Unemployment rises, job market down

July 2, 12:27 PMTampa Spiritual Wellness ExaminerJesamine Mello

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Russell Fox attends a job fair (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

As the job market worsens and unemployment rises, the air is becoming thicker and thicker with fear and uncertainty. Many Americans are facing drastic changes in their lifestyles. And despite what we keep hearing and will continue to hear for as long as we will believe it, things are not going to get better anytime soon. This is not meant as a doomsday prophecy – rather, it is far from it as a matter of fact. This is a wake-up call for Americans to stop acting like children expecting some grown-up to care for them and to start acting like psychologically, self-sufficient adults. We are in a mess and we have to get ourselves out of it by changing the way that we think about ourselves.

Everyone is looking for insurance and a guaranteed sense of security from external sources. We have come to expect Society to provide this insurance and security for us. It is as though Society were an exterior Mother-womb from which we refuse to cut ourselves. People believe that Society should take care of them. We have become a culture of entitlement, which like a child demands and expects hand-outs. Indeed, we live in an Age of Entitlement. This sense of entitlement has cost us dearly: politically, financially, psychologically, and spiritually.

What has happened to us? How did we get here?

Here’s something to think about. Remember what George Bush said when he initiated the first string of bailouts? He said that he wanted to “restore credit so that Americans could get back to daily living.” Has anyone considered that this kind of thinking is exactly the mindset that has gotten everyone here in the first place? And in looking to blame “those in authority” for the decisions for which we as adults are ultimately responsible, we have also lost our dignity and our integrity.

Is this really how we want to be remembered? As a culture who demands bailouts, handouts, free health care, and whatever else you will have (or take as long as it’s cheap or free)? Where is our dignity? Do we really want to go down in history as a country of people screaming and crying, “Somebody, please! Save me, save me!”