Which pays (and I'm not kidding) about $2 per meal. Do you think you could eat on $6 or $7 per day?
I'm glad that you participated in an anti-hunger event and wrote about it, but I would encourage you to keep learning about this topic if it's something that you care about - which it seems that it is.
This is one of the richest countries the world has ever known, and we still have 1 in 5 children who are not getting enough to eat on a regular basis, and 1 in 5 seniors who do not get enough to eat. If you think that there are plenty of supports in place to address this, you don't understand the system and how it (doesn't) work. We do not care about this as a society or it wouldn't be such a dire issue that has been going on for literally decades in this way. In fact, in the past 30 years, more and more "entitlements" that help hungry families have been reduced or taken away.
Part of changing the systems is not super-imposing a new structure (how would that even happen and so why are you worried about it?) but by changing the way that people relate to each other - which allows for new structures to be accepted and make sense. My friend's husband is currently incarcerated for something that he didn't do, and the prison system is horrendous - I mean truly inhumane and counter-productive to doing anything but warehousing inmates until they are released back into the world worse than when they went in. She wrote (under his account) something recently about the Nordic prison systems which are actually treating prisoners with respect and preparing them to eventually transition back into society. A few American cities are trying to learn from them, and this is the way that positive change can come about - when people see that less domineering systems not only lead to fewer behavioral issues, but that staff are happier too.. that kind of thing.
I don't understand why you think that coercion is at the root of getting people to change - except that you are a product of the dominance hierarchy and I guess it's mostly all you've ever known. How about the rich history of inspirational rhetoric that invokes change? How about the new possibilities that are seeded when people learn that something else is even possible? How did Martin Luther King Jr. and his companions bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964? It wasn't through violent coercion, I'll tell you that. I mean honestly, this sort of recalcitrance is just kind of comical.
Of course social change is a low priority in your life because most of the things that are truly horrendously wrong in the world don't affect you. If you think the way the world is is inevitable you need to be a better student of history because it's been relentlessly changing for thousands (millions) of years and this will continue. And there are also other places in the world right now today that are vastly different today — right now.
I'd just like to speak my piece on how I would like to see that go. I'm no MLK, but I can still make my small impact in my little corner of the world, and maybe there are others like me doing the same, and maybe, just maybe that will have a positive impact. If not, at least I will have tried.
Ruthlessness and manipulativeness are key elements of the dominance hierarchy - something that doesn't exist in every culture, not even every Western democracy as a core value today (much less in the past). It doesn't mean they don't exist at all in those cultures, but they aren't valued and lauded like they are in America. That's the difference. Just as violence has always existed in some form, but is not celebrated and glorified in all cultures, so too with the rest of it.
I'm sorry, but I think you are being really naive and overly simplistic about this stuff. And kind of fatalistic too, and you can afford to be because it mostly doesn't impact you in any material way. Me, I don't think that I'm free until everyone is free. And I know I'll never see that in my lifetime, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to try to do my part by talking about the ocean that we are swimming in and the ways that we might be at least try to dream of something else that is less destructive.
You can say this stuff is "human nature" and maybe it is, but as Woodburn notes, human beings are fully capable of creating social structures that hold it in check. And they have for most of human history, and they are actively still doing it around the world right now. I don't see why we can't continue to encourage that?
