It is not enough that the super-plutocrats are destroying the United States; they are trying to also destroy the World. Their avarice and pride, coupled with a healthy dose of narcissism, may spell doom for us all, if we don't take the weapon they are using against us out of their hands: Money. What use has anyone for a billion dollars? You can't spend it without making the rest of us miserable.

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From the Beginning

Mark Sashine made the following comment about Rob Kall's 23 January 2014 article "Treating Extreme Wealth as a Disease." [Author's Note--Words in brackets are corrections of spelling errors, or amplifications for the sake of clarity. These errors are much too common when you are in a hurry and type your comment on an OEN article too fast.]

"What you see are figureheads. I hope you don't really believe that one person can really OWN a billion dollars? First, there is no such thing as a billion dollars -- I hope you are not expecting a a pot of gold. Second, there is no such thing as OWNERSHIP -- when it [comes] to billions you can maybe talk management and monitoring but the collateral property has a life of its own. Thirdly, those people who play those [roles] belong to the powerful groups: they themselves without those groups are dead meat. No, groups also do not OWN property -- they [OWN] people, connections, networks, means of communications, tendencies, DECISIONS. That's a real power. Thus[,] what you see is bogus. Stop please trying to see [some normal] sense in it. There is no sense where a plot is evident. If you reject the [idea of] group/class warfare you might as well have fun masturbating... sorry. BTW, I teach engineering economics. Money does not grow on its own -- it does not grow at all. Money is in the eyes of the beholder."

Rob attached the following note to his article: This comment has been flagged. Reason: (Great Comment: Promote to Article) flesh this out into an article, please. rob kall

There was a similar note attached to my comment:

Rob--I don't think you are far wrong. The one symptom that stands out in every mental disorder is selfishness. I suffer from one of the lesser bipolar disorders, probably Type III, although I have had some symptoms of Type II when I was younger. When my illness acts up, one of the first signs is that I start feeling very selfish and unwilling to compromise or show any hint of generosity. Medical professionals I have asked about this agree that selfishness is a symptom of all mental disorders, including catatonia, because who's more into themselves than a catatonic.

This comment has been flagged

Reason: (Great Comment: Promote to Article) an article or essay on selfishness, with your comment as the starting point -- or not -- would be great. rob kall

Rob is absolutely right. Both comments need to be fleshed out into an article. And I am going to do my very best to do both Mark and myself justice.

  The Basis of Power and Wealth

  As I have stated in several previous articles (beginning with "The Tao of Government" (28 February 2009), despite Leon Trotsky's statement that all power comes out of the barrel of a gun (a sentiment later echoed by Chairman Mao), all power in reality is a phantasm, even if its manifestations are at times all too real. Power exists because we believe that it exists. As I have stated before: if tomorrow, all of the people of the United States of America believed I was this nation's rightful king, then I would be King; all of the rest of it would be paperwork.

Ever since the nineteenth century, when we began to do away with land ownership being both the basis and the measure of wealth in the western democracies (finally dying forever as the last of the medieval empires fell at the end of World War One), wealth has been based on what the equivalent cash value of all of your assets, real and paper, was perceived to be. Increasingly, from the middle of the twentieth century on, those assets were the value that was agreed to by society explicitly (real estate, capital, fiat currency), and implicitly (stocks and bonds), which the majority of first Western, then world society, believed that they had. And as computers, credit and debit cards, and other electronic resources have become more and more prevalent in our society, possession of physical assets that honestly mirror our wealth has become rarer and rarer.

Let us consider what one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00) equals in terms of pure physical dimensions.

If gold is valued at $1000.00 per ounce, one billion dollars of gold would weigh thirty-one and one-quarter tonnes (a tonne, or metric ton, is roughly 32,200 troy ounces), or roughly 1,375 50-lb. ingots. One billion dollars in one-hundred dollar bills would be one hundred thousand bundled stacks of $10,000.00 each.

To transport that much gold would require at least one and more probably two semi-tractor-trailer combinations. To haul that much currency would require at least that many, if not more, semi-tractor-trailers to safely move.

One billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00) as an electronic notation in a computer effectively weighs nothing, and can be moved around the world in less than a second with a few key strokes.

That may be the most telling statement of how little one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00) is actually worth in the great scheme of things today. After all, how much real intrinsic value can anything have that can be moved with such ease?

Ownership versus Acquisition

When you speak of the "ownership" of this one billion dollars, Mark is once again correct: ownership denotes some sort of direct, day-to-day control over a physically existing asset, not a nebulous, artificial creation such as one billion dollars worth of stocks, bonds, or credit derivatives, let alone an electronic notation in a bank's--or several banks'--ledgers. Stocks and bonds at least at one point had a direct, positive impact upon the nation's economy: they provided capital for the expansion of corporate or governmental facilities that created jobs and material wealth. Credit derivatives, on the other hand, are worse than the "numbers" slips that organized crime used to fleece millions out of the poorest neighborhoods of New York City, Chicago, and other urban centers, because they are less honest, and potentially capable of destroying the whole world's economy.

Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts (in his 6 October 2009 OpEdNews article "Marx and Lenin Revisited"), wrote, "Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods to financial capital's accumulation of profits based on the purchase and sale of paper instruments." This method of accumulating wealth is in reality the wealth of the gambling hall, not of the farm or mine or the factory floor, because it is based solely on belief and not on any physical assets. It is extremely dangerous for any economy, as we saw in 2008, because if the belief in the basis of that wealth is shaken--or worse still disappears--then there is nothing with which to support and redeem that wealth, and billions, even trillions of dollars, can disappear from the economy in a heartbeat.

However, today's wealthy entrepreneur prefers this method of obtaining wealth, because there are no facilities to maintain, no contract deadlines to meet, no suppliers with which to haggle, no unions to deal with, no storms to delay transport of material, and few if any employees to get sick, have relatives die, or object to overwork, because all--or nearly all--of them are as greed-driven as the entrepreneur. More (apparent) profit, less responsibility" who could ask for anything more?

In the Thrall of the Super-Plutocrats

When I write about people at this level of wealth, I am not writing about the top One Percent of our population, those who make $400,000.00 annually, or have 5 to 10 million dollars in personal assets. Those individuals are nothing but the upper-level management of the corporations, foundations, and trusts that are controlled by those whose real economic power Mark alluded to in his comment. These highly-paid--relative to the rest of us--lackeys support their superiors in the corporate scheme of things not only because it is lucrative, but because they hope that through luck or marriage, they or their children will be able to join that elite group. These managers are the people who are "owned" that Mark is writing of when he states "... they [OWN] people...." All of these wannabe masters of the universe are at the beck and call of the exceptionally small minority (2 or 3 one-thousandths of one-percent) who really run things in this corporatist oligarchy that we increasingly find ourselves trapped in.

Interlocking boards of directors in the multitude of corporations, foundations, and trusts, both foreign and domestic, control much of the world's economy as surely as any Communist Central Planning Committee ever did. These super-plutocrats--individuals and families whose personal worth exceeds $100,000,000.00--have only one axiom by which they run their enterprises: ever-greater profits, and influence. This is how they measure their status in comparison with other super-plutocrats, no matter what the cost is to the public, their employees, the nation where they are headquartered or resident, or the world itself. The only group that I can think of with a similar outlook is Organized Crime, particularly the Syndicate of Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in the 1930s-50s. But the first group who is always asked to sacrifice are the employees, starting with those on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder.

Nor is the requisite wealth an automatic guarantee of acceptance within this hierarchy: ask Bernie Madoff and Michael Milken, or any one of a number of professional sports figures who made the requisite cash during their careers but lost it later in their lives through "bad" investments. They made their fortunes, but then tried to stay independent of the super-plutocrats. The super-plutocrats used the government to bring both Madoff and Milken down, as a warning to others. The sports figures--like Joe Louis--were put back in their "place," as a reminder who are really the "champions." I believe that elements of the super-plutocrats of the time were also responsible for the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., because they could not be brought down by legal means. (See my recent four-part OEN article. "The Judgment of History; Or Why the Breaking of the Oligarchs Avenges President Kennedy's Assassination," for more on this theory. Parts One, Two, Three, and Four are available through the embedded hyperlinks.) This is class warfare at the highest and most despicable level: an attempt to establish an inviolable aristocracy of wealth who makes all of the important decisions in our lives, while dumbing us down through a carefully controlled corporate media that brooks no real opposition, and shouts down or works hard to discredit any opposition that appears.

Visual Aids to Better Understand Differences

Mark Sashine sent me a great chart comparing the tactics and effectiveness of America's Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests against the super-plutocrats with the demonstrations of the Ukrainian political dissident movement. The Ukrainian movement is supported by various plutocratic groups seeking a share of political power in his native Ukraine:

Mark told me in an e-mail about his chart that talks between the Ukrainian government and its dissidents have begun in Munich, Germany, in order to firmly establish a partition of power among the plutocrats in Ukraine. Both OWS and the Ukrainian dissidents were in their own way effective, however it is OWS that supports democratic ideals, and continues to try and grow from the bottom up, not the top down, as seems the case in Ukraine. Mark states that the plutocrats in Ukraine have betrayed the ideals of the demonstrators who supported them.

There are lessons to be learned from both sides of this chart. The reaction of mainstream political movements and media in Ukraine was markedly superior to that of mainstream political organizations and media here in America, but that was because of the influence of the Ukrainian opposition plutocrats and their wealth. OWS needs to learn how to get the media on their side. Both sides could learn from the others' demands and logistics, because you do not always have time to organize a protest like a military campaign, although protesters of America's OWS could learn from their Ukrainian brethren, as well as the military, the advantages of not only that sort of planning, but of contingency planning as well. When it comes to hostility to ethnic and other groups, the Americans far and away outshine the Ukrainians in terms of inclusiveness, and of not depending on plutocrats who will use a nation's pro-Democracy elements, and then betray them. Americans on the other hand need to learn that police and security forces always have agents provocateur ready to go at a moment's notice to undermine and disrupt pro-Democracy political movements. Americans also need to learn to be more definitive in what we desire from movements like OWS.

Finally, there is the violent side of the coin: police brutality/anti-police equipment, attacks on government buildings, disruption of normal activities (disturbing the peace), vandalism of property and architecture; the Ukrainian dissidents were far and away better prepared than OWS, but this was due as much to the Ukrainians' willingness to use violence as it was to the non-violent, organic nature of OWS. However, preparations for the inevitable police crackdowns on OWS were pitiful; occupation of government and other buildings in peaceful protest were few and far between; disruption of the peace in the forms of marches and other active demonstrations of people power non-existent; non-permanent vandalizing of property to make a point (making a large papier-m ché pig's head to cover the Merrill-Lynch bull's head comes to mind) non-existent. As I have stated before: the super-plutocrats know how to deal with violence; they don't know how to deal with well thought-out, Gandhi-King type non-violence. If you don't believe me, look at the protests in Wisconsin two years ago.

"Armchair generals study tactics, real generals study logistics." -- Quote from Russia's Frunze Military Academy

Going back to the subject of logistics, and how these protests originated, I think that like the military, economy of force is important. While the sudden, spontaneous rise of several hundred OWS franchises--for lack of a better term--across America was inspiring (and demonstrated a deep-seated frustration and exasperation with our government and its corporate masters), the Occupy Wall Street movement's large number of protests could not be sustained at their initial massive numbers, not without large-scale outside support in terms of funding and positive media coverage. Except for a small number of commentators on MSNBC, and left-wing magazines and websites, the American media was generally very negative about the entire OWS movement.

In the future, we need to organize better, and take our cues from the people who protested in Madison, Wisconsin, against Scott Walker, and in Cairo, Egypt, against Hosni Mubarak. OWS needs to look at the Ukrainian model: its targeted locations, its funding and organization, and its tightly scheduled series of events. I believe that OWS would have been better served if, after two weeks, it had consolidated its protests from more than three hundred down to three or four dozen, and concentrated all of its resources into that smaller number of sites (economy of force). The organic nature of OWS worked against sustaining (in the long-term) the passion and power inherent in the rise of OWS itself. They also need to concentrate on discipline--self-discipline--if they ever take to the streets again. Occupy Wall Street and its successors must remember a simple rule: if someone is advocating violence, you can bet that they are agents of the police or the super-plutocrats. Throw advocates of violence out immediately.

The super-plutocrats' ultimate goal is nothing less than the creation of a neo-feudal society of haves and have-nots, in terms of not only money, but power (political, social and economic), and rights. Serf City here we come.

Simplifying the Difficult to Explain the Inhuman

And this leads me into a discussion of the Seven Deadly Sins and selfishness.

Sloth is more than simple laziness; it is the active desire to do nothing while satisfying your desires. Lust is more than just sexual desire; it is the satisfaction of those desires at the physical and emotional expense of others. Wrath is more than anger; it is unfathomable rage, directed against a person or a group of people that can only be satisfied by those people's complete humiliation, or the utter eradication not only of them but of everything related to them from the face of the Earth. Envy is more than wishing you had something someone else has; it is the willingness to take it from the other person by any means necessary, or, if that is impossible, exceed the achievement(s) of the person you envy. Gluttony is more than a need to eat and drink; it is an unquenchable desire for sustenance. libation, or some other need at the cost of every other phase of your life. Pride is more than simple over-blown self-worth; it is the need to always be without peer, first and foremost within your circle of friends and colleagues. Avarice is far more than simple greed; it is the desire to have so much wealth as to be untouchable by life's surprises and downturns. Every one of the traditional "Seven Deadly Sins" has the integral components of: 1) selfishness, which can be defined as narcissism with little or no empathy; 2) dehumanizing other human beings to satisfy one's desires, which I defined seven years ago in my 16 June 2007 OpEdNews article "Choosing the Hardest Thing," as the basis for human evil; and 3) the sheer impossibility of ever fully satisfying the unhealthy desire associated with the sin.

We must also consider the interconnectedness of all Seven Deadly Sins: Envy often lies at the beginning of all of the other Sins; Avarice, Lust, and Gluttony are the same Sin with a different focus; Sloth arises out of the idea that if you have more than enough, you won't have to work so hard for what you want; Pride is always felt when you have achieved your next benchmark for the underlying Sin, regardless of human or other cost; Failure to satisfy your Sinful desire invariably invokes Wrath.

So why am I bringing up the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins?

Because one thousand years ago, human beings did not have the fancy words to describe the neuroses and character disorders (the modern term for psychoses) that fill our modern lexicon, as well as the DSM-IV, and yet these mental disorders existed even then. In those days, such illnesses were blamed on possession by the Devil or the various demons in Hell's hierarchy, the sale of one's soul to the forces of Evil, or simply doing the Devil's work for your own benefit, including practicing witchcraft and alchemy.

And if you will note, all of the Seven Deadly sins exist, in whole or in part, within the conditions of Hoarding, Narcissism, Dynasty Disorder, Addiction, Depression/Low Self-Esteem and overcompensation for these feelings, Anti-Social Personality Disorder (which covers psychopathy and sociopathy), and Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy, which Rob mentions in "Treating Extreme Wealth As a Disease."

And make no mistake, the super-plutocrats suffer from some or all of the Seven Deadly Sins as well as the psychological disorders of which Rob wrote.

So, once again, why do I bring up the Seven Deadly Sins?

Because, to quote Rob's article, "I would also argue that people who sympathize with and defend and support the interests of the wealthy against their own and their families' interests are suffering from Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy. In that disorder, parents subject their children to unnecessary surgery and medical treatments. Is it that big a leap to wildly speculate that people who fight for the rights of billionaires to widen the income gap even further are literally hurting their children by voting to protect the ultra wealthy?"

A lot of those people that Rob is writing about in that paragraph are Conservative Christians, and if you throw all sorts of psychological mumbo-jumbo at them, they will ignore you.

Throw the Seven Deadly Sins at them, in the proper fashion, and you will find yourself with a staunch ally.

Yes, I am talking tactics here. But perception is reality, as someone once pointed out. Start pointing out that while everyone has a right to make a profit, no one has the right to profiteer--to make an excessive profit at the cost of the lives and well-being of other human beings. Most Conservative Christians can see the inherent wrongness in profiteering.

If they don't, point out to them that it violates the very essence of Jesus' teachings (see Matthew 7 and 25).

And it is selfish.

I don't care if you consider Conservative Christians and their beliefs to be utter lunacy. Whatever gets you through the night, as John Lennon once sang. It is a scary world, and making fun of other people's beliefs because you find them irrational demonstrates your prejudice, not your compassion, every bit as much as their trying to force their beliefs upon you demonstrates theirs. It is this very attitude that the super-plutocrats have used for the last fifty years to divide and nearly conquer us. As Mark said in his comment, "If you reject the [idea of] group/class warfare you might as well have fun masturbating... sorry."

The Opposite of Selfishness

Five years ago, on 19 September 2008, I published an article on selfishness, altruism, and fairness on OpEdNews titled "Illuminating Dichotomies." The following is a section of that article [corrections and amplifications in brackets]:

"Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to Thomas Law in 1814) called self-interest 'egoism.'   I would put it more bluntly; it is selfishness, pure and simple.   

"If pressed, most conservatives will admit that their own motivations arise solely from self-interest. Most conservatives will also try to claim that their self-interest is 'enlightened;' that they often set aside their immediate self-interest for some probable (and more substantial) long-term personal benefit " they justify their own more generous or seemingly altruistic actions, as well as others' acts of generosity or mercy, [by] claiming that they are truly neither. Altruism, after all (according to conservatives), is contrary to human nature--which is that of a selfish, [self-]absorbed brute who does nothing except for personal reward or self-gratification. They leave the possibility of an inherent contradiction to the self-interest/altruism dichotomy to the liberals.

"I say contradiction, because altruism is no more the opposite of selfishness than love is the opposite of hate...  

"In a practical sense, love is when you deeply care what happens to a person or a thing in a positive or constructive sense. Hate is when you deeply care what happens to a person or a thing in a negative or destructive sense, which is love turned inside out. The real opposite of love is apathy, where you do not care what happens, positively or negatively, to a person o r thing.

"The same is true of selfishness and altruism. Selfishness is when you place your needs ahead of everyone else's. Altruism is when you place everyone else's needs ahead of your own; in other words, altruism is selfishness turned inside out. The true opposite of selfishness is fairness, where you desire to see that everyone's needs are met, at least to some extent."  

Selfishness leads to a society of expediency and thuggery, where might makes right and "justice" belongs to the highest bidder. Fairness is the very core of real justice, where men are judged by their individual merits and actions, not their pocketbooks or connections. Justice is an ideal that is aspired to, but rarely achieved in the fullest sense, even with the best of intentions among all concerned.

On 13 August 2009, Deena Stryker published an article on OpEdNews titled "Selfishness is Un-American." There is a great paragraph in that article that shows how so many modern Americans have twisted the concept of "self-reliance" into a pathetic excuse for indifference and injustice [words in brackets are my amplifications]:

"In the early days of the republic, the need for solidarity [unity of purpose and mutual support] among individuals was obvious. As individuals became less able [and I would add less willing] to provide solidarity for one another, that role was shifted to government. You are not called in the middle of the night to [help] deliver your neighbor's baby because there is a hospital equipped to do that. But when your neighbor knocks on your door because she ran out of milk, you say 'too bad for you, lady.'"

Objectivists and many Libertarians and Conservatives seem to believe that the only way that they will survive in today's world is to be as selfish as humanly possible. What they refuse to understand is that a community (not a collective, these are two entirely different animals), working together in the members' mutual interest, under auspices of the Social Contract, will survive and prosper far better than selfish individualism or mindless collectivism. This nation was founded on the basis of community, of unity in terms of purpose and mutual support, which becomes obvious to anyone who reads the papers of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Lincoln.

Selfishness is a dead end, leading over a cliff, for any nation that adopts duty to self over duty to one's country. This was the attitude adopted by Rome's optimates, the conservative oligarchs of the Late Republic, and it was this attitude that destroyed the Republic. It is the underlying belief system of Socrates, Plato, and their followers, as readers of Plato's Republic are aware. This attitude led to Athens' defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, and the unsuccessful attempts by Socrates' students Alcibiades and Critias to overthrow the Athenian democracy and establish an oligarchy. And while the Athenians drove Alcibiades, Critias, and their Councils of 400 and of 30 from Athens, and then gave Socrates the option of exile or drinking hemlock for his continued agitation against the Athenian democracy, the oligarchs continued to have far more control over Athens then they had had at the time of Pericles, before the war. (See I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates; 1988; for more on the real causes of Socrates' death.)

Nor should we forget a more recent example where selfishness held sway: Nazi Germany. The only two rules that mattered in the Third Reich were: 1) subordination of your conscience to the State; 2) then rise as far in the hierarchy as your raw ability, and your indifference to human suffering, would permit. Crush everyone who got in your way, even if they were family or friends. The Russian Orthodox Church named Adolf Hitler "The Anti-Christ" when he invaded the Soviet Union, and students of Nostradamus, the 16th-century French mystic, believed they were correct. And no one is more selfish than the Devil.

Living the Self-Examined, Self-Aware Life

As I stated in my comment to Rob Kall's article, "The one symptom that stands out in every mental disorder is selfishness." So while selfishness may not in and of itself be a neurosis or character disorder (the modern term for psychosis), it is a symptom, and if you intentionally try and be selfish, you really must ask yourself one question: do I have some underlying mental disorder--such as the ones that Rob listed in his article--that is at the root of my selfishness, and am I using my selfishness as an excuse to avoid confronting my mental illness and doing something about it. The rising numbers of prescriptions for depression and anxiety disorders tell me that even if such medications are being over-prescribed, there is something very wrong with our nation's mental health.

Certainly, the super-plutocrats and their ilk suffer from selfishness; charity on their part almost invariably has an ulterior motive, often as a tax write-off or a means to broadcast their "superiority." They use the shield of their corporations, their foundations, and their trusts to keep the world that you and I live in--and all of our many problems--at more than arm's length. They and their lackeys insist that if we are suffering, it is because we do not work hard enough in the world where they have established impossible rules and conditions for the average human being to get a little ahead, let alone prosper. Their disassociation from reality is also an indication of other mental illnesses: dissociative disorder, even schizophrenia, along with the fact that they put their wealth--which is a thing--ahead of people. This, as I said in my OpEdNews article, "Choosing the Hardest Thing," is just plain evil.

I think we, as compassionate human beings, need to save them from themselves. Raise the marginal tax rate on anyone making more than $10,000,000.00 per year to 70 percent.

It's the least we can do for them.

Authors Bio:

Richard Girard is a polymath and autodidact whose greatest desire in life is to be his generations' Thomas Paine. He is an FDR Democrat, which probably puts him with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the current political spectrum. His answer to all of those who decry Democratic Socialism is that it is a system invented by one of our Founding Fathers--Thomas Paine--and was the inspiration for two of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who the Democrats of today would do well if they would follow in their footsteps. Or to quote Harry Truman, "Out of the great progress of this country, out of our great advances in achieving a better life for all, out of our rise to world leadership, the Republican leaders have learned nothing. Confronted by the great record of this country, and the tremendous promise of its future, all they do is croak, 'socialism.'