Stuck in a box not of our own choosing seems to describe most of us in America. We didn’t ask mortgage lenders to make risky loans. We didn’t ask credit card companies to hike the rates up to 24% or higher. We didn’t ask health insurers to deny claims until we verify each time that we do not have duplicate coverage. We didn’t ask the Big 3 automakers to make gas guzzling SUVs and trucks. We didn’t ask oil companies to make historic profits while jerking us around with historic high fuel prices. We didn’t ask for all of our investments and savings to take a dive. We didn’t ask for forced unpaid time off, salary cuts, and layoffs. We didn’t ask that bailout money be heaped on privileged corporate and financial investor criminals. We didn’t ask for any of it. No we did not.
Hi! Jeff:
ReplyDeleteSay Hi to you! Thanks for visiting my blog and for your generous comment.
I’m really impressed by your visually stunning photo and socio-politically conscious article. The opening statement reminds me of American Essayist Clarence Page’s comment on being-in-the-box:
“We are born into boxes. Our box defines us by gender, color, religion, ethnicity, nationality, and on and on. Sooner or later, we begin to think outside the box.”
It doesn’t matter whether nor not we are stuck in a box of our own choosing.
More importantly, we need to “begin to think outside the box.”
Chen-ou
Hi Chen, hi Jeff - can I say my 2 cents?
ReplyDelete1 cent) We also leave this world in a box...
2nd cent) I happen to know a guy whose family (wealthy) owns a car dealership and around the time this whole financial scandal first came down, his perspective was that YES, at least as far as the car co.'s manufacturing the gas guzzling SUVs...his perspective was that customers kept buying these SUVs right to the end, the manufacturers and dealers like his father had no choice but to keep making and selling the stuff to make their money.
I guess being from finance, I partly recognize the culpability of "demand" forces -- many times misguided -- like the public's demand for cheap food, fast/convenience foods largely responsible for mass production, unhealthy techniques in the food business.
Having said the above, I also recognize the other notion that the modern lifestyle of having to spend so much more time and resources working and paying taxes drive the need to have cheap food, convenient food, and perhaps the solid SUVs to be able to drive so far on dangerous highways to get to work...and back for dinner with the family...
It's all an insane circle or circular process with all of us circling within boxes...
all the best,
Flo