Heart of Occupy Wall St Protest

[mizpeh]

Originally Posted by Jermyn Davidson

"Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While bankers continue to destroy the American economy. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out."


Am I the only Conservative that understands and agree with these sentiments?


I am grateful for the right to protest and for the protesters who exercise that right.

I don't criticize the hamsters who choose to abandon their wheel. I only wish I could abandon mine.

"I was watching the television interviews of some of the Occupy Wall Street young people. In this particular segment they seemed to only be able to find 22 year olds. That is, those just out of college who have not been able to find a job. The latter is understandable since the unemployment rate of 18-22 year olds is somewhere in the neighbor- hood of 25% or worse. They are angry. They feel they have been sold a bill of goods. They have been told, ‘get a good education and you will find your job and place in life’. Only that isn’t so much happening these days. There are a lot of unemployed college graduates, and the number of unemployed high school graduates who did not go on to college is astronomical. Your odds at least are better if you have a college degree. Looking around for someone to blame for this mess, the Occupy Wall Street crowd has fixed on Wall Street, on the Bernie Madoffs in our world (as in made off with our cash). And of course there is some truth to the rumor that greedy people on Wall Street caused the crash of 2008. But it is not the root of the problem. Nor is the root of the problem laziness. Nor is the root of the problem a lack of hard work. Americans still by and large are very hard workers, compared for example to the Greeks. No, none of this gets at the root of the problem. One of the wonderful old Pogo cartoons gets at the root of the problem.



We in general are the root of the problem. Our culture is in the clutches of the most primal sin of all narcissism. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. The heart turned in upon itself leads to greed, a strong sense of entitlement, selfishness, self-centeredness, ‘me first’. It’s all narcissism. Narcissism is by definition a sick form of self-love. Love that is focused on self, not God or others, but self. Did you ever wonder why the great commandments (not suggestions) were love God with your whole heart and neighbor as self? Because frankly that’s the hardest thing in the world for a self-centered narcissistic person to do. They have to be continually reminded. We are indeed our own worst enemies. We don’t need to point fingers at others who are ‘more narcissistic than us’. We need to simply look in the mirror. There is an old ditty which goes this way ‘The three persons I admire most are me, myself, and I. Me, myself I know very well, but who’s that other guy?’..."

By Ben Witherington http://www.patheos.com/blogs/biblean...besetting-sin/