The Nails That Scratch The World, Continued

 I think my issue/concern about using the suffering of the world to empower your martial arts and become 'the nails that scratch the world' is that it doesn't truly lead to systemic change.

It's people fighting to be king of the hill. Or, as I discussed in previous posts, it's like the caterpillar pillar in Hope For the Flowers. 

They are determining who wins by who defeats the other in martial arts, so it's pretty much 'might makes right'... and if a better martial artist appears on the other side they may fight this battle again, and the results will change. 

All success in the battle to be king of the hill is temporary. 

One person might be lucky enough to win it and keep the position until they die, but then the chances of their successor or their successor's successor doing the same is - not good. 

Systemic change is... different.

For example, take terrorism.

I absolutely hate terrorism. I hate the suffering it causes, the sickening way they justify their violence, the way they deliberately target the innocent and vulnerable...

But in order to defeat terrorism, I don't want to kill every terrorist. 

To me, it's far more important to defeat the idea of terrorism as a viable strategy.

That is, if there's a group that wants to make some sort of change to happen and they're trying to figure out how to do so, I want anyone who suggests bombing a market or targeting civilians to get instantly shouting down as a fool or a moron. 

I want it glaringly obvious that such tactics are foolish and dumb and won't achieve anything worthwhile.

And that means I want a complicated strategy that involves whittling away at their support (whether by welcoming former terrorists who are trying to turn over a new leaf, or other such methods), preventing them from gaining supporters by making sure we don't act so badly that neutral parties start joining their side, and at the same time maintaining constant pressure and yes - lethal force - against the hardcore extremists who refuse to change course. 

Basically, anyone who thinks attacking civilian targets is a good idea needs neutralized.

By the same token, if you want to end suffering the goal shouldn't be to guillotine all the wealthy 1%-ers (or in modern terms, to 'eat the rich').

It might come to that, sure... but it would just mean changing who's at the top, and in a few generations the exact same problems will appear. 

Instead, I want it glaringly obvious that anyone trying to build a system that creates and then ignores human suffering is like building a house on sand. 

Your foundations are weak, and the house will never last.

The issue is not actually that some people have a ton of money. It's that they have a ton of money - because of a system that has failed to pay wages in keeping with inflation (which basically means workers have received a wage cut for decades. It just doesn't feel like it because nobody actually change the dollar amount they were getting.) 

I want a system like this to be considered as foolish as the mercantilism Adam Smith took aim at. 

That companies and top investors hoarding money just means they're all fighting each other for larger shares of the same pie, whereas if they truly want the economy (and more money that comes from having a slice of a larger pie) then they would care about making sure the lower socioeconomic classes had money to spend.

That not all of their wages were tied up in paying for room and board. (Seriously. This isn't magic, nor mysterious in the slightest. Just think about stimulus checks. The more discretionary spending the majority of people have, the more likely they can afford to buy unnecessary things that appeal to them... which means there's more of a market for whatever business idea you can come up with. Oh, and I have to wonder how many more people would maintain multiple news subscriptions or multiple streaming video options if they didn't feel limited on how much they could afford. In the current economy, nobody is going to be paying for Netflix + Amazon Prime + HBO Max + Disney Plus + you get the idea. Each of those have to compete with each other for subscribers, because most people don't have the extra money to pay for more than one or two. Unless they're such a fanatic about it that they're willing to sacrifice other things.)

I also want it to be glaringly obvious that having a system where many people can't afford healthcare is foolish in the extreme. Not just for the loss of life from people who can't afford simple treatments like insulin...

But loss of work hours because people put off treatment as long as possible, so what might have been a couple of missed days if they'd been diagnosed and treated early instead becomes weeks or months of absence.

Etc, etc. 

Basically, I want it to be considered good business sense to have systems that empower and enable people rather than exploit and ignore them.

And that only particularly foolish and incompetent business owners would try to use sweatshops or factories that externalize the costs to the environment. 

We don't need a 'race to the bottom', and the companies driving that race deserve to be ridiculed and penalized. (They haven't discovered some great new strategy... they've sacrificed their morals in a way that other companies refused to.)

Anyways... I've rambled on enough about what I'd like to see. There's hints of actual studies supporting all of that, so I don't think it's completely unrealistic... but it'll definitely be an uphill battle.

To draw this back to 'the nails that scratch the world', and the fight between the righteous and demonic martial arts sects...

It's not really enough. (If there's any truth to the idea that fear of Malcolm X is part of why Martin Luther King Jr. was able to accomplish as much as he did, I suppose there's a use for something that reminds the powers-that-be that they can lose it all if they ignore too much suffering... but just having a counter-reaction doesn't change the system itself.)