LET US NOT LEARN THE WAYS OF POLITICIANS BEING MOTIVATED BY GREED AND FEAR BUT RATHER LET US BE MOTIVATED BY LOVE
We can be motivated by love, truth, and a form of righteousness that isn’t all judgy and rude but humane and enlightened, warm and kind.
Some are motivated by greed, they want more than is their due and what they have earned, and they pay never a mind to who actually pays the bill. This can come both on the form of money as well as things like environmental impact and social impacts which won’t affect you but will affect others.
Some are driven along their decision-making path by hobgoblins and boogeyman, caricatures and stereotypes of anyone different from themselves, from whom they need protection, and which protection they are willing to pay for with the rights and wealth of others being laid upon the altar of their gods of fear and panic.
You can be sure that, regardless of their Party or staged ideology, almost every politician appeals to the latter two and almost none would appeal to the first group and their motivations. We can, however, have eyes wide open and just assume whatever any politician says comes from greed or fear, and if we scratch a little beneath the surface we’ll see the true color very easily. So scratch below the surface and ask yourself how much the first group is appealed to, then you will learn to view most every politician, even the one you support, with suspicion and contempt, because most are not to be trusted.
Politicians are too easy to pick apart, however. Most of them got there by being cagey, self-absorbed twits who fool most of the voters, or who manage to get the most votes counted in their name (you be the judge), by fooling enough people to pass the post.
What about me. What about you.
I have ascertained, sadly, that TOO MUCH of what I say is motivated too much by the latter thing, fear and the anger that comes with it. I’m not above being greedy, it’s just that I am far more conscious of it, so it’s not really a pet vice of mine. That doesn’t make me better than you as fear is also, in my estimation, a vice when it’s not rational or justified, and most of the time is isn’t.
I think both the greed and fear motivators are down to a heightened self-importance and conceit about what one deserves and is entitled to. As to fear, I’m no entitled to feeling safe from things and people I ought not fear, especially as a Christian who should rest in the Lord, come what may!
I am broken and I think maybe we all are. Ironically, I think, the more you engage in politics, and I literally make a living from politics (well, around 70% of what I do), the more you get the infection.
The thing about greed, and I remind you I’m specifically talking about wanting something you didn’t earn, aren’t owed, and should not expect at other people’s expense, is that those who promise to slake your thirst are always lying. No sane person believes that taking that which others are rightly due and giving it to others whose do not deserve it is sustainable. It doesn’t matter if it’s business owners being told they will get what their workers are due or non-working people will get it from business owners (and therefore also workers), it’s always a lie and never sustainable.
As for fear, it is so easy to become afraid of the other side, of people who are different, of things that you don’t like or that you think are wrong, go against being on the right side of history, or are a sin. When someone promises to cure the fear by clamping down on what you fear, they always demand you surrender all or part of your own agency so they can save you from the things they probably taught you to fear in the first place!
Greed and fear are terrible motivators but ask yourself if you’ve ever been motivated to vote based on love? Imagine a politician saying their agenda is to pave the way through good public policies that benefit all of society and not just a preferred demographic or other special interest so that people can feel and walk freely in love, to be loved and to love others, without greed or fear stalking their conscience and unsettling their heart. It’s not gonna happen.
In the US it’s Biden or Trump. Do they motivate people by love for their fellow man and by being loved and being free to love and pursue their life in peace, or do they use appeals to greed and fear mostly to exclusively? In my opinion, they both use greed and fear, in spades, in extremes that are not common even in US politics. Indeed, we have to go back to the 1850’s and right before the Civil War to match the tone we have seen set today.
I followed the Nigerian elections closely and the side I thought would be best for the country lost to a genius vote counter who plied the people with an appeal to greed and made promises the federal government could never keep without bankrupting the part of the constituency they do not cater to for votes, especially the Igbo and Christians! But what politician appealed to love for Nigeria, to each other, and for yourself to be able to experience love through a life of freedom and abundance? Not one, in my opinion!
In Germany not one Party appeals to love and as the AFD grows so grows the call to censure them and invalidate them through boogeyman fears about “Mustache Man 2.0”, because the lame establishment UNIPARTY of corpostate shills has only ever played the people based on different measures of greed and fear, depending on if it’s the SD or CD, Greens, of FDP. As an aside, the FDP is to me the most purposeless party in human history and is hardly anything to get rowdy about. The AFP is more about fear and their dalliance with Russia is alarming, albeit not because their alternative views on German foreign policy should be labeled treasonous as they have. None appeal to love.
Even India’s Mohdi, who maintains a solid lock on Indian politics, is most certainly not driven by love, despite his religious posturing as if he is himself a Hindu Monk (if their is such a thing)! His policies are greed and fear like all the rest and his opponents, who keep losing to him over and over again, offer nothing different in substance but only in form.
Wherever you are in this world the politicians are an extreme caricature themselves of the most negative currents in society and they become part of a self-feeding loop that perpetuates more and more extremes until finally it eats itself and society collapses. See Haiti of recent history and the French Third Republic of the 1930s which lost to the Germans despite having better and more of the right equipment to fight a war!
As I recall no examples of a political movement or leaders who appeal almost exclusively to love, slightly to legitimate fear, and not at all to greed, I am not certain politics will ever be more than slowing the speed of collapse so private people can prepare and get themselves hidden from the deluge to come. If anyone knows of an example where this isn’t true, enlighten me, but if you are an American and say Trump or Biden, let me stop you right now and just say, “no!”
Going back to where I speak of appealing slightly to legitimate fear, the Bible itself in Proverbs 22 explains how when the wise see danger coming they hide themselves and when the foolish see danger coming they keep on moving along until eventually they get wacked, or punished. Of course if China is building out a strong offensive military force we would be idiots to ignore that and let our own military decline to the point we can’t beat the CCP, as an example.
Neither fear nor greed, understanding that wanting what you deserve, are owed, and have earned and having your own self-interest are not greed but wanting what isn’t by right yours to demand IS greed, are terrible motivators for life. We should start to eschew the ways of our politicians and both become sensitive to their true nature and to our own propensity to be infected by their rhetoric to become like them.
Pictured here is my mom to the left and Dora to the right to illustrate love, they loved each other and had a blast, no greed or fear between them.
