Alternative Economic Systems Won't Address Economic Inequities in Our Mind Sets.

A little over 2 years ago, an acquaintance, an older woman asked me to come live at her house. We bartered room and board for light housekeeping and laundry. Within 10 days of arriving, her roommate, an elderly woman, suffered an acute renal failure. I agreed to help the homeowner to take care of her roommate who the doctor's then sent home to die. With the assistance of Hospice, who came three times a week to bathe the woman and the nurses who visited frequently, the homeowner and I took care of the patient. It was exhausting, labor intensive work, but as the patient was so even tempered, sweet and appreciative; rather a quite nice experience. For this additional service that I willingly assisted in, I was promised a one time cash payment of $500 no matter if the patient lived a week or more. She lived a little over four months more. I was fine with this arrangement as it allowed me to conduct my research in the home without having to go out daily to the library with had been my habit for years--and it seemed the compassionate, caring thing to do.

As time went by though, I realized that the homeowner had grand expectations for the little bed in her unfinished, filled with stuff, crowded basement and a little food. She was constantly asking that I do extra things--her house being rather large and a wh*** lot of work; as our modern homes tend to be. For a long time, I willingly obliged as I was undecided as to what exactly I fairly owed the woman in exchange for living in her home. How much of one's life must be bartered for such? I came to equate the exchange as becoming more like indentured servitude than of a fair swap. I realized how literally, the old Southern slave economy and mentality was still alive and well in our current era. The homeowner had always depended on the labor of others to do the household chores and even assist in the raising our her children.

After the patient died, it took me more than 8 months to began to feel comfortable with what I determined was a fair swap of services. The homeowner on multiple occasions let me know of her pleasure to the arrangement. However, I did find it necessary to leave the house daily and trek to the library to work. If I stayed in the house, the inquiries for a "little" help with this and that never abated--and thus made it impossible to focus on my work.

Things progressed this way until I assisted an overwhelmed teacher friend with her grades. I moved in with my friend for two weeks and assisted her at much personal costs of my time which disrupted by own research schedule. Once I returned home, the homeowner began to try and insist that I do as much for her as I did for my friend. Somehow, what I had done out of friendship now equated, in her mind, to more work for her. Of course, tensions arose once again about what was fair. She as the person with capital and tangible assets felt, and in many respects has learned, that these "properties" have more value than human beings.

Certainly this concept has evolved throughout history and has been seen in the treatment of minorities and women who are the most called upon to perform the dirty, tiring work of everyday existence; and most often without being paid an adequate "living wage." We've seem how this concept is most present in capitalism itself which has long secured the exalted position of capital over labor.

Capitalism, literally only evolved from the displacement of people from the land that was a result of

enclosure and the beginnings of commodifying land. Once indigenous peoples were displaced, they were left with only two options: moving to the cities to seek employment (thus becoming commodities themselves) or staying on the land and giving the fruits of their labor to the new "landowners."

We might begin to understand the abuses from the perspective of being torn away from our mother, the earth, and once having been so, enslaved like figurative caged animals and domesticated. These wounds are so deep and buried in our past for us to easily, intellectually grasp--they've been covered over by the heroic exploits of history which has been virtually fixated on the deeds of the oppressors. Few of us are equipped emotionally to rise above denial and look squarely at what has happened to us on this planet, and how these old wounds will continue to fester until we muster the courage to feel them and then heal them.

We will literally need to become conscious of our past in order to break our habitually responses which continue to enslave us and destroy our planet. By stepping outside of the current paradigm, we can then begin to envision more natural and balanced ways of living once more our our earth.

No matter what type of economy we create, until the underlying value is once more fairly redetermined so that it does not benefit the dominant over all meek, we will continue to suffer from our original split from the natural world and be unable to address our planetary decline. We must each individually begin to reconnect with the natural world for it is our split from such which is responsible for the sorry state that we find ourselves submerged in a toxic, sea of chemicals which threaten our very existence on our planet.. As Dennis VanEngelsdorp warns on his "Plea for Bees," we all suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder.