There Can Be No Law or Justice Without Fair Wealth Distribution

Help me keep saying the thing that need to be said. I appreciate you! Upgrade at 30% off!Your indoctrination started even before you formed your first memory. They told you that you shouldn’t color outside the lines, that doing so was “wrong,” that if you persisted in making that mistake, it made you “less” than others.You had to accept this because you didn’t have power.It continued from there. You went to school. You turned in exceptional work and got a “C.” Even if you received 99% on a test, there was something wrong. There was always something you could do better.When you began to accept your flawed nature as irrefutable fact, they began to use it as a justification for your abuse.Your work is not good enough, that’s why you are so poorly compensated.Other people are better than you.Other people belong to a different class, a better class, a superior class.Your purpose in this life is to labor, theirs is to reap all the rewards. There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s just the way it is.You chase and you chase and you case the demon’s tail. Sometimes you get close, but you never quite catch up.Even if you do score 100%, it still isn’t good enough because you’re told that admiration is reserved for somebody who makes a breakthrough.Maybe you win a race, and that’s not good enough either. The competition wasn’t all that special. Your time wasn’t a world record.There are an infinite number of reasons why you’re pressured to believe there’s nothing special about you. You’re a single serving piece of meat. Your fate is to be used and discarded.That’s what we teach.I remember the day when the constant critical whisper lost its power over me. I was 18, I’d finished a grueling 50 kilometer race in the middle of winter. I didn’t win. I wasn’t particularly fast.But I’d done something impressive.I knew it was impressive.For the first time, I felt I had worth as a human being.The volume of the constant criticism got turned down.Looking back on my life, I realize I’ve had many opportunities to get rich. There were many innocent people that I could have taken advantage of. They were vulnerable. They made a mistake. They did all the things the whispers told me were bad.To silence the whispers, I could have sacrificed my fellow humans.It would have been easy to gather up all that they had and add their meager possessions to my own.But I didn’t. I chose not to get rich.I chose not to steal from them.At this admission, the whispers roar back to life. “You see? You see? You got what you deserve! You deserve your misery! You made a choice to be poor and to be among the marginalized! Don’t come complaining to me!”Yet, many of those who add to these whispers only have power because I chose not to take from them when they were weak.I chose.Those voices that justify cruelty have become fused with our perception of reality. We think there’s no escaping them. I talk to old men who make assumptions about the cruelty of all people.They use this cruelty to justify their own.They disregard the exceptions of others who learned how to turn the volume of the constant pressure down.“If I don’t take it, somebody else will.”But there are other cases where people will leave well enough alone. It does happen. That experience has been my own.The simple fact is that we don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to live with constant anxiety. We don’t have to experience constant terror.We don’t have to accept that our labor is worthless and we somehow deserve our despair.That’s a lie told by the hoarders of wealth to justify the misery they inflict on all of us and even themselves.The problem with the world is that too many people have too little even though there is enough to go around.It’s a myth to suggest any human being is “less.”We’re all deserving. We’re all the same.In order to appease our pain, it’s imperative that we recognize the extent to which we’re forced to play a rigged game.It’s all a lie.When you turn down the volume, you recognize that even the rich are terrified they won’t survive. They’re on a path that brings them no peace. They constantly scramble for more. They take, and they dunk the heads of their fellow human beings beneath the churning waters so that they, themselves, might breathe.It takes more energy to hold a person down than it does to lift them up. Together we will all rise.Together we must recognize that wealth is a punishment, it’s not a reward. Wealth comes to those who are least deserving of it in all cases.Accept that as a possibility. Turn the volume of the whispers down and allow yourself to think.We’re so indoctrinated, we don’t even approach the door that leads us to peace.You’re not poor because you’re flawed.You’re poor because you’re good. You refused to hold your fellow human beings down. When the time came for pain you said, “I’d rather take the blows than force a sacrifice in my place.”The rich chose different.We have to realign. The truth is there can be no justice if there isn’t equality. You have no autonomy if you’ve been deprived of your power. There is no freedom if you’ve been robbed of your basic human dignity.We need wealth equity.We need to see through the veil of lies that doesn’t allow us to perceive how much better the human experience can be.Every single one of you has had the opportunity to steal. You chose decency. That’s why you struggle. We are the majority.Don’t do the work of the whispers. Don’t talk about exceptions. Their insufficient charity is performative. In all cases, extreme wealth is the direct cause of extreme suffering.First we have to collectively recognize this.Then we can stop the whispers from corrupting our own children, and create a paradise for them.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. 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