Sadistic Pavlovians

“The most powerful positions are those which control some crucial area of uncertainty.”[1]

One of the most disturbing ways to achieve control is to randomly award and punish. In this way, the individual being controlled is constantly perplexed as to whether he is doing well or badly. He continues to strive for the occasional windfall and condemns himself when his “luck” fails him. Since the financial roller coaster is a shared experience, there is a common bonding with others “in the same boat” and a sort of Stockholm Syndrome persists. Perhaps it is not the game, but our willingness to play it, to believe in it, to ascribe our hopes and dreams, our progeny and our legacy to it, that makes it so sickening. How many generations of sons and daughters have become lawyers, doctors, politicians, stockbrokers, in the hopes that they, too, could play the game? The game is rigged, or rather, we are not the ones playing it, we are the pieces; we are pawns moving ahead, moving back, being sacrificed. We are being played, and on some level, we know it.