According to last Sunday's Telegraph, the British-based Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, insinuates that the Russian Forbes Editor, Paul Klebnikov, was murdered for "telling lies" about himself and his fellow billionaires (Murdered writer 'was like a bull in a china shop'). I am not informed enough to form a definitive judgement on the matter, but under the circumstances, I think it far more likely for someone to be murdered for telling the truth than for telling lies. 

It seems to me that what has happened in Russia since the fall of Communism, with a small number of clever people grabbing vast amounts of wealth for themselves, is a classic and tragic case of man's lower, animal nature winning through against his higher, human nature. It is ironic, instructive and hardly coincidental that the attempt to impose "more human than animal" values on the Russian people (in the form of Communism) should have backfired so badly and produced a society in which man's animal nature dominates even more forcefully than in the West, which, through the rule of law, has sought to temper, harness and exploit man's animal nature.

When Jesus said, "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven", he should have let it stand, instead of immediately contradicting himself when challenged by adding that "for God all things are possible", i.e. even for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Although I suspect that the contradiction was added by some of his early followers who did not want to put off the rich from joining or supporting their sect. 

The fact is that the pursuit of and attachment to material wealth and power (which are closely related and often identical) is based on our more animal than human nature. Those who wish to progress spiritually (i.e. become less animal and more human - or, if you prefer the language of the Bible, to enter the kingdom of heaven) have to overcome their primitive urge for material wealth and power and put their talents to more enlightened use.

The trouble is that because of our animal origins we are all programmed (by our genes) and conditioned (by society) to be respectful, fearful, envious and desirous of material wealth and power, despite our protestations to the contrary and modern democratic society providing considerable, although still wholly inadequate, protection against their misuse.

In the West, the pursuit of wealth and power is regulated, albeit very inadequately, by the rule of law, but the underlying animal drive is ruthless and lacking all humanity, as exemplified by the tobacco industry's long, tenacious and continuing fight against regulation of its addictive, harmful, and for many lethal, products.

But it is not just the tobacco industry. Virtually every industry and everybody places their own (or their family's) material and financial self-interest above everything else, is encouraged and expected to do so, provided it is legal, of course.