I happen to be reading this gripping essay by Bill Moyers about the network of corruption and influence that has been creating and reinforcing plutocracy in America, and the heavy lifting in front of the country’s citizens if anything resembling democracy is ever to be in reach again:
As great wealth has accumulated at the top, the rest of society has not been benefiting proportionally. In 1960 the gap between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was thirtyfold. Now it is seventy-five fold. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives in the country was 30 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker
(disclaimer of sorts - a bit more than a decade ago I was a compensation and organization design / strategy consultant working with large multinational firms. I quit quite suddenly when I realized I was being an active contributor to the problems that were bothering me so much, most tangibly with respect to compensation strategies that help to create this abusive gap between worker and executive remuneration .. a high hourly rate corporate prostitute, in other words).
As I was reading the essay (the last few paragraphs of which I will finish after completing this post), I began watching, and got into, the movie North Country, which is about nasty, ugly, brutal sexual harassment at a Minnesota mine and the eventual development of a class action suit against the mine.
In the culminating scene of the movie, in a court room the defense lawyer is using the “Nuts and Sluts” defense, probing and trying to establish the “Sluts” part of the defense by asking about the identity of the father of her son (Josey’s son was born of a supposedly unknown father when she was 16). For the first time since the birth of her son (having hidden the ugly truth from the world), under examination in court Josey states that she was raped by her high school teacher in the classroom, and that he is the father.
The denouement of the film comes in the court room as Bobbie, her principal harasser at the mine (who was her classmate and wannabe boyfriend in high school, and witnessed the rape through a window) is initially claiming it was no rape (leaving one to wonder if he was hurt or ashhamed and of course, at 16, scared of outing the teacher). He, on the witness stand, finally cracks and admits he witrnessed the rape, saying “what was I supposed to do ?
I had tears welling up in my eyes. I hate injustice, power and privilege being exercised in the course of manipulating people, and lying and circling the wagons so as to avoid responsibility for doing things that are clearly wrong.
I also often feel deeply sad about the rape of democracy and the murder of thousands of innocents ( and the lying and circling of wagons to avoid responsibility for the injustice and abuse of power) that the Bushes and thier cronies and sycophants (a small tightly connected group of sociopaths) proactively practice so that they can maintain control of the society they seem to believe is their private company and treasury.
Bill Moyers’ article from which I obtained the quote above dissects the fundamental crisis that this raping and abuse of American society and other countries in the world is visiting upon us all. Virtually no corner of the globe is untouched by this, as the USA effectively controls the World Bank and the IMF, buys what friends it can find (the UK and Israel, essentially), and has enfeebled the United Nations.
I’d recommend watching the movie North Country (the sound track has some great moments by Bob Dylan and great supporting work by Cissy Spacek and Woody Harrelson) if you are a sentient human being who has a modicum of decency and principle … as well as reading Moyers’ essay.
I am going to bed tonight with a heavy heart.
Why, when blessed with the miracle that is this planet and the equally miraculous gift that is consciousness, can humans knowingly engage in such ugly, inelegant behaviour ? You’d think we’d grow out of it eventually, wouldn’t you ?
I don’t believ humans were meant to be savage, cruel animals, tho’ goodness knows I also don’t believe that there’s some divine inspiration, guidance or design that informs what humans were meant to be either.
Tonight all I know is how I feel, and cruelty, meanness, abuse, manipulation by humans against humans makes me sad.
‘-(
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February 27, 2006 at 10:43 am
Anonymous
“I don’t believe humans were meant to be savage, cruel animals, tho’ goodness knows I also don’t believe that there’s some divine inspiration, guidance or design that informs what humans were meant to be either.”
Hi Jon. Although I hold fairly conventional Christian beliefs, I’m not one to foist those beliefs on everyone else at every opportunity. I say that simply so you don’t misunderstand my motive in saying what follows.
It all hinges around that word *meant*. If human beings evolved through survival of the fittest (as I believe we did), then self-serving behaviour would seem to be a direct consequence of that. What’s surprising isn’t that we as a species have so much capacity for bad, it’s that we have so much capacity for good. Where did morals come from? They don’t seem to follow logically from evolution. The co-existence of evolution and morality is a paradox that neither side has yet satisfactorily explained. I don’t have an answer either, but it seems like a useful question.
So back to that *meant* word. By whom, or by what, were we not *meant* to be savage, cruel animals? As I said, that’s not intended as a rhetorical question - I’m not using it as an arguement for the existence of some divine force - but there’s much hidden in that phrase, wouldn’t you agree?
February 27, 2006 at 10:53 am
Anonymous
yes … and our consciousness is a complete mystery to me. I don’t believe in the concept of a god.