By Chad Arias / Asst. Opinions Editor

By Chad Arias / Asst. Opinions Editor

How is it that we as mankind disassociate ourselves from the laws of nature?

Every other form of life on this planet works in harmony for the betterment of their community. Ants, for example, form colonies in which every individual ant has a specific function they must carry out: soldiers, architects, scouts, and finally the queen.

While the figurehead of the colony may be the Queen, where would she be without the lowly ants that help to dig the colony’s tunnels, or the solider ants that fight off invading insects?

All members of a colony share roles that are equal in their importance toward maintaining their way of life as an ant.

However, as humans, we see a far different approach that strays away from natural law. Humans set up social classes in order to separate themselves from, say, the lowly untouchables on welfare to the multi-millionaires on Wall Street.

These levels of self-organization are not natural and instead of building each other up, we tear men down for personal gain.

In what other species do we find selfish and greedy organisms that take pride in their violence?

A lion will kill only what it can eat. Squirrels collect nuts, but they do not hoard away droves among droves for multiple winters.

No, nature has a circle of life in which they thrive on without any real cognitive thinking.

Maybe humanity’s greatest curse is the one thing that distances us from our animal counterparts, our minds.

The human mind has formed unnatural notions such as capitalism, social class, entitlement, manifest destiny, and religion.  

In such times as these, we find that the lowly peasants begin to wonder why they are hungry and jobless while the lord is comfy and cozy in his castle.

“What makes him so different than me?” the peasant thinks to himself. There is no difference.

A human is a human and we were supposed to be created equally, but I guess the men on Wall Street missed that memo.

The protests known as Occupy Wall Street have been in full effect since late September with peaceful demonstrations. Day by day, the number of protestors seems to be growing without the advertisement of any major media news program.

Occasionally, one may find a story or news reel about the protests while browsing the internet, but for the most part, it has been kept hidden from the public.

In our present-day society, where life can be achieved simply by sitting behind a bright screen, the amount of public unrest must have been great enough to move these protestors from their comfy beds and into the harsh streets.

These actions are nothing new and have been brewing ever since the economy turned sour. The common folk can be kept at bay as long as there is food in their stomachs, but when the 10 percent of Americans who hold 90 percent of the nation’s wealth cannot provide jobs, food, and housing to the masses, an uprising is bound to occur.

Huge Wall Street companies made poor choices and ran their business into bankruptcy.

Who was there to bail them out? The tax payers were.

Both you and I paid with our own money to bail out companies such as General Motors and American International Group, Inc. In return, we the people are easily forgotten after these major corporations have received what they need to survive.

They stayed on their knees just long enough to steal your money, and then it’s back to the clouds of Wall Street they go.

Critics of this movement have brought up the point going after banks instead of the government.

The answer is simply because the government officials in power today are nothing more than pawns of big businesses.

Major corporations donate to political candidates in order to get their own agendas passed. Politicians are being bought and sold for corporate gain.

President Obama, for example, may be the leader of the free world, but he is only a figurehead. He who holds the gold makes the rules, and as of now, 1 percent of the American population holds all the gold.

Presidential candidate Herman Cain, in response to the protest being led by the unemployed, said, “If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”

It’s that kind of sick arrogance from the upper class that has led to these demonstrations. How can he tell us to get a job when there are no jobs available?

Even if people are employed right now, they are too busy paying off thousands of dollars in student loans.

The entire education system in the United States needs to be reformed to serve the community rather than to make a profit.

In history, we have seen the rise and fall of many democracies. Upon average, a democracy lasts about 400 years before it implodes on itself.

That’s not to say that this movement is the beginning of the end, but the common folk of America are speaking up and turning into a force that’s to be reckoned with.  

The economy shows no signs of life, unemployment rates are still over 10 percent, and unrest among the American youth continues to grow by the second.

A nation must evolve and change with the times.

Capitalism worked for a time, but in the end however, it’s left a huge divide between the social classes of America in its wake.

As Gordon Gecko said in the 1987 film “Wall Street,” “Greed is good,” but where has that taken this society?

Instead of taking care of each other, we tear our neighbor down. In the end, will only the rich be left standing?