I despair when I think of the intellectual treasure that humanity has wasted over the millennia to keep unimportant sociopaths and their descendants in incomprehensibly insane riches and privileges, whose appetite for more and more can never be satisfied.
Centuries have tick-tocked by while a trove of lives and aspirations has been lost to an effort to keep civilisations in almost the same retarded spot by a small number of those amoral individuals trapped by grand delusions fed by their insane wealth accumulated at the price of millions of other lives just as precious, smart and gifted. This has to be the most egregious crime against humanity ever, yet no one will suggest that the never-can-be-rich-enough have a serious medical problem. Psychologists shrink away from identifying the malaise and society prefers to think about over-the-top plenitude as an accomplishment worthy of respect, even submissive deference.
Hearing one of those terminally afflicted über-rich trapped in a moment of blunt honesty made me realise the depth of the inanity of the insatiable pursuit for ever more, moRE, MORE. In that moment that passed too quickly, the pitiful soul expressed the seldom-heard truth about his life as a bottomless pit that could never be filled no matter how hard and how fast he shoveled wealth into it.
One of the saddest moments was hearing a man who had so much more than everything sigh and admit that once he got on the wealth acquisition treadmill, when stuff started to roll in his direction, once he had attained the status that allowed him to successfully pursue yet MORE stuff at an exponentially growing pace and volume – he was stunned to realise that none of it meant anything. Once he recognised that his dream for MORE had become a reality, he was surprised that it didn’t satisfy any of his expectations. In spite of having zero need for MORE, he just could not stop himself to demand and receive yet more. Nor could he bring himself to atone at least to those whom he had fleeced to attain his absurdly obscene wealth. Even as he understood that his dream had metastasized into a nightmare, a terminal disease that, paradoxically, had corrupted his own life into a demented joke, an insanity that I call the Croesus Syndrome.
A person with a need to frequently wash his/her hands, or who will go to absurd lengths to not step on a crack in the pavement, will very likely be diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The obsessive-compulsive accumulation of wealth is a degenerative disease that corrupts the hoarder and his/her descendants with profligate and useless lives and an obsession with wealth for wealth’s sake. The ultimate definition of a wasted existence.
The Croesus Syndrome, were it ever recognised as a serious psychological disorder, contaminates entire societies. Attaining massive riches is often elevated to the status of a religion whose adherents worship at the macabre altar of the Almighty (here insert your most revered currency) and most depressing of all, who choose to idolize the ultra rich parasites and tolerate their criminal endeavours that rob societies of a chance to pursue one’s innate gifts.
In the end, Croesus, who seemingly had lost the ability for self-criticism, misread an oracle, lost a war and his kingdom, and paid for it by being immolated atop a burning pyre.
The longer the 21st century croesuses and their enablers are allowed to impose their limitations on our civilisation, the greater the chance for the glorified bean-counters, made rich by unconscionable and legally sanctioned fraud, to turn our world into a massive pyre, a conflagration that could be initiated by a nuclear reactor whose corporate owners cut corners, lie and bribe supine politicians in the name of Holy Profit. (sarcasm)
As I contemplate in disbelief the nightmare that the citizens of Japan have just lived through, first the massive earthquake, then the tsunami, and now the destruction of, and by, the nuclear reactors, I think about the massive losses throughout history of the lives, talent and hopes caused by something that could have, and should have, been avoided had humanity elected a different, and very likely, a more equitably profitable path.
Instead we have chosen to invest in Death. Death by war, hunger, poverty and diseases caused by Man’s disregard, even contempt, for the environment and fellow Living Beings, whatever the species. All in the name of the Ble$$ed Billion$. (more sarcasm)
I cannot be the only person with acquaintances who had devoted their entire lives to serving an illusion of becoming an “important” person, only to die too early for lack of purpose once sidelined, a/k/a retired. The once-paragons who allowed their jobs to define them, who confused brown-nosing lackeys with friends, who likely will not get the truth about themselves until shortly before their death.
Hearing a man admit that his entire existence has been wasted on chasing a golden mirage that he never really possessed is probably what killed him shortly after our last encounter. He was too far gone to even try to learn to do something other than acquire companies, screw his employees out of decent salaries and recognition, game the stock market and sacrifice his children to the snobby world of the idle rich. Cultivating roses in one’s garden and contemplating a beautiful lake teaming with life above and below the water table, apparently, just doesn’t cut it.
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Until we get it right or are wiped out of existence by our own stupidity, we will read about, hear and see tragedies that should have been arrested a long, long time ago: wars, poverty, hunger and illnesses created and proliferated by humanity’s idea of “progress” for a few pieces of gold that will never tell you how well-loved you are, how good your are, how smart and important you are to somebody. Progress defined as turning a spear into a gun that will spew flechettes dipped in depleted uranium, seeds that will not reproduce, medicine with gross side effects, mountains of plastic packaging designed to create an illusion of plentiful content, pricey energy whose waste requires eons to reach a half-life…
I am sometimes kept wide awake gripped by heart-stopping thoughts about the world that we could have created for ourselves. A world that has had more than enough time to learn how to anticipate and guard against earthquakes, protect against tsunamis, floods and droughts. A world where humanity’s well-being should have been foremost in everyone’s mind because wealth does not determine one’s ability to come up with brilliant ideas. A world where Death Machines like the nuclear plants and the pointless absurdity of wars, both ultimate manifestations of the Croesus Syndrome, should have been rejected as criminally unacceptable evil. A world that would treat junkie$ afflicted with the $yndrome with care and compassion and return to them the chance to really… live.
© 2011
