The rich will kill us all in their quest for amassing as much artificial wealth as they can. The only true wealth is a healthy and balanced ecosystem which is something none of them understand as they have completely commodified it as a means of amassing that aforementioned artificial wealth. They are all completely lost in a world unto themselves and have no concept of reality. I don’t see how I could “hate” them even more considering I’ve known for many many years now that they are leading the charge towards ecocide on earth. What could be worse than that?
When I went to college my major was biology, and I chose that field since I loved nature. However, my college professors never spoke about the environment nor were they interested in nature and it's well being. My genetics teacher popped into my bird watching class, one of a kind course, and told my professor in front of her students that she is wasting our time with this garbage. What makes the rich powerful are people, regular people, who go along with their bullshit. So it's not just the rich who are screwing things up, but a complicit public who perhaps knows no better. I was never enamored of the rich, because like everyone else they eat, shit, and they die like everyone else.
"A will to a system is a lack of integrity," writes Nietzsche. Can we perhaps substitute the term ecosphere for ecosystem? Or any other for that matter?
They are as artificial as the fictitious wealth they create. Pity them. Hate them for what they are doing to us and the world. But pity them, for they adore wealth; it is not something to accumulate it is something to adore.
Hatred is surrender. To hate them is to acknowledge that “The Rich” have won.
I revel in the simple fact that my awareness of evil is what makes me better than evil.
I don’t hate any human being. I don’t hate the savage cowards who are killing children in Gaza, or the lunatics who might end the world before I finish writing this sentence. Hatred makes them stronger.
I hate what they stand for, I hate what they do to the world, and I hate that they exist. I hate poverty and hunger; I certainly don’t hate cretins like Bezos or Gates. And if I think for a second that I’m better than them, I’m lost. I’m just luckier.
My greatest luxury, one that none of them can afford, is in knowing that I’m free from the shackles of greed and hollow craving.
To quote Joseph Heller, I have something none of them can ever afford: I have enough.
Hate has meaning in a rational sense. Evil is a biblical term that conceals more than it reveals. These people are monsters, some conscious others not.
I found this important interview to be extremely revealing. I didn't pick up on the "hate" of the title, but "know thy enemy:"
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
I don't hate the rich who consumed by their greed, never found the true beauty of living. I really don't covet the wealth of the super rich because I have all I need and want. In fact, as a low middle class American, I'm richer than the wealthiest of the kings and emperors of the past since I can enjoy the advancements in sciences and arts that they could not. I'm sure that Nero would have gladly donated his magnificent Domus Aurea to any person who had had anesthetics available for his teeth extractions or major surgeries. And I don't need teams of beautiful slave girls fanning me with ostriches' feathers since I have A/C while listening to the finest world's symphonic orchestras in surround sound at my studio when reading the best books purchased through the internet.
So... Oh great Ramesses: keep the proud message that seems to be proclaimed by your colossi at your temples in Abu Simbel "My name is Ozymandias,king of kings look on my works ye mighty and despair", but... I will not swap my lucky fate with yours. And neither with yours, modern-day billionaire, your greed and the way you built your fortune is disgusting!
Hating the Rich means hating the system that created them. As persons, they are sinverguenzas, or people without shame as we say in Spanish.
And the rich do not enjoy their lives. Built on stress, constant competition, narcissism -- they never enjoy what we as working people enjoy. A day at the beach, a campfire in the mountains, no, for them the vampiric form of life they have adopted or have been adopted into is a calamity of despair.
Never think the rich are 'happy' for they are not.
Agreed. I hate the system but not the rich that rather need pity for their imprisonment in their golden cages, though they are killing our ecology and encouraging the wars necessary for maintaining their wealth. The true lamentable fault is ours that has allowed this rotten capitalist system to endure. In that sense we all are sinverguenzas.
Robert Coles wrote about children living in poverty (I think in the 70's). The last chapter was devoted to the children of the wealthy. The distortions to morality, to empathy and connection, but also to any sense of well-being, in Cole's view, made great wealth another form of poverty.
I feel like the two major factions of the elite are fuedalists and technocrats.
Fuedalists own the land, the sea, and the sky. They want to be lords and princes of their own domains; of course they don't want a strong state up in their business.
Technocrats own the big banks and tech companies. They love the state. They love endless war, which grants them perpetual debts at our expense.
Landless peasants paying eternal rent or powerless citizens paying eternal taxes: take your pick.
Basically, yes. Although I'd arrange it slightly differently. Techno-libertarians reject the idea of legal restrictions; they're powerful enough, as Social Darwinist winners, not to need them. And they resent anything that reduces them to lowly equal citizens. The everyday sort of corporate CEO merely wants one dollar, one vote. They do want rules--their world runs on contract language.
It would cease to be hilarious the moment the authorities arrived and gave them the decisive boot. Mind you the homeless are not even permitted to sleep in public or be seen in public places - essentially, they have no right to exist.
Never a boring moment in a Chris Hedges presentation. Nor one not erudite. How does he read as voraciously as he does? The part of his career that I've witnessed has been endless cites of libraries and brilliant scholars, from a dizzying array of sources of wisdom. Robert Scheer is perhaps the only other reader as profuse. Nietzsche writes that the highest art is reading well. That, apparently, makes Chris the greatest artist on the planet.
Greed is our ultimate affliction. If we want to have a healthier reality, one where people work towards the betterment of others, then we need to reduce our carbon footprint, become less dependent on corporations and more so on each other.
Achieving skills, food growing, restoration/recycling, tech, writing, anything that can be of use to others. Nodes of smaller communities built from people pooling resources and skills, all democratically run. Everyone has an equal vote.
That is why the peaceful revolution is required. They certainly wouldn’t allow it. If I can ask, do you think we are too dependent on the capitalist system or that if we in earnest did try it, that the corporations and law makers would begin to restrict people liberating themselves from the system?
okay, just minutes in to the interview that already pushes every button, but the "extralegal" status of entitled immigrants who traverse and have shown no borders or loyal sovereignty as they weaponize them and have offshored jobs and stolen wealth i have witnessed since i entered the job market in 1979 points up the junk/et values that are the casino of futures these mfing chess pieces have always played roulette with humanity as pawns
The rich will kill us all in their quest for amassing as much artificial wealth as they can. The only true wealth is a healthy and balanced ecosystem which is something none of them understand as they have completely commodified it as a means of amassing that aforementioned artificial wealth. They are all completely lost in a world unto themselves and have no concept of reality. I don’t see how I could “hate” them even more considering I’ve known for many many years now that they are leading the charge towards ecocide on earth. What could be worse than that?
When I went to college my major was biology, and I chose that field since I loved nature. However, my college professors never spoke about the environment nor were they interested in nature and it's well being. My genetics teacher popped into my bird watching class, one of a kind course, and told my professor in front of her students that she is wasting our time with this garbage. What makes the rich powerful are people, regular people, who go along with their bullshit. So it's not just the rich who are screwing things up, but a complicit public who perhaps knows no better. I was never enamored of the rich, because like everyone else they eat, shit, and they die like everyone else.
"The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class." Marx
Everyone is affected and infected under capitalism.
o
"A will to a system is a lack of integrity," writes Nietzsche. Can we perhaps substitute the term ecosphere for ecosystem? Or any other for that matter?
They are as artificial as the fictitious wealth they create. Pity them. Hate them for what they are doing to us and the world. But pity them, for they adore wealth; it is not something to accumulate it is something to adore.
Hatred is surrender. To hate them is to acknowledge that “The Rich” have won.
I revel in the simple fact that my awareness of evil is what makes me better than evil.
I don’t hate any human being. I don’t hate the savage cowards who are killing children in Gaza, or the lunatics who might end the world before I finish writing this sentence. Hatred makes them stronger.
I hate what they stand for, I hate what they do to the world, and I hate that they exist. I hate poverty and hunger; I certainly don’t hate cretins like Bezos or Gates. And if I think for a second that I’m better than them, I’m lost. I’m just luckier.
My greatest luxury, one that none of them can afford, is in knowing that I’m free from the shackles of greed and hollow craving.
To quote Joseph Heller, I have something none of them can ever afford: I have enough.
Hate has meaning in a rational sense. Evil is a biblical term that conceals more than it reveals. These people are monsters, some conscious others not.
Hate, in this context means deplorable.
“There is no man who differs more from another than he does from himself at another time.”
~Blaise Pascal
'I am a human being; nothing human can be alien to me.'
~Terrance
Schumer entered the Congress with 80 thousand dollars. He is worth now close to one billion.
Pelosi the same: started as a Mayor and ended up with 100 million.
They love capitalism. They make their reputation and money by using the political system.
Capitalism is all about transactional relationships, not human relationships.
Empathy dies on the tree of mammon
I found this important interview to be extremely revealing. I didn't pick up on the "hate" of the title, but "know thy enemy:"
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Sun Tzu
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
Powerful, relevant quote.
The Chinese. A far more intelligent country
I don't hate the rich who consumed by their greed, never found the true beauty of living. I really don't covet the wealth of the super rich because I have all I need and want. In fact, as a low middle class American, I'm richer than the wealthiest of the kings and emperors of the past since I can enjoy the advancements in sciences and arts that they could not. I'm sure that Nero would have gladly donated his magnificent Domus Aurea to any person who had had anesthetics available for his teeth extractions or major surgeries. And I don't need teams of beautiful slave girls fanning me with ostriches' feathers since I have A/C while listening to the finest world's symphonic orchestras in surround sound at my studio when reading the best books purchased through the internet.
So... Oh great Ramesses: keep the proud message that seems to be proclaimed by your colossi at your temples in Abu Simbel "My name is Ozymandias,king of kings look on my works ye mighty and despair", but... I will not swap my lucky fate with yours. And neither with yours, modern-day billionaire, your greed and the way you built your fortune is disgusting!
Hating the Rich means hating the system that created them. As persons, they are sinverguenzas, or people without shame as we say in Spanish.
And the rich do not enjoy their lives. Built on stress, constant competition, narcissism -- they never enjoy what we as working people enjoy. A day at the beach, a campfire in the mountains, no, for them the vampiric form of life they have adopted or have been adopted into is a calamity of despair.
Never think the rich are 'happy' for they are not.
They are slaves to Mammon.
Agreed. I hate the system but not the rich that rather need pity for their imprisonment in their golden cages, though they are killing our ecology and encouraging the wars necessary for maintaining their wealth. The true lamentable fault is ours that has allowed this rotten capitalist system to endure. In that sense we all are sinverguenzas.
Robert Coles wrote about children living in poverty (I think in the 70's). The last chapter was devoted to the children of the wealthy. The distortions to morality, to empathy and connection, but also to any sense of well-being, in Cole's view, made great wealth another form of poverty.
I feel like the two major factions of the elite are fuedalists and technocrats.
Fuedalists own the land, the sea, and the sky. They want to be lords and princes of their own domains; of course they don't want a strong state up in their business.
Technocrats own the big banks and tech companies. They love the state. They love endless war, which grants them perpetual debts at our expense.
Landless peasants paying eternal rent or powerless citizens paying eternal taxes: take your pick.
Basically, yes. Although I'd arrange it slightly differently. Techno-libertarians reject the idea of legal restrictions; they're powerful enough, as Social Darwinist winners, not to need them. And they resent anything that reduces them to lowly equal citizens. The everyday sort of corporate CEO merely wants one dollar, one vote. They do want rules--their world runs on contract language.
Good thinking. Techno feudalism, the digital dark ages is what is the agenda.
Here's a fantasy. Wouldn't it be hilarious if some homeless people broke into one of those empty luxury apartments and squatted there! (haha)
It would cease to be hilarious the moment the authorities arrived and gave them the decisive boot. Mind you the homeless are not even permitted to sleep in public or be seen in public places - essentially, they have no right to exist.
Excellent & informative!! Thank you!
Never a boring moment in a Chris Hedges presentation. Nor one not erudite. How does he read as voraciously as he does? The part of his career that I've witnessed has been endless cites of libraries and brilliant scholars, from a dizzying array of sources of wisdom. Robert Scheer is perhaps the only other reader as profuse. Nietzsche writes that the highest art is reading well. That, apparently, makes Chris the greatest artist on the planet.
DEMOCRATIC
SOCIALIST
EQUALITY
PARTY
IT’S THE ONLY PATH OUT WITH JESUS!
Greed is our ultimate affliction. If we want to have a healthier reality, one where people work towards the betterment of others, then we need to reduce our carbon footprint, become less dependent on corporations and more so on each other.
Achieving skills, food growing, restoration/recycling, tech, writing, anything that can be of use to others. Nodes of smaller communities built from people pooling resources and skills, all democratically run. Everyone has an equal vote.
Agreed. The current capitalist system will not allow what your propose. But agreed, building parallel communities is what needs to take place.
That is why the peaceful revolution is required. They certainly wouldn’t allow it. If I can ask, do you think we are too dependent on the capitalist system or that if we in earnest did try it, that the corporations and law makers would begin to restrict people liberating themselves from the system?
No revolutions I know of are peaceful. Nice if they could be but look at the competition. They are out to destroy us.
Yes, the corporate state will do anything to maintain its power.
The struggle will continue but with more veracity. This scares the ruling class.
“Not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious.”
------ Walter Benjamin
okay, just minutes in to the interview that already pushes every button, but the "extralegal" status of entitled immigrants who traverse and have shown no borders or loyal sovereignty as they weaponize them and have offshored jobs and stolen wealth i have witnessed since i entered the job market in 1979 points up the junk/et values that are the casino of futures these mfing chess pieces have always played roulette with humanity as pawns
a game of master pieced theatre
"The working class has no homeland." Karl Marx
Like drinking from a fire hose. I feel disheartened.
The author forgot to mention any of the simplistically pretentious, oddly spelled names of the (((oligarchical))) offspring of the global plutocracy