Sunday, December 23, 2012

Dear Mr. President:

Can't find the correct words to describe the way we (you) are handling the present maneuvers of the Sophists masquerading as elected representatives of the People. It is apparent that you are well aware of the line of light that lies between the two great fields of force. As they say, "the measure of understanding is the degree of love.", and it is great to, once again, have a President, a leader, who loves enough to understand the greater needs of Humanity.

I would like to make a suggestion regarding a solution to a present and growing problem. I suspect that, given the group nature of our collective consciousnesses, you will have heard this from other angles, so its value may be in the fact that I, who on the international stage am virtually no one,  am suggesting it.

The issue is the link between education and employment.... It is broken. An article in this morning's NYTimes, "For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall", a great piece real reporting, triggered this missive.

I have personal life experience with these conditions, and I have given a lot of thought on how to ameliorate the damage to our society as we work to bring sanity back into the system. I was a high school English teacher in much better by gone days when education really did mean something. I am the father of a brilliant daughter who has been unable to complete the work on her PhD thesis because of the need to "earn money" and is now, saddled with that "crushing debt", ($90 K), incurred while completing the academic side of that degree. Now, including the 20 paid hours a week she actually stands in front of the students, she is working 60 to 70 hour weeks trying to teach 4 classes, about 120 students, in an "educational furniture store." As an adjunct professor, an euphuism for "teaching slave", she is paid (only for the time in the class  room) a total of $1319.( Her other 50 plus hours of work are her unpaid gift to the system.) No benefits of any kind. These young brothers and sisters are the poor, the sick and practically illiterate products of our broken elementary schools.

You have been a teacher, still are, so you know that this woman, one of our children, is performing miracles everyday in those class rooms.

Over the past few years I have asked the young people I encounter working as wrappers and checkers and clerks in grocery stores and coffee shops about their education. Probably 70 percent of them have some college experience and 25 percent of them actually have BA degrees. These are the best jobs they can find, and they are constantly looking.

So, to heal this breach in our path to a greater good for all, I am suggesting that we go, as a nation, on the offense.

Our posture is to be constantly and totally on the defense. This the core rot that is generating the rapidly increasing decay of our democracy. I can't even imagine the amount of  the people's resources that we as a people are spending on defense. Actually, the concept of "defense" creates enemies and is a counterproductive hold over from ancient times when we were concerned with "savages" or wild animals coming from out of the bush to rape and kill. It is a ridiculous point of view in today's world created and nurtured by people who are "walking backward into the future".

So, the proposal is to create a Department of Reconstruction. Forget about a Department of Peace. In its present manifestation peace needs war to have meaning. I suggest that we simply forget about both war and peace and start to focus on reconstructing or building the Greater Good.

Realizing that these kinds of reconstruction take time to percolate through the collective consciousness, I would suggest that we fund the Department of Reconstruction with half of the budget we now devote to defense or, to be truthful about it, the Department of Endless War. Half of whatever gigantic billions of our money is being wasted on fear and ignorance now would be enough to provide, not just the U. S., but  the planet with a mutual force of arms if and when they were needed.

The other half would be put into those things that will really keep humanity from going over the Cliff of Oblivion. First and foremost, which anyone who actually thinks will see, is the education of our children and, now, that huge group of adult victims produced by these broken systems over the past 30 or so years.

We would not be educating these people to take places in assembly lines or other menial mindless jobs. (There will soon be no assembly lines anyway.) We will educate them to be human beings. They will know how to think, hence they will be highly useful in all sorts of human service and interface jobs hundreds of which I could name beside teachers in all disciplines, doctors, nurses, scientific expertise in all areas of environmental applications and so on.

The heart of this suggestion is that, since these are our children and our people, and since we have paid to educate them, we are obligated to provide them with meaningful labor. Humans need to labor. Labor is what gives a brother or sister honor, respect, dignity, but the labor needs to have meaning. So, we create branches of the Department of Reconstruction in agriculture, environmental quality, all fields of science, teaching, all the health and human services fields. These branches, sort of like the Peace Corps (which was a beautiful idea), will provide abundant opportunities for meaningful labor for people all around the world. If we initiate, manifest such a concept it will be picked up and utilized in all our brother and sister nations. This would be leading in the true sense of that concept.

We need to move out of the box of ignorance in which we have been trapped for centuries and into the light of reason and common sense.

lots of love

-tom