My old blogging friend, billyann-journal.blogspot.com posted an interesting link. (http://www.truthout.com/conservatives-say-it-out-loud-they-hate-democracy/1316786695) which grabbed my attention. Every now and then I say to myself, enough of your pontificating about politics, you're getting to be a bore, so just stay off the subject. But I'm like a drug addict who has to come back for more when I read something like this link.
The gist of it is the old Ayn Rand business of an elite only entitled to run the world, a kind of fascist oligarchy where a select few should be in charge. I know I have a number of acquaintances who fit right into this philosophy. Screw the majority who don't know diddly squat and aren't entitled to any of the benefits of this world; it's only we the enlightened who should run things and reap the benefits. A few winners and a lot of losers.
When I was a kid of ten, I raised bees, with the help of a local farmer/beekeeper who taught me a lot about this fascinating world of bees. I kept bees for about three years and, thanks to the understanding this farmer/beekeeper imparted to me, I learned to handle bees without a problem; in fact, I only got stung once when I put my thumb on and squashed a bee in one of the frames in a hive.
Ayn Rand and the other monolithic far right would love the principles of a bee society. There is one Queen whose purpose in life is to procreate and produce eggs. 95% of the hive is comprised of worker bees, infertile females, whose sole purpose is to produce honey. The only other classification of bees are the drones, males whose only purpose in life is to service the Queen---and only one gets that privilege in a mating ritual in which the Queen flies higher and higher in the air, and the drone who can stay with her gets the score. Then, for a few weeks, the remaining drones sit around the hive, gorging themselves on honey and doing absolutely nothing for the benefit of the hive. Then one day, usually in early autumn, you come out to visit your hive---and see a mass of dead males pushed out the front of the hive. The worker bees have struck and wiped out the drones.
We are not bees, thank God. I know we have too many drones in humanity, but we can't just turn on them and throw their dead bodies out of the hive. We do have the ability to train some of those drones to be responsible contributors to life, but there will always be a certain untrainable number who are useless who become our responsibility. I don't think we want 95% of us to do nothing but work and to have no time to enjoy the benefits of work in their leisure time. and I don't think we want a single Queen in charge.
Some of the Republican candidates seem to be making Ayn Rand-like noises. I also really get worried when I hear of incidents like a certain campaign debate crowd clapping at the idea of letting the indigent go without health care and die. It is an exclusive elitist philosophy of individualism in an anti-democratic spirit. Democracy can be a pain in the ass many times. But I don't want to contemplate a life without it. John Donne said in the seventeenth century in one of his wonderful sermons at St. Paul's in London, "No man is an island unto himselfe,,," No, we still depend on and need each other.
I don't want to be in a bee society, thank you.
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ReplyDeleteThank you, kind Sir. In the 1960s I worked for a corporate organization whose officers encouraged it's employees, especially upper and middle management to red Ayn Rand's books. He also spread the word that if he knew of one of his employees who did not vote for Goldwater, he would fire him. So I read those books and prepared to discuss one or both with either the VP or the president of the company, who had a habit of dropping by your office, plopping down in a chair, to discuss, Ayn Ryan, one of her books, or the crude, vile nature of socialist Lyndon Johnson.
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought of life the way you put it but I wouldn't want to live that way.
By the way somebody reading over my shoulder said from behind me 'whoever wrote that is a smart man."
I don't know if it was the way you wrote your blog, or that you knew of Ayn Rand, or that you tied her in with Bee Keeping. It was a left handed compliment (she is left-handed). I was forced to admit I do occasionally get in over my head by the company I keep.
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ReplyDeleteGreat analogy. My definition of an Ayn Rand disciple would be our mutual friend RH.
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