Extreme selfishness: true face of evil

People fall back on religious symbols for what constitutes evil, but evil is obvious in light of the harm that extreme selfishness is doing to humanity and the earth.

Firstly, each individual needs to ensure their survival and of those they are responsible for. That is not selfishness. Selfishness is when the motivation is to gather more resources than is necessary or useful for a reasonably comfortable life. Extreme selfishness is when accumulating wealth, power and influence is such that many, many more are harmed by the actions taken, such as can be seen in the actions of the extremely wealthy and dictators, even if they are heads of corporations rather than governments.

For many, evil is visualised as the devil, a figure who seduces the weak of will to do their bidding. However, this is more anthropomorphising like that of making god into an old man sitting on a throne in heaven. Such visualisations serve to make out that the choices people make are subject to the whims of a war between great beings. This diminishes the agency that the real choices people make play out in the real lives of those subject to those choices.

People have free will, and while they can be subject to coercion and various pressures that may back them into mental and emotional corners that lead to dubious life decisions, the decisions that have led to wars, widespread pollution, repressive civil societies, gross wealth inequality and the verge of total environmental collapse have been made by those who were free of such pressures. The people who make decisions to create great harm do so because they are extremely selfish, and want to create conditions that feed their avarice while preventing others from disrupting their agenda.

We live in societies that have been molded by the choices of a few to maintain and increase their control over the lives of others. They have promoted the idea of individual selfishness as the supposed best way each individual can improve their lives. However, such selfishness only serves to have people competing with each other over the tidbits of wealth that the few have not taken control of. People in conflict with each other are not of a mind to band together to present a common power block that can challenge the power of the few.

The philosophy under which this latest phase of extreme selfishness has been enacted is called neoliberalism. Its implementation has resulted in subverted governments that allow undue influence of the few, democratic institutions infiltrated by those who seek to undermine them, a debilitated union movement that has seen historic lows in membership, and a lessening of the social net that the previous post-war Keynesian economic order had established to maintain a measure of social cohesion.

All these weakened institutions have undermined the ability of citizens to resist the onslaught of propaganda imploring rejection of democracy. People have felt aggrieved about their loss of agency, but they have been directed away from those who created that loss towards those who seek to reduce it. This has been done through pitting groups against each other as if the gains of one group means losses for others, rather than a gain for one means gains for all.

This is a weaponisation of minor differences to create great social turmoil to further weaken social cohesion, with the goal of subverting nations to the control of the few. All this so a few can continue to amass great wealth and power for themselves alone. This is extreme selfishness and it is truly evil, because they do not care about the suffering of those who are hurt by their decisions and actions, but instead they revel in how much they can control the world's people and resources.

It is difficult to keep the rogue states under the control of psychopaths in check if our own countries have the same type of people gaining advantage out of the conflicts. It is hard to stand up for true freedom and equality when being subverted by those who wish to turn our own countries into dictatorships.

They are a cancer upon humanity because they are psychopathic narcissists bent upon enslaving humanity to the point of extinction. This is an obsession that cannot be reasoned with, just because they lack the empathy that would enable them to see how self-destructive it is. The only way these people can be stopped is to remove their ability to bend societies to their will.

There are many who are thoroughly enmeshed in the idea that the extremely wealthy few are going to save humanity and the earth. They will continue to do so until they die. We have to accept that, so we should not waste time trying to change their minds, but we can change how much influence they have. They have the few backing them as a means of disrupting our societies to the point of disfunction, but we can weaken their influence by participating in promoting democracy by writing, voting for candidates for office that have shown that they truly value democracy, or even standing for office.

We can benefit by being organised, but that is not a requirement, because if enough consistently act with good will and empathy, more will see that the outcomes that result create less harm, and they will want to act similarly. Out of that, we can change the world for the better.