WEALTH & POWER . . .
We shape the world and the world shapes us.
The tendency of both outward material wealth
and power is to become not so much means
to a better world or even a happier life, but
to become ends in themselves. Once this
happens, what wealth and power come to
fear more than anything else is the loss of
wealth and power.
Because of this all-powerful fear of loss, wealth
and power are only really interested in the arts and
sciences insofar as the arts and sciences can
make the increase of wealth and power possible,
and more secure. And because this fear of loss
corrupts all clear thinking, it leads us to deny in
the name of security everything we do not wish
to believe. This is why wealth and power are
notoriously bad at dealing with the disturbing
facts of any kind of serious existential crisis,
say like those posed by abrupt climate change,
or the collapse of democracy into military dictatorship.
That is the essential contradiction of outward
material wealth and power, in any era, in any age
and place. And it is why wealth and power rightly
fear their own downfall, which, because of the
contradiction itself, is with time, tragically
both necessary and
inevitable.
WEALTH?
Wealth? When I have the things I need
to share the things I love.