While a tiny minority in the West live in opulence billions of others around the world live in squalor, poverty and despair.
This inequality is what is fuelling terrorism, mass migration and hatred.
It needs addressing.
When you have nothing you have nothing to lose. When there are no jobs and no hope what is there to look forward to? When your children are dying of disease and malnutrition while others are indulging in undreamt-of extravagance it must fill you with hatred.
People who are desperate turn to fanatical religions, extreme politics, mass migration, war and are traumatised by their experience. To them horrendous death is a daily occurrence. Why not?
The average income of the top FTSE 100 executives in Britain is £14,000,000
The average income in Britain is £27,000
A top executive earns 183 times the income of the average worker.
Some executives are earning in excess of £14,000,000 (How many lottery wins is that a year?)
A miner working at the coal-face, covered in coal-dust at temperatures of 38 degrees will earn £40,000 (And are worth every penny of it).
A registered nurse will start at £21,500 (And should be paid double).
In China the average yearly income is £3210.
In Zimbabwe the average yearly income is only £1,950.
The two richest people in the world (Bill Gates – worth $79,000,000,000 and Carlos Slim Helu – worth $77,000,000,000) are worth more than entire countries. It is my contention that nobody could ‘earn’ that sort of wealth. They have accrued that by exploiting others.
It is my belief that until this inequality within Britain and all around the world is addressed we will have war, terrorism, mass migration and hatred. If you stop and think about the consequences of this exploitation it is unacceptable. What would you say to the mother who has just buried her baby?
Accruing huge wealth is a sickness. Inequality is a disease.
Money – Mon Eye – One Eye – It is a religion. Keep it up brother.
Well as an antitheist I’m opposed to all religion. There has to be a better way! Thanks again!
There has to indeed. I was just thinking that those whom you were referring to worship the one eye. Its even on our money over here.
Perhaps we will find it. Your music and my writing might be small parts of a big wave, a zeitgeist that will blow the nastiness away!! Wouldn’t that be nice!!
Here’s to a better world – a world of equality, freedom and tolerance!! A groovy love to everyone!!
Hatred is sometimes the result of a desperate desire to survive misdirected at others who’re struggling to do the same. Blaming religions is a lot like blaming skin color.
I don’t completely agree. In my view religions have been created by people and are used to gain power. They invoke intolerance and hatred towards people who believe in different gods or no god. Skin colour is merely the result of melanin concentrations in skin as a result of evolution. There is a tribal element here that various groups have sought to exploit. They have used skin colour to create division and hatred in a similar way to that deployed with religion. But we are all one species. The differences are minor; the similarities immense. Racism has been used to engender hatred. So both religion and skin colour have been exploited by individuals in order to gain power. In that way they are similar.
I’m really just talking out of my butt here, but having studied Chomsky’s linguistic theories a bit, I’ve come to the conclusion that much as he posits grammatical structure being hard-wired into our brains, I think society also has a hard-wired structure. Bees for instance will always build their hives in the same fashion. So too do humans. Every human society has had an almost identical social structure, just like how we have all had language with a nearly identical grammatical structure. There’s deviances surely, but there’s always going to be mutations, either physiological or cultural. The point being that there’s a case to be made for religion/spirituality being a hard-wired concept in the human experience. Therefore, instances in which this instinct is abused by those with a love of power would be similar to those people who exploit other naturally occurring phenomenon in the human experience, skin color being another example. It’s just a theory obviously.
I think you’re right about it being hard-wired in. We have a predisposition to liking ritual, ceremony and hierarchy. We like to worship. We love to believe. It makes us feel comfortable. I think some people realise this and latch on to it. They can then use it to gain power over the gullible.