Leave the Rat Race to the Rats

By Michael Phillips

This time the Goodwill Revolution takes up the challenge of transforming the dismal ghetto into a model community. Our rat race culture pits people against each other in a competition to get as much money, materials, and power as they can. Greed, selfishness, ruthlessness and avarice are assets in the rat race. Kindness, sincerity, compassion are liabilities. The rat race culture  has corrupted our values and our institutions. The winners of the rat race are highly respected. Losers are  despised.  If there are 10 participants in any race, there is only one winner, but nine losers.  Similarly, the rat race creates lots of losers. This is unacceptable.  In our society, the worst losers are poor people in the ghettos, poor black people.

The goodwill revolution encompasses a comprehensive set of principles which reinforces and mobilizes the inherent goodness of mankind as the key to true happiness. In the goodwill revolution, kindness, compassion, and  honesty are valuable assets.  Greed, selfishness, ruthlessness are liabilities.

So the book is about rejecting the rat race and adopting the goodwill revolution to fix the prevailing problems in our society with the focus on fixing the ghetto as a model. The poor black people in the ghetto are in crisis and need urgent care. Their jobs, education and living conditions all suck. But, the goodwill revolution can change all that.

(106 pages}

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hot Calaloo Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9780961051617

Michael Phillips

Michael Irving Phillips was born in Jamaica. He left home for Howard University in the US where he received MA (Education) and BS Chemistry) degrees. “Leave the Rat Race to the Rats”  is a sequel to his previous book, “Boycott Money And Save Your Soul – Launching the Goodwill Revolution”. The first book launched the Goodwill Revolution, while this one applies it. Previous work includes “Poems for Husbands and Other Underdogs”, compilation and publishing poetry books “Bitten by Bonzo” and “Living in Constant Spring”. However, most recent years has been spent in a one-man production of Hot Calaloo, a newsletter about Caribbean news and views. From April 1992 to December 1999 it was published monthly and was transferred to the web at hotcalaloo.com since then.

Book preview

Introduction

Our rat race culture pits people against each other in a competition to get as much money, materials, and power as we can. Greed, selfishness, ruthlessness and avarice are assets in the rat race. Kindness, sincerity, compassion are liabilities. The rat race culture  has corrupted our values and our institutions. The winners of the rat race are highly respected. Losers are  despised.  If there are 10 participants in any race, there is only one winner, but nine losers.  Similarly, the rat race creates lots of losers. This is unacceptable.  In our society, the worst losers are poor people in the ghettos, poor black people.

Unfortunately, most people think the rat race is compulsory. But, we do have a choice. Simply dropping out is not really a solution. We need to choose a real alternative to the rat race. The Goodwill-to-all Revolution is that alternative. The goodwill revolution encompasses a comprehensive set of principles which reinforces and mobilizes the inherent goodness of mankind as the key to true happiness. In the goodwill revolution, kindness, compassion, and  honesty are valuable assets.  Greed, selfishness, ruthlessness are liabilities.

Let’s be brutally honest. The rat race has been catastrophic. Our American democracy is in shambles. This is no accident, but is the result of a deliberate calculated plan by our un-elected  rulers, the 1% richest people in America. They dictate to us, the hapless 99%. Their war policy has ruined America’s reputation in the world. One million Iraqis dead because of our invasion justified by a lie! One million!  Endless wars and international bullying have made us the most hated country in the world. Torture, indefinite detention of prisoners of war for over 15 years! At home, our cherished institutions  have been tarnished and corrupted by their money. Law enforcers turn law breakers. Our political system has been rendered ineffective mired in combative gridlock. Altruistic politicians are intimidated and  rendered helpless by lies, exaggerations and distortions.

War profiteers  in the 1% flourish as schools close, cities deteriorate, and our infrastructure crumbles from neglect and lack of funds.

Candidate Obama gave us the ‘audacity of hope’ to change things, but President Obama betrayed that hope under the grip of the 1%.  And the 1% continued to pit us against each other in an insidious rat race that generates distrust, divisiveness, selfishness and greed.

So the book is about rejecting the rat race and adopting the goodwill-to-all revolution to fix the prevailing problems in our society with the focus on fixing the ghetto as a model. The poor black people in the ghetto are in crisis and need urgent care.

Leave the Rat Race to the Rats is just the first book in a trilogy. This trilogy outlines not just rants about, but offers solutions to, the worst problems that afflict the ghetto, such as education, jobs, crime, policing, political powerlessness. The other two books, soon to be released, are:-

Fighting Crime  in the Ghetto with Goodwillism

Overcoming Political Impotence in the Ghetto with Goodwillism

Look for them soon.

Chapter 1

Leave the Rat Race to the Rats

Are you ready rat racers? On your marks, get set, go!

Rat race!

Oh, it's a disgrace

To see the human-race

In a rat race, rat race!

(Bob Marley – Jamaican reggae singer)

Regardless of color, all people want to get out of poverty. Despite poverty programs only a relative few do escape from poverty. One of the benefits of getting out of poverty is getting the hell away from poor people. It means getting away to affluent people, who don’t really want them around. Suburban flight from the cities often is an attempt to get away from poor city dwellers. That has grown into a trend of getting away not just from poor people but from people in general and into the woods of rural America, many people  go in search of isolation.

In our culture people, just don’t want to be just better off , they want to be better than. That is what is admired as being ambitious for success. Better than is manifested by more than. Keeping up with the Jones can be hard enough but now we must have more than the Jones. Welcome to the rat race. So, our prestige and self-image are enhanced by the more things we have, and the more expensive the better. Goaded on by advertisers, we buy not because of need, but to flaunt our symbols of success. And so we buy, buy, buy. The quest for money to buy more becomes our obsession, our love, our addiction. This love of money and addiction has become dominant pillars of our culture.

But, the love of money is the root of all evil and addiction is slavery. Some pillars!

It is a culture of gas guzzling SUV’s, MacMansions, and all sorts of conspicuous consumption. It is not a culture but a rat race and that rat race mentality is ruining our culture. It is not a people-friendly culture.

But this culture is killing us. It is:

polluting our earth,

destroying our eco-systems,

gobbling up the earth’s resources at an alarming pace

generating wars and violence

saddling us with millstone materialism

de-valuing people

But this culture is self-destructing.

We need a cultural revolution. But some are too invested in this rat race culture to change even though it is personally disastrous to them too. The richer you are, the more heavily invested in this corrosive rat race culture you are. The richer you are, the more likely to resist change. For the rich are winners of the rat race. It is nice to win. But we need to leave the rat race to the rats.

Better Mousetrap

We have been told that all we have to do is to build a better mousetrap and people will buy. That used to be good advice. Not anymore. The rat race mentality has taken over. It does not have to be better. People will buy  if it’s:

Cheaper

Lower wages to make it cheaper

Send manufacturing job overseas to produce by slave wages

Weaken the union so that workers may be abused and denied benefits

Use mind-numbing advertising to make the inferior product  seem better

Yes, in this rat race culture, even if you use deceit, trickery and exploitation to sell your lousy mousetrap, people will still beat a path to your door. Selling lousy mousetraps this way has become very popular, if not the norm. And even worse, the use of deceit, trickery and exploitation has invaded almost every aspect of our rat race culture with disastrous results.

Poor and the Goodwill Revolution

The poor have power to transform this money-addicted society into something noble. But first we must transform ourselves. The worst off you are, the better equipped to transform. Riches is just baggage to chain people to the money-materialism-addicted rat-race society.

The fact is blacks are the wretched of the earth. Every black person, regardless  of their socio-economic status  must view with dismay the bitter reality that all over the world  blacks are at the desolate bottom of the white man’s world.

It’s still a man’s world, but more  specifically a white man’s world. Go in almost any country of the world, blackest Africa, South America,  of course Europe and Australia, white men are on top. Blacks are on the bottom. Immigrants coming to America, regardless of their race, country of origin, want to become white men or ok , just like white men. Even if they are black, they want to become white men. If you are ambitious, that is what you do. White women want to become white men too.  Everyone wants to become rich and powerful like white men. In the white man’s world, success is measured by the amount of wealth, material goods and power.

But some blacks  have been able to make it in this white man’s world. Too few blacks  make it. These very few are justifiably proud and it is a remarkable achievement against some formidable odds. But it is time to stop deluding ourselves. We will never get parity in the white man’s world, unless there is a revolution.