Without elites, we will all go hungry?

Why the elites have to keep telling us without them, we will all go hungry, so forget about 1st world rights!

At first, the message forwarded seems innocuous enough –sensible even in its carriage of though as it goes on to highlight some well established motifs – we are small country; and like small fries in a pond; it pays to get along with the big fishes; otherwise things just doesn’t come around – but where the message in my humble opinion degenerates into plain back slapping endorsement of the status quo ante is when lashings of, “we are so good in what we do; even the Chinese have seen the wisdom of learning from us” – “if good wins over evil; then we need to sacrifice our sense and sensibilities on the altar of necessity” – “good life doesn’t come for free; it comes with a price; and we would do well to dig into our pockets,” begin to filter through.

Am I imagining it? You know what I am going to give Ah Pek Lee the benefit of the doubt; I don’t doubt for one moment; I could have very well confected all these Da Vinci code connotations – so its best if you do me the courtesy of re-reading what he said and judge for yourself whether I am spot on or just making a mountain out of an imaginary mole hill.

Besides this essay this isn’t about what Ah Pek Lee said; rather why and how do elites go about the business of mythologizing their existence? – why for example do they keep telling us without them, we are all going to be toast? Why do they keep repeating the trite warning – if good is going to win over evil, then it always has to come at a heavy price – and no matter what the sacrifice it’s worth paying it – including set aside all our illusions that we could for moment even have real “rights.” Instead of the zoo keeping variety that we have to settle.

Now if you really want to know why elites say the things they regularly do - then you need to suspend disbelief long enough to consider how most of our perceptions in life may be shaped by myths rather than fact.

Don’t believe me? Then just take a look at how myth making is so often pursued unabashedly, even against the face of incontrovertible evidence – like how the MSM keeps trying to sell themselves as the next best thing since sliced bread as the one and only reliable purveyor of the truth. Never mind that our beloved rag languishes somewhere below the Timbuktu daily post – in the land of mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all - self praise is always good to go 24/7.

But why is cult of mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all so corrosive? In what way does the myth making machine work against society? Some may chide me for being defeatist or even overtly critical; after all, lets say a kid with carrot fingers tells you his dream is to play Rachmaninoff to a packed audience in Carnegie hall – what would you say to him?

My answer is, I dunno – all I know whatever response it is; it pays to be measured and this may mean sticking as astudiously to the truth as possible - no one denies a bit of myth making can motivate and even edify encouraging others to strive towards excellence. I know this only too well; it doesn’t always pay to be brutally honest, not if the truth disables and demoralizes – only my point is; if the myth making is taken too far, it can lead to complacency or worse still a false sense of confidence – that incidentally, is how the world tripped and promptly broke it’s neck in this recent global economic meltdown – now if you really want to understand the global financial crisis; believe me - you don’t even need to do know what are sub primes, derivatives, CDO’s and the rest of those gobble d guck like inverse repayment and equity based costing regressions.

Believe me, you could just as well throw all this out of the window and wipe the board clean and start with this ONE assumption - at the center of the anatomy of disaster that made possible failure on such a grand scale there had to be a Rolls Royce myth making machine (in some cases it may embody the persona of larger than life persona like Bernie Madoff; or even take the form of a century old firm like Lehman Bros) – the whole idea of a machine that can always be relied on perpetuate the good life that so many people bought lock, stock and barrel into – and what was it? It’s only this: house prices will always go up and up and up / and there is no end to good times – and for a very long time, that myth even turned out to be a self fulfilling prophecy as when so many people buy into a myth; its even conceivable they may even have the power to inadvertently shape their version of reality – but a failing that is common to every myth is it cannot be sustained in perpetuity; that’s to say at some point intervening events will cause it to become so unhinged from reality that the whole edifice just comes crashing down – it matters little whether it’s the myth of the cult of the sword that Samurai once ritualized to perpetuate their class politics by imposing a country band on gun powder – at some point, a boatful of brigands are going to show up bearing muskets and when that happens it’s just going to be a be a game leveler; or as the Ottomans say, “hark-met-ther,” when the armies of Sulaiman came across cross bow for the first time to turn back their siege machines – that in the nutshell is how the world suddenly found itself knee deep in shit.

That’s has to be a sobering thought; one that should prompt us all to ask whether it’s even wise for us to keep the myth making machine of mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them – if we are really serious about the whole business of craving out competitive advantage after the dust has settled on the global economic carnage – its something to consider very seriously; when you consider the last time someone looked at a mirror – she ended up as an old witch peddling poison apples – like I said, it’s a fools game, that we can ill afford in such testing times.

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