Opus 2024-351: High Ground Parasites

There are people we run into you feel they have the high moral ground.  They are doing wonderful things, heartwarming things, things which makes society better.  This could be anything from people in a religious calling to enemies of flouride.  The net is thrown very wide with this thought.

Many people who claim to have the high ground and are working hard to convince other people that they should join them in their convictions. are basically living off of the sweat and equity of others.  Sometimes your dream is not possible in the world we live in.  One thing that comes to mind would be those who are into organic foods with no pesticides and no fertilizer.  This is a wonderful thought.  It’s something which would be great if we could all live that way.  But there is a reason why those kinds of foods are very expensive.  It’s because there is a very high rate of failure in their crops.  Bugs and various diseases tend to destroy fruits and vegetables that are not protected by pesticides.  If you have enough money, you can pay someone to watch carefully to pick off the bugs and bring you only the stuff that is golden.  I don’t think that the peasants doing the bug picking will live with the same level.  These people have the moral high ground in their own eyes, and they are parasites.

I think of the people in our country who are antiwar and nonviolent.  That is a wonderful position to take.  Some of them are thoroughly consistent and suffer at times because of their stand.  I salute them.  Others simply want to be more noble than those around them and when things get tough, they called the police.  Think of the citizens living in that exclusive community, I believe Martha’s Vineyard, who were very open minded regarding immigration until the governor of Texas sent a couple busloads into their neighborhood.  I only read the click bait headlines, but the impression I got was that they had the military called out and those dirty immigrants were removed from the upper class enclave almost immediately.  These people are parasites.

You can apply this logic to people in certain religious callings, who claim that they don’t worry about the physical things of life.  What they don’t point out is that their needs are met by the church, and by the common smelly working people who give to support the church.  It’s possible that they are parasites.  It’s possible that they are very genuine and serious and sincere, and actually producing more benefit to the community than they are taking.  The luxury of doing those noble things though is paid for by other people.  And a very real sense they are parasites.  Of course, I would be willing to accept the idea that there are some organisms which are like parasites because they live off of another organism, but give back in another way to balance the books.  I think it’s called symbiotic.

So think before you yell “parasite”.  Think before you refuse to yell it.  Examine your own life.  And don’t allow yourself to be put on a guilt trip because you don’t want to contribute to support their noble calling.

homo unius libri