Walter Mosley by Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation Page A
Tags: General, Political Science, Civics & Citizenship, Electronic Books, Political Process, Civil Rights, Political Participation - United States, Political Participation
Ads: Link
communication to stem the potential for violence on a grand scale. Young people are at the forefront of communication if only because they constantly create one of the most universal languagesâpopular music. We need to bring them into our meetings and discuss with them, as equals, the problems we all face in this twenty-first-century village of ours.
The older generationâs decisions, to a great degree, are based on misplaced certainty and fear whereas the youth have optimism and a much healthier learning curve than our aging brains can muster. We must cut away that which is no longer useful in our stores of memory and bring whatâs left, our valid experience, to our young people. Together we have a chance of creating international parity and a country where brothers and sisters come in all ages, sexes, races, and creeds.
STEP TEN
UNDERSTANDING COST
C ost. The Great Shadow Joe and his acolytes, the Joes, grasp this term with uncanny acuity. They know what everything costs down to the micromil: planks of wood, fish off the coast of Brazil still swimming and dreaming of the filtered sun, unending acres of fallow earth in southern Wyoming, the labor in your hands and in your aging brain. They know how much it costs to get a left-handed person to buy a product in a market versus the cost of snagging a righthander. They understand the way to bring you to life in steps from sexual arousal, to desire for comfort, to the cash registerâall while youâre talking to your mother on a cell phone about Christmas dinner.
Having the knowledge of what things cost provides almost absolute power in the modern world. If you know what something costs then you have at least the potential to control that thing. There are people in Washington and on Wall Street who can tell you how much it will cost to make a young woman a doctor or to maintain a young manâs lifelong journey through the prison system once he has slipped (or has been pushed) into the gangs.
This might be the most important and complex step in the recovery program of the Oppressed Denizen of the modern worldâthis because Cost is an intricate process that appears to be simple. It (Cost) started out purely and innocently as a human bartering system but through the centuries it has been taken over by the virtual system of the Great Shadow Joe. Capitalism (GS Joeâs other name) has altered Cost and value to fit its needs and predilections.
There was a time that an old woman sitting in front of her semi-rural home in Oregon could tell you what an apple in her barrel cost. No more. Now Best-Fruits-Imaginable, an agribusiness cartel officed in Cincinnati but incorporated in São Paulo, Brazil, can undersell that grandmother and tell her, by the greatest of all communicators (The Market), what the true and transitory
worth of the product of her familyâs age-old orchard actually is.
âBut, Miss Rogers,â the potential buyer says, âI can buy a whole bag of apples like these at the supermarket for the price youâre charging for one.â
Cost.
As everyday citizens in the world who know our alphabet and our numbers, we believe that we understand Cost. The price tag says apples $3.25 a bag . I can read. I can comparison-shop in the newspapers. I can call Betty and ask her how much sheâs paying across town. I donât need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Au contraire.
The price tag has nothing to do with Cost. The price tag is what you payâright now. But every dollar you spend is only a down-payment on a bill that will follow you for the rest of your life. Once Best-Fruits-Imaginable buys 87.09 percent of the mom and pop orchards in the Northwest, apples might well become a rarity and their Cost will reflect their availability. The apples you bought five years ago at a discount will now eat into your paycheck as you bite into them. These are the wages of Cost.
And it goes further than that. What
The older generationâs decisions, to a great degree, are based on misplaced certainty and fear whereas the youth have optimism and a much healthier learning curve than our aging brains can muster. We must cut away that which is no longer useful in our stores of memory and bring whatâs left, our valid experience, to our young people. Together we have a chance of creating international parity and a country where brothers and sisters come in all ages, sexes, races, and creeds.
STEP TEN
UNDERSTANDING COST
C ost. The Great Shadow Joe and his acolytes, the Joes, grasp this term with uncanny acuity. They know what everything costs down to the micromil: planks of wood, fish off the coast of Brazil still swimming and dreaming of the filtered sun, unending acres of fallow earth in southern Wyoming, the labor in your hands and in your aging brain. They know how much it costs to get a left-handed person to buy a product in a market versus the cost of snagging a righthander. They understand the way to bring you to life in steps from sexual arousal, to desire for comfort, to the cash registerâall while youâre talking to your mother on a cell phone about Christmas dinner.
Having the knowledge of what things cost provides almost absolute power in the modern world. If you know what something costs then you have at least the potential to control that thing. There are people in Washington and on Wall Street who can tell you how much it will cost to make a young woman a doctor or to maintain a young manâs lifelong journey through the prison system once he has slipped (or has been pushed) into the gangs.
This might be the most important and complex step in the recovery program of the Oppressed Denizen of the modern worldâthis because Cost is an intricate process that appears to be simple. It (Cost) started out purely and innocently as a human bartering system but through the centuries it has been taken over by the virtual system of the Great Shadow Joe. Capitalism (GS Joeâs other name) has altered Cost and value to fit its needs and predilections.
There was a time that an old woman sitting in front of her semi-rural home in Oregon could tell you what an apple in her barrel cost. No more. Now Best-Fruits-Imaginable, an agribusiness cartel officed in Cincinnati but incorporated in São Paulo, Brazil, can undersell that grandmother and tell her, by the greatest of all communicators (The Market), what the true and transitory
worth of the product of her familyâs age-old orchard actually is.
âBut, Miss Rogers,â the potential buyer says, âI can buy a whole bag of apples like these at the supermarket for the price youâre charging for one.â
Cost.
As everyday citizens in the world who know our alphabet and our numbers, we believe that we understand Cost. The price tag says apples $3.25 a bag . I can read. I can comparison-shop in the newspapers. I can call Betty and ask her how much sheâs paying across town. I donât need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Au contraire.
The price tag has nothing to do with Cost. The price tag is what you payâright now. But every dollar you spend is only a down-payment on a bill that will follow you for the rest of your life. Once Best-Fruits-Imaginable buys 87.09 percent of the mom and pop orchards in the Northwest, apples might well become a rarity and their Cost will reflect their availability. The apples you bought five years ago at a discount will now eat into your paycheck as you bite into them. These are the wages of Cost.
And it goes further than that. What
Similar Books
