fiat_knox | La Voisin and The Throned Devil Maxim

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
-- Henry David Thoreau

Following an overly simplistic comment on Facebook, "The rich arr rich because the poor are poor," I had to comment on this. The answer is deeper, and more complex, than just condemning people for having more money than others.

One can't even say something simple such as "The rich are all jerks, which is why they are rich," because I can point to a dozen jerks that don't have a lot of money. The assertion "The rich are rich because they're smart" doesn't work either, because I can point to a dozen rich celebs and aristos what are thick as clotted cream, and a hundred very smart college graduates, including those with high level Philosophy degrees, polishing tables in diners or living off the street. So what does generate the inequity and uneven distribution of wealth?

I'd argue that there is some inherent corruption present in the human condition, that results in some rising to status and power while others descend.

I would argue that corruption and power tend to walk hand in hand, regardless of whether that power vests in some mythical "Godhead" to which the philosopher priests must attain through apotheosis, or simple heredity and the propagation of a handful of incestuous genes through generations like some warped mockery of the Pharaonic Dynasties - corruption comes first, leading to adventurism in a society where more than one alpha male exists, each one striving to assert dominance.

"Only one can be King," the public say. So the schemers set themselves up as kings in a different cloth - Papal, financial, military, cultic, secretive. And the public will believe, and will throw their possessions at these corrupt individuals, and wealth sticks to them like shit to the feet of a fly.

The Throned Devil Maxim of La Voisin says it all. "Power attracts Darkness; Darkness attracts Power."

There has to be some sort of sick corruption in the heart of Man that allows this to happen, in some form or another. The inequalities and inequities arise first, and the uneven distribution of wealth follows - as a symptom, not a cause.

Neither the rich nor the poor, nor the priests dazzled by the beauty of their church and the shells of buildings and bits of gold and silver in their hands, can see this - because, in looking out towards material things as the measure of their status, they derive satisfaction from having achieved their goals, and do not seek to question their dark impulses within.

In the case of the priesthood, those impulses to power can be twisted into something vile, and the church - recognising this impulse on an unconscious level - does what any cabal of the corrupt does.

It sets up an immune system to protect its own.

It is those immune systems - the police corruption, the coverups, the dismantling of societal constructs such as the NHS and the welfare system, the denial of suffrage to women, the bigotry towards sex - that are the manifest symptoms of that inner corruption; the symptoms of a terminal disease that we collectively call "Injustice."

The injustices of the world are the leaves and branches of Henry David Thoreau's tree of evil. Still, nobody is striking at the root.