Tags
Climate Change, Corporations are not people, Find a literary agent, Homelessness, Hunger, Inequality, Injustice, Northwest Region/Guyana
Happy New Year 2014
Source: Happy New Year Quotes
As Year 2013 comes to an end, I would like to thank all of you who have signed up to follow my blog, other visitors who read my posts, and those who take the time to share their thoughts and experiences. Special thanks go to Cyril Bryan of the Guyanese Online Blog for sharing my posts with his readers. My wish for each one of you in the coming year is that you realize at least one of your goals for 2014. Our plans don’t always work out as envisaged.
While I achieved my goals of completing the revision process of my first novel and having it edited by a professional, I failed to find a literary agent to assist with publication. This goal remains on my list for the coming year.
I began working on my second novel, exploring betrayal, set in the northwest region of Guyana during the period 1979 to 1980. My goal in 2014 is to complete the research required to bring the characters and period to life. Creating characters that readers will love and hate is both challenging and lots of fun.
The real world is not the same as the world of fiction. In real life, I cannot shape people and events to obtain a desired outcome. I have no control over external forces. I can only control my response.
Injustice and inequality in America are real. Homelessness and hunger in America are real. How does one respond to such chronic disorders? Overcome or succumb? Fight or flight? Hope or despair?
Year 2013 marks the end of the vestiges of hope I harbored that our dysfunctional government would free itself from the corporate stranglehold. Since corporations are not people, they are incapable of considering the consequences of their decisions and the needs of the people who sustain them. Programmed only for generating profits, they gobble up Earth’s resources and spew destruction and suffering.
The Arctic ice continues to melt. Sea levels continue to rise. Oceans are warmer and more acidic. Storms and forest fires are fiercer and more destructive. The effects of climate change are already a reality for millions of people in the United States and worldwide. Yet, the corporate culprits spread misinformation and denial about the greatest crisis facing our times.
During this year, I struggled to understand how the highly-educated elite could jeopardize the survival of the human species on Planet Earth. Are some of them psychopaths whose wealth and power protect them from prosecution under the law? Does the world they live and move in shield them from the ugly reality? Is their greed an addiction?
Whatever the reasons driving the behavior of the elite among us, one thing is certain. They get away with what they do because we-the-people let them. If we continue to let them lead our species to the brink of self-destruction, we have only ourselves to blame for our silence and inaction.
Three Worlds One Vision 
Reblogged this on Guyanese Online and commented:
Great article Rosaliene… covers all the major points that concern us all. You forgot to mention the Fukushima Radiation that is now hitting the US and Canada west coast. See article: http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/fukushima-radiation-hits-us-west-coast/
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Cyril, thanks for sharing my article with your readers.
Yes, indeed, I did forget the radiation coming our way from Fukushima. Too much negative overload! Our technologies have run amok. We are paying the price with our lives which have little to no value for the Powers-that-be.
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Rosaliene:
All the best to you for the New Year 2014…. especially for the publication of your first book and the completion of the second one.
Cheers.
Cyril
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Thanks, Cyril.
I continue to stumble and fall, but, with support like yours, I get up and keep moving forward.
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The human capacity for rationalization knows no bounds, as far as I can tell. I wouldn’t doubt that part of the rationalization of the irresponsible corporations (some are quite responsible) has to do with the idea of creating jobs and giving money to charity, which they also do, even if not all the jobs are compensated with a living wage. The sheer size (scale) of some of these entities in one sense makes them easy targets, but in another makes them very difficult to take on. All the while our individual lives are bombarded with so much information and a technology that changes so rapidly, it becomes hard to keep up with just those things, let alone to become part of any action to better mankind. Your voice is an important one, especially in a day when independent journalism is dealing with its own compromises just to stay alive (portrayed with considerable humor in “Anchorman 2).” Keep writing, Rosaliene.
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Dr. Stein, I’ve become so disillusioned by the actions of BIG corporate power that I have come to perceive their good acts as mere self-serving.
There are numerous non-profit groups and organizations that are working for change in specific issues. But we don’t hear much about them in the corporate-controlled media. Perhaps in a future blog post, I could provide a list of the major non-profit organizations working for change. I’ll add that to my list of goals for 2014.
I haven’t yet seen “Anchorman 2.” Thanks for the recommendation. Laughter helps me to disperse all of life’s toxicity.
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Onward, Rose – you are doing us all a service with your posts and the discussions they foster – hopefully actions as well. I must ask you to consider this re corporations, however, yes, they are not people but they are controlled by people, men and women of the same species that gave us the unsung who give tirelessly for the welfare of others. As unhip as that sounds, it is so. We must also, seems to me, be wary of looking at corporations as something foreign, not of our making – the corporations are made and controlled by people just like us and those people must be held accountable.
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Angela, I agree that the people who own and control corporations should be held accountable for their crimes. This becomes a complex issue with giant multinational and transnational corporations where their owners, the shareholders, are numerous and super-rich. As I see it, jailing their elected managing directors does not change the laws governing US corporations, legal entities with rights of person-hood.
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