How Moral Are We Anyway?

If your way of life was seriously threatened, how far would you go to get what you need?

Let's start with food. What if the price of it became so high that you could only afford to eat one meal a day? And if you had children, to eat even less so they could have more?

You could do it for a little while, but what if you saw no end in sight to the problem? And that the problem was through no fault of your own? Imagine that you've been laid off a good job, and now working two slave wage jobs, or none at all, because none were available.

Or that gas became so highly priced that you could barely afford to fill up a lawn mower, much less your car? And the price of home heating oil and electricity was so sky high that your temperature was set in the 40s and you slept with your coat on and burn candles for lighting in the evenings.

People throughout all the ages hate war, especially when the stakes are high and they may lose. Wars have generally been fought over resources and/or religion. The latter is often a cover for the former.

Men who lead them or those who get paid well to support them, even the senseless wars, generally don't mind. This is particularly true with propagandists, ie, the media and politicians, who benefit from being the mouthpieces of those who start them and when their lives are untouched.

Americans, by and large, have hated what's been going on in the past seven years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the big one before that, Vietnam. The lies told and lives lost were senseless. We are fortunate enough to have the freedom to complain and criticize, unlike many other countries who better not publicly say a word about it.

Our ability to complain makes us feel good, almost like we're doing something. We see it as taking the moral high road, and that if we were in charge, we'd do things differently.

But now the stakes are extraordinarily high and our lifestyles are a hair's breath away from becoming unbearable. The global fight for diminishing oil is as serious as a massive heart attack. It's needed for food production, gas for our cars and energy for homes. The US dollar is about to drop again. The economy is in a shambles, and banks, airlines, and major businesses are going out of business. Our government is broke.

It won't be long before many of us are hurting. If another country has what we want - what we need - to hang on to some level of comfort for the rest of our lives and our children's lives, are we then ready to set aside our moral high ground and fight, kill and nuke to get it?

How moral will we be then?

Just a thought and a question.