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Helping or Liberating?

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Robert De Filippis
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I paraphrase a message I heard in a lecture here: In the speaker's story a black person said to a white person, "don't say you're here to help me. Say you're here to liberate us both."

In my words, "you're here to free us both from these roles we play, roles made necessary by a sick system."

I've said many times we are all victims of the system. And it's toxic because it pits one group against another, for example, when I said cops who shoot black kids are victims too. But they, just like the kids they shoot, need to be liberated from the toxicity that places them in their respective roles.

This may shock some readers, but I don't think the system is racist in nature. It's classist, i.e., economically classist. And it is based on a prehistoric myth created from a reality humanity faced millennia ago. This is the powerful myth of scarcity!

Those with an agenda, convince us there isn't enough to go around. And they have a lot of evidence to prove it. What we don't see is that real scarcity is caused by abusing the systems naturally evolved to be more egalitarian in their original forms.

For instance, the De Beers family controls the supply of diamonds so well a buyer will believe they are rarer than they are. Add some provocative advertising and we're willing to spend thousands on a useless rock.

We love the system because it has given us the greatest material wealth in the history of the planet. But its Darwinian "survival-of-the- fittest" mentality is abhorrent to a well-functioning society, as unfettered capitalism is now proving.

On the plus side, ordinary people benefit from this system by exchanging their skills and knowledge for the material resources needed to live a productive life. But there is a small percentage of people who will abuse the system by propagating fear of scarcity to line their own pockets. They don't care about society. They only care about the power and advantages money grants upon its owners.

I chuckle when I hear the arguments about what's most important in the U.S. There's no contest. Money seems to top every other value. Following the money will usually take you to the cause of most problems we create and say we're trying to fix.

The solutions are usually measured in terms of returns on investment to the right special interests. Efficacy is rarely a consideration. For instance, billions invested in a military already larger than the next dozen countries combined, to protect us from an imaginary existential threat of imaginary proportions. Who in their right minds would attack us?

Our challenge is liberation from the tentacles of a system that pits us against each other because of the myth of scarcity, i.e., "there just isn't enough to go around." A system that distracts us while the ultra-wealthy rig the flow of money upward into their coffers and destroy the planet in the process--creating real scarcity.

So, when someone says "I'm here to help you" it implies they're free or above the fray. Nothing is further from the truth. As helpers, we're as much victims as the people we're trying to help.

Robert De Filippis

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Author, columnist, and blogger with a long career in business management, management consulting and executive coaching. I've authored and published eight books: "You, Your Self and the 21st Century,"The Flowers Are Talking to Me," and "Faith (more...)
 

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