Cruelty Is The Point

It’s a common mistake. Decent, civilised folk try and use decent, civilised reasoning to persuade those on the far-right to not support evil things. As I have said many times, the moral reasoning we apply to our daily lives is not only different to those in the oligarch/far-right industrial complex, the cognitive morality function (the actual brain region) is defective and, at times, completely absent.

It sounds like hyperbole to say that those who support the oligarch takeover are deficient in key brain functions. But it is true. Indeed, for decades the powerful elite (also themselves damaged) have groomed the more marginalised, the less well educated, and the victims of some form of domestic abuse or neglect (this includes the callous disregard of some wealthy parents). They create the ideal society to foster easily manipulated foot-soldiers.

Perhaps alarm bells should have sounded earlier when cuts to education and health were pushed through. They don’t want their prey educated or mentally well. It is better for the oligarchs that more of the population are as damaged as they are and as devoid of morality as they have become.

It’s not as easy as you may think to morally corrupt ordinary people. They are not like the wealthy - distant to the suffering their decisions cause. Ordinary people working as bank tellers, nurses, teachers, factory workers, see the suffering caused by the very greed and selfishness our morals are programmed to prevent. The pain of the hungry child. The agony of the parents who can’t feed or dress their kids as they would like. The teacher or nurse trying to patch together fixes for those who would be fine if only they had a just share of the massive wealth that exists. Ordinary folk are harder to corrupt than the wealthy and powerful.

It’s why cruelty is needed. Not just cruelty but very visible acts of cruelty. It needs to be normalised. The threshold to put aside one’s moral values needs to be lowered. The cruelty inherent to the oligarchs needs to be normalised in the public, so they can continue their malignant growth and consumption.

Cruelty is the point.

In part it’s a power play. In another scarier part, the act of cruelty provides some form of hedonistic relief. Oligarchs are damaged people. They have failed to develop the social brain that separates us from the chimps. Stuck on a competitive setting, while the rest of us are simply looking to connect, to cooperate. Driven to validate themselves by what they have, while the rest of us judge ourselves on who we are and what we stand for.

It makes absolute sense that they would use their power to try and reshape the world to fit their stunted and dysfunctional minds. Everyone is selfish, so we can be more selfish, they say. Indeed, if everyone is just out for themselves then they are the best of us as they are the best at looking out for themselves. They try and turn a blind eye to the inconvenient truth that most of us simply want to connect with others, to feel like we belong, to have companionship and meaningful relationships. This of course means we can’t be selfish or greedy or cruel - who wants a relationship with someone like that? Unless of course that is all you’ve know. Unless of course that is what is normal.

I cannot stress enough that we must deal with these greedy, selfish outliers by first viewing them as damaged. I am not saying they couldn’t rehabilitate and begin forming reciprocal relationships instead of trying to dominate and win every conversation. They could. Many, as they approach the end of their time, probably will. What I am saying is we should not assume that the actions taken by those trying to dominate society need have any other motivate than a visible display of cruelty; that causing harm is the point. It isn’t about the economy or freedom or any religious ideology. It isn’t an attempt to correct something that some learned person on the right thinks has gone wrong with society. No. The cruelty and damage to ordinary people is the point. Take away our civility. Take away our sense of community. Make it normal to treat each other exactly the same way our oligarch overlords treat us.

Resistance is to treat each other better. To reach out and help one another. Visible displays of kindness and justice and honour and integrity and the kind of relationships they couldn’t even dream of having. Stay you.