If You're Not a Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Precipitate

via reddit

I ran across the above cartoon today while wasting time on the internet. It makes a fair point about our education system: people learn in different ways, yet we persist in measuring everyone by a rubric that only works for some. My problem with this, which is more general than just this cartoon, is that it fairly criticizes the system, making a rather tired point, and then leaves it at that. I'm tired of people criticizing things without providing any sort of alternative way of doing things. This is probably an unfair expectation of a political cartoon, but it embodies this issue for me, which I've been thinking about a lot lately because of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In general, I think it is a good thing to criticize things and institutions that you see as being problematic/ deserving criticism, but after a while, you have to move on from just pointing out the problems and move towards presenting a solution. Criticism should serve as a starting point for further discussion to ultimately facilitate change. Criticism for criticism's sake is useless, but people use it to mask the fact that they don't have a solution to the problem they are presenting.

As far as Occupy Wall Street (OWS) goes, I'm fairly ambivalent towards it as a whole movement. I think it's great that people are standing up against what they see as a problematic system, which does have a lot of problems. I like that they are bringing attention back to the economic problems that are affecting people, like joblessness and debt, rather than the rubrics that people tend to use to measure the economy. (I fail to understand why I should care about the Dow Jones Index or the NASDAQ. I don't get why these mysterious points are important.) On the other hand, I don't like their vilification of everyone who earns a certain amount, regardless of their circumstances.

All that said, my biggest problem with OWS is that I don't see them having a real purpose or endgame. What do they think will be a fair solution? What are their solutions to the problems they are protesting? I don't know. I don't see them as having any real solutions that are practical or in any way achievable. They say they want a more democratic society. What does that mean? Direct democracy? That's not possible in a country of 350 million. They say they want a fairer society. How so? What constitutes fair, and who is the judge of that? They say they want economic justice. Does that mean wealth redistribution, because if it does, it violates the tenets of a capitalist society.

I certainly don't claim to have the answers, but I don't think the OWS protesters do either. People are frustrated with the slow recovery, and the unemployment rates, and the fact that the wealthy have a relatively low tax rate. Those are perfectly valid complaints, and protesting is a good way to make everyone aware of those frustrations, but, after a while, it becomes meaningless because no real solutions are presented. Yelling about how angry you are and how much you don't like the current situation isn't going to change anything. It may be cathartic, but it won't do anything, unless you provide an alternative system that you can show would be better than the current system. We are all aware of the problems with the current system, so give us a better one. They maybe you can affect real change. Stop whining and do something real. Otherwise, this whole OWS movement is meaningless.