With All Due Respect, You Don't Get It...

A message to all Amerikan social activists and concerned citizens…

While I applaud your intentions in attempting to resolve your targeted economic or environmental problem—burgeoning federal deficits/debt, our dependence on oil, foreign ownership, global warming, poverty—you are wasting your time and resources. The problem that you are addressing is merely a derivative or by-product of a more fundamental Amerikan problem, our addiction to excessive consumption—living beyond our means in order to perpetuate our inflated lifestyles. You cannot possibly resolve your targeted problem unless and until we first terminate our addiction to excessive consumption.

Why?

As long as we remain junkies, addicted to excessive consumption and our resulting inflated lifestyles, we will find ways to score—that is, we will continue to commit economic and environmental indiscretions in order to live beyond our means. And, we will always be able to commit economic and environmental indiscretions at a much greater rate than the rate at which they can be remedied by social activists and concerned citizens.

The reality is that all attempts to resolve our economic and environmental problems, in the absence of first terminating our addiction to excessive consumption, are of no permanent consequence and are a waste of time and resources. These efforts are tantamount to issuing buckets and mops to clean up the mess resulting from a water main break, while neglecting to first close the valve.

Compounding the futility associated with these current problem solving efforts is the fact that the fragmented and disjointed agendas endorsed by today’s social activists and concerned citizens—thousands of competing causes with competing messages—send conflicting and confusing messages to the Amerikan public. The result is apathy or even resistance to “social causes” by mainstream Amerika, who are simply overwhelmed by information overload.

Today’s fragmented economic and environmental problem solving efforts, which target currently insoluble problems, must be re-channeled into a single, focused, well-orchestrated effort that targets the underlying cause associated with all of our pressing economic and environmental problems—our addiction to excessive consumption. We must eradicate the source before we can effectively resolve the derivatives, which will require a concerted effort on the part of all Amerikans.

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Henry David Thoreau

(Please see www.wakeupamerika.com for details.)

Our 21st Century Social Contract

The Myth of “Us” Versus “Them”…

As an increasing number of Amerikans come to realize that something is fundamentally wrong with the Amerikan status quo, we unfortunately prefer to project rather than accept blame for the situation. We attempt to blame our political and economic representatives for both the causes and the effects associated with the litany of economic and environmental problems that currently confront us.

This erroneous line of reasoning creates the mistaken impression that, we, the Amerikan public, are the innocent victims of dysfunctional policies and practices being imposed on us by external forces beyond our control—it’s “them”, not “us”. Unfortunately, this convenient but misguided junkie-logic serves only to obscure the real cause associated with Amerika’s pressing economic and environmental problems, and to totally undermine effective solutions.

It is essential that we, as Amerikans, understand that our political and economic representatives are not responsible for the fact that we continue to rush headlong toward our own demise; that we, as individual Amerikans, are solely responsible for our current dilemma. Our political and economic representatives are merely our “elected” agents, acting on our behalf—we elect our political representatives with votes and we elect our economic representatives with dollars.

In truth, our political and economic representatives are doing exactly what we, the Amerikan public, have elected them to do—they are attempting, at any cost, to maintain the Amerikan Culture, a distorted “reality” within which we can perpetuate our addiction to excessive consumption and our inflated lifestyles.

Whether it involves incurring irreparable debt, waging wars to ensure steady oil and natural gas supplies, selling our sovereignty to foreign interests, or using our planet as a garbage dump, our political and economic representatives continuously attempt to defy the laws of nature and economics on our behalf—as we do individually—in order to “buy us our next fix”.

What we have here is a symbiotic relationship between an oblivious, addicted Amerikan public and our political and economic representatives, to whom we have ascribed the privileged status of “leaders”. We, as Amerikans, have willingly abdicated total responsibility for our very existence at the societal level to our “leaders”, in exchange for “perpetual entitlement” to our inflated lifestyles at the individual level.

The unspoken social contract between the Amerikan public and our political and economic representatives: “We won’t ask questions about how you make it happen—any type of rule violation, hypocrisy, duplicity, hidden agenda, manipulation, or international aggression is fine—just don’t jeopardize our ‘right’ to live beyond our means. If you can’t, won’t, or claim not to be able to ‘guarantee’ that ‘right’, you are out…”

Only when “we” choose to terminate our addiction to excessive consumption and live sustainably within our means at the individual level, will we elect political and economic representatives who will take commensurate action at the societal level.

We are what we elect; we elect what we are…

(See www.wakeupamerika.com for proposed solutions; I welcome yours as well.)

Importing Our Inflated Amerikan Lifestyles

There is a lot of talk about how Amerika is “exporting jobs” to foreign countries; what is of greater concern is how we are “importing our inflated lifestyles” from foreign countries…

“An ‘ecological footprint’ is the amount of land and water area a person or a human population would need to provide the resources required to sustainably support itself and to absorb its wastes, given prevailing technology. It is a way of determining relative consumption for the purpose of educating people about their resource use and, sometimes, triggering them to change how they consume” (Wikipedia).

For example, in 2005, Iraq had a per capita ecological footprint of 2.5 acres; China 4.0 acres, India 1.7 acres, Nigeria 3.0 acres, Russia 10.9 acres, UK 13.8 acres, Japan 10.6 acres, world average 5.4 acres—Amerika 24.0 acres! (Global Footprint Network)

This means that it requires, on average, approximately 24 acres of planet earth’s surface area to create the goods and services consumed by every Amerikan and to dispose of the waste created by every Amerikan each year.

Interestingly, Amerika’s “bio-capacity”, our domestic surface area available to produce goods and services and to dispose of waste, is only 11.6 acres per capita—leaving an “ecological deficit” of 12.4 acres per capita. This means that at least half of Amerika’s current consumption and waste disposal is being enabled outside of the US; that is, by using resources located in foreign countries.

This scenario is obviously not sustainable...

As developing nations, those who are currently subsidizing our excessive consumption by “exporting” their “surplus” bio-capacity to Amerika, continue to develop, they will want to retain their resources in order to improve their own living standards. The result: “surplus” bio-capacity will no longer be available for export to Amerika.

As the bio-capacity available for Amerikan “import” decreases, we will be faced with some difficult choices: forcibly appropriate resources from foreign countries (Middle East), keep foreign countries poor in order to diminish their demand for their own resources (Africa), or terminate our addiction to excessive consumption and learn to live within our means—at less than half of our current living standard (No way; we’re Amerikans; we’re entitled!!).

As a global reference point, the combined ecological footprint of the entire world’s population is currently 23% greater than the planet can regenerate (Global Footprint Network)—a condition called “overshoot”. We maintain this position—temporarily—by depleting earth’s finite environmental resource reserves. Talk about unsustainable…

(See www.wakeupamerika.com for proposed solutions; I welcome yours as well.)

The End of the Amerikan Dream

The message that nobody wants to hear…

The American Dream, the Amerikan mantra, is characterized by perpetual growth, perpetual progress, perpetual prosperity, perpetual entitlement—the next generation will always “have it better” than the last. For generations we have lived the American Dream and experienced ever-improving living standards and material wellbeing, yet most of us have never thought about how it all came to be—we have just assumed that it will never end.

Unfortunately, the American Dream must come to an end, because it is, and always has been, unsustainable. Unfortunately, too, awakening from the American Dream and returning to reality will be unpleasant, especially for future generations—living the American Dream has come at a tremendous price.

Why?

We have paid for the American Dream by living beyond our means—supplementing the consumption level enabled by our earned incomes at any point in time with “incremental” income generated by depleting our economic and environmental reserves and with “incremental” income generated by incurring economic and environmental obligations against our future. In the process of perpetuating our inflated Amerikan lifestyles, we have taken, but we have not replenished; we have borrowed, but we have not repaid.

Over time, we have vastly depleted our critical economic and environmental resource reserves, and we have incurred economic and environmental obligations against our future that are both excessive and of questionable quality. We are rapidly approaching limits in both areas; finite resources ultimately run out and accumulated obligations must ultimately be discharged. When we reach one or more of these limits, the American Dream will end.

While the end of the American Dream is inevitable, the circumstances under which it will end are still within our control to some degree. We can dream on, reach one or more economic or environmental limits, and experience a catastrophic awakening; or we can take action now to mitigate the adverse effects associated with our awakening by voluntarily choosing to live within our means. (See www.wakeupamerika.com for proposed solutions; I welcome your solutions as well.)

In retrospect, the American Dream will be viewed as more of a society-wide junkie high, which it is, than a dream. The American Dream has been a multi-generational distorted reality characterized by unsustainable excess, during which we, as Amerikans, have enjoyed inflated lifestyles enabled by consumption at unsustainable levels—excessive consumption.

The issue at hand is whether we have the courage to voluntarily awaken from the American Dream, terminate our addiction to excessive consumption, and face reality—discharge our accumulated obligations and live sustainably within our means from this point forward. The alternative is a rude awakening from which many of us will not survive.

The American Dream is history. It is time to Wake Up Amerika! and face reality!

The Wake Up Amerika! Message

The Wake Up Amerika! message is one that everyone in our country must hear, until we get it…

While it is becoming increasingly clear that we are confronted by an unprecedented array of impending economic and environmental disasters that threaten our living standards, health, and national security; most Amerikans are unaware of the fundamental problem underlying these impending disasters.

Part one of the Wake Up Amerika! message is that we, as individual Amerikans, are responsible for the impending economic and environmental disasters that currently confront us. In our unrelenting efforts to maintain our addiction to excessive consumption—live beyond our means, economically and environmentally, in order to perpetuate our inflated lifestyles—we continue to commit, both individually and through our political and economic representatives, the economic and environmental indiscretions that have put us on the road to impending disaster.

We are the problem…

Unfortunately, neither our dysfunctional behavior, nor our addiction to excessive consumption and our resulting inflated lifestyles are sustainable.

Part two of the Wake Up Amerika! message is that we, as addicts, must take decisive action to terminate our addiction to excessive consumption, and we must insist that our political and economic representatives do the same; that the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms associated with terminating our addiction will be societal disruptions, living standard degradation, and population reduction; that the longer we wait, the more severe these withdrawal symptoms will be; and that the price for inaction is reaching our day of reckoning, a societal apocalypse in which the disruptions to our lifestyles and society are likely to be catastrophic and permanent.

We must be the solution…

Achieving permanent solutions to our pressing economic and environmental problems involves nothing less than a cultural revolution, the American Cultural Revolution, during which we must terminate our addiction to excessive consumption and choose to live within our means, both individually and societally.

Or many of us will not survive...

Wake Up Amerika! seeks to create broad public awareness of our addiction to excessive consumption and its inevitable consequences, to promote open public discussion regarding permanent solutions to our addiction, and to encourage Amerikans to take decisive action to terminate our addiction NOW—thereby regaining control over our individual and national destinies and establishing a solid foundation for future generations.

(See www.wakeupamerika.com for proposed solutions; I welcome your solutions as well.)