Think I finally figured the terribly wealthy out...

"Après moi le déluge,"


attributed to the King of France Louis XV (1710-1774), meaning, "After my reign, let chaos and destruction come" (in the sense that it would no longer matter to him).

Sure, there will be repercussions from the way they've amassed their wealth...
but they won't be around to suffer them, so what's the problem?

This is the only excuse I can see why some people behave as they do; they believe that the consequences of their actions won't come home to roost until after they're dead and gone.
Somebody else (read: those without, the have-nots) will catch the fallout...in more ways than one.

Karma? Oh yeah, she can be a bitch alright...and I've never heard anything about how 'happy' a life these people lead...
on the contrary in fact.
Somehow, that doesn't make up for the swath of destruction (environment, lives, businesses, etc.) they leave behind in their quest for MORE.

"Oh, thanks for paying our FAIR SHARE of taxes for us. Bwaaaa ha ha ha ha. Smirk. Sneer."

- Tax-shirking Republicon FatCats

:)

Depriving their own grandchildren of drinkable water and breathable air seems contrary to what DNA tries to do with most of its manifestations, yanno?

I can understand the sociopathic "You don't matter because you're not me" but the suicidal trait of "My grandchildren and great-grandchildren don't matter" seems to run against several eons of evolutionary success.

mental illness I guess all around in the US these days (maybe it's always been that way?) and I just think, maybe sociopathic behavior grows during stressful times. Maybe when society makes it impossible to get your needs met (psychological needs as well as physical needs for rest, sustenance, etc.) then we see more of this sociopathic behavior. I think about it sometimes. I wonder why there seems to be so many people who really don't care what happens to anyone but themselves.

aberrancies. Humans have always possessed some degree of altruism, but helping other humans survive is beginning to work against one's own survival, and I think this is where the school shootings and some other forms of antisocial behavior arise.

I haven't thought about this a lot because it's just too dang depressing . . .

And now we have the religiowackazoids trying to stop birth control in the U.S.

they turned into bad mothers and then all the male rats fought a lot and chewed the tails off other rats, etc. They just turned from loving creatures (rats can be loving, that's why people sometimes enjoy them as pets) with altruism for each other, into monsters basically. Just from overcrowded conditions, competition for resources, and other stresses that come with that.

I don't remember all the details now about the study because I was only about 11 when I read it but some of it kind of stayed in my mind and you know, whenever I read about school shootings, mothers drowning their young, fathers shooting their families and then themselves, and many other signs of distress in the population, I think back on that study and I think I see similarities.

It's clear to me there is too much stress on our population and it's having a bad effect on pretty much all of us. On our society as a whole. Now that stress may be overcrowding, maybe it's stress related to advertising and thinking we have to keep up with the Joneses, etc. I mean there are lots of sources of stress in our lives I think. I truly think advertising and TV and magazines are one source of stress because you then feel all this pressure to have a perfect face and body, I mean unnaturally perfect, and then you feel you have to have an advanced degree, plus a beautiful upscale home plus you have to drive the "right" car and...it just all adds up to feeling like you aren't good enough just the way you are, which is a big psychological stressor I think.

Then there is the stress of always wondering if you are next on the chopping block to lose your job. Or not being able to find a job in the first place. The stress of debt hanging over our heads. The stress of realizing peak oil is here and things are going to get even worse in the next twenty years or so. The stress of watching people around you pretty much going nuts, like those who only watch FOX, people who have addictions, sociopaths, etc.

There is just a pretty big amount of stress these days and I know people will say, there have always been stressors but I truly think when I was younger it wasn't this bad.

"Population, Evolution and Birth Control" -- think that book was published in the 'seventies.

The home box for the rats was equipped with unlimited supplies of food and water and was cleaned somehow, so excess feces were not a stressor.

The study was designed so that the *only* stressor was limited space for the ever-increasing population, and the effects were exactly what we're seeing among humans now.

Mothers neglecting or killing their young, gangs of young males chasing and raping females instead of engaging in the usual mutual-agreement courtship behavior, many forms of aggression and fighting -- every time I see an account of one of these I think of the rat study in Hardin's book.

They weren't competing for resources -- they were stressed by their crowding. But the breeding behavior didn't stop, it just became more and more erratic. And they didn't even have little religiowackazoid rats preaching about "the sanctity of life."

Every once in awhile, somebody says, "Whatever happened to the population explosion?" Or "Remember when people used to worry about overpopulation?" I think we really are like the frog in the pot of water on the cookstove, and I wonder if these people are any better at seeing climate change.


The fighting, bleeding, furiously murderous rats in the box were not hungry. They were just crowded.

MUST have some decency, somewhere....

money can protect you from...unless you use it to make a filter or something.

and frankly, the contempt they have toward anyone without as much as they have CAN BE PALPABLE. i literally have been on the receiving end of it, living in southern Johnson County (extremely wealthy county in the great red state of Kansas), on more than a couple of occasions. it can be a real soul-crushing experience ...

Rather Randian as well. I've got mine, fuck you. Everyone should make it on their own without any help from anyone else, as long as I can help myself to as much of the pie as I choose. And don't expect MY kids to avail themselves to this lofty ideal of self support... I'm going to give them shiny cars, college degrees, homes and credit cards... whereas your kids need to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and make something of themselves despite how difficult I make it for them! Harrumph!