Symptoms vs Causes

A Matter of Power

For all the things that politics is interested in legislating, it seems like it’s much more about how to deal with symptoms than it is about causes.

Perhaps, that’s because it is really difficult to legislate things in the causal realm. But, endless treatments of symptoms without recognition of the disease, in the end, is somewhere between futile and hopeless.

At some point, all you end up doing is legislating your legislation, because you're not really working on the problem.

We must find those among us who are willing to work for the service of the people, rather than for power. Because until that happens, nothing substantive will change.

Who has the courage to truly serve we what we really need, rather than simply try to hold on to power? Too many of those currently in power don’t.

Power is rooted in causality. Power wants us to continue to focus of symptoms, to avoid what causes those symptoms. Because causality is the locus of where real change can occur. But, those with power don’t want real change — they want things to stay the same. They want to keep their power more than they want to see things change.

America is, by many measures, the most powerful country on earth. And, yet, it is fraught with problems that many other developed countries have mostly resolved. Why? You have to ask, why? And too many of our ‘leaders’ don’t really want to ask why because that would mean that the level of work involved would challenge many dynamics related to their power — power that benefits them, as opposed to those who are being hurt by the things we refuse to change.

We all know this is true, and we all know how it works — money. Money’s power blinds us to the truth, not to mention to the pain of those who suffer from the impacts of power not aimed at maintaining our collective safety. Why are we, as a nation, now armed to the teeth?

In 2004, a ten-year federal ban on assault weapons expired, and since then. mass shootings have tripled. Zusha Elinson, who is writing a history of the bestselling AR-15 military style weapon used in many mass shootings, notes that there were about 400,000 AR-15 style rifles in America before the assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994. Today, there are 20 million.

-- Heather Cox Richardson

Because everybody is making money from it. Pull the money out of the equation and a lot things might start to look pretty different. Perhaps even, real change could happen.

But, those who could work at these things, don’t…because they have too much power reinforced by money. They aren’t really incentivized to change — their wealth has dramatically increased by keeping things the same.

People have been very passionate about the problems we face, particularly at is relates violence. But, at some point, the passion starts to feel too thin…and more passion doesn’t seem to help very much. Perhaps this is because it inadvertently continues to fall into the symptom domain, rather than in the cause domain. It is amazing how quiet those who could really help change things are; how often they try to change the subject, to make it about something else.

We really have to be honest and look at the dynamics of power that are causing the violence we experience. And, in order to do that, we have to look at those who have the power to do so. And, in order to that, we have to look at the money that sources their power.

The American people have to demand (power) a restructuring of power, and therefore money, to move much from passion to the real power of change.

When will we do the hard work of shifting our focus from the symptoms to what is causing those symptoms?