Saturday, March 13, 2010

Intellectual Elite Disconnect

If, societal norms pass into chaos with the possible collapse of the “system,” what will you do?  A large majority of individuals do not even desire to contemplate this possibility, or, if they do, they believe the “system” will somehow protect them, feed them, and maintain their naive everydayedness.  The intellectual elites, I think, are especially prone to this rosy eyed view, so it was interesting to read the following from a post at SurvivalBlog.com titled Letter Re: Confronting Kleptocracy—Identifying the Looter Mentality, which is taken from a letter written by a Dr. Dean to James Wesley, Rawles who owns SurvivalBlog.com.

Last fall during a lecture I asked a group of medical residents what they would do if society collapsed. I used the example of an EMP with complete failure of the electrical grid and ensuing chaos. Keep in mind, these are very well educated and intelligent people; they are physicians in training. These people are expected by the population to have the highest ethical standards and morals. Their answers astounded me. In the early aftermath as a group these people said they would go to the store and get what they needed. When I reminded them there was no way to pay with a credit card they seemed to think that it would be okay anyway. Many of the women said they would resort to begging if things became difficult, but most of the males in the group said they would leave for the rural areas due to the availability of cattle and other farm animals. When I asked what they would then do, most responded that they would take “one or two.” It wasn’t until I mentioned that stealing cattle is also called “rustling” and men used to be hung for such acts that it even began to register they were in fact stealing. The notion had not even occurred to them. One of my residents took the discussion further saying, “It wouldn’t necessarily be considered stealing because of the national emergency.” When I assured him the farmer or rancher would definitely consider it stealing and would likely defend his property with a rifle, he answered, “He wouldn’t shoot me. I’m a doctor. Besides murder would be a worse crime than my stealing.”

Troubling, isn’t it?  Go read the whole letter.

Linked via Jeffrey Quick who titled his post on this De Nile.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/13 at 10:51 AM
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