Of Leaves and Trees

Most people (it would seem the vast majority) resent the hell out of someone else being “above themselves.” You’ll often hear people complain, “How’d that dork get to be a Major,”...OR “How’d THAT idiot get to run this department,”...etc.

Likewise the vast majority of people, deep down inside, revile the very entertainers they claim to “adore” the most!

It’s EXACTLY the way you might expect a leaf to resent the tree. The leaf NEEDS the tree, but it’s a rare that any of those that NEED something actually LOVE that which they are dependent upon. In fact, you might well imagine that just about every leaf would rejoice (if they could) should their tree come down with Dutch Elm Disease or Oak Blight….same way “fans” LOVE nothing more than seeing their “favorite celebrities” go down in flames.” It feeds that natural fan/leaf resentment. That’s why gossip shows and celebrity magazines sell so BIG! People LOVE seeing Kirstie Alley as a big fat slob…or Lindsay Lohan drunk and looking trashed. That’s why most of these stars (trees) tend to be very wary around all these leaves (fans).

It’s the same reason that while many workers hate their bosses, they still WANT someone to be “up there,” they NEED someone to be “up there”...to take the fall when the entity eventually goes down in flames, which all entities eventually do. Then they most definitely want it to be someone else taking that fall.

It also explains why increasing distrust and even outright hatred for the government is so expected and really, quite sensible. People who depend on something tend to resent the hell out of that something...at least if they have any sense and any self respect. People in earlier times didn’t hate government so much because there was so much less of it...they rarely came in contact with it. Nobody was telling the pioneer what to do and what not to do.

BUT today, with so many people depending on Social Security, pensions, Medicare, and all kinds of relief, with government running the education system, paving the roads, building the bridges, inspecting your housing, you mattresses, your food...well, most sensible, self respecting people are going to revile that entity and see it as “monstrous.” The more people need something, the more they tend to resent and detest it.

Aldous Huxley was right when he graphed man (the individual) vs. mankind over time. While time is very KIND to mankind...conditions tend to improve over time (life in 1230 AD was certainly somewhat better than life in 528AD and life in 1962 was almost certainly much improved over life in 1793...time is very UNKIND to man, the individual, as more automation and more rules and bureaucracy tend to constrict the individual.

Again, the most self-aware people and those with the greatest amount of self-respect tend to be ardent individualists. Those sad conformists who take whatever new indignities are cast upon them, the ones who mindlessly repeat the prattlings of accepted dogma are always in the majority, or so it seems and it’s why free thought has and probably will always have to face a strong wind of resistance and it’s a cold, bitter wind coming out of those northeastern fields of conformity.

Perception is EVERYTHING!...Or Riders Who Feel They’re “the Ridden”

Morgan Gliedman (L) and Aaron Greene (R)

The other day, two well-heeled pseudo-revolutionaries and allegedly, OWS stalwarts were arrested for having a huge cache of weapons and few grams of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, or HMTD (a peroxide-based explosive that is “the explosive of choice” for many would-be terrorists as it is not as easily detected as nitrogen-based explosives) in their Greenwich Village apartment.

Morgan Gliedman and Aaron Greene were arrested Saturday, December 29^th, 2012 for housing a wide array of weapons and explosives in their Manhattan apartment.

“Morgan Gliedman, who grew up on Park Avenue, graduated from Dalton in 2002. Her dad, Dr. Paul Gliedman, is director of radiation oncology at Beth Israel Hospital, Brooklyn Division.

“Paul Gliedman - who was included in New York magazine's list of top doctors in 2011 - received his medical degree from Columbia University.

“Morgan's mother, Susyn Schops Gliedman, is a realtor with Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Greene attended Harvard as an undergraduate and did his graduate work at the university's Kennedy School of Government.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255609/Morgan-Gliedman-Aaron-Greene-junkies-terrorists-police-say.html

Aaron’s father, Jeff Green, is the head of a well-known New York art restoration company, Evergreene Architectural Arts.
http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/01/morgan-gliedman-aaron-green/

Here we have two scions of the 1%ers allegedly “hating the rich.”

We’re supposed to believe that “All the 1%ers are bad EXCEPT these two!”

It’s almost cliché, that the wealthiest are always the ones who hate wealth creation...“other people’s wealth” the most. To paraphrase Dr Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, “If you want to sniff the stench of decadence...smell yourselves!”

To many, it appears a dichotomy that so many of the wealthiest would revile the wealthy. Certainly G. B. Shaw did, when he concocted Fabian Socialism after coming to the frustrating realization that the poor will never rise up, being too desperate for their daily bread, too insecure, too afraid of the awful specter of being fully responsible for themselves. Shaw realized that the task of true social/economic revolution would always fall to the bored and jaded scions of the wealthy and well-connected.

But what could possibly motivate the wealthiest to support any form of real redistribution and oppose the creation and store-housing of massive amounts of wealth by individuals?

Some have claimed that a natural guilt might explain it, other, more cynical and observant people have noted correctly that by leading such “reforms,” the rich retain, not only the access to the trappings of wealth (power is the primary goal of wealth creation), but control over the process in perpetuity.

Of course, I beg to differ.

In my view, the one thing the Collectivists, from Hitler to Mao have gotten right is that there are just two kinds of people – the worker bees and the queen bees, or more rustically, the riders and the ridden.

Those who are ridden appear almost born (perhaps bred) to be ridden. In fact, so much so that it is when they are NOT being ridden, that they are most miserable. The man who hates his crummy job doesn’t usually rejoice when fired, in fact he’s usually inconsolably depressed...and it’s NOT because of the loss of a pay check. He’s getting his relief check, he’s eating. No, what he misses, is that miserable boss, his “rider,” bursting into his office every morning shouting, “What’d you DO this time you moron?!”

Now, I think such traits, like homosexuality, dissociative disorder and the like are pretty much inborn, or genetic. Innately you’re either a rider or one who is ridden – a veritable beast of burden.

Now sometimes, possibly quite often, actually, one of those built to be ridden finds him or herself born into the reins of ridership.

Whoa! There is very little that can make for a more miserable existence than that! These riders who were meant to be ridden buck and rustle against the reins, as they much prefer the saddle...they WANT to be ridden, even if they are ostensibly unaware of this. Somewhere, deep down inside they know, they just KNOW that at heart, they’re just another beast of burden and that’s exactly what they REALLY see when they look in the mirror each morning.

Now a rider can’t just toss away the reins in our society. That would be unforgivably irresponsible. Far more irresponsible than one of the ridden “spitting the bit” from time to time...that’s somewhat expected, at least from the best of them, but a rider CANNOT, in any graceful way, demure from the power and control they are meant to wield.

So, what do they do? They identify with the other beasts of burden, they commiserate with those who are ridden...and that’s precisely how they see themselves, as “the ridden” no matter how opulent their lives, no matter how much privilege is foist upon them.

In the worst such cases, you get an Abbie Hoffman, a scion of Wall Street power who turned on “the establishment,” or Kathy Boudin, the daughter of a wealthy New York City Lawyer, who’d attended Bryn Mawr College before devoting her life to violent “activism” against her own class.

That’s more or less, what Gliedman and Greene seem to be.

Seriously, if such people truly wanted to improve the world and really cared about others, they could simply divest themselves of the burdens of that wealth and bestow it on someone far less fortunate. Such a recipient would almost certainly be far less destructive with it. Hell, some might actually find ways to actually improve things.

So, obviously “making the world a better place,” isn’t high on the Boudin’s, Gliedman’s or Greene’s bucket lists – self glorification and exerting control over others, certainly seems to be.

Who knows after all? Perhaps they’re born riders who THINK or “perceive” themselves to be “the ridden,” but can’t pull away from their innate riding urges no matter how hard they try.