As you can imagine, my last post inspired a few folks with differing opinions to pose some counterpoints. Some threats, some propositions, and a few that with enough lube could fit snugly into either category. To paraphrase one sent by someone backing around Germany,
“If people are capable of so much, why don’t they use their big brains to help each others, create beauty instead of destruction, or save their fellow humans from starving?”
Well, my fellow traveler, you’re not going to like this, but ‘they,’ those people with all the money and power, the ones who don’t help others and always seem to make things worse just because they can, that 1 percent who’re so different from us common folk, the problem is that they’re a whole hell of a lot like you (and me, but I acknowledge I have a problem and am in hate recovery).
When we set ourselves apart from the rest of our species, when we think we don’t like humans, or “people suck,” aren’t we suggesting that they are all incurable, unfixable, failures? So with that mindset, why would we help them? When we think it’s us against the world who are we going to help but ourselves and the few we keep around because they make us happy? But if we’re just looking out for number one, isn’t that exactly what we say is wrong with those other people?
“Well, they have more, so they should do more. I need every dime for my car payment, comic books, internet, cable, games, new smartphone, festivals, costumes, and sex toys. And I can’t live without food delivery, bottled water, and my 4 $ coffee to get me going in the morning. Besides, I always try to donate my old things to Good Will. It all still works, I just got new stuff.”
You are richer than you know. You just live beyond your means and only compare yourself with those who have more. Don’t believe me? Type in the lowest about you’ve ever made into CNN’s Global Wage Calculator, thingy. I dare you.
I’m not much different. Like many I sometimes entertain dreams of winning a zillion dollars, buying quite a bit of land, and building a small house. Someplace so far away from it all that I wouldn’t even have to get dressed to go outside. Just me and some hard to offend friends. (Sigh)
But I also have to admit that even if I did it in the greenest way possible building a home still would mean cutting down trees, displacing animals, upsetting the water table with a well, and all sorts of things I can’t even imagine that would fuck with the ecosystem.
In short, I would be doing all the same sorts of things I hate when other people do. But it would be ok because… rationalizations. Probably the same ones others tell themselves when they tear up the Earth to suit their wants.
So count your blessings that you’re not American-Rich, you still get to delude yourself into thinking what a good person you’d be if you were.
My point is that perhaps the rich or even most ‘bad’ people aren’t that different from most of us. They try to take care of themselves and the people who’re closest to them, and don’t like or trust anyone else because they’ve been hurt, ‘people suck,’ and blah, blah, blah. They hide themselves away from the rest of us because they think the mass of humanity isn’t worth caring about. It’s the same bullshit tribalism as ours, just with the “us’ “ and “them” reversed.
Don’t think I’m deluded enough to suggest that there’s no real monsters out there, we all know there are, I just think it’s a much smaller fraction then most of us like to believe. The fear that the world is full of them divides us and makes us turn on each other. Hell, maybe if we all didn’t have such an “Us” against “Them” mentality there’d be less of them out there.
Force yourself to be a better person than your fear wants you to be. Life is a whole hell of a lot more fun when you’re not engaged in a cold-war with it.
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