They have immense wealth to do and have whatever they want but they still want more. It’s a disease. It’s never enough. These parasites control, manipulate and exploit.
They use their economic, media (& social media) power, and financial power to elect governments and control what politicians do.
Their tools are racism, patriotism, nationalism, religion, fear and hate. They operate on divide and rule.
2. The political classes.
They are motivated by power-lust and greed. They can only get elected if they have policies that the elite approve of. Money talks. Social media talks. The media talks.
Their reward is power and wealth. If they do what their masters want they will be elected, have limited power and become reasonably wealthy.
3. The comfortable Middle Classes
They have jobs and professions that give them good spending potential, comfortable houses, nice holidays, good status symbols – cars, servants, private education.
They live comfortably and are people that others can aspire to.
They do not want to make waves. They know they are privileged. The system works reasonably well for them.
4. The working Classes
They are ‘given’ just enough to keep them on side. They can barely afford housing, cheap cars and goods. They work hard to get by.
They can be exploited for their work and purchasing power.
They create the wealth but do not benefit.
Their role is declining as AI/robots take on the various jobs.
Do not need to be well-educated (best not), are fed a mind-numbing diet of TV trivia, mindless social media, pop music and propaganda. An endless brainwashing.
5. The poor
They’ve dropped out the bottom. Surplus to requirements. Given social benefits to stop them becoming a problem and live at subsistence levels of deprivation. Socially despised and easily scapegoated. They should get a job and slave away for the benefit of those above.
6. The World’s extreme poor.
These people exist in third world countries in extreme poverty, starving and dying. They are a desperate group who can be exploited for menial tasks (field work, caring, servants, factories, sweat shops) on extremely low pay in order to boost profits.
Of course, groups 4,5 and 6 are portrayed as parasitic leeches feeding off the hard-working prosperity of everyone else. The narrative is that they are where they are due to their own laziness or ineptitude. They deserve their position. If they’d only studied harder and worked harder they could have had a nice life in groups 1, 2 and 3.
People are brainwashed with ‘The American Dream’ – work hard and you could become a billionaire.
The reality is that the system prevents that. It’s a closed club. The privileged have their private education and social networks to give their children access but keep out the riff-raff.
Social media has made it all the more brazen. It has replaced religion as the opiate of the masses.
The world is run by the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg, Putin, Xi and Trump who have successfully brainwashed the masses, perverted democracy and control the whole system.
World poverty, war and chaos are their friends; they can exploit all that!
Exploiters and profiteers from the elite swamp look for right-wing politicians to give them tax breaks and business deals. Con the gullible. Convincing the people that conniving snake-oil salesmen have the interests of ordinary folk at heart.
They peddle fear, hate and division to mask their real intent! What they want is your money and to get high on power.
Blame the immigrants.
Blame the Muslims.
Blame the poor.
Always remember – work hard and you can be superrich just like them. (Spot the con yet?)
We’d all come back from a walk through England’s glorious countryside, over the green, rolling hills of the Southern Downs, trailing along a river bank swathed in a mass of wild flowers through which the butterflies danced, and bees busily droned from blossom to blossom. We’d wandered lazily through a hot morning with the sun scorching our faces under unremitting blue sky – four old friends together.
Nothing could be more delightful than the perfect English summer day when it happened. You could not count on it to happen too often in such an unpredictable climate. We’d found a picnic bench outside a pub overlooking the old weathered rock walls of a mediaeval castle and basked in the weather and company, swigging a cool beer, idly talking, laughing lots and picking at a pub meal.
Throughout the entire walk we’d been catching up on news, reminiscing and sharing views. That’s what old friends did. I’d outlined my thoughts on my book. Writing was one of my passions. It infuriated Liz. She saw it as one of my obsessions. Something else I wasted endless hours on. She despaired over the way I could not relax and live in the moment. Even on a beautiful day, walking through the most beautiful scenery, my mind was flitting through the interior of my head while the world slipped by. I only had to have an audience, and I could not help but let fly, and allow all that storm of pent-up ideas to gush out. Kathy and Tobes had made the mistake of appearing to listen. It seemed to me that they liked the idea but saw nothing original about it. In their view it had been done to death. Nobody would be interested. But it had caught their imagination to an extent, more than most of my fanciful literary concoctions.
Kathy and I were sitting in the front room, on the floor, our backs against the sofa, a glass of merlot in one hand. We were passing a spliff back and forth, contemplating infinity and arguing about religion. Standard practice for a Sunday afternoon.
‘So what would you say to some evangelical redneck who believed the world was formed by god only four thousand years ago?’ She peered at me with a cheeky, quizzical look, daring me to rise to it. ‘You know, Oph, some brainwashed American, brought up in the Deep South who was taught that every word of the bible was the absolute word of god, huh Oph?’
I chuckled. Kathy was wearing her most innocent expression, challenging me to put my mouth where my words were. As a self-confessed atheist it was a justifiable question to put, a typical Kathy question. Would I dare to answer back, to argue with a big rowdy devout evangelist, or would I simply keep my head down? I didn’t know. I guess it depended on his size and belligerence.
Kathy enjoyed provoking. She spent time trawling YouTube for the little extracts by Chomsky, Hitchins and the like. She loved their sharp wit, expert put-downs and the brilliance of their intellect. Compared to such exalted company it was no wonder that Kathy was sceptical about the extent of my knowledge and ability to put together a coherent argument. But, after all, I’d asked for it. Over the course of the day I’d been discussing my idea of writing an antitheist’s bible, and yes, perhaps pontificating about my frustration with religion.
Through this phase of my life I’d become increasingly angered by the extent that organised religion intruded into the world and dictated what went on. I was dismayed by the malleability of ordinary people, even the more intelligent. They all seemed so gullible. The world was full of religious absurdities. There were people with strange hanks of hair, strange hats, strange gowns, strange accoutrements, bizarre hairstyles, weird practices, obscene veils, and the full range of idiosyncratic genuflections and intricate daily routines. All of which, as diverse from each other as they were, were considered to be dictated directly by the word of god. They couldn’t all be right could they? Even a fool could see that.
Yet all the adherents were vehemently adamant that they were the one and only true chosen people who god chose to speak to and that the others were intolerable blasphemers who deserved death and torture for not recognising this fact.
It did not take huge intellect to see these absurdities for what they were. The sight of these extreme religious behaviours would be hugely funny if it wasn’t for the fact that all these religious groups seemed intent on imposing these ridiculous dogmas on everyone else and were prepared to bomb, torture and destroy everything to achieve this end. The waves of terrorism, jihad and retaliatory wars were horrendous, utterly horrendous – all directly or indirectly due to religion.
Behind this practice of ordinary believers was the power struggle of the manipulators; the leaders that used the institutions to feather their own nests and achieve their own agendas. The history of religion, right up to the present day, was strewn with examples of power-mad tyrants using religion to achieve their ends. I railed against it. I thought of myself as a tolerant person but, there again.
What is education for?
Chapter 4 – The Purpose of Education
It always seems to me that this is where everyone gets confused. Everyone talks about education as if they are talking about the same thing. They are not.
Politicians rant about league tables and world standing without any understanding of what they are talking about.
Parents send their children apprehensively into the machine with a modicum of hope but no real understanding of what they are hoping for.
Students are consumed by the process without grasping what is actually happening to them.
The measurable outcomes are easy to grasp and so are given greater importance. The aspects that are not measurable are sometimes acknowledged but usually taken for granted and brushed aside. You cannot measure happiness, empathy, responsibility and tolerance.
Industry cries out for more and better grist for the mill.
We in education are always falling short. There needs to be a national debate.
There needs to be an international debate.
Everything stems from philosophy.
We have to stand back from it so that we can view the edifice of education objectively. What is the purpose of education? This is something that needs looking at from all sides.
Out of this debate there must be some consensus and the application of intelligence. We can no longer allow education to be the football of political dogma and vested interest.
Education has to be based on sound philosophy and in the hands of educationalists who know what they are doing.
So what needs to be considered in arriving at this philosophy? Let us look at education in the widest possible light. By exposing the various philosophies to light we might explore them better.
I do not necessarily agree with the philosophy enshrined in these objectives nor do I place them in any order. Indeed I abhor some of these philosophies. I merely moot them as considerations in order for us to debate the enormity of this subject. We cannot arrive at concensus without taking into account the full panoply of views. By looking at the monolithic construction that education has become from different angles we might begin to make sense of it. Here are my views on what various interested parties view as being the fundamental purpose of education:
I am sure there are others to add to this list.
There are some that I believe have no place in education. I do not believe that religion should be allowed anywhere near young vulnerable minds. There is no room for outmoded, primitive superstition in schools. It should be outlawed. As for religious schools and the brainwashing of young children I view this as child abuse.
Too many minds are stultified by poor education techniques, their imaginations sacrificed on the altar of rote learning for league tables and their enjoyment strangled.
The cleverest boy in my school was a genius. He passed every exam with a clear grade A. He was also a joyless, timid, and boring individual without spark or passion and was unemployable except to stoke the icy furnaces of academia or the depths of library archives. Heaven help us if we churn out such vacuous products of stifling education systems. He was an utter failure. He reminds me of Gove! Let the debate begin ……………….. please!!
Until we get the philosophy right and know exactly what we are setting out to do and not to do
