MANGAWHAI'S NO.1 NEWSPAPER
|
|
Worzels World - A thumb on the scalesRecently I have tried to debunk some of the many myths that have gained credence in our culture. Such things as tolerance, pride, the need for high self-esteem, the concept that peace is the absence of external violence rather than the possession of inward calm have become almost unquestioned within our society. Another such view is that ‘we are all equal‘. It’s obvious, even to a moron, perhaps especially to a moron, that we are not. Indeed all sporting contests (or any contest for that matter) are proof of our inequality. Why then is so much lip service paid to this obviously false concept? The actual truth, and this was never questioned until recently, is that we are all different. The only reason to improve is to make yourself, your situation, your community, your world, better and therefore unequal to what it formerly was. If a man can only be tomorrow the equal of what he was yesterday he may as well chuck it all in. Maybe this is part of the reason so many do? In the poker game of life we are all dealt different hands and no two are equal It’s how you play the game that counts. This is what makes it fun. No matter how hard I studied at school I would never have come first in class. Martin Jones was simply smarter than me and others were not only smarter but learned quicker and studied more too. What chance did I have? No matter how hard I trained, and I did train hard, I could never have won the hundred metre sprint. Ray Sumner and a few others were faster by nature and genetics. Instead I had other talents, like annoying the teachers, at which I excelled and ranked very near the top of my year. Being annoying is a talent that held me in good stead in rugby as an open side flanker and is a quality that has remained with me. At best this trait was described as tenacity. Mostly though it has been described by less flattering adjectives. Admittedly it’s not much of a talent but it’s mine and comes in handy sometimes and I think I‘m getting better at it. Although it is as plain as day that we are not equal but different, we are not so unequal or as dissimilar as the structure of society might suggest. Plato asserted that in an ideal society no individual should receive more than six times the income of the poorest individual within that society. Banker JP Morgan said he thought income disparity should be no more than twenty to one. Yet somehow within our current corporate controlled global economy the elite derive incomes many thousands of times larger than the poor and marginalised. Whilst students beaver away accumulating debt and many in the waged workforce are forced to earn a subsistence income, the wealthy fly business class to attend meetings as their invested capital accumulates unspeakable wealth with no need for any actual work. Former Fonterra CEO Theo Spierings personally received millions of dollars a year ($8.32million in 2017) whilst losing billions of farmers dollars, illustrating just how absurd the current structure is. Keep in mind that this corporation was once ‘The farmers co-operative dairy company'. It should perhaps have been rebranded the ‘Make farmers produce more for less then rob them corporation’. But then labelling things what they really are is no longer the fashion. Although the word ‘Fonterra’ means little to anyone who hasn’t studied linguistics, it is a snazzier name for the marketing people to rip people off with. Here are a few more facts to ponder: Half the world’s wealth is controlled by less than 1% of its population, according to a report highlighting the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else. The world’s richest people have seen their share of the globe’s total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140tn (£106tn), according to Credit Suisse’s recently published global wealth report. These billionaires – who account for 0.7% of the world’s adult population – control 46% of total global wealth that now stands at $280tn. At the other end of the spectrum, the world’s 3.5 billion poorest adults each have assets of less than $10,000 (£7,600). Collectively these people, who account for 70% of the world’s working age population, account for just 2.7% of global wealth. That is essentially how we ended up here in a world that pays lip service to the lie of equality whilst practising an even greater lie of gross disparity. And simply because we are not equal doesn't mean that we should take it as a licence to be unfair. It is all smoke and mirrors of finance power and greed. They have duped you, and me too to some extent, into being their slaves. Einstein, who I am fond of quoting, when told he possessed a genius IQ of 180 replied, “Three morons.” No we are not equal but that is about the greatest extent of our natural inequality. Why then do we tolerate inequality in resources in the order of thousands? Maybe it is because most have all been equally fooled. Feedback? Email prof_worzel@hotmail.com No matter how hard I studied at school I would never have come first in class. Instead I had other talents, like annoying the teachers, at which I excelled and ranked very near the top of my year. |