The Cancer Stage of Economic Parasitism, 29

And this calls to our attention an even more fundamental basic: that a study of human conditions may well be mainly a study in suppression and PTSness. Which is exactly what is stated in the principle that, “Unless we can detect the social personality and hold him safe from undue restraint and detect also the antisocial and restrain him, our society will go on suffering from insanity, criminality and war, and man and civilization will not endure. Of all our technical skills, such differentiation ranks the highest since, failing that, no other skill can continue, as the base on which it operates – civilization – will not be here to continue it.”

A common concept has been made explicit in the term “necessity level”: how heavily a rusty bolt has to be hammered to unlock it? McMurtry’s idea mentioned by Nuri that “nothing short of a global cancer could effectively bring about a worldwide revolution to eradicate the capitalist cancer” is but an implementation of that concept, which in itself is universal. People get hammered more and more heavily by economic suppression in the form of economic parasitism until their necessity level is reached and they finally act. But at what cost?
What are the odds that the hammering damages the bolt beyond repair? As the hammer blows get heavier, what are the odds that instead of unlocking the rusty bolt breaks? As the hammer blows get heavier, what are the odds that the hammer or its sparking get out of control and cause disasters, and how many of them and how big? How many people are going to suffer how much? How many people are going to succumb?
It’s not just the common sense principle that prevention is better than cure; there’s more to it than meets the eye: not sparing people an ordeal that could be spared them is something I call a suppressive act.
Meaningfully, it has been said that “War rulers were deified and peacetime rulers forgotten no matter how many wars they prevented.”