The human species is the most difficult and unpredictable being to understand. We as humans are the most vulnerable in pacifying our needs and desires. Living in Istanbul, poverty is strongly visible compare to NYC in which we may think poverty is strongly related to being homeless or someone with no shelter. However, Americans are not familiar with the hidden poverty within the rural and urban atmosphere and the decreasing salaries/rising quality of life some individuals are experiencing. In Istanbul, poverty is visible but not as strong as the symbolic symptom such as homelessness. Surprisingly, poverty and the dichotomy of class are ingrained to the society. Throughout the city, you will find gecekondus, a Turkish version of a slum town that brings me memories of San Salvador’s shantytowns in El Salvador. When talking to some of my Turkish pupils (ranging from university students to CEOs), they acknowledge about such conditions but are complacent with the situation. In other words, the people do not seem bothered due to the fact that it has become an integrated part of their culture. Yet, they all admit that life in Turkey is hard and dire improvements are needed, but the populous have become content in living in a broken bureaucratic political system.
With the nation declining to third world status, I have come to believe that the average American is the most complacent within our integrated world. My assessment may be a bit exaggerated but I am convinced of the notion that I am raising. In the midst of a strong economic stagnation, people are expressing their suffering and heartache that they are experiencing, which is clearly justified. Many individuals have lost jobs, homes, savings, and other forms of property. However, on the flip side, there are a few whose arguments are not strongly convincing. For example, a number of people are crying hearsay not because they way of life has been hampered to the brink of poverty but upset at the fact that they cannot fulfill their consumer appetite for vanity and materials. As Milton Friedman argued in his book Capitalism and Freedom, it should be the person who is at fault for making ill-wise decisions and must bear the brunt of the responsibility. Some individuals and entities are experiencing adversity due to error and greed, and do not deserve a form of government sponsored aid. Yet, the government will still intervene in relieving those who are “suffering” (Bush tax-cuts for the top 1-2% of the American tax bracket, TARP stimulus package for a number of corporations, cash for clunkers to bail out the auto industry, and other forms of government aid). This kind of action strongly enforces “moral hazard” across all fields ranging from businesses to the individual accumulating a ballooning debt. For those who are familiar with me, remember that I still do support in reforming health care, not making the Bush tax cuts permanent, and implementing a universal education system as long it is in good faith (i.e. fiscal responsibility).
In one of the greatest democratic and economic powers within the history of the world, people can still be easily deceived with the information provided by the main stream media, so-call “experts”, and lack of citizen participation. Nonetheless, there is a minority of well-educated, sophisticated, and informed individuals but their voice of reasoning is over-shadowed by the misinformed populous. A majority of people have abused the element of the Maslow theory in regards to needs. Each person wants to put their needs first even though the basic necessity of survival has been fulfilled. The individual, like Adam Smith’s definition of capitalism and Charles Darwin's "natural selection", has exploited a resource to its maximum capacity to fulfill their lust and desires. It leads me to question, when times were good, what did the public and other stakeholders do to strengthen the overall health of the community and its democratic foundations? Other than fulfilling the objective of special interest, the people have done basically nothing to defend their value within society. Instead, we consumed ourselves into greater debt, created an environment filled with hatred (i.e. immigration reform, anti-gay marriages, and hostile partisan politics), lagged in the area of innovation via research & design, and have become the products of the “too big to fail” companies that view the person as a commodity rather than a rational consumer.
Yet, maybe I am being overly generous in calling the person “rational” for they have become too dependent on credit and the system. We as a species have traded our democratic principles and had become the dependents of the paternal system where we expect others to fix the mess we created rather than be the “rational” citizen in resolving the problem. We have lost accountability for ourselves, the appetite for civic association, and have become pleased in putting the blame on others. As a consequence, the era of the human bar code has commenced but it is not too late to make a difference in being active in the civil process.
