The Arrogance Loop
The Dark side of an Arrogant Elite
Can you imagine living in a country where few tell the truth, and the news just reports viewpoints that seek to regulate opinions. A country where all laws serve a happy few and the term ‘take what you can get away with’ is the rule of thump for the elite? Everyone else is still free to shout what they want (on the internet), yet media manipulation, propaganda, spin doctoring, fear mongering amongst parts of the population make all calls for change sound weaker and weaker, while the unrest among the masses grows. They just know, they’ve been scammed, but it’s harder and harder to get a fair hearing. For now apathy is most common, but as problems rise and solutions seem more and more out of reach for many poor people, a resistance movement is growing. At the same time it seems the elite is getting more brazen and arrogant about what they do. They start to believe it’s their right to live like this. The word ‘entitlement’ becomes household. Do you feel your country is like this? (USA, France, UK, other?) Do you feel the end of freedom and morality seem not to far ahead, or even feel like a forgotten borderline that has been passed already?
The core of the ‘Arrogance Loop’ pattern.
What is going on? I once had a girlfriend whose father was manic depressive. Within the family his attitude would grow every day a little more rude, arrogant and scoffing. And as his family feared his outrages his demands would slowly increase, as would his outrages when things didn’t play out to his liking. All the way to a point that his wife would threaten to leave him, his children exploded back and everyone refused to play the game and demanded some excuses. He’d mumble some kind of sorry, would play all nice and sweet and giving for a bit. And then, when everyone thought he learned, his attitude would slowly get worse again. To prevent his outrages, once again they’d all play along, until he really crossed too many borders again. They’d revolt, he’d tone down, after which the loop was repeated. This is what I call an Arrogance Loop.
How it works and what it needs.
This harrowing tale of destructive relationships is nothing new. Yet our understanding of it in the bigger scale of things isn’t developed enough yet.
What do I mean with that? Namely that national or even global politics follow the same pattern. Hillary Clinton behavior in the 2016 election shows a beautiful curve of arrogance towards Bernie if she’s winning enough, and mimicking his stances when she feels she has to win over his followers. The same with the American elite. Currently the news gets more and more manipulated1, through playing the card of possible voter fraud voters rights get limited in absurd ways2 and truth’s distorted. And since they get away with it, they slowly put more and more self serving laws and regulations in place on top of the old ones. No laws stopping them, no gigantic protests or arrests as yet pressing for change. So they continue on this course.
Big corporations are the same. Once, at the end of the 19th century, child labour in the West, immensely long work hours were stopped by the rise of workers unions and the fear of the mighty for communistic revolutions. Those changes also led to the rise of the middle class. Corporations went with it for a while. When mobility during the 20th century became easier, and unions in the West were strong, they found out it was possible to open up sweat shops in Asia. And child labour and long working hours returned on massive global scales. Only through protests and activists that hit corporations like Nike in the wallet, did quite a few of them tone down their practices, or just hid them better and spin doctored all news around it. And now with smart framing it seems incomes below the poverty line in the US are a must to do what? Keep the billionaires rich? The story of the banking crisis is also one of expanding rules and self enrichment on more and more shady scales.
The dangers of an Arrogance Loop out of control
It’s not even that the greedy elite is evil or want to rule as dictators. They just want to keep on growing more powerful (very addictive stuff: power) and protect their interests. Hell, they even might think they need all that power to do good, according to their limited personal believes3. And since their actions seem normal, they keep it up. The thousands of people working for them, and even helping them pressing these interests for good salaries all make it seem more okay too. The higher they get, the less they feel for others. Madeleine Albright is a perfect example of not valuing lives other than her own side4. It shouldn’t surprise you that it has been discovered that people who are richer than 10 million seem to lose their moral compass. And the more and more power they gain, the more the elite is allowed free play, the more they’ll believe it is okay, as wild dogs who got unleashed.
The current loop out of control means pollution and destruction of nature, for the profit of a few. It means wars, against created enemies, to enrich a weapon industry. It means documents and researches into damages done by medications and GMO’s may be falsified or smartly framed to protect interests. It means a growing amount of poor working full work weeks and still earn not enough to support their families. It means you feel small and the world dishonest. And you’ll see very rich people smiling on the covers of magazines, toasting to successes you never experience the results of.
Two future scenario’s
Here’s the thing. It’s all much like this Manic Depressive father: The loop will spin out of control, until the borders become clarified. Until then, most often, the arrogance will betray itself by becoming more and more brazen, as everything seems to be allowed. Often even applauded by believers or people hoping to benefit from supporting the elite. Yet, when the Arrogance Loop is not contained it has only two possible endings. The first is a (hopefully a velvet) dictatorship, where if you want access to good, money, food and housing you need to play along, or even support the regime. Such a regime will suppress resistance with self justified violence and regulations, mostly way worse and expensive than solving the true issue for the general public. Here the Apartheid regime is a good example. It made a few white guys very rich, but South Africa as a whole much poorer. Very much like what’s happening in the current USA.
The second thing that can happen is a resistance that starts with banners in the streets and ends in violence. The most well know example being the French revolution (or the current Yellow Vests protests 2019 edit). The reign of Louis XVI was the perfect example of an arrogance loop out of control. Also the English arrogance towards Americans that led the the war of independence was infuriating. The elite had become totally blind and or indifferent to the tolls of normal people. Rather than seek answers and help, they regarded protests as attacks. And when even the pretext of leading and caring for normal people gets lost, apathy may turn to resentment and resentment turn to anger. Regimes often seek to turn the anger towards a minority, believe or group of foreigners (illegal immigrants!). But, like it happened to many dictators the last decades, in the end, the shots may be fired at the ‘happy few’ in the biggest palaces.
Suggestions for the Populace
S o the lesson for all normal people is: apathy or fear of confrontation makes matters worse. They later you step up, the bigger measures will be needed to make the elite listen. Already relationships between rich and poor, between en elites and minorities are severely damaged. And posting shouts on facebook or rants on Youtube will not be enough. Even several thousands people protesting at the doors of CNN for falsifying the news, hardly, or not at all, reached mainstream media. You really have to be louder. And like Martin Luther King use higher morals everyone can identify with. All violent actions will be framed as criminal or perhaps even terrorism. And this in turn will incite more restrictive laws.
Gandhi and Nelson Mandela made change work without violence. Like the father of my ex, somewhere deep within, the Elite know they are out of bounds. They need to get clear and strict boundaries. Yet, if their idiocy is repeated often enough the liars and their followers do tend to start to believe it. Like, try to explain to an average American (who believes FOX) the difference between social democracy (modern Norway) and communism (old USSR or current Venezuela). This makes all the anti Muslim rhetorics worrying too. At some point this will become a new ‘accepted reality’.
Don’t accept rules that make no sense or feel harming to individuals. Make clear statements with civil disobedience if necessary, hit them in the financial pockets if you can. And don’t get self righteous either. Many revolutions turned to shit when the revolutionaries became as corrupt as the former elite, or fought over spoils, or, like in Syria, drowned in blood. Look for the best examples, like Vaclav Havel and Mandela to see how change needs to include those you oppose, not make enemies out of them.
Suggestions to the Elite
And the lesson to the elite is: when you think you can get away with it, you’re on the wrong road. When you have more than 10 million (should I say billion by now?) and have friends in high places or even feel part of the ruling class and you still don’t understand what this is about, you’ve gone too far. If you can’t or don’t dare to walk any normal suburb you’ve gone too far. If you need to have body guards and lawyers to stay safe you’ve gone too far. If you need to buy lobbyists, spin doctors, politicians and or cronies to stay out of prison you’ve gone too far. If you google yourself in a negative way and find loads of different links, you’ve gone too far, even when half of those are exaggerated. You’ve become too arrogant to understand what your actions mean to other humans. Arrogance, self righteousness and manipulation to protect interests make the bubble on which you float bigger and will make the burst harder. It is time to self reflect on your position. Arrogance means you’re forgetting that at one point you promised to serve, not to amorally take (even with the law on your side) ‘at the cost of’. Your arrogance may cost thousands loss, life and homes. Probably it already did.
For if you don’t work for the ‘bigger whole’ and all citizens feel acknowledged, respected and supported, you are doing something wrong. Think about it as water. It’s healthy when it goes full circle. But when money only goes up and it never really rains (a trickle is not enough), you get draught and resentment. You could bring the rain back. Go do that!
Share! Truly share and help. It will make you so much happier as well.
Notes:
1 Very few people actually own the big media corporations, and control messages. Also these same news corporations (in the USA) are by law free to lie (yes, crazy), as corporations are free to lie, as they are regarded as individuals, who also may lie.
2 Yet when thousands of minority people can’t vote or a heavily discouraged, this doesn’t seem to be fraud. That’s called ‘security’ Even when most of these voters seem to prefer outsiders or underdogs who campaign against the establishment.
3 When the personal believes of very few people, like the Koch brothers become the solutions for everyone, you can not have a balanced and healthy society. Most often opposing sides have both good ideas to bring to the table. It’s all about balance, not about strong singleminded policies. Especially not, when fueled by warped world views and pure self interest.
4 From Wikipedia: On May 12, 1996, Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” and Albright replied “We think the price is worth it.” (She didn’t explain who the ‘we’ in this answer was. To me the lack of shame or care was shocking.)
