Crusader War College

Link: http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?D=2007-05-24&ID=189129&HC=3

The link is to the Rantburg article about a wealthy couple who kept two Indonesian women as slaves in their home. The comments are better. Here's Gromky's. Short. Penetrating. Its sad-sounding bewilderment adding to its eloquence:

There's something about these people's culture. It's not enough that you be rich and successful. No, you have to be rich and successful and other people have to be miserable. I don't understand it at all.

I don't either. It's a complete mystery to me, which means I probably wouldn't do something like this myself.

...

That's a jewel in and of itself, but then Zenster weighs in with his usual penetrating analysis that leaves me saying, "what he said!":

It's not enough that you be rich and successful. No, you have to be rich and successful and other people have to be miserable. I don't understand it at all.

Welcome to the cult of the Zero Sum Equation. These Neanderthals simply cannot conceive of the Win-Win situation. The only way that they obtain a sense of reward is through someone else's loss. It is the epitome of the bully who can only be happy if someone else is unhappy.

This is the modus operendi of Islam and a host of other throwback cultures. Tormenting others is a soothing balm for the constantly humiliated souls of those who simply cannot stand the notion of anyone else being successful if they themselves are not as well. It is taken as a personal affront that someone else would have the audacity to uplift themselves without first supplicating the personal wants and needs of these self-presumed elite. Be it Robert Mugabe, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the Iranian mullahs or any other garden variety tin pot dictator, all of them view this world's wealth as their personal playtoy to be kept out of the hands of the great unwashed.

Put one lobster in a pail, and your supper escapes. Put two lobsters in a pail, and they'll stay there until they die, each pulling the other down while trying to climb onto the other's back to escape.

No Mo Euro's comment reveals a prophetic eye. I'll break it into pieces and comment.

It's more pervasive than that Zenster. And it occurs within our own society, even the non-Islamicist sector.

Unfortunately, those who have a perverted need to perceive themselves, not as free in order to achieve, but superior and dominating of others, are everywhere (although I will admit it seems to be more common in certain meme sets).

I've seen it too.

You'll see more of this behavior as America (and the world) becomes more affluent.

Why?

In earlier eras of humanity, only a few were wealthy. Those that had the sick need to feel superior to all others could do so simply by acquiring more wealth. And those that didn't have wealth, and had no way to obtain it and the outward creature comforts that came with it which signified "superiority", were SOL.

Now that more and more people have enough to buy a lot of creature comforts, the formerly much wealthier who have the need to feel superior feel threatened in their superiority, since even the hoi polloi can own wide screen TV's and vacation in warm places and drive nice SUV's. So they take measures to insure that other aspects of behavior still denote themselves as being superior. Constantly being late for appointments, insisting that other individuals with which one interacts ALWAYS compromise their own schedule and convenience for one's own, ridiculous demands for services that go way beyond what is reasonable, slavery, etc. I'm sure that there are other things I've missed.

The concept is called IAMITY - "I'm Always More Important Than You".

Furthermore, as wealth trickles down, now people who would have been lower on the social ladder in earlier, less affluent times, are starting to acquire the same snotty attitudes. Perhaps this is just a common human foible.

I've always felt that if I were the poorest person in the world but I could do the things I like, it wouldn't matter. The need to obsess about how much other people have in terms of their wealth, importance of their time, etc., relative to one's own in defining self esteem is a sad little psychological affliction that I don't understand. In the end it doesn't signify superiority, rather, emptiness of purpose.

I'd have thought emptiness of soul, than of purpose.