I was commuting home from the city one day, and was seated at a window seat in the bus I was in. We were at a bus stage mid-way through the journey, next to a supermarket that was close to a shanty village nearby.
My attention was caught by some knocking on the bodywork by some passenger readying herself to board the bus. The knocking was coming from a cane in her hand as she was trying to find the entrance of the bus.
Once she found it, she slowly but carefully boarded and immediately started addressing the passengers in the bus about her plight and need for financial assistance.
As she was doing so, I was looking at her eyes to see if there was anything that I could pick that point to a problem with her eyes, as they seemed very normal, but she was looking into space as one would expect a blind person to.
I was seated near the back, so I could observe how she moved along the aisle as she went from passenger to passenger. I noticed she seemed to know where the passengers were seated and her eyes were more focused on the seated people as she moved forward, with her back turned to most of the passengers.
In my head I was thinking either she was partially blind, or she was puling our legs to benefit from our sympathy. Sure enough, as she turned back and started going towards the back of the bus, she caught me staring at her. When she got to where I was seated, she moved on swiftly without pausing in expectation of something from my pocket, which told me something wasn't completely right about her.
It got me thinking of how many of us use similar tactics to get the best of others, pretending to be disabled to get special privileges, mothers carrying friends' babies to beat impossible queues, guys pretending they're wealthy to get hot chicks, etc,etc.
Why can't life be straight forward for everyone? For anyone to get to the place where they have to figure out ways of beating established systems, it takes a trail of negative experiences towing the line or enjoyment derived from the sheer thrill of applying evil genius. Most where I come from have experienced the former.
In a system where corruption is handsomely rewarded and abiding by the law is a costly affair, most will subtly be pushed to favour systems that allow them to get away with wrongdoing, even if it means putting others in a disadvantaged position.
A good example is the proliferation of rug-pulls and honey-pots in the sh*tcoin scene, which take advantage of our hope for quick gains. the GameStop saga exposed the market manipulation habits of the whales in business, who use sophisticated tactics to get the best out of money-markets, stock exchanges, crypto exchanges, etc.
Photo by Natasha Hall on Unsplash
In every society, there is usually a point of "correction", "reballancing" and any other term that can be used to explain dissappearance of ancient cultures that happens throughout history. If these things described above keep happening over and over in society as we know it, at some point, something's gotta give.