32. Betrayal

Welcome to Musing Interruptus. Thank you for clicking, thank you for listening. As we go down the rabbit hole of thoughts surrounding experience, betrayal is not one easily avoided. There is an internal betrayal, which I won’t go into right now, and an external betrayal. This is today’s topic. Betrayal can only exist when you trust a person or group with information or resources, thus giving them power over others. For example, a ruler might have their trusted advisors who run around behind their backs, sharing information, resulting in the ruler being overthrown. Even the brightest leaders have misread a run-of-the-mill sociopath who extracts information for their own gain, in a game they feel they must win at all cost. As losing is the ultimate blow to their very fragile egos. People who sacrifice trust and friendship to -win- —whatever that means– generally lose more along the way than they were capable of realizing. It was lost on them from the very start. This can be a hard truth. The sacrifice is true and honest friendship, support, and companionship. Maybe the most fragile of sacrifices, although not necessarily the most valuable, is trust. We can probably agree it is a foundational element. Once this is lost, know this, you may have won, but your reputation will be tarnished. That is a double loss. Betrayal is not only an action, it is a lesson. We are always alone in life, we are all we have, and our reputation is part of that. A reputation for being callous will lead to loneliness versus being kind. The matter or material we are made of, be it contaminant or nutritious honey, will mark our lives and the tracks we leave behind. The latter, being kind, requires a great deal of inner strength, intelligence, and patience. Especially with oneself, because kind people are bound to trust the wrong person or people at one point or another. The stakes may be very high. No one is exempt from betrayal, just as everyone has a price. A devastating kiss, sealing conspiracy, the Judas Kiss. The multiple betrayals of being sold by your family and then by the people who bought you, and finally, being sold off to a group of conquerors, having to serve them and their purposes, and establishing a final blow of betrayal to the people who betrayed you several times before. Like the Malinche… that one seemed inevitable. A brother saving himself and his wife by throwing his own sister under the bus, Greenglass betrayed his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. They got the chair. The Cold War was a curious time for agents, double agents, and betrayal. 3.44 People always find a way to justify these acts. Betrayals have justifications, even lofty justifications. Such is the case of Brutus who conspired and betrayed Caesar, who was stabbed 23 times; a sacrifice to preserve the Republic, protecting it against the designs of a man who would amass more power and dissolve the Senate. Brutus, who was said to be manipulated into fulfilling his destiny, as magnicide ran in his family. Continue Reading