Founded in a deep irony, capitalism promotes the moral framework of autonomy while at the same time eroding the true freedom of the vast majority.
In the same way that we respond to pain in one part of the body as something to remedy immediately, we should see it as our priority to alleviate the pain of the many people and natural elements constituting our economic body. Our inability to do so is our tragedy.
You teach me that some love stories are viscerally beautiful up until the very moment of their end, but that does not mean they are meant to last. They are meant to be experienced only as a precursor to the other things life has in store for us.
It is now brought to public memory that perhaps we are reentering The Gilded Age — an era marked by rapid prosperity, technological advancements and economic growth, its golden exterior of prosperity disguising the destitution within.
The pillaging of Africa’s resources by some of our nation’s most revered companies serves as a brutal reminder that even with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, American corporations do not practice this formal equality beyond its borders. With the onset of globalization, they have merely transferred their system of exploitation overseas.
Maybe it is time to consider that we fall in love not with people, but with moments: a moment in which our lover is bold, a moment in which they excite us and a moment in which they exude kindness, compassion or any other quality we may deem worthy of love.
In the same way that we invest in our military to develop weapons of mass destruction to allegedly keep us safe, we must see it in our priorities to build our citizens’ human capital through a formal investment in higher education.
It is the worst of times because our government does not shy from restricting consumption when it appears detrimental, but refuses to regulate a production scheme that has been complacent in the shredding of human dignity; and unless we vehemently transform ourselves, we too will be complacent in this genocidal process of mass affliction against not just human lives, but our planet as well.
It took nine years of the Western experience for me to discover that we are not free.