The Case for Informed Citizenship

by Janet Ritz

With reports of the use of child labor in horrific conditions that supply tobacco to Philip Morris cigarettes, the ongoing destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, the denial of unemployment extensions to the millions who've exhausted their benefits, the suicides by technology workers in China, the widespread use of child labor to produce chocolate, the conflict minerals used in cell phones, has the time come for citizens to look in the mirror?

Human Rights Watch, the group best known for documenting governmental abuse and war crimes, plans to release a report on Wednesday showing that child and forced labor is widespread on farms that supply a cigarette factory owned by Philip Morris International in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia.

While child labor should be condemned in any setting, the report said, employing children on tobacco farms is particularly hazardous because tobacco field laborers are exposed to high levels of nicotine while doing their jobs.

In a society that runs on oil, on gas, on coal, on supermarket produce sections piled high with colorful fruits and vegetables that many around the world would see as equivalent to the gold in Fort Knox, we have distractions from the consequences of our choices. If we stop to think about what went into the production of that phone, that tank of gas, that bar of chocolate, what will we see in ourselves? Are we, by our own obtuseness, responsible for those who toil in unsafe conditions, who find themselves looking out at a destroyed Gulf of Mexico, who mourn for loved ones buried in an unsafe mine?

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That Acrid Smell in the Air

by Sherman Yellen

Oh how I hate an ism. Born in the first half of the twentieth century I've lived through them all. That century was cursed with fascism, communism, and McCarthyism. In the twenty first we have Islamic terrorism. 

I must apologize if I am adding to the already overcrowded list of isms -- but with the threats from Republican Congressmen, the bulls-eye targeting of Sarah Palin of the Democrats she disagrees with, and the racist and homophobic curses from the Tea Party ringing in our ears after the passage of the health care bill, I suggest that we take a look backwards at the sad story of Timothy James McVeigh and see the McVeighism that is festering. 

Here was a man so filled with rage and resentment against the government for its Waco and Ruby Ridge raids, and a generalized hatred for American foreign policy, that he used explosives to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in April of 1995 killing 168 people, injuring 450 others, nineteen of them small children in a day care center. Continued...

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Commentary: The Journey to Individuation – and Responsibility - Part III

by K.J. Wetherholt

It is here that I am going to take a departure from simple commentary and get into something more substantively. In part I and part II, I described the issues with foisting adult responsibilities on children, the educational system failing students, and the need for adults to take up their rightful role as “elders” who are re-learning the inherent sense of responsibility that used to be expected of adults. As “the Girl Who Silenced the World for Five Minutes” suggested, this sense of responsibility is paramount, or else the new generation of young men and women will have to do what we refused to do out of apathy, superficiality over substance, bickering, feigned ignorance, or sheer laziness—which may or may not have something to do with the sense that, following the atomic bomb, some part of us, even subconsciously, started to believe that all life—and everything on the planet—is inherently disposable, and that short term gain was preferable to looking toward a long-term that may not even exist.

To learn to take up that responsibility and to move through the Wasteland, as it were, to learn how to grapple what humanity has gotten itself into, we need to perhaps revise Jung’s timing in terms of Individuation—we can no longer wait to do our soul searching until after middle age—we’d better find what’s important to us now, not as selfish human beings, but ones with a little more depth than that, and we’d better act on it for the benefit of more than just ourselves. What we leave the next generation has to be an undisputed priority, and that indeed means cleaning up our mess. Continued...

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Commentary: The Journey to Individuation—and Responsibility: Part II

by K.J. Wetherholt

In Part I, I talked about the issue of kids and education, following President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren in Virginia following the Labor Day weekend. I discussed how children are truly deemed numbers by education, despite their protestations to the contrary.

I talked about how kids are being forced to grow up before their time—are being pressured to adopt a sense of adult responsibility for their futures—when even in elementary and middle school, which was a time for many of us to dream about what we would become instead of being forced into making a decision and preparing for it at such a young age—including in elementary and middle school.

I talked about teachers sometimes being the last bastion of support for school-age kids, and that last positive adult contact being taken away form them by the very system which is supposed to be supporting their growth as human beings. I also suggested that conceptual learning is being forced onto kids before their minds and development are ready for it—making existential issues muddy and confusing—when what kids need during adolescence is structure, safety, and solid foundations which give them the confidence and the ability to walk forward, without taking the ground out from underneath them and forcing them to accept adult concepts just for the sake of appearing progressive.

I talked about how the perception of schools counted for more than the welfare of students themselves—and how those are indeed these days more often than not mutually exclusive. Continued...

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Commentary: The Journey to Individuation—and Responsibility: Part I

by K.J. Wetherholt

On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama stood before a group of students in Virginia to commemorate the first day of a new school year. His spoken remarks, and those found online here, show a president who is asking the students of this country to understand their role and their responsibility, not just to themselves, but as citizens of the United States.

I was happy, at first, to see that he did not give students a way to get off the hook. No matter what background, what family conditions, what race, gender, or economic status—something is expected from each student. To be his or her best. No momentary difficulty or failure is an excuse to give up entirely. There is no quick fix for success. It is hard work, and the questions he asked hearkened back to the most quoted speech of President John F. Kennedy, asking “not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

President Obama:

“So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country? “

I was instantly reminded of something I had written back in college about Jung’s concept of Individuation. Individuation is the concept Jung came up with for the second phase of life, after the education and structures of young adulthood—when one in middle age seeks to answer larger questions about him/herself and his or her place in the whole—while seeking, too, to be a whole human being. You have already established yourself and have given of yourself to your family and to the community. You have already outgrown the more immature phases of life that demanded structure—you are ready now to ask the deeper questions. Continued...

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