fakepilot on Nostr: Abdul Ghani from Shantaram: The world is ruled by a million evil men, ten million ...

Abdul Ghani from Shantaram:

The world is ruled by a million evil men, ten million stupid men and a hundred million cowards. The evil ones are in power - the rich, the politicians, and the religious fanatics - their decisions rule the world and lead it down their path of greed and destruction.

These, the truly evil ones, are only a million in the whole world. The very rich and very powerful, whose decisions are the only ones that count - they are no more than a million. The fools, who number ten million, are soldiers and policemen who maintain the rule of the wicked. It is the standing armies of the twelve most important countries, the police force there and in twenty other countries. In all, there are no more than ten million with any real power or importance. They are often brave indeed but also foolish, as they give their lives for governments and causes that use their flesh and blood as mere chess pieces. These governments always fail them, ignore them, or finally abandon them. Nations do not ignore others as shamefully as they ignore their war heroes.

And the hundred million pitiful cowards, they are bureaucrats, paper turners and pencil sharpeners who allow the evil to reign and look the other way. They are heads of some department or secretaries of some committee and chairman of some association. They are directors, officials, mayors and officers at court. They always defend themselves by saying that they are just following orders or just doing their job, it's nothing personal and if they don't do it, surely someone else will. They are the hundred million pitiful cowards who know what is going on but say nothing when they sign the paper that puts a man in front of a firing squad or sentences a million people to a slower death by starvation.

So it is. The world is ruled by a million evil, ten million stupid and a hundred million wretched. The rest of us, all six billion of us, pretty much do what we're told to do!

Do you know what this means, young man?

That formula - one million, ten million, one hundred million - is the real truth of all politics. Marx was wrong. You see, it is not about classes, because all classes are in the hands of this few. This set of numbers is the cause of empires and rebellions. It is this formula that has created our civilizations over the past ten thousand years. The ones who built the pyramids. Who started the Crusades. That formula caused the world to go to war and it has the power to compel peace.