by Kirby Congdon…….

What motivates people to deliberately abuse another person, as in gang rape, or group denial of a victim’s identity, or for a president to enjoy, as he does, a bullying personality?

We cannot understand such negativity because we don’t want to. It comes too close to our own need to dominate and to be superior. It originates in the thrill of being powerful, to control by diminishing a victim’s ability to retaliate. It is the foundation and the purpose of our society’s practice of competition and the insistence on public success. Our advertising in business has relied on vulgar, loud and super persuasive processes which have influenced the behavior and the processes of thought of would-be politicians unfortunately.

We want to do things thoroughly and do them well not so much as to find out who we are and what our culture is as much as it, so often, is to rid ourselves of the need to achieve understanding of what education is for. Also it is the obligation to win in a competitive society.

It is one thing to understand, say, a Beethoven sonanta and experience the music of it. It is something quite different to want to play it better than anyone else and get a prize. To be distinctive is to appreciate the experience of being a human being. The need to be more of a human being than anyone else transforms talent, knowledge and life itself into a game. It makes governing into a war of domination and it makes social behavior merely the indulgence of power and puts respect into a category of fear and intimidation. The advantage that this stance provides is that we can conveniently avoid having to think,