Just Keep Your Head in the Sand

Tell me, why do we do these nonsensical things:

Come up with plans to geo-engineer a solution to global climate change, rather than changing our ways.

Come up with health care reform schemes that will still allow vast fortunes to be funnelled into the dysfunctional and corrupt pharmaceutical, medical and insurance industries, rather than changing our ways.

Continue to seek pharmaceutical treatments for the symptoms of our unhealthy lifestyle choices, rather than changing our ways.

Try to mend the economy by returning to business-as-usual, rather than changing our ways.

Are we so undisciplined now that it's impossible to take responsibility for the messes we have made? Must we always be engineering solutions that allow us to continue along just as before, as dysfunctionally as ever? Have we gone so soft we always expect to be bailed out of the scrapes we get ourselves into? Whatever happened to discipline, sacrifice, and a willingness to put the greater good ahead of immediate gratification? Nobody seems to want to do the work involved in creating a healthier paradigm. It's just business as usual. Keep your head in the sand. Keep doing what you've always done.

What's going on with that? Why can't we immediately and drastically curtail greenhouse gas emissions, fix the healthcare system (not access to it--first we have to fix the medical system so that medicine is about healing again, not about profits and drug-pushing--then we can worry about access), take responsibility for our health by living well in the first place, and begin the transition to a steady-state economy. But no, all of that requires work, discipline and sacrifice. And you can't ask that of anyone these days, it seems.