Full Moon Edition November 2024
What do you believe in? At the core of who you are, what supports your sense of self? We imagine all sorts of responses, but when we look at the social order and what we hold in highest regard, winning might be the honest answer. Everybody wants to be victorious, right? That’s where the money is. And the power. Nobody likes losing.
Success has many parents, failure is an orphan. When we win, the world is our oyster. Lose and the finger-pointing begins. We’ve felt it in our gut since time began that life is competition. Darwin told us why: the well-being of the species depends on the better besting the lesser. Natural selection ensures evolution its upward course. Use your pawns strategically and god save the queen.
Who has the power and what they’re doing with it is what merits our attention. If winning is what it’s all about, and money is how we measure who’s getting it done, then Elon Musk is the most important human being alive (HERE). How can we argue with that? So we wonder what he’s up to and who serves his interests.
The Palio in Siena, Italy, is an annual competition (HERE) that dates back many centuries and originally celebrated “certain solemn events.” A horse race run through the center of this ancient town for which the various clans (contrade) spend the entire year preparing to win and capture the prestige that attends it.
Only one clan can be victorious. The rest will lose, of course, but uniquely in Siena only one of those who fail is shamed. The team that finishes second bares the burden of being the loser because unlike all the others who were defeated they came close to winning and didn’t. So, in the instant case, Jeff Bezos is the loser. Zuckerberg. Gates, Buffet and Ellison, none of the rest of them matter much. Maybe next year.
The purpose of the Palio, we might suppose, is essentially no different than public spectacles of all sorts, if solemn events no longer. They are entertainment, something to provide distraction from tedium and tumult, something to root for in hopes our side might win and life for a time will be bathed in the glow of besting. Like the Borgias before them, today’s titans are pleased the people are distracted.
Politics, we’re told, is the science of people being governed. How power is exercised in any society and for what purpose is the game. It’s endlessly entertaining. Honesty, truth, transparency have no role whatsoever; rather, duplicity and disingenuousness are the tricks of the trade. Authoritarian, democratic, or in any other of the variations on the theme of governance, getting people to do what they want is what they who push and pull the levers have in common. For whom are they making the effort?
Politicians, it is said, are those who’ll bravely send you to fight and die for what they believe. Or those they serve. It’s appropriate that election day and Veterans Day in the U. S. come so close together. Rationalizing a disregard for life sacrificed in service of the powerful has become a science in itself. Sanctimonious ceremonies of thanks are the least they can offer veterans. It’s cheaper than providing them actual care.
What was shading the truth became spin and now is blatant lies. No excuses needed. Winning is reason enough. In politics, it appears to be the only reason. Election days come and go. One side wins, the other loses, and power is put to use but not much seems to change. The poor persist, the powerful preside and the wealthy prosper. Meanwhile, too, for causes great or small, perhaps for no good cause at all, the brave people who serve and fall fill the trauma centers and the cemeteries. We thank them for their service, even if whose interest was served and why remains reliably opaque.