A shadowy elite, or thugs with guns?
Who really runs the world, and makes it so awful for the rest of us? Is it actually just us, ‘following orders,’ earning a living, doing what’s expected? Or is it the fear of what might happen if we questioned the whole thing, said no, and actually stopped?
Is there really a shadowy cabal of elites who think they own us, who run the world, and who manage everything for their profit and our subjugation? You can find people who firmly believe that there is, and that no real social or environmental progress will be made until they are exposed and overthrown.
In our workplaces, we certainly come across people who own the company, who run the company and who manage its sections. They enforce dress codes, working hours and what they see as acceptable behaviour. It is interesting to analyse the hierarchy in terms of their intelligence and their degree of insight into the real world and into human nature.
Very often, middle management are less aware and less capable than those they manage. They may have been identified and promoted as ‘useful idiots’ by those above them. They are rule-followers. They provide insulation between the unruly masses and the general management. Real managers don’t want to listen to carping and moaning from people who are not properly interested in the quarterly figures.
More senior management may be better educated, but they often are buried under piles of figures, reports, initiatives, projects, politics and terribly polite but utterly ruthless in-fighting. Way up the tree you find those who have very little understanding of what the business actually does these days, but who have a great deal of money invested in it continuing to grow profitably.
What’s it like at the very top? What do they teach them at public and private schools, and how does it affect the rest of their lives? They teach them to be emotionally unavailable. They teach them about the Trojan Wars and the glorious Roman Empire. They teach them to love their school, their house and their traditions: that they are the direct inheritors of the most perfect and precious civilisation the world has ever created.
Now, they have resurrected populism. They put up a cheerful buffoon who, to rising cheers, answers questions with, ‘Ahh! But I… but I… I ah… I don’t think people want to hear about that. I think… I think…’
Utopian human societies rise with the sun, sit by the chuckling stream, and cheerfully share the fruits of the free and unfenced land. Such dreams are as old as the hills, but they are easily shattered by thugs with guns and a ruthless belief in their own supremacy.
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on 5 September 2019
