Viking Bankers

Like the Vikings, Bankers see themselves as noble warriors, providing for their OWN (families) – and without shedding a drop of blood . . .

Excuse me picking on bankers again. It is because they are currently the most visible example of those, not just serving, but also excessively exploiting society as an ENVIRONMENT.

I call them Vikings, because it is the same (subconscious, Darwinian) motivation for the survival, advantage and “success” of their own families, that is driving them – and everyone else, of course.

Human nature is a product of Darwinian evolution (what else?), which drives us to exploit our environment, and now includes human society itself.

The basic unit of human survival and reproductive success, until the advent of civilisation, was the TRIBE, which sometimes organised themselves into a NATION, to facilitate their protection against, or exploitation of, other tribes and nations.

The Vikings were a NATION, which, instead of fighting amongst themselves (although I’m sure they did that as well), went out and exploited the resources they found on foreign shores. Those they plundered (Anglo-Saxons, for example) saw them a evil pirates, but from a wholly subjective perspective. A few generations before, Angles and Saxons themselves had been the pirates, taking land and booty from the Celts.

The primary purpose of civilisation is to regulate human self-exploitation, which those in power, of course, did (and continue to do) to their own advantage. Only, you need more than a strong arm to impose order on a population (of exploitable human resources); you need brains as well, which resulted in nobles and clergy cooperating in the creation of the STATE.

Within the state, individuals in a position to do so, spontaneously organised themselves into quasi-tribes, i.e. classes, professions and other shared interest groups, in order to secure the best possible advantage for themselves in the social environment, which, of course, also had to be maintained: like a shepherd looking after his flock, which he tells them is for their own good, so that they behave and do as they are told (this is where religion comes into its own; and being dumb sheep, they believe and obey him). But, of course, the shepherd’s real interests are his own (and/or those of his employer), which is the meat and wool the flock provides and can be exchanged at market for money.

Social scientists should be telling you all this, rather than me, but being themselves an interest group, wholly dependent on the state and status quo, they are blinded to the Darwinian reality of our situation. So I keep going on about it, in the hope that some of them will eventually take notice.

Bankers: “Parasites” in our Social Wood

Bankers are a species of tree, as it were, in the wood that represents society.

It is difficult to see the wood for trees, because very different from what we have been taught it is like, and because so much is hidden underground.

The hidden roots of the “banker trees” are drawing nutrients parasitically from the rest of the wood – which is why they have grown so tall and prosperous. While above ground, we only see how dependent everyone is on them.

If a host is dependent on a parasite, strictly speaking it’s not a parasitic, but a mutualistic relationship (which is what bankers want us all to believe, of course). Only in the case of human society, the parasites have made their hosts far more dependent on them than they need be, in orderto take far more than they are giving or deserve.

Only it’s not just bankers who are taking far more from society than they are giving or deserve – which is why no (effective) action is taken against them. Society is, in fact, a tangle of mutualistic, semi-parasitic and fully parasitic relationships, which everyone is afraid of exposing to the light of day (especially those doing well for themselves), for fear they might lose their own advantage.

Society is a self-exploiting organism (a product of man’s misplaced and perverted Darwinian nature), making it inherently unjust, inhumane and unsustainable.

We are half aware of this, seeing OTHERS as exploiters, but not in ourselves. The political right sees the liberal left as out to exploit their hard work, savings, talents and entrepreneurship (for the benefit of themselves and their less hard-working, less talented, less entrepreneurial and “disadvantaged” clientèle), while the liberal left see the political right and capital out to exploit ordinary workers, while shirking its responsibility for the poor and disadvantaged.

If we want our civilisation to survive – which I assume most of us do – we have no choice but to change this. It’s a BIG challenge, which some think not worth even trying to rise to. But if we don’t try, we are not just giving up on ourselves, but on our children and grandchildren as well.

The first thing we have to do is recognise and develop a sound understanding of the perverted Darwinian nature of society as it currently exists.

Bankers' Bonuses

Let’s not be too critical of bankers’ bonuses, but recognise what they have to tell us – if we are prepared to listen – about the very nature of our “society”: the fact that it serves primarily as an ENVIRONMENT, which state and economy facilitate the self-exploitation of, to the advantage of power wealth and privilege.

This includes bankers, of course, but many others besides, and at the end of the day, everyone is out for their own (family’s) advantage, which is what “social mobility” is also really all about.

If bankers’ bonuses helps bring this home to us, it will have served a very valuable service. I doubt that it will, though. It never has in the past, because such an awareness would undermine the most basic assumption underlying our understanding of state and economy, namely that they exist primarily to SERVE society as a whole, as a NATION, and as expressed in a recent Telegraph opinion piece, “Rewards for success keep our economy going”, justifying the bonus which gave the chief executive of RBS, Stephen Hester, a total annual income of £6.8 million, and from which the following quote is taken:

“ . . rewarding success is an essential part of what makes a capitalist economy more efficient at delivering prosperity to everyone than any of the alternative systems.”

The original motivation for socialism was to end this exploitation of society by its rich and powerful elites, but there was a lack of understanding of just how deeply-rooted in man’s (perverted Darwinian) nature, the phenomenon of self-exploitation was: when one elite was removed, another simply took its place; or, what usually happened, was that once “socialists” gained access to power, they used it to their own advantage, just as the elites they were attacking did – only we hated them all the more for their hypocricy.

Understandably, this has given socialism a very bad name, especially since actual states claiming to be socialist provided examples of the kind of society most of us definitely do not want to live in, making capitalist societies look almost idyllic in comparison.

Socialists’ fundamental mistake (a very human one, given our tribal nature) was to see the situation in terms of “them and us”: us GOOD socialists on one side, those BAD capitalists on the other. They failed to recognise that we are all inclined to take advantage of and exploit our human environment (society), if given the chance – although some, far more ruthlessly than others.

The point is that if we want our civilisation to survive – and I presume most of us do – we MUST put an end to the gross self-exploitation exemplified in bankers’ bonuses. Not that simply reducing or even abolishing them would solve the problem. We have to deal with its ROOT CAUSE, otherwise nothing fundamentally will change.

However, before we can even make a start, we must first recognise and develop an understanding of our own Darwinian nature, and how its perversion, in the artificial environment of human society, has given rise to the social, political, religious and economic power structures of our civilisation. Otherwise we’ll just be thrashing around in the dark, and probably making a worse mess of things than “socialism” did.

It’s a BIG challenge – but one we urgently need to rise to.