What is the dominant attitude in the global community today: “We are all in this together” or “Survival of the fittest”? For the answer, we have only to look at Wall Street in the U.S. and in books like Doug Henwood’s Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom. “Henwood’s main contention was that the actual purpose of the market was not to distribute capital efficiently but rather to make the rich richer—to ‘maximize the wealth and power of the most privileged group of people in the world, the creditor-rentier class,’ as he put it.”[i]
Clearly our species has chosen “survival of the fittest” as the basis for our worldview which is tantamount to collective suicide. “The New York University economist Edward Wolff has pointed out that as of 2016, the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans owned, in dollar terms, 84 percent of the total stock held by U.S. households.”[ii]
We have chosen fear (our false self) rather than compassion (our True self) as our guiding light and the rationale for our behavior. That choice has caused divisiveness throughout the human community which in turn exacerbates human pain and suffering.
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Supplemental Reading: Compassion, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#34 Maximizing Wealth and Power
[i] Steinberger, Michael. “Money Mirage of Wall Street.” The New York Times Magazine. May 31, 2020, p. 57.
[ii] Ibid.
