Thank you, Augusto, so well spoken here. Humans, and other species too, acquire a sense of entitlement: my cat insists on sitting on my chest ! Our hope is that a ruler with a twisted sense, if I can call it that, will read in it an ownership of a 'commonwealth' society, with names like the royal Rao's of Baroda and Vijaynagar, Yew of Singapore and Mahathir of Malaysia as examples. Some belief systems shape minds and conduct, with Buddhism and Lutherism coming to mind. The first gave us Ashoka, and the egalitarian rulers of post 1947 Ceylon, the latter acccounts for the near utopian aura of Finland and Scandinavia. And now for group propriety: if an individual is solicited for gifts to a entire class of twenty scholars, should he expect to be stopped and greeted by, perhaps just one, of forty happy parents !
________________________________ From: augusto pinto pinto...@gmail.com : . . They also have the capacity to embody the aspirations of large numbers of people; they have the ability to mobilize people; they are opinion leaders ... These sorts of qualities are not very simple to acquire and retai. The problem with our politicians is their values: and these values are strangely just like our own. Like us they worship money. The difference is that unlike us who do what we do half heartedly, they take their God very seriously, and they do whatever it takes to appease this deity. This is why they are so successful in whatever they do.