Distracted

 I've felt kind of distracted today.

Thinking about overlapping and non overlapping moralities and their intersection with privilege and power.

A leader who gives an order and a million die from sudden neglect... but it serves him and he doesn't think about the consequences. 

A person who checks their phone 400 times a day and only 3 times a year is reminded of the slave labor that wrestled the materials from the earth and manufactured it... thinks how sad, and then scrolls to the next thing. Again, it serves me, I do nothing regarding the consequences. 

A person who in their desire to be close to power, doxes and serves as lapdog vengeance for the powerful.

A person who in their desperation to fight back harms the non-influential family member of the powerful.

A system that is rigged to serve one group immorally, and an attempt to disrupt that system that uses the same tools is considered immoral. (We don't believe in political violence -says the side with the largest army). 

Give unto caesar what is caesars... 

Well... more than half of the emperors of rome died by violence, held power through violence, died by violence. Some of them got statues and coins, some of those statues were also beheaded. 

Is the exercise of thinking of the morality in itself a barrier to change, a binding spell cast down upon the masses... that the elite instill on others but do not follow? religion the opiate... until the next religion whether it be capitalism, or nationalism, or what can be pushed... 

I watched a video yesterday that reminded me: we are animals. We don't ask the dog what its purpose is. We get annoyed but don't judge it for barking or leaping. A group of dogs can be violent toward one another, but we don't call it violence. We don't need each of its behaviors to have a deeper meaning. We don't ask it to bear the weight of the world. Don't question whether it has been productive enough today to deserve it's daily bread. 

When dogs fight over food, they don't question fairness or morality. If our leaders choose to destroy the ties that bind us together, pitting us one against the other, dismantle the shared safety nets, the-communal resources, starve us, deprive us, make it impossible to thrive, make it impossible to see neighbor as brother or peer, but as competition to scrap with... is it not moral to question and fight the system that creates such conditions.

Sometimes, I think about things more historically... its only recently that we started assigning morality to past historical actions... "they were bad for doing x."  I mean, sure... but without x the world you know would not exist. There are statues of Christopher Columbus all over latin america... he was not a good man, even his own people recognized that at the time... but he isn't remembered for being good, his actions had consequences that made opportunities for us today.   I think some elite think of things on that scale. Some leaders don't care whether their contribution was good or bad, just consequential. Change the map. Get your name in every paper and history book. Be the first, or the unique... 

These qualities don't really serve those they lead... but they are impactful. One could say -hey there are positive leaders who added, created, benefited humanity... yes, but probably also at a cost, a disruption. 

Maybe we need to get out of this mindset that disruption is bad -it is a scarcity position. Survival mode. Don't cause friction or things could get worse... they are getting worse, is your obedience to the system helping? at what point do you take a bigger risk to make things better?