Thursday, October 6, 2011

The exploiter class

287:

My own way of making a start in helping to clean up today’s mess is to home in on the waste of pollution and the cruelty of animal slavery. They’re both dark forces connected with the wealthy exploiters running the animal-exploiting industries. Their grip on things needs to be weakened, and what anyone can do is withdraw support from them by stopping spending money on the goods they produce. Anyone can do this and help make a difference that way. It will, at the same time, support the liberation of animals.
The exploiter is often a kind and loving individual who genuinely cares about their family. The might see themself as a good person, believing that ‘charity starts at home’. They are providing ‘a better world for their grandchildren’. They care far less about the community or about ‘the greater good’, especially if by doing so it affects their profits. They like acquiring money and have little empathy for anything or anyone being used by them to make their money.
I was listening to one of them, a hunter, on the radio. He farmed animals and loved guns. He was trying to justify the pleasure he got from pulling the trigger on a moving animal. He couldn’t say what it was, except that it felt ‘natural’ to him. He’d always done it since he was a boy. He said that it came naturally to him. Animal farming and hunting - it’s how he and his family have always made their living (or got their kicks). It seems they were used to finding opportunities and taking advantage of weakness. They see dollars in everything. Where most people see a forest in terms of beauty, 1%’ers see the trees as lumber. Where most people couldn’t kill an animal the exploiter has no trouble doing so ... or better still, they employ someone who’ll do the messy business for them.
The consumer lets these people thrive. And these people therefore believe themselves to be doing nothing wrong since they have the support of so many dollar-spending customers. Regard the exploiter as the spoilt child, the consumer as the weak parent - the longer the child believes they can get away with bad behaviour they will, and become all the more dangerous the stronger they get.

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