Dis Connection

Because we are disconnected, we reverberate and distribute nearly innumerable problems throughout our system, in almost exponential fashion. Solve our disconnection, and we clear out legions of problems (although admittedly, we run the risk of creating a few more in the process—clearly, a risk worth taking).

Here’s just one small sample of how our disconnection—and our lack of seeing the effects of those disconnections—multiplies throughout our society while we address, if we address at all, things in a band- aid fashion because we see no connections: There are too many individuals in our highly individualistic society who feel out of place—or feel they have no place. After all, “you’re on your own, pal,” is what the culture says to them, despite any offers of help. Many turn to drugs, violence, escapism, or various forms of anti-social behavior. There’s ONE problem (actually a bunch, but we’re simplifying here).

Meanwhile, down south, we have spiraling (out of control?) violence from individuals and organizations vying to supply the illegal drugs that those disconnected up north want. We rail and rage when it affects our own non-drug involved citizens. We talk about “the border,” and “fighting the war on drugs,” and more useless verbiage while we spend our national treasure in foreign lands treading water at best, and maybe stirring up backlash and blowback. We spend money—ridiculous amounts of money we don’t have—on all sorts of things in isolation. We make little headway on, and we solve, none of them. Because we make no connections.

We ignore the desperate that we create as byproduct of our ways abroad. And then rage in frustration when those desperate lash out or seek to do us harm. The desperate are keenly susceptible to manipulative radicalization by the few—have we learned nothing from our own Western history how this can happen?

We like to spout how we don’t need to spend even a little money on “foreigners” (an increasingly fanciful notion in this highly interconnected and interdependent system and biosphere), while we spend enormous amounts on often heavy handed presences in foreign lands. Our willingness to bleed our increasingly phantom treasury in dubious ventures contrasts even more inanely with our unwillingness to actually invest in desperation-prevention. We spend untold billions in all sorts of immigration issues, let alone the billions more we spend on the “drug problem,” looking for more or better mops to sop up the water rather than shutting the faucets off.

Ask those who TRULY understand and study the immigration issue, and you will see that much of it can be ameliorated by connected and thoughtful policies, not emotional lashing outs.

Ask those who TRULY understand and study the drug issue, and you will see that it is largely a manifestation of other things, and if you don’t address those things, whatever you do about drugs is of marginal effect.

Examine your precepts America.