Broken: reduced to fragments; fragmented; ruptured; torn; fractured; not functioning properly; out of working order.

We as a nation are broken. Yet we remain tied, bound, gagged to a system that is safely entrenched in practice, ritual, convention. And I understand that for those with power it is more comfortable to choose our moment over the care and consideration of future generations. And I understand why many of us with little or no power also choose to be safe within what we know rather than risk relatively comfortable moments for the untested turmoil that would be required to work for the future. Promising decisions are hard. Routine decisions are easy. To be safe is to abandon Justice, both today and for future generations.

Hard decisions are necessary in the face of injustice. Yet (by dressing up routine as promising and presenting status quo as progress) our system in this country has evolved to convince the oppressed that injustice is just; that they are better off in their shattered fragment than they would be seeking Justice for other fragments even if theirs would also benefit from that search. Our system in this country has taught us zero-sum thinking – that first and foremost it is about me, my comfort, my pretense, and secondarily it is about my fragment because opposing fragments are out to get what’s mine and there’s no such thing as mutual beneficence.

So to seek Justice, to attach urgency to actual hard decisions, I must do the following:

• Admit that it does not have to be a zero-sum game.
• Consciously realize that there is no such thing as a good decision.
• Begin to recognize myself as pretense.
• Risk comfort for untested promise.
• Risk the moment for tomorrow.

We are not functioning properly. We are not functioning according to Beauty, Truth, Wisdom, Justice. We have warped Form, Function, Discipline, Indulgence and elevated bureaucracy, convention, certainty, division.

We are broken.