I’m judging they’re grammar.

With the Occupy movements being a huge source of international attention recently, I can’t help but reflect and question the trends I see on Facebook of my own friends’ reactions to the protests.  The word ‘socialist’ has been thrown around a lot as well - in Australia I’m still not sure how that is used as an insult considering the socialist leanings of a lot of Australian law and the fact that a lot of people who use it as an insult actually benefit from these policies, but that’s a different issue.  Those who tend to be more conservative tend to look at these protesters as lazy and commend police brutality against them as if they’re just young people who require more discipline.

But in thinking this, I can’t help but reflect on the nature of conservatism and liberalism in general.  Conservatism - by nature, and correct me if I’m wrong - is basically the belief that modern thinking is destroying old traditional values.  If it’s not broken, why fix it?  If they worked so well back then, why change them now?  It’s also notable that a lot of conservatives tend to be Christian, perhaps this relates to the fact that religion gives you a very specific view on what’s right and wrong and that it does not need to be changed - changing it seems to imply changing our moral values.  

But here’s where it’s difficult for me to agree with that frame of mind.  The issue is, that even if something was perfectly okay back then that doesn’t mean that the same way of thinking or government will work now.  

I’ll use recent news as an example.  We know the Earth’s population just reached 7 billion.  Human population has grown exponentially. Now the idea of something growing exponentially doesn’t mean a lot to many people, it’s just an abstract concept.  But what this means is that things are changing, and rapidly. The change in any single decade is larger than all the decades leading up to it.  I’m trying to give an example of how things are expanding and how the current way of dealing with things CANNOT sustain this growth!

What worked in the past simply cannot now.  This revolution was inevitable.  If we look back at a curve like this, we can see a gradual change before it suddenly peaks.  This is why it’s hard to see how things that were working so well are all of a sudden going terribly wrong.  Our population is not sustainable in the system we have now.  

It is very easy to get richer when you already have money.  This is obvious.  It’s very hard to start with nothing and make money.  What annoys me is that people who come from riches seem to feel that they deserve what they have.  So much of wealth has to do with luck, and unfortunately those with wealth have the means to make much more money than we can even dream of.  With this sort of system, it’s completely inevitable that all the wealth of the population would be restricted within this 1%.  This has worked for a while but now if we look at the way the population has increased so dramatically it is inevitable that the system cannot function like this any more.  

I have a feeling this view is just going to be looked at as revolutionary communist talk because I’m insulting capitalism but I really am not trying to say that.  All I’m trying to say is that, given the exponential nature of our population growth, our current system is unsustainable and change was always going to happen.  What’s actually going to happen, I have no idea.  But I think everyone needs to take a good hard look at the rate of which the world is going and really ask themselves whether or not this current system can handle an exponential growth of poor and suffering human beings.