Creating suffering

There are the few who seek to control the wheels of our societies for their own ends. Unfortunately, some of those ends are perpetuating cycles of suffering.

We all know about the psychopaths that are the dictators who run their countries with an iron fist, using corporal and capital punishment to keep their populations in line. In so-called democratic countries, it is generally bad optics to be engaging in such extreme measures, so how are those predisposed to creating suffering to fulfil their nefarious desires?

So that we don't start our considerations from some dystopian baseline, the ideal society that we could be living under is where we all have the freedom to pursue our interests as long as we don't prevent others from doing so. We know that we cannot maintain our society unless each who can undertake some effort towards maintaining the functioning of our society. We would know that for all to have a comfortable life, individuals cannot over-indulge to the extent that creates shortages for others.

The key in this scenario is the recognition that we all have to exert some measure of balance between our individual desires and what is good for all. If we are all comfortable with this arrangement, we would exert pressure upon those who seek an excessive share of resources to desist. So how do those whose psychological profile wants to create suffering so distort our sense of fairness that we tolerate the types of inequity and violence that plagues even so-called polite societies supposedly ruled by enlightened leaders?

At the dawn of humanity, we were all hunter-gatherers, living with few possession because what we each owned personally had to be carried with us as we moved around the countryside. We may have had someone whom we trusted to make decisions, though there was a measure of consensus involved. Of course, some may have wanted more control, and since most don't like unnecessary conflict, they would acquiesce to them.

Once agricultural settlements became commonplace, the amount of possessions possible increased, and so did the opportunity for individuals to amass far more than they needed, just because they had somewhere to put them. Avarice, substantially precluded by the previous nomadic lifestyle, was now free to play into the functioning of our societies. We were thus set on a path to inequality.

Expanding settlements meant at some point they were going to be encroaching on each other's territory. Of course, amassed possessions is temptation for other settlements. While nomadic tribes could just seek grounds where there would be no conflict, settlements had to protect themselves to maintain their lifestyles that were dependent upon their possessions. The risk of conflicts were greater because the consequences were greater. The identity for nomads was their family, but for settlements, it was substantially based upon their possessions, and their sense of a right to defend it.

Of course, if settlements were not so attached to their possessions, they could just choose to share. However, those who had really benefitted from the chance to amass possessions would not be so enamoured with such a decision, so would seek to harken back to the settlement identity to get people to maintain their status quo, casting people in other settlements as being enemies who would want to rob them of their possessions and who knows what else. Here we see the heightening of a threat of loss as a means of being increasingly prepared to use violence. Seem familiar?

This is the basis of manufacturing a dependence upon possessions and the loss of them as a reason to build societies based upon violence. This serves those who thrive upon creating dysfunctional societies that on the surface appear entirely functional. What is underneath is a deep inequality that means most are trying to own more than they need because the society expects them to, but which makes it difficult to actually reach what the few privileged have, with the threat of violence to keep them in line.

This is done in the nicest possible way, usually by applying it to those who are considered unworthy of inheriting the benefits, with the implied threat that those pitting themselves against the rulers will suffer the same suppression. We thus have a society at the mercy of those who enjoy creating suffering, supported by those who are so distracted by false addictions that they will also engage in suppression of the marginalised to maintain their addictions.

If those in charge of our societies were really repulsed by the suffering they create and perpetuate, they would turn societies upside down to make it better. But they are not, and they will not. They do nothing to stop the violence, but instead make it valid, all while creating suffering for those who actually support them by destabilising the societies enough to keep people from exercising clear-headedness about which direction they individually and collectively need to work to make societies actually better for all.

We are seemingly prosperous, but we have so many problems that are deliberately being worsened by the economic and political levers being pulled by those privileged few, all while trying to persuade us that it is all for our benefit. We cannot afford to leave these people in their positions of power, so we must take steps to isolate them from having influence. With just that, and taking steps to avoid others like them from taking over, we will automatically ease the stress that people are artificially under to conform to unnecessary goals that do not serve them.

With these people separated out from influence, we will have the opportunity to dismantle the institutions that maintained their privilege. That means dispensing with those parts built into our democratic structures that actually work against them by giving the privileged inordinate advantage or opportunity to thwart popular laws, together with the withdrawal of financial instruments designed so that only the wealthy could take advantage of them. It also means dispensing with laws that are directed at particular classes of people, whether for benefit or punishment. Here, equity is fairness.