"Setting Aside Religion"   Victor knows the purpose of life is to survive and breed.  Other than thatit is only what you choose to make it.  If you don't survive long enough youcan't breed or having bred, you can't nurture and protect your young tomaturity.  Survival is primal.   To live, we require food and shelter.  (Medicine, education, armaments,etc. come under the two main headings.)  Group formation aids in securingand maintaining food and shelter.   Conquest of other groups secures additional land on which to carryon the process of life.  It may allow growth of the group by increasedbreeding activity and/or assimilation of the conquered population.Peoples may be eliminated to free up land and resources.  Thevanquished may also be enslaved.  If your group already consistsof masters and slaves conquest may result in an increase of wealthfor the masters.  More slaves equals more producers.   The armies required to expand or prevent being expanded upon alwaysconsist of trained slaves.  They are controlled by specially trainedoverseers (corrupted to officers).  Officers, like CEOs, politicians,judges and managers, are highly trained slaves who are entrustedwith the care of common slaves and rewarded with a comfortablesurvival.  Another way to acheive comfort to start one's own business.   The difficulty of starting a business is complicated by resistance fromexisting masters.  Directly or indirectly, the use of slaves will berequired for your business to succeed.  Masters are jealous of theirslaves.   Slaves are not directly provided with the means of survival.They are instead provided with tokens which they exchange for thenecessities of life.  Slaves produce these things themselves butthe goods are gathered and held by the masters who claim they areprivate property.  A claim that is backed up by police and armies(when necessary); who are themselves slaves owned by the masters.   Even though your business may not employ slave labor, you(presumably) profit in the tokens which symbolically represent theproduce of slaves.  The masters, as a group, want all the tokensreturned to themselves.  They cultivated the system for their ownbenefit and resent any upstarts use of their world!  It's not impossibleto become a master by starting your own business.  It's not impossibleto win the lottery or become a superstar.  Assign probabilities to thosepossibilities and compare them.   Perhaps you think the system is unfair?  Remember your training!If everyone tried to jump off the bridge at the same time there wouldbe no where to stand on the bridge.  Besides, the pile of bodies wouldsoon make the jump inefficient.  Those merely crippled would be aburden to society.  If we were all masters there would be no one toproduce anything and we'd all starve.  Granted, over the centuries thenumber of masters has increased (and some have been replaced).The number of rapists and murderers has also increased, like themasters, in proportion to the size of the population.  But there mustbe a ratio of maximum efficiency.   Currently, there are about 5% masters and 95% slaves.  The one intwenty ratio of excessively agressive and manipulative to passiveand dependent personalities seems to work pretty well so don'trock the boat! And, if you must assert yourself, certainly don'tattack the system!  Simply icorporate enough evil into youexistence to scare the masters (be careful not to get caught breakinglaws).  Then they will allow you to be like them.  You may turn on yourown and become a parasite.  Thus the system will be preservedand the notion that everyone gets what they deserve will be reinforced.A truly rebelious example could be disastrous.   However, you needn't concern yourself too much about the possibilityof a successful rebellion against exploitation of the majority by theminority.  The textbook example of how the system defends itselfoccured 2000 years ago.  Jesus Christ suggested giving away allproperty and emulating his way of life.  Apparently He was buildingquite a power base adn the authorities had to use force and guile tosuppress Him and His ideas.  Many of His followers were alsoexecuted before the empire could coopt the rest and return to normalbusiness.   It's seldom necessary to go to such extremes today, though violentrepression always lurks in the background.  Threats to the system areordinarily dealt with by withholding rewards.  The system rarelyresorts to physical abuse even when large segments of a populationare involved.  If changing technology and growing numbers of peoplemake many of us unnecessary to profitable production for the masters,the expendable slaves are starved to death or die of nutrition relateddiseases, lack of medical attention or exposure.  Who needs crossesand lions when we have joblessness and welfare reform?   I once asked Victor, "What chance do think there is that you'lldo any good"?   "Virtually none"!   "Then why do you bother"?   "It amuses me... what else do I have to do"? Snickering,"the probability that what I've written will go to thecommon heart and the people will rise up and throw off the6000+ year oppression of wealth and create a heavenly utopiais almost nonexistent and would be except for Shroedingerand Heisenberg who tell us that's impossible!  It's thatsmall; but still greater than my chance of getting a job inMBA ridden, living standard avalanching, service economy...And anyway, what else do I have to do?"				  (c)Copyright 1998. A.G. Kaiser