Theories 101

My recent problem is that ever since my friend hipped me to the realities of banking I've been skirting the fringes in a manner I'm not accustomed. Case in point: "Zeitgeist" . I'd not even heard of this movie before last week but I watched it yesterday and it gave me a lot of food for thought. If you've not seen it, the general premise is that a select group of bankers rule the world and manipulate events so that they may keep the world in endless debt and thereby beholden to them. More or less, whether via organized conspiracy or no, that sounds about right to me. Perhaps not the manipulating events part but the general idea of ultra-capitalists is not a far fetched notion to me a'tall.

Over time I've come to believe that genetics and environment are the biggest pre-disposers of human behavior, the umbrella above class, ethnicity or race (note the order). A saying which encapsulates my feeling best is: "It takes all kinds to make a world." I think if one submits to a non-religious view of understanding human nature (which does not, I'd like to add, necessarily preclude religious faith), one eventually runs smack into Darwin to explain both the diversity and similarities between peoples. From this worldview, super aggressive, greedy folk -- - such as some bankers or, hey, how bout those financial products unit managers at AIG - - are but a necessary variation on the human theme. For years I've heard Warren Buffet trot out the same genetic/sociological explanation for his successes: "Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner." So why not a class of folk wholly or mostly lacking what we currently consider an appropriate amount of, um, shame or thought for the welfare of others? Could we call these people 'functional sociopaths'? Just marinate on that for a sec: how many people, from all walks of life, might we line up underneath the general heading of 'functional sociopath'? How about the functioning alcoholic who's just a tragic accident away from life imprisonment? Or the wife beater who is but an unfortunate blow away from the death penalty? Congress, as I write, is debating an appropriate manner by which to punish those responsible for bringing down our economy. But weren't these people simply doing what they do, being whom they are within varying degrees of excess? I'm not looking to absolve poor behavior, only to better contextualize it. Interesting to think about, yes?