Originally published September 16 2011
The root cause of crime (Opinion)
by Hesh Goldstein
(NaturalNews) Violence in modern societies is increasingly associated with property crimes as individuals are willing to resort to whatever means necessary to secure desired goods.
A kid steals a candy bar because he wants to enjoy the taste; a young man breaks into a house to steal a new stereo because he wants to enjoy listening to the latest tunes; a drug addict sticks up a grocery store, shooting the owner, in order to get the money he needs to get "high"; a bank executive embezzles a million dollars so he can run off with his girlfriend to enjoy life in the Bahamas; a woman murders her husband so that she can collect on his insurance policy. So what is the common motive behind these crimes? The answer obviously is the desire for sense gratification.
Criminologists and social scientists have almost completely overlooked the fact that materialism is the root cause of crime. False identification of the body as the self leads people to believe that sense enjoyment will make them happy and satisfied; and most crimes are directly or indirectly connected with the attempt to find satisfaction and sense enjoyment.
Daily, the mass media -- television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. -- saturates us with the message that the goal of life is sensual pleasure, and that success in life depends upon the acquisition of those objects that make such sensual pleasure possible. From a very young age we learn that we should strive to be the controllers and enjoyers of all we survey. We are promised that such "Lordship" is the way to satisfaction and happiness.
The criminal is just trying to follow this message the best way he knows how. He is just trying to be the central enjoying agent -- the Lord -- that he has been taught he needs to be. So he needs beautiful women. He needs a flashy car, fine clothes, a big house, all kinds of kitchen appliances, a big soft bed, a stereo, a VCR, a big flat screen TV, a gold watch, a yacht -- he needs, he needs, he needs!
Since no amount of sense gratification is ever enough to satisfy us, we always feel that we need "more". From the poorest person to the richest person, from the street person to the person who lives in a mansion, everyone wants more sense gratification and more material wealth. If you are poor, you feel you need a bigger TV to be happy; if you're rich, you feel you need a new yacht or a more expensive car. Enough is never enough.
So we have crooks from all income levels. The poor crooks commit crimes so they can get what they think they need; the rich crooks commit crimes so that they can get what they think they need. The street crook robs people so he can buy some nice clothes, a computer, and possessions of that kind; the corporate crook robs companies so that he can buy 50,000 acres of land or a new Lear jet.
The fact that there are at least as many "wealthy" criminals as there are "poor" criminals effectively destroys the materialists' theory that the root cause of crime is poverty and the solution to the crime problem is to make everyone rich. Obviously, if poverty were the cause of crime, then no wealthy people would commit crimes. Besides, the term "poverty" is relative. A poor American, for example, would be a wealthy Ethiopian.
In fact, criminals, whether rich or poor, are criminals not because they are poor or rich, but because they are in the illusion that material things -- material sense enjoyment -- will satisfy them. And, of course, the reason they are in this illusion is because they erroneously identify their body as themselves.
And because our materialistic society considers the acquisition of wealth and power to be the goal of life, the more wealth and power you possess, the more "successful" you are considered to be. If you are materially poor, you are considered a failure in life, whereas if you are wealthy and powerful (regardless of how you acquired such wealth and power), you are considered a great success. So, obtaining material wealth is not only essential for your direct sense gratification, but also for your feelings of self-worth. In other words, you feel only as valuable as the things that you possess and control. Lacking appreciation of your real value as an eternal, blissful spark of life, a child of God -- falsely identifying the temporary body as yourself -- you try to achieve feelings of self worth by the acquisition and control of material things. To achieve such economic development, you may end up engaging in illegal activity -- in other words, you might become a crook.
However, if you understand that you are not your body, then you will understand that a life of false Lordship and sense gratification will not satisfy you. Therefore, you will not see the gaining of material wealth and power as the goal of your life. You won't feel that you need things that in fact you don't really need. Therefore, you won't be driven to try to get something, "at any cost"-- including the cost of your life, someone else's life, or imprisonment.
The most ironic thing about a life of crime is that it is based on a lie -- the lie of materialism. The reason kids in poor neighborhoods idolize the local hoods is because they think that such hoods are happy. They see that by material standards the crooks are "successful"-- they've got nice clothes, jewelry, flashy cars, the respect of others, pretty girls, lots of cash, and so on. But if such kids knew that material wealth and false Lordship were not synonymous with happiness, then they wouldn't see crooks as successful. So it is this big lie -- the materialistic concept of success -- that causes many youngsters to follow in the footsteps of the hoods.
Children obviously would not be so eager to emulate these hoods if they knew that crooks are not really happy. So whether you are an educator, a producer of movies, television shows, popular music, or just a plain old mother, father, elder brother, elder sister, aunt, uncle, etc., you will really help the children if you try to teach them that material wealth and power are not synonymous with success.
Of course, no matter what you and I do, the big lie will continue. The influential materialists are not going to tell the truth. Instead of telling the children that the hoods are not happy even though they are rich, the materialist tells them that one day the hood will get caught and be sent to prison, and then he will suffer. In prison, they say, the crook will be poor and powerless. So in this way they are saying that the criminal is happy as long as he is not in prison. Now, children know that criminals are rarely caught, and those who are caught are out of sight -- no longer seen by the children. Therefore, the criminals who are seen regularly by those who are not in jail are the ones who are "happy". So as far as the kids are concerned, crime does pay.
Important sociologists, criminologists, and psychologists sit around doing million-dollar studies searching for the root cause of crime. But they just can't seem to find it, even though it's staring them right in the face. Materialism is the root cause of the crime problem. But for the materialists to acknowledge materialism as the root cause of crime would be a self-indictment -- like pulling out the rug from under their own feet.
Materialism is the foundation of their own personal lives; it is also their avowed ideology. This entire consumerist," success"-oriented society is based on materialism. To acknowledge materialism as the cause of crime is to acknowledge that the root cause of crime cannot be destroyed without cutting out the very heart of our modern, hedonistic "civilization". Unable to accept the bankruptcy of their "religion" of matter worship, they plead confusion and ignorance, and ask for more funds to do further studies. The fact is that the crime rate will continue to remain high as long as people are ignorant of their true identity and are bombarded with the message that more sense gratification will equal more satisfaction and happiness. As long as success in life is gauged by the amount of material goods amassed, the crime problem cannot be solved.
The high rate of crime is a radical problem, one that requires a radical solution. We, the masses of people, must fundamentally change the way in which we view ourselves, the world, others, and the goal of life. Such a re-education of the masses through the schools and media would obviously take several decades at least. Nor is it likely that the powerful economic forces controlling the mass media would cooperate in the effort to produce such enlightenment. After all, these forces have a vested interest in keeping us materialistic. These economic forces want us to be in a position where we are always trying to enjoy our senses, but are never completely satisfied. If we remain in such a "wanting" condition, we will remain consumerist zombies -- easy to manipulate and to exploit.
We would stop being good "markets" if we stopped viewing sense gratification, and therefore the acquisition of material wealth, as the goal of life. In short, we would be lousy slaves, no longer responsive to the promptings of advertisers promising satisfaction to whoever buys their product.
So it is unlikely that the powerful propagators of materialism and hedonism will do an about-face just to help reduce the crime rate. Therefore, we can expect the crime rate to continue to climb.
This could very well lead to the breakdown of our democratic society. Throughout the United States, the cries for more law and order are getting louder. We are tired of being prisoners in our own apartments. We want to be able walk the streets again without fear of being raped, mugged, or murdered. We want the criminals behind bars.
This is only natural. External, socially administered laws, as well as prisons and jails, are meant for those individual members of society who do not have, or do not abide by, internal laws. If you can't or won't control your own sensual desires and actions, then society has to step in and do it for you. The desire to enjoy some sense object may pressure you to steal something, but you can say no to that desire. If you are successful at controlling your desires and actions, then there is no need for society to control your body for you. But if you cannot control your desires and end up stealing, then the officers of an external control enter the picture.
The need for external control exists when there is no internal control. The cry for increased law and order is a petition for increased external control. And it has come about because of the alarming increase in the number of people who have no internal control -- i.e., the increase in the number of hedonists.
The call for a crackdown on criminals has justifiably frightened many civil libertarians. They see it as a move towards totalitarianism and fascism. They, like most of us, feel that a police state is at least as undesirable as a society teeming with criminals. They correctly fear that in our attempt to solve one problem, we may end up creating an even bigger problem. Unfortunately, however, although most civil libertarians are aware of the dangers of America's becoming a police state, they cannot keep it from happening. This is because they have no solution to the crime problem.
The more society becomes like a wild jungle, the louder world the cry for law and order become. The demand for order is simply a natural and inevitable reaction to the chaos. There was no way to keep totalitarianism at bay unless the level of crime is brought under control.
A free, democratic society can exist only as long as most of the individuals within that society have at least a fairly good grip on their senses. If we were all completely satisfied internally and if we could all control our minds and bodies, then there would be no need whatsoever for laws or external forces of control, such as police. Of course, such a perfect society is not feasible and practical terms. But, the more internal control more of us have, the less need there is for external controls over us. Conversely, the less internal control we have, the more external forces are needed to control us. So our freedom and democracy depends upon our ability to restrain and control our desires and actions.
The all-pervasive message of hedonism continually eats away at our ability, and even our desire, to control our senses. The mass media has successfully manipulated people into feeling that anyone who tries to control his senses is a weirdo or an outcast. The homosexual isn't strange -- the celibate is. The promiscuous 17-year-old who has had three abortions fits in, but the 17-year-old virgin does not. We have been taught that "free" people are those who do whatever they feel like whenever they feel like it. In classic Orwellian doublespeak, the media has labeled the enslaved "free" and has even made these "free" souls feel pity for those of us who are "enslaved" by so-called "inhibitions", "hang-ups", and the "outdated belief" that we should control our senses instead of being controlled by our senses. In this way, hedonism erodes the very foundation upon which our democratic society stands.
People think that poor people commit more crimes because they don't have as much as they need and this is why there's a lot more poor people in our prisons. All this shows is that poor criminals cannot afford lawyers to keep them out of jail. Furthermore, the kinds of crimes that poor crooks engage in are quite different from those carried out by the "' rich" crooks. Every middle and upper class person who cheats on his tax return is stealing as much or more than a burglar. And the IRS estimates that there are literally millions of such tax cheaters. They bilk the government out of over $100 billion a year, yet these people just aren't caught, that's all. There are also millions of middle and upper class white-collar criminals, who are also never caught. The emphasis in law enforcement just isn't on such crimes. The poor criminal has to do his thing on the street level, where there's a greater chance of confrontation with those who would stop him. Therefore, there is not only a greater chance of his getting caught, but also a greater potential for violence. And it is the violence that law enforcement agencies tend to focus on. So just because there are more "poor" criminals in prison doesn't mean that there are more poor criminals.
The thinking that most "poor" criminals steal out of a genuine physical need is nonsense. Do you really believe that the guy who robs a liquor store takes that money and buys a loaf of bread for his starving mother? That's pure naivete. Such petty thieves spend the money on flashy clothes, cars, jewelry, and, more than anything else, drugs like cigarettes, alcohol, pot, heroin, and crack. Studies have shown that most crimes are committed by a relatively small number of thieves, each of whom commits hundreds of crimes a year. These guys are mugging and robbing primarily for dope money. Otherwise they would be rich, right? If a guy commits an average of one of two robberies the day and averages say $100 a hit, you're looking at between $40,000 and $80,000 of tax-free dollars a year. In other words, the so-called "poor criminal" who commits most of the street crimes isn't poor at all - unless you call someone with a $40,000 - $80,000 yearly income, poor.
You might think that it's their addiction to the drugs that leads them to commit the crimes, and if their use of drugs is due to being poor and frustrated, then poverty is the root cause of crime. But the reality is that the frustration due to being poor may be an immediate cause of their turning to drugs and thus to crime - but it's not the root cause. If poverty were the root cause, then people who are not poor to begin with would not be frustrated and would not be turning to drugs. But people who have been wealthy their entire lives are also frustrated and also into drugs.
A poor person may be frustrated because he sees all the advertisements for the goodies, but he doesn't have the money to buy them - so he takes drugs to forget his frustration. The rich person, on the other hand, has the goodies that are supposed to satisfy him, but they don't. So he's also frustrated and he turns to drugs to forget his misery. By the way, the "rich" person may also turn to crime in order to help pay for his drug habit. But, due to his position in society, his crimes are less noticeable, so he's less likely to be caught. In any case, it's clear that the root cause of crime - at least in the West - is not the lack of the basic necessities of survival but the lack of wisdom and inner spiritual satisfaction.
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About the author:
I have been doing a weekly radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called "Health Talk". In 2007 I was "forced" to get a Masters degree in Nutrition because of all the doctors that would call in asking for my credentials. They do not call in anymore. Going to www.healthtalkhawaii.com enables you, among other things, to listen to the shows. I am an activist. In addition to espousing an organic vegan diet for optimum health, I am strongly opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation and everything else that the pimps (Big Pharma, Monsanto and the large food companies) and the hookers (the doctors, the government agencies, the public health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the tricks.
After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child I developed asthma. After taking the organic sulfur crystals (they are harvested from the pine trees in Louisiana) in November of 2008 for 10 days my asthma reversed and has not come back over 4 years later, 18 cases, so far, of autism have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, osteoarthritis, joint pain, astigmatism, gum disease, increased sexual activity, heavy metal and radiation elimination, parasite elimination, free radicals elimination, faster athletic recovery time, increased blood circulation, reduced inflammation, resistance to getting the flu, reduction of wrinkles, allergy reduction, reduced PMS and monthly period pain, nausea, migraines and so much more. And it's only possible because of the oxygen it releases that floods the cells of the body. The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids. You can find out more about this incredible nutrient also on my website - www.healthtalkhawaii.com -.
My book, "a Sane Diet For An Insane World", has been published. It can be viewed at
www.asanediet.com.
I have been doing a weekly radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called "Health Talk". In 2007 I was "forced" to get a Masters degree in Nutrition because of all the doctors that would call in asking for my credentials. They do not call in anymore. Going to www.healthtalkhawaii.com enables you, among other things, to listen to the shows. I am an activist. In addition to espousing an organic vegan diet for optimum health, I am strongly opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation and everything else that the pimps (Big Pharma, Monsanto and the large food companies) and the hookers (the doctors, the government agencies, the public health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the tricks.
After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child I developed asthma. After taking the organic sulfur crystals (they are harvested from the pine trees in Louisiana) in November of 2008 for 10 days my asthma reversed and has not come back over 4 years later, 18 cases, so far, of autism have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, osteoarthritis, joint pain, astigmatism, gum disease, increased sexual activity, heavy metal and radiation elimination, parasite elimination, free radicals elimination, faster athletic recovery time, increased blood circulation, reduced inflammation, resistance to getting the flu, reduction of wrinkles, allergy reduction, reduced PMS and monthly period pain, nausea, migraines and so much more. And it's only possible because of the oxygen it releases that floods the cells of the body. The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids. You can find out more about this incredible nutrient also on my website - www.healthtalkhawaii.com -.
My book, "a Sane Diet For An Insane World", has been published. It can be viewed at
www.asanediet.com.
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