There are ideologies that build, and there are ideologies that can only take.

A society that produces nothing still has to eat. Someone, somewhere, has to work the ground. Someone has to grow the food, build the house, raise the children, discover the medicine, and keep the water running.

A power-based ideology has only two ways to solve that problem. It can create a slave class inside the pyramid, or it can raid the people outside it. Either way, the people at the bottom produce and the people above them take.

That is why it is a pyramid scheme. It does not survive by promising that no one will be enslaved. It survives by promising each new recruit that he will be the master. The slave is always someone else: the rich, the infidel, the weak, the wrong race, the wrong class, the wrong sex, the wrong tribe. The category can change. The structure does not.

People inside these systems can cooperate. Dictators cooperate. Rival tribes cooperate. Movements with contradictory doctrines cooperate. They do not need a shared vision of the good. They need each other to preserve the structure that lets them take.

One commandment to remember as you read:

“Do not covet.”

We need to understand what kinds of people *can* exist in society.

From birth, people differ in how they treat others. Every person is a result of many generations that survived, but there are many ways to do so.

Imagine the following scene:

You are walking down the street and see someone eating ice cream.

You want that ice cream.

What stops you from simply taking it?
Suppose the person looks weaker than you, so you could take it and walk away.

Some people would not do it because they would feel bad.
They dislike seeing others suffer.
That trait is almost hereditary: some children have more of it, others less. Then there is the opposite type: people who simply grab what they want.
They see ice cream, they want ice cream, and they take the ice cream.
Why not?
Most of us fall somewhere between those two extremes.
Reality is more complex and exists on a spectrum.
A person inclined to take what he wants might first look at the child and decide whether the child is “too fat,” then use that as a reason to take the ice cream. Some would not care at all. Some would need a justification and would look for one. Others, even if starving, would feel terrible doing it—especially if the other child is hungry.

That raises another question:
What do you do if you are starving?
Suppose you are in the desert, in real danger, and you need that ice cream.
Do you take it?
Of course, if you think like a Jew—and I hope you do—there is a third option: you ask.
You go to the other person and say,
“I am in this situation.
Please help me.
I need that ice cream or I will perish.”

People respond differently to that request as well.
Some would see that you need the ice cream more than they do and would give it without being asked.
Some are hungry themselves and do not notice until they are prompted, but they would still give it gladly.
Some would hesitate and say it depends.
And then there are the extremists on the other side: people who would lick the ice cream slowly while watching you perish. Those people exist too.

That is a reality we have to face.

Now add the wider social context: laws, witnesses, social punishment, or actual punishment.
Those who expect severe consequences will usually decide it is not worth it, even if they badly want the ice cream.
Others will weigh how much they want it against how severe the punishment is. This adds another layer of complexity.
Laws work well on people who are not at the extreme. They do not work as well on those who simply do not care what happens to them. They are very effective, however, on people who would take the ice cream if they were certain no one would ever know, but who will refrain if there is a chance the act will come back to them.
Some of you may be thinking: unless I am starving, why would I even consider taking someone else’s ice cream?
I would notice it, think “nice ice cream,” and keep walking.
Any other thought never arises.
Here another factor matters: not only laws, but values — and what you were taught at home, at school, in your community, or by people who popped in, dropped a truth-bomb, and popped out.
A law is something you calculate: what will happen if I do this? A value is ingrained. Even when you are alone and there are zero consequences, you still would not do it. You would simply think, “Why would I?”
You would not weigh consequences because the thought itself would not occur.
That is the crucial difference.

Yet the more natural impulse is often the opposite. If you are a little hungry, the ice cream is right there, and no one will ever know, why not take it? Doesn’t that make more sense?

If your parents taught you that a free ice cream is always the best opportunity, you might take it even if you do not want it. If Law (the 10 Commandments) taught you not to take other people’s things, the idea may never enter your mind.

Now imagine two people meeting.
One comes from a world in which you do not take other people’s things and should not even want them. The other thinks: grab whatever you can, and do whatever you must in order to grab it.
Situation A:
The first person is eating ice cream. The second person walks up and takes it. The first person is baffled. “What? That’s strange.” Unless the incident is extreme, he may shrug it off as an outlier, or he may call the police, depending on his personality and sense of threat.

Situation B:
The person who needs the ice cream is weak and cannot simply seize it. He begs: “I am in a bad condition. I need that ice cream.” The first person gives it to him. The second, the third. He has three ice creams; y'all have got none.

• The person who needs the ice cream can offer to repay the debt by working afterward, or he can offer to buy it if he has money. In a dire situation, there are alternatives.
• But if you grow up in a society where there are no consequences and everything you heard at home was “take whatever you can whenever you can,”
• then taking the ice cream is simply the easiest thing to do—easier than walking five meters to buy your own.

There is another option I did not mention earlier.

The moment the weak person eats it, recovers color, and feels strong again, he beats the first person and takes his wallet as well. Why not? That is what he was taught: take whatever you can, whenever you can.

He may be even more calculating.
“Can I stay one night?” You say yes. Then he does the same to your daughter, your children, and everything in your house after you have hosted him.
Something like that can destroy an individual. It also happens between nations, because nations have values.

If you take a child from that world into your house, you have a ticking time bomb.
I am sorry for those who do not see this.
Watch what happened to children kidnapped and raised by ISIS who later came home. Young children returned as complete sociopaths.

Even with modern psychology, it is almost impossible to undo.

You must be able to protect yourself.

"…(those) who found America too narrow told us that not only must we know other cultures and learn to respect them, but we could also profit from them. We could follow their lead

— Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind