My over-riding feeling when I read Shakespeare's "Macbeth" as a 13 year old was that it was an awful lot of words just to say: Grabbing power over other people is an empty pursuit and it will bite you in the bottom in the end. A poster would have sufficed.
And it seemed like such a backward step to devote so many beautiful words to obtaining the kind of insight we should have been born with. Been there, done that, why are we still talking about it? But humanity doesn't seem to have learnt from its mistakes. They're just repeated - over and over again through the centuries.
In history class, it was obvious from a cursory glance that, if you put enough pressure on the peasants, they would always revolt. Dictators do not last forever. There is a kind of swinging pendulum effect. It's just physics. So why do they still pop up with regularity? Haven't they read how the story always ends?
What are they thinking?
The same goes for mini-dictators; people who but for the opportunity to rule over nations, simply bully those within their smaller spheres of influence. Children rebel against bossy parents; wives leave or murder their abusive husbands; and so on.
Most of us are exposed to these facts at school, but how many of us actually take them on board in how we live our own lives? Probably not even the teachers do.
It's a strange, strange phenomenon.
Perhaps it's because we don't think of ourselves as the dictator. It's always someone else. So, if as you read this, you're thinking: "You've just described so-and-so", THINK AGAIN. It may apply to you.
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