Men like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Trump represent a deficit in ideological thinking focused on the greater good. Brave voices are needed to assert our humanity.
What do bored billionaires do when their obscene hordes of money can no longer satiate them?
They reach for and align themselves with power, that’s what. And most times that power comes from political alignment, the ultimate megalomaniac fantasy and the only way to describe what is playing out in the global arena, as evidenced at US President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The trouble is that having money and power can be dangerous if one’s moral and ethical boundaries are blurred, and one is not guided by a progressive quest to use it for the greater good of society.
When I was at university learning about how ideologies were developed, contested and took hold to structure our society, the world felt like a place of possibility. It was a world alive with idealistic thinking that one could make some contribution, not only academically but intellectually, and ultimately through one’s actions.
Of course, that was 20 years ago, but when I think about it, that is a relatively short time for such thinking and efforts around building our society to be scuppered.
That is not to say that all ideologies are good, but at least then we existed in a time of…
