are greedy and they are not, yet if we were to exist in their shoes we would do the exact same thing. So it not to blame but to explain the workings of the system itself and how it is not fair for all in this world, and how it is not in fact beneficial for all that are living on this earth. The problem within this world is the capitalistic system and the greed within all humans, and the capitalistic system allowing that greed to infest the entire world, and thus allowing the human to only look out for themselves, not placing themselves as all that are living in this world, plant and animal included.
Most of the `1%` are for capitalism because they have profited from it, and I have seen the excuse that they employ others to justify their stance for capitalism, they are fine with capitalism because they have `won` while all others have `lost` within the game of capitalism. It is in fact the system that is in place that is the problem, it is the fact that the human is the way the human is within and without on all sides, no different from the rest of humanity. Thus the answer is a new system, not a `beheading` of the 1% or a demonization of the 1%, it is to realize that we too would have done the exact same thing in their shoes, through/as their upbringing and the environment that they have grown up around and have been exposed to.
A new system is needed for this Earth to become truly sustainable…well for the human to become sustainable with/as the Earth. That is why I support an Equal money system. Investigate more at http://equalmoney.org all information is there, yes the forum is there as well, but not to support questions that the information on the site offers. As well there are many FAQ videos out now that answer those types of questions. Check it out, investigate it.
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