It is overall heartbreaking to realize that what bands together those citizens of the world who turn to violence is perhaps a shared sense of uselessness.  In the book “Baghdad Burning,” the author points out the rampant unemployment which followed the destabilizing American intervention in Iraqi politics and military maneuvering.  I also read about the neighborhoods in France that are primarily composed of immigrant families, many several generations strong, whose entrenched poverty and lack of opportunity result in frustrated young people ripe for radicalization.  Here in the U.S., a similar despair stems from the lack of employment characterized by dignity and stability, not to mention a living wage.

Humans are most suited to the real work of hands turned toward actual survival.  What do we do when even the barest semblance of such occupation is removed?  Evidence suggests a psychological implosion, characterized by anger and scapegoating.

I long to maintain my optimism: that real work for the people will result in peace born of satisfied dignity.  What if the many were to turn our hands to the discernible improvement of our shared spaces?  A true turn-around would require the employment of many hands, no longer left idle to the scrolling s and trappings of devices which all too often stoke the fires of discontent.  The source of this spreading dismay is truly not in one another: the source of widespread discontent lay in the continued separation of our need for work from the reality of surroundings increasingly made amenable only to the profiteers of war and earth’s degradation.