Posted by Alexander Jerri
I’m coming to you today from the shipyard in Popham, ME, where dry-dock professionals are currently refitting the fishing trawler, the SS Merkin, to be airlifted for use by the Ukrainian Navy should the hostilities become pelagically noir – or, whatever, move into the Black Sea. Somehow.
Must there be nations? Well, whether or not there must be, there are. Must a nation have a leader? Well, most do. Must the leader be wealthy? Well, most are.
If there must be nations, and if a nation must have a leader, and if a leader must be wealthy, maybe they shouldn’t be the wealthiest person in the nation. And maybe the wealthiest person in the nation, leader or not, shouldn’t be wealthier than the nation itself or be able to leverage their wealth to determine national policies. Just as a rule of thumb.
There are a lot of things wrong with the way wealth is distributed, especially now, and there are a lot of things wrong currently with the leadership of nations. It’s hard to imagine that the two problems aren’t somehow related.
Economic wealth and political power both give the bearer delusions of strength beyond their actual physical abilities. They become so used to getting what they want, it’s only natural that many of them tend to esteem themselves superhuman.
The opposite is also true, however. The über-privileged are also prone to indulge delusions of fragility. King Charles VI of France famously believed he was made of glass and took elaborate precautions to avoid accidentally shattering. Napoleon is said to have been afraid of cats, and this fear is also said (by me) to have stemmed from the worry that he might step on their tails and be visited by them in the night where they would steal his breath in revenge. Emperor Augustus Caesar was under the delusion that he contained a highly conductive fluid that would attract a fatal lightning strike. Genghis Khan was irrationally fearful of being eaten by dogs, even small fluffy ones. The celebrated novelist, Balzac, had a fear of burning up in the sunlight, as did the Count of Dracula.
Two moderately old sayings should be kept in mind, though:
1. The rich are different.
2. It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
The wealthy and powerful are physiologically different from the rest of us losers, based on a peer reviewed... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
I have my world builder hat on and my world builder gloves and boots. Of course, can’t forget my world builder safety goggles. I hastily contrive a fertile crescent from what’s lying around my mind. Rolling hills of green, a forest of cedar trees. A couple of rivers that will one day be called the Euphrates and the Tigres. I’m gonna say it’s about eight thousand years ago, before the marking up of a lot of clay tablets with stories. There’s not a great deal materially left from that time that could refute me. It was an oral culture, but before the advent of most of the oral traditions that were later recorded, and most likely adulterated, in more tangible fashion. So long ago, people had only in the previous four thousand years even come to sense themselves as distinct from all the other things in the world.
Most of what people created were stories and songs and rhythms. Those items were constructed of vibrations. Almost as soon as they were appreciated, they would blow away in the wind like a sake cup of pure oxygen served as an amuse-bouche at an irrationally expensive trendy restaurant. Or a burp. But much more important than a quarter cup of gas because these vibrations were early strokes sculpting the kind of species we were going to become.
I take it back, forget about the geographical location. This could happen anywhere. I’m going to tell you a story now, and this is just between you and me and the invisible power of wishing: there once was a time when the vast majority of people were intelligent, contemplative, and respectful of each other, even of those less intelligent, contemplative, and able-bodied.
Everything was so new no systemic ideas of disdain, prohibition, or guilt had yet taken hold. No one knew what laziness was. All the labor – the tending of the wild growth from which food was gathered, the grinding of seeds into pastes and powders, the weaving of plant fibers, the caring for what domestic animals there were – all that took at most a couple of hours each day. The rest of the day was for finding out what being a human was all about. Because, however long people had been in existence, there were always freshly-minted people coming into existence who barely knew what was going on around them. Or inside them, and had yet to explore the nature of the relationships woven around and through them.
They weren’t savages.... read more
