Occupy Cyberspace

I'm going to start by openly admitting that there are a lot of things that I don't understand. Maybe by starting that way, I can avoid having my post openly flamed. Maybe not. But I want to try to understand. I want to know the people who are protesting on Wall Street and in different cities around the world.

At first, when I saw the beginnings of the protests, I thought that these must be people who were too lazy or unlucky to find a job or find opportunity in this crappy economy and had nothing better to do than be jealous of people who have money, whether they had to work hard for it or if they were born into it.

Then, I realized that point of view is very easy to have from the point of view of someone who has a good job. How can I criticize someone as lazy when I'm too lazy to listen to their statements and try to come to an opinion of my own based on the facts?

Fortunately for me, in my career there was only one month long period when I was out of work. I hated it. I felt like if I wasn't on some online job site filling out applications, I was worthless. I didn't spend a single moment doing things I enjoyed while my husband worked and I was at home. Imagine if my hunt had lasted more than a month... six months... a year... two years... I can definitely see wanting to take to the streets in protest.

In a way, my struggle hasn't been as hard as most. I went to college on scholarship, and I have been working at well paying jobs. My luck is due to the hard work my parents did to pave the way for it. They struggled way worse than I have. I go on vacations that they wouldn't have dreamed of while my brother and I were growing up. I have debt to pay off that's my own damn fault. (Who knew that trying to finance a few years of meals and hotels while marching competitive drum corps, amongst other things, with credit cards was a bad idea? Well, I did, but I did it anyway!)

Though, I do wonder... Is it possible that I'm struggling more than I have to because there's such an imbalance between the super rich and the rest of us? If all of the politicians are rich, do they really represent us? If they don't represent us, is that taxation without representation? Is it possible that a revolution of sorts is necessary, and if I don't see it coming, does that make me similar to the people who didn't do anything during the American Revolutionary War because they were living comfortably as subjects of Great Britain? Is the reason why the protesters have no set list of demands that there are a lot of questions, there's no one right answer, and there's no one exact enemy to target? I honestly have no idea.

As of this point, I have not really come to any conclusions. But I am going to keep watching with an open mind and hope that whatever happens can be accomplished without violence.