I often wonder when exactly the perverse ability of human beings to ignore another person’s suffering or to become blind to other people entirely, begins or arises? How the Roman gentry walked around their cities oblivious to the drudgery of slaves all around them, buying and selling human beings without a thought to anything but affordability. Did the Aztecs never think their way of hacking a man to pieces on a an altar was a vile way to kill and a vile way to appease a god? And did the British receding from their Empire never stop to wonder if putting monarchs in place as rulers over people was in all honesty their best idea?
I wonder today about this as Europe has been downgraded in its credit rating and faces the greatest financial stresses that it has faced in a generation, with America still trying to pull itself out of the straitjacket of International trade that threatens to pull it down; and our Government in the UK gives a man permission to suggest a yacht be bought for the Queen because she misses the old one.
I think human beings are only capable of seeing a few hundred of their peer group and everyone else is a myth, along with meritocracy and égalité.