I've just got started

I think I have been thinking inside my head long enough. It's time to put some words down on paper... er... screen. Even if this is only viewed by my alter ego, it has to be worthwhile to convert my assorted cogitations into a more permanent record. Mind you, if things continue the way they are going, there may not be electricity to power the machines on which these musings appear.

So here goes. My first posting on the wuh-wuh-wuh.

In recent years, in an attempt to make some kind of sense of "it all", I've been developing contacts with different people from different countries and cultures. I've been living in hope that there are sensible remedies out there for the malaise that is blighting human life. Perhaps there's always been blight. But it does seem that events are now spinning out of control, judging from the number of intelligent people who are sounding the alarm worldwide.

 

Who's listening?

 

From San Francisco to Budapest, London to Vladivostok, Cape Town to Vienna and who knows how many points in between, human beings are expressing that they're feeling alienated, oppressed, unwanted and increasingly impoverished, while surrounded by provocative gaudy symbols of ultra-power and ultra-wealth wielded by a very tiny minority of human-like creatures whose single claim to fame is that they excel at thieving from the innocent and unwary.

I say creatures - beast is another word - because they are those for whom the following statement is beyond comprehension. It looks charming in Russian:

Жизнь не имеет смысла, если мы не чувствуем любовь к товарищ по заключению на этой планете.

Here it is in English:

Life has no meaning if we don't feel love for our fellow prisoners on this planet.

In my way of thinking, those who have no empathy for the suffering of others are not humane, and they may not be human either. I believe empathy is a sign of human-ness. We have a term for those without empathy. Psychopaths. And it is my hypothesis that psychopaths are a sub-species of the primate family, possibly with a different brain chemistry and different neural pathways to those of the homo sapiens mainstream.

I don't want to sling mud unnecessarily, I try not to judge anyone else, and I don't particularly want to spend time in the courts at the whim of those with the wealth to hire equally psychopathic win-at-all-costs libel lawyers. So I won't mention specific names of the high-powered individuals for whom the label "psychopath" is appropriate. However, a cursory look at the public and private behaviour of the  inhabitants of corporate, financial, media, law and political lobbying boardrooms would be a fruitful exercise for those who wish to identify said individuals. Several have been in the spotlight recently, others are forever masked behind institutional barricades and are amusingly referred to as the men behind the curtain.

The common denominator among these individuals is Greed. Everything else about them directly correlates to the exercise of zero empathy greed.

If you have come across this posting and would care to express your opinion on my hypothesis - or make your own hypothesis - I would be glad to read it. I stand ready to bend to a greater wisdom - or sapience, as the impressive George Mobus terms it (Question Everything).

Slightly adapting a well-worn misquote of Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for the triumph of psychopathic oppression is that good people do nothing." Chewing the cud with good-hearted fellow prisoners may just start a ball rolling that cannot be stopped.

Comments

[Dylan Lancaster]

Hi. I like this very much. I like your style of writing and am agreement with what you have said.
Dylan.

[Aboc Zed]

I agree with Dylan above. Good post and good thinking. I often have thought along those lines myself. The problem is the ruthless psychos are "better" equipped to climb atop of the pecking order pyramid. While the fellow co-operators spend time and energy thinking about others and how life can be made better for all those guys and girls (yes I met girls who are like that :) waste no time to go up so that their selfish ways are supported by layers of homo sapiens sapiens under them. It is high time for co-operators really organize and take their ways to the top; that is to _become_ the top. It, of course, will happen eventually but we want it sooner rather than later.

By the way your Russian phrase does not sound completely Russian: "заключенных" should be "по заключению"; the meaning changes and reflects English better: "товарищ заключенных" means "comrade of prisoners" so you get "love to comrade (friend) of prisoners” instead of "fellow prisoner"; "товарищ по заключению" means "someone who shares imprisonment with me" analogous to "brothers in arms"

[Anywhere But Here Is Better]

Thank you Aboc, I stand corrected on my fledgling Russian.

Regarding co-operators getting organised, we can only hope it comes sooner rather than later. A number of well-qualified commentators, including George Mobus at http://questioneverything.typepad.com predict an evolutionary bottleneck looming in our near future. Unless wise ("sapient") homo sapiens sapiens get ready for this, we may have to hand the planet over to another lifeform, giving them a chance to make a better job of peaceful, wisdom-based co-existence.