The awful truth

This week I've been wondering why some people behave so awfully. I got into a Facebook discussion during the week about the Koch Brothers and what on Earth makes them tick. If you haven't heard of these guys, they're enormously wealthy billionaires. They're heavily involved in fossil fuels, chemicals and all kinds of nasty stuff. They're massive bank rollers of climate change denial, campaigners against any kind of social safety net for anyone, and just generally, well, awful. So, what is it that drives them? Are they insane?

How do they justify the selfishness of their actions? How do they feel about the environmental destruction they cause, or the threat they pose to the health and welfare of the entire planet? Don't they care? Don't they think about it? What drives them? It seems 'nuts' to me, and to most people, I'm sure. But, I bet they consider themselves not only perfectly rational, but mightily superior to the likes of me.

Of course, one person's idea of 'awful' behaviour is not the same as another's. A lot of governments seem to think that citizens defending the environment from corporate greed is 'awful'. There have been recent laws passed specifically designed to make it illegal to get in the way of forest destroyers, frackers or miners. Clampdowns on all sorts of hard won democratic rights are in train all over the world, more than usual. Meanwhile there are certain 'rogue' corporations hell bent on selling things that kill people, wipe out bees, poison the waterways and do all kinds of other damage. They face no serious impediment or sanction of any kind, let alone jailing the members of their boards for manslaughter.

It seems backwards to me when democratically elected governments, paid for by the blood and sweat of the people, use the people's money and the people's police to punish people acting in their own self-defence. I'm sure the politicians involved don't see it this way. I wonder if they even think about it? If they do think about it, they probably think these 'trouble makers' deserve whatever they get.

I understand that the oligarchs don't like citizens getting between them and a pot of money, but how do they rationalize this to themselves? Do they see 'consumers' as somehow subhuman, their health and welfare of less importance than their own precious selves? Do they think that their money and power will protect them from climate change, lawsuits, or ravening hoards, so it's not their problem? I guess the aristos probably felt much the same before the French Revolution. They probably didn't waste a lot of time worrying about the plight of the poor, or the scandalous wastefulness of their own lifestyles, or the connection between these things.

But, when just about every religious tradition on the planet espouses the virtues of protecting the weak, giving to the poor, treating others with kindness and compassion, how is it that a smallish group of people just get off 'scott free' when they do the exact opposite? I don't know the answer to that, but I certainly hope that 'karma' will catch up with them in the end, perhaps aided by some new, socially responsible laws that will change the status quo, once we get a few more sane people into positions of power. I just hope it doesn't take too long.