European refugee crisis

Let us examine what is really going on here. Thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and other places in the Middle East and Africa are leaving their homes and risking death, detainment, separation from Their children and family, and risking everything to come to Europe and the west. Picture yourself making this choice. What would the circumstances have to be to force you to choose that course? If you are honest with yourself the answer can only be that you have no choice because the alternative is that if you stay where you are those terrible events will most certainly happen. This planet's fundamental underlying functional system is one of dynamics. The system is always trying to correct itself. Let's take, for example, economic systems. In any system forces drive an economic boom where some people benefit greatly and other benefit only slightly, and others not at all. rules are put into place to force how people are allowed to use that money, or no rules are imposed at all. Either way, the "bubble" we call "growth" cannot be perpetually sustained and the economy slows down, stagnates, or reverses itself causing previously great wealth to be lost. The cycle reverses again. Or take a natural system, prey and predator - the fox and the rabbit, then cheetah and the gazelle, the owl and the mouse. When the environment provides adequately for them the population soars. But when the population can no longer be sustained the creatures start dying causing a population collapse or migration. Sound familiar? So let us look at the causes of these environmental changes that push such dynamics. In the case of the current crisis, or let's even take our own immigration dilemma, the western world is faced with a mirror into which they only see themselves, but can't. We have benefitted far to long from the creation of an exploitative economic system that has devastating results on others while we live incredibly privileged lives. We become blinded by our "success", and place many self-reinforcing systems into place (media, religion, laws, cult of personality, economic, etc.) to convince ourselves that we are right and they are wrong. These systems drive us, largely blindly, toward our own short term goals (buying that next thing) rather than pursuing collective strategies. We raise our own benefits at the expense of others with little knowledge, and not a little denial, of the real results. We cannot sustain such a system forever. Just as in nature the system will collapse and the entire system will face a crisis. The owl cannot blame the mouse for having too many babies while the mouse blames the owl for eating too many. But they only see it that way, as their minds are solely bent on their own survival. We can not hold these people and their countries solely responsible for what has happened here. Our economic system takes from them and has not benefitted them. We hold our success out in front of them, see how much better we are? Then when that success is threatened we impose punishment (war), economic sanctions, and even just enough help ($) to mollify them for a while, and we try to make them in our own image. The problem is that none of these solutions is sustainable and only temporarily staunches the wound. The bubble bursts, the floodgates are opened, humans suffer beyond their capacity and the system tries to correct itself. We have to start to see how it is lArgely our economic system that has put the system out of balance and it is our responsibility to change it. We have all the money, money we have made by exploiting them. Now they are asking for a share and they have a right to do so. We feel burdened by this demand. We naturally become defensive. We become overwhelmed and want to build walls, or attack in order to preserve the system we have convinced ourselves is right, not just for us but for everyone, though it is clearly not so. It reminds me of a neurosis and in some cases a personality disorder. When the mind becomes challenged by events (e.g. I'm told that I'm loved but I'm being hurt) defensive systems are put into place to deal with these disconnects. There is denial - it's not that bad really, or they didnt mean to hurt me, for example. Then you act in ways to repeat and recreate the circumstances you dont want. You think you are behaving in ways that make sense, but in reality they are flawed. Yet you cannot see it yourself. Sometimes it can be pointed out to you and you may be able to see it and do something about it (thus the therapeutic process at work). But then there are those whose systems are so reinforcing that no matter how much evidence they are faced with, there can be no reality check, no ability to see. That is called a personality disorder - and all of you know who these people are in your lives. Unfortunately, we have a kind of cultural personality disorder in which we can not see the evidence no matter how clearly it slaps us in the face. I think about it this way also. The individual who experiences the neurotic conflict experiences symptoms - fear, anxiety, depression, rage, and even psychotic breaks of reality as well as paranoia. As a society this is precisely what is happening. We are anxious and fearful of terrorist attacks, often irrationally so. Yes they are possible, but the chances of any individual being hurt on any given day are practically zero. We are angry and we go in the attack,,- drone strikes, war. We are depressed and we retreat - build walls. We become psychotic and make up outlandish belief systems (religious extremists who believe in things like their belief in god's word should trump the collective laws we create - i.e. Constitution), and paranoid. These systems are not sustainable. Making a real change is always very difficult and for some it is impossible. We have to journey through sacrifices that we are often ill equipped to handle. When it's the individual we face a crisis of identity, we are forced to realize that our self has been identified by these defensive acts ( that we have only been vaguely aware of) and new actions are anathema to our identity. Yet new action is necessary if we are to correct the pathological system. Our society is experiencing the check, the reality check that has been a long time coming. If we do not adjust to this problem, we and others will continue to suffer. The refugees are that check. The terrorists are that check. Our own religious fanatics are that check. Our own mass murderers are that check. Police killing people is that check. We need to pay attention to the symptoms and understand that they are telling us we need a change. Let's make it peaceful and collaborative, not a fight that will cause more suffering and deaths. Have we not evolved enough for this yet? If not then so be it. Arm yourselves, build your walls, kill and be killed. That is the only other alternative.