Of late I have been noticing increasing levels of protest around the world regarding a number of different issues and it has given me pause for thought. We remember the Arab Spring which swept through the Middle East not so long ago and is already turning into Autumn in preparation for Winter. There is the Occupy Wall Street protest that is spreading throughout the world as well.

Each of these things represents something of the iconoclasm of the age…a shift is occurring on a global scale that has been brewing primarily in the western world for nearly a century or more and is impacting every aspect of life. Something new is coming; we feel it in our deepest places like a great tide set to sweep through things and we just don’t know how to respond or prepare.

There is a huge level of dissatisfaction among people nowadays… dissatisfaction with government, with corporations, with employers, with churches, and even with one-another and so whenever we feel discomfort and pain we seek to root it out.

I have begun to wonder though if the cancers we seek are not actually being found. I wonder if, as my friend trained in holistic medicine would say, we are in fact treating symptoms rather than causes?

Case in point – Egypt went through a radical sea-change recently. The population long suspected corruption in the government…a cancer if you will, and in response they toppled the government and are slowly finding that many of the same pains still exist.

Any government, organization or relationship that is in pain will often, in a knee-jerk fashion, seek to root out the cancerous culprit in a rather haphazard way only to find more of a scapegoat…remove or destroy scapegoat and find they are still in pain.

Questions arise. Uncomfortable questions like “if we dug out the cancer why am I still dying?” or “If we removed the cause why am I still in pain?”

One should be suspicious of doctors who diagnose a problem and then point to a source that has been removed and try to convince you that things are fine and the pain that is felt is nothing to worry about. I have seen this happen again and again at every level from global to individual.

“The reason you are not feeling well is because of this tumor but since we removed that two years ago you are fine?” To which we go away suspicious and wondering “if I am fine why do I feel so awful?”

The danger in pretending to have dealt with a root cause when all you’ve done is dealt with the symptom is a little like the dangers of leprosy…you stop feeling or mask the pain and die as a result.

Leprosy does not cause rot…leprosy is the death of the nervous system…that system that causes us to feel pain. The pain is wired into us to warn us that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with because if we don’t we could die. Lepers do not feel pain. They hurt themselves without knowing and their wounds fester and rot because they have no idea how serious things are…that is what I am talking about.

There are a lot of countries, corporations, businesses, churches, couples and individuals that are willfully shutting off or ignoring their pain to their own doom.

If it feels like there is something wrong it is likely because there is something wrong. If someone tells you the pain you are feeling is because of something that is no longer there than they are fooling themselves and you…there is a clear and present danger, as it were, in the midst of you and yours that needs to be dealt with before it kills you.

Remember the euphoria that Egypt felt after the fall of Hosni Mubarek? It was that sense that “we are healed…we have removed the cancer and are better now.” But a few have worried aloud wondering “what if Mubarek was merely a symptom of a greater malaise? What if the sickness runs deeper?” They are not being listened to?

I would ask this same question to the protesters on Wall Street, Bay Street, Fleet Street and elsewhere. What if corporate greed is simply symptomatic of a much deeper, more frightening cancer? What if we are protesting symptoms instead of causes?

I fear we need a more holistic approach to the great cancer spreading through western culture, one that digs to the root causes. This is not easy and it takes great patience and much suffering but in the long run it may mean the difference between life and death.

This is the question we all need to ask ourselves? “If the source of my illness has been removed as I have been told why do I still feel pain?” I suspect the truth is that you have simply masked a symptom rather than dealt with the root cause…the cancer that runs beneath.