Suppression, 4

Suppressive finally completes that shift and highlights that whatever the motives, the point is that the individual is not just potentially but actively damaging his/her fellows: that individual is a fire that won’t extinguish spontaneously, as long as the environment is not fireproof and the firemen actively contain him or her – or, failing that, until the whole world will be but dead ashes.

I will use here the term suppressive since we’re here to get somewhere, but also because there is something specific and deeper in it on which the following is based; but it is nonetheless understood that with it I mean everything that all the terms above mean, plus everything else added here.

Whether its origin is material determinism or spiritual free will, whether that type of individual is the cause or the effect of it, for practical purposes intention is the ultimate cause anyway. This said, is that intention mere domination or utter extermination? That is the question.

So, just as the confusion between economics and finance, suppression requires a closer inspection, too. To suppress basically means to oppress, to crush, to make one smaller, weaker, more insecure, worse, you name it, and possibly to a point to reduce one to zero, to kill him/her. Or possibly even to below zero, to a helping hand in spreading and multiplying suppression.

There are many variations and degrees of suppression, but I think we can list three broad stages: 1) deceive, fraud and steal – sort of one−off, hit−and−run suppression; 2) degrade and enslave – continuous and overwhelming, damaging the integrity of the victim; 3) nullify and murder – the final one.

These are the goals of suppression, and there are as many ways to suppress as many good things ill−intentioned people can betray, infiltrate, pervert and twist into suppressive tools. Politics and religion, for instance, have been used to suppress during history. Now it’s the turn of Economics.