Only The Thief Knows When and How He Will Attack

A certain amount of modesty prevents any balanced individual from claiming that the reason things are tight is mainly the fault of someone else.

The rich rely on the normal human decency of other people to permit them to continue on with their pilfering of the world, its resources and its citizens. In the same way that a bully relies on the reticence of his hapless victim and the paedophile relies on the helplessness and shame of his victim to keep the machinations of exploitation in place and steadily rolling.

Power must be an intoxicating drug. It must be a seductive enabler. Studies have shown this. Any given group of people, handed the reins of power for any period, soon abuse that power. 

People come to believe there is something divine or God-given in their ascent to a position of power or control - whether over other people or even animals. 

We all recall teachers who seemed to revel in meting out punishment for this or that – detentions, extra home work, even public displays of admonishment designed to shame or humiliate. 

We recall employers and supervisors who crossed the line that separates efficiency maximisation and mean-spiritedness, and government officials or officers of the law who stepped over that same line. 

The mean-spiritedness comes partly from a sense of separation. Like sheep dogs tending a herd many authority figures feel somehow enabled, by virtue of nothing more than the position they happen to occupy, to figuratively jump on the backs of their charges. 

Any casual observation of the financial goings on in the world at large quickly reveal this separation phenomena reaching epidemic proportions. 

The rich do not work any harder than you or I. They simply do not. Simple mathematics and a cursory counting of the number of hours in any given day put this myth that the rich work harder to rest. 

As a class the rich do not make their wealth gathering techniques and tricks obvious to we normal, balanced individuals. We would never think of such devious things. Just as we would not think of bullying a weaker, smaller person and certainly would never consider abuse of children as an option under any circumstance. These are things we don’t think about. We don’t imagine shooting up a shopping mall, or blowing up a city block, or poisoning drinking water in a village, or releasing oil spills into the ocean, or great unending clouds of pollutants into the atmosphere. These things do not occur to us and therefore we don’t consider that such things are possible. 
But such things are not possible only if you are a balanced, normal, average individual. 

If you are a psycopath everything is possible. 

In today`s civilization psychopaths run almost the whole show. People who do not flinch at causing distress in others, who do not baulk at poisoning children or incapacitating adults, or polluting food chains, or pilfering the digital pockets of every person with a bank account, a credit card, a job, a family. 


As a working journalist I always somehow assumed that everyone could see clearly when gross injustices were being perpetrated, when evil deeds were afoot. But I was always wrong. People don’t see it until it is knocking down their door and pulling them out of bed in the wee hours. But mostly it goes unnoticed. It is secret and is even unsuspected. Like rain that falls from the clouds, upon every inch of ground, soothing and subtle, calming and gentle and monotone, without colour or light or shade or preference or empathy - so the power and wealth-hungry steal from every person.  In portions small enough not be considered worthy of notice, let alone complaint. That’s how it starts, anyhow.

Comments

Fuzzy Logic said…
Such a timeless and accurate observation of the world.
I want to wallpaper something with these words. Or scratch them into the concrete minds of the unknowing victims of the world.

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