Over the past few weeks I have spent a considerable amount of time contemplating current and recent world events. Needless to say, this has left me struggling with a rather distinct and pronounced sense of disquietude. As I mulled over the regime changes, financial crises, terror attacks, endless wars, resource conquests, social corruptions, and societal perversions that have happened and are taking place across the globe, I could not help but recall the incredibly incisive observation Nick Carraway makes about Tom and Daisy Buchanan near the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:
I couldn’t forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….
Fitzgerald’s penetrating insight about the nature of the elite, that small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth and political power, is still valid today, especially when applied to world events behind which the elite are almost always the architects and culprits. In fact, the notion that the elite are careless people who smugly feel that their actions are entirely justified despite the things and creatures these actions smash up has, in my opinion, never been more valid than it is today. And as is the case with Tom and Daisy, the elite today feel no shame or responsibility for the wastelands of destruction and agony their careless actions create and leave behind. Just like Tom and Daisy, I believe the global elite of our time act in a careless and confused manner and that their well-made schemes very rarely come off the way they had envisioned them. Of course this does not bother them too much because after they drown the world in unholy chaos they are perfectly content to retreat back behind their money and let others clean up the mess they have wrought.
I share Nick’s confusion about what motivates and unifies the elite. Like him, I cannot determine if it is money or power or just vast carelessness that keeps these rulers together and inspires them to plan and perpetrate ever new and ever horrendous sins against truth, beauty, goodness, and humanity, but I am certain of one thing – like Nick, I can’t forgive them and I can’t like them.
I couldn’t forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….
Fitzgerald’s penetrating insight about the nature of the elite, that small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth and political power, is still valid today, especially when applied to world events behind which the elite are almost always the architects and culprits. In fact, the notion that the elite are careless people who smugly feel that their actions are entirely justified despite the things and creatures these actions smash up has, in my opinion, never been more valid than it is today. And as is the case with Tom and Daisy, the elite today feel no shame or responsibility for the wastelands of destruction and agony their careless actions create and leave behind. Just like Tom and Daisy, I believe the global elite of our time act in a careless and confused manner and that their well-made schemes very rarely come off the way they had envisioned them. Of course this does not bother them too much because after they drown the world in unholy chaos they are perfectly content to retreat back behind their money and let others clean up the mess they have wrought.
I share Nick’s confusion about what motivates and unifies the elite. Like him, I cannot determine if it is money or power or just vast carelessness that keeps these rulers together and inspires them to plan and perpetrate ever new and ever horrendous sins against truth, beauty, goodness, and humanity, but I am certain of one thing – like Nick, I can’t forgive them and I can’t like them.
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