Extras

Any child born in the last sixty years has probably dreamed of living in a Disney castle, queen or king of the kingdom, doling out justice, love and healing to the people below them.

We see ourselves as displaced rich people. The allure of movies like Gone With The Wind and Ben Hur is the similitude we find between ourselves and the people we admire.

Almost no one I know sees themselves as the buffoon, or bad guy.  And if there is some relationship with the poor person in the movie, we see ourselves as the exception.

I sometimes wonder if evolution has not only produced the features on my face and number of legs I have, but also conditioned me to live vicariously, and quietly, in the shadow of the few powerful and wealthy.  I grew up revering them and thinking they were all practitioners of noblesse oblige.

They in turn often unite the rest of us in feeling entitled and content with our underling status by giving us scapegoats in the guise of people of a different race, color, or religion.  We are allowed to rise up and barter for the same things over and over again so that we never get around to the real problems.

Life is never as simple as it appears in a movie.  And if it was, most of us would be extras.