Hello
there! I’ll be talking today continuing the broad theme of what I have said in
the earlier post. Today I tell you why it is expensive to be poor.
Well, it
should not come as a surprise that inequality in the world is increasing and
that the top 75 people in the world own more than the next 3.6 billion people[1].
In today’s world order, most of the things are determined by economic forces
including lawmaking, social status and unsurprisingly, financial benefits.
Today’s hero is not the one with intellectual prowess but the one with economic
prowess.
It is a sad
state of affairs unfortunately, that money commands obedience from the public.
It inevitably follows that political power flows from economic power. Laws are
lobbied for by the wealthy to be in their favour, they can afford to spend to
save, they can afford to jump the queue, they can afford to buy the system.
This world
is very cruel to the poor, and it does not reward sacrifice, or talent, or even
love. The world rewards those who kneel down obediently before the economically
and politically powerful – those who surrender their lives to the almighty
all-powerful neo-gods of the present who can control your lives in more ways
than you can imagine. To be told what to feel, what to think, what to wear,
what to do in private, what to speak by these all-powerful is now a reality.
The legal system now has more control over its subjects than it has ever did in
history. Even more than the great rulers and autocratic monarchs in their time.
Kindly allow me two minutes of your time to present to you a classic paragraph
from Sir Edward Coke:
“ […] a man’s house is his castle. […] The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it, the storm may enter, the rain may enter; but the king of England cannot enter! All his force dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.”
When it
comes to today, at most this can be called legal romanticism. This presents an
ideal which today’s generation has never witnessed. The transition of society
from being ‘human’ to being ‘mechanical’ is inevitable where only a small group
of the population seeks to control the lives and destiny of others. Huxley’s ‘Brave
New World’ might soon be a reality.
To ask
again who is to be blamed for this? One need not look at anyone else to seek
the root cause of the problems. It is you who has caused this impending doom
that has befallen humanity. Systems of government fall and rise but human
mentality stay the same. For those who say war or a bloodshed revolution is the
solution, I pity them. War and bloodshed has never brought any good to humanity
for people die – the good die and the bad die. Bad deeds eventually go away
like the good deeds. The circle of good and bad continues.
Am I
suggesting humanity will self-destruct? With a war, maybe. But with what
continues, society will drastically change towards the picture that Huxley had
painted for us long ago. A great visionary indeed! He could imagine today when
Sir Edward Coke could say such great things of the erstwhile legal order.
“No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. […] Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses [...] The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!”
[1] Treanor, J. (2015). Half
of world's wealth now in hands of 1% of population – report. [online] the
Guardian. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/oct/13/half-world-wealth-in-hands-population-inequality-report
[Accessed 31 Jul. 2016].