The Return of Socrates’ Poison
As an American historian, I do believe that a deep stream of greed, exploitation, and corruption best explains much of the last 500 years. Human nature being what it is, a relatively small percentage of greedy men and women has sometimes given in to the worst of human vices and traits.
Their hypocrisy, deceptions, lies, and crimes knew no bounds and so they ended up doing damage to their societies vastly disproportionate to their actual numbers.
Their words and actions were grotesque, despicable, and wholly indefensible, both spiritually and morally. Lying to deceive, lying to cheat and rob, lying to accumulate stolen riches became the way evil men gained power.
They became powerful enough and destructive enough to leave their permanent imprint on humankind’s historical development nearly everywhere.
Humanity has a proud history of honest labor, social productivity, and individual creativity, accompanied by much artistic, intellectual, and scientific progress. Humanity also has, unfortunately, a sad history of oppression involving violence, death, and destruction.
We human beings as a species are so “two-sided” (and to such an extreme extent) that we are historically schizophrenic; Humanity is Good and Humanity is Evil at one and the same time. It sounds bizarre to say but if the shoe fits . . .
The truth is that there has always been more non-violent “good people” than violent “bad people” but the destructive behavior of the minority has a disproportionately negative effect and can ruin many thousands of lives.
Good qualities such as humility and modesty, honesty and loyalty, courage and kindness sometimes seem unable to hold their own with the wickedness of the few who surrendered virtue in favor of unseemly vices.
Once on the wrong path, they initiate and profit from the rapidly expanding concentric circles of confusion and chaos that emanate from their destructive ways. Super-selfish persons create hardship and tragedy with their immoral and irrational acts that go far beyond their mere numbers.
For many decades and in many places, students have been taught history from the perspective of these robber barons, these murderous conquerors, these enslaving exploiters who robbed people of their lands and resources.
Students have been taught rationalizations for such evil acts rather than those historical truths that sustain and inspire honest, decent people.
Many of these devastating social practices came from Europe and the so-called “Western” cultures: or rather, from the rich elites of these nations, from the wealthy of America. Their greed is a poison that has been infecting the whole world for nearly a half-millennium.
Now the poison is starting to spread closer to home: it has infected the home roost and is adding its toxic effect to everything and everyone. The poison will reach the heart of the whole nation eventually and these upper classes must soon realize they have fatally poisoned themselves as well.
The rich will hire anyone to come up with “a better solution” to hide their wealth and how they acquired it, but the new age of technology leaves them more exposed than ever before. Truth has daily a thousand new doorways through which to surge, while the rich are desperately slamming doors behind them to try and protect their time-honored generation-by-generation cover-up lies.
Now the poison is moving into the body politic, like hemlock slowly creeping up Socrates’ legs. The fatal effect on this great philosopher started in his farthest extremities and slowly moved toward his heart, paralyzing him as the poison spread. So, too, is the historic poison of greed spreading upward toward the heart of capitalism.
The capitalist class has always had one enemy it could never defeat: itself. Or did they forget that? Its stupidity, its arrogance; its violence, its death; its corruption and its greed; its lies and its insanity are all impossible-to-hide traits telling us who they are, where they are, and what they are hiding.
They stole everything they could get their hands on from the less fortunate for generation after generation, century after century—did they really believe they could avoid a day of reckoning forever? That day is well-nigh on us! A new time draws closer. The chance to overcome their crooked scales of justice is just around the corner and drawing ever nearer—now, even as we speak!
