The system has been broke for a long time

Dear Editor,

Re: Balance would be a mix of both lifestyles 

Some good points raised by Mr. Hartin. It’s a worry. 

There emerges a picture of a society imbued with culture and religiosity albeit, with a modern government that despite its “progress” and expediency in securing funding, is not remedying issues associated with growing population, resultant demands on infrastructures, unemployment, internal corruption, a taxing church and village oligarch for “faalavelave”, family dependency, a G.D.P that shows higher expenditure on imports than income from exports, increasing value shift from immaterial to material, increasing imbalance of wealth distribution, the haves vs have nots, poor level of education, etc. 

It’s all very dystopian and dire. 

Obviously something isn’t working. The system is broken. It broke a long time ago. 

The government blames the individual and the family unit of the individual, the church blames the devil’s work in the individual, the village punishes the family of the individual, the family asks for money from aiga overseas and the cycle continues on until eternity. 

Here’s a suggestion, translate the teaching of Buddah into Samoan and make sure it is compulsory reading. Look at Buhtahn, a Buddhist nation that values Happiness over its GDP.

They have the understanding that by clinging on to the desire for wealth, comfort, pleasure, self indulgence, one becomes ignorant of of the fact that the desire for these very things is the cause of human suffering! This would apply to all sectors of our society... We are a desirous people.

We desire rest and food, status and power, honour and wealth, recognition and fame... We desire unobtainable things which we search for endlessly, greedily, ignorantly, when in fact it’s all delusionary.

We suffer for our attachment, our egos, our want. 

Buhddism seems philosophically more in harmony with the old ways of seeing things, maybe we need to go back to our roots and rediscover what is truly important in life.

 

S. Matagi

Samoa Observer

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