Sunday, May 16, 2010

on being responsible to each other

Sunday morning and reading the NY Times and it is riddled with endless news accounts about how we are slowly destroying our world−our environment, our global economy, and each other.

Our world has grown smaller. The Internet has created one huge interconnected world where we can no longer think only about ourselves. Everything we do inevitably affects everything and everyone. Look at Greece. The little guy doesn’t pay his taxes; fears that the country can’t pay its massive debt drops the value of the euro for fear of the collapse of the European banks that hold the debt, and then that fear tanks the Dow. Oh boy. Who would have thought?

But after all, we are like children. We learn by example. We need to be shown what is right and wrong, how to be responsible financially, environmentally and treat others as we would like to be treated. But what do we learn when all around us we see preachers raping children, the big guy lying and cheating and stealing our money, the corporation consciously taking calculated risks based on dollars saved rather than lives or nature saved, and when even good presidents get sucked in to making bad choices? We learn to cheat and lie and say, “well if they…”.

It’s hard to always do the right thing. I try to. I think most of us try to. There are times when I feel lazy about rinsing out the plastic container so it can go in the recycling bin and I want to just drop it into the trash. I mean how can just this once hurt anything. But of course globally, just this once, one at a time, it does!

Though I am thankful for all the good of the internet and all the beauty of our global interconnectedness (all you have to do is watch Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - 'Lux Aurumque' and see and feel and hear the beauty of it all, there are times when all this connectedness has me wanting to crawl into a hole where I am responsible only to myself and my family and friends.

I guess I am beginning to feel overwhelmed by my responsibility to the whole world and I just feel like pulling out all my money, before they successfully lose all the hard earned money I made while doing the right thing, and running away to some beach before that giant 300 foot deep oil plume reaches me.