On Jun 23, 1:38 pm, Publius
nospam.comcast.net> wrote:>>>> If natural resources were unlimited -- that is, if there was enough
>>>> water, food, clean air, energy, land etc. so that everyone could
>>>> have as much as they wanted, and those natural resources were
>>>> plenty enough so that they could be replenished and/or maintained
>>>> indefinitely -- then what reason would there be to wage war?
>>> Power, pure and simple.
>> Why would people who had as much of anything as they wanted want
>> power?
>
> Power --- a capacity to control others' lives --- is a drug for some
> people. It is an end in itself. For such persons land, energy, and other
> forms of material wealth are merely means to that end, either for producing
> the physical wherewithal for exercising power, or as inducements to the
> masses to surrender it. Politics is largely a symbiosis between despots and
> parasites. The parasites confer power on the despots, or submit to it
> quietly, in the hope of being rewarded with a free lunch.
Absolutely, I agree with you there . . . politicians and their
supporters are "co-conspirators" in that they both fulfill the
psychological needs of the other.
Which is why it is imperative that if there is ever to be a move
toward the ideal of self-government, there must be a shift in human
consciousness.
> The parasites'
> desires for free lunches, like the despot's desire for power, are
> unsatiable, and thus all polities descend eventually into totalitarianism.
Some people believe that humans are "bad" by default. Perhaps you are
among them. I believe it's just a matter of evolving into a higher
state of consciousness.
