Editor,
Are most college graduates better world citizens than minimum-wage U.S. workers who never finished high school?
No!
Most college graduates consume far more, pollute far more, travel far more, cause far more global climate chaos and pay far more federal income tax to wage war!
When Gandhi was asked what worried him most, he replied, “the hardness of heart of the educated.”
I do not want a bigger slice of the U.S. pie saturated with the blood, sweat and tears of poor multitudes worldwide, robbed and murdered by this empire’s international terrorism and insatiable greed.
Ponder the thousands of college graduates at Sandia and Los Alamos Labs who devote their brains and careers to designing weapons of mass murder while they rationalize with endless excuses.
Most college graduates sadly will not risk their incomes and jobs to take strong public stands against the U.S. Empire and many other evils.
As long as the main motivation for many or most students to get a college degree is to get more money, more power, more prestige, education is no sure path to a better world of fairness and compassion for all people.
Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world … My life is my message.”
Albert Einstein said, “More and more I have come to value charity and love of others above everything else. All of our lauded technological progress, our very civilization, is like an ax in the hand of a pathological criminal.”
When we stand on the edge of a cliff, progress and sanity mean stepping backward.
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The most radical, non-violent action persons of conscience can take in this society is to pledge publicly to live simply, to own no car and to pay no federal income tax for war the rest of our lives! I have pledged this for years.
I lived WELL in 2010 on $4,126 for my total living expenses — less than one-half the U.S. poverty level and less than one-half the federal income taxable level for me as a single person. I have owned no car for 32 years. I have ridden in no car for 10 and one-half years.
I would trade places with no millionaire, no billionaire. I would be ashamed as hell to live like that. I have no right to have more than what I need while others in this world have less than they need.
Don Schrader
UNM community member
