Why The Elites Can't Just Leave Things Alone

This is a topic I keep meaning to post about. Namely the difference in attitude between ruling class type people and more regular type people when it comes to dealing with problems.

To give a simple example.

Let's say a bookshelf breaks in your home. It's a mundane problem, but one that needs fixing. However, though you recognise it needs fixing you may not be able to fix it immediately. It might be that you don't have the £70 spare at the moment to go and buy a new one from Argos. It could be that you simply don't have the time to spend an afternoon drilling holes in walls as you're too busy working a 9-5, or looking after the children. So it gets put on the backburner. Hopefully at some point you'll get round to sorting it, but for the time being it gets left.

However, if you're someone that has a lot of wealth, especially someone that employs staff, then it's quite different. You simply note the issue to an aide, and it gets dealt with. The money isn't an issue, nor is the time, as you're hiring someone else to come in and do the work.

When you live like this it becomes a habit. You get used to having problems dealt with immediately.

It's similar with health issues. For instance, let's take baldness. A cosmetic issue, but nevertheless one that is often considered important by men who start losing their hair. Now a normal person, with limited resources, might try a few over-the-counter remedies to stop the hair loss. Or order some online wonder-drug in the hope it works. However, after trying and failing a few times they'll quickly accept their fate and embrace life as a bald person.

If a person has a lot of money though they don't have to be as accepting of their fate. They can spend thousands jetting off to hair transplant specialists, or trying the latest state-of-the-art procedures. If they're unhappy with the results of one specialist they can hire another. The dream of hair remains alive, and the sense of control over the situation is retained.

An extreme example can be seen with celebrities and their endless plastic surgeries. Michael Jackson perhaps being the classic case in point. All humans have hang-ups about their appearance, but it's only with money that the possibility to indulge these hang-ups becomes an option.

Political hang-ups..

I think it's much the same with world politics. When there's so much money sloshing about, and so many people that can be employed to tackle a problem, it's very hard to just leave things be. The war in Iraq took place twenty years ago. It's hard not to imagine that had things just been left alone Saddam Hussein might have died of natural causes by now. Of course, conversely it's also possible that he could've went on to wage his own wars and lived to have been one hundred and twenty. So it's impossible to know for sure. Again though, it's hard not to feel the war just made things worse. Like drilling into the wall to put up a shelf, only to hit an electricity cable by accident.

I think lots of things in politics essentially boil down to this "do something" vs "leave things alone" question. However, most the people that are vocal in politics (including myself for sure in this regard) tend to be the sort of people that want to set the world to rights. So "leave things alone" rarely gets aired as an option. The sort of people that want to leave things alone are leaving things alone by default and staying out of it.

In many ways the Brexit vote (yes, Brexit again) was a vote to leave things alone.

"Just leave Britain be Britain, stop doing stuff!! ..and stop doing it so fast!"

When I was seven years old the Berlin Wall fell. That same year Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed by firing squad. By the time I reached the age of thirty-one we had completely open borders with Romania.

That's quite the pace of change. All driven by an elite class with an innate desire to impose some kind of order on the world. Even as one order had just fallen. Could we not just have waited a few generations and enjoyed life after the Soviet Union? Meandering naturally, testing the waters.

I'm being a little unfair here. Like with our appearance, we all have these hang-ups and impulses. It's just accentuated in those that have the means to get their own way. That habit of doing something, the annoyance that something is out of place and not exactly where you want it to be. That an ornament has been moved slightly or put in its wrong place, or that the world jigsaw isn't exactly how you envision it in your mind. We would all shape the world to our own desires to some extent if we could. It takes a tremendous amount of self-restraint to step back when you can see in your field of vision a problem that's bugging you.

Plus, at the other end of the scale, leaving problems to fester is also a bad habit. So a bit of zip is needed in life as well. I guess it's a case of trying to find a balance. A little bit of will and purpose, but a little bit of pragmatism and acceptance of reality too.