Some years ago, when I was an undergraduate student reading the forward to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, I came across a line where the poet was talking about the mournful Irish women of his childhood telling people sympathetically, but a bit bluntly, “they’ll just have to thole,” where thole was a word that meant suffering or endurance. Surely the Irish people have had to endure much suffering and plagues as a result of their unenviable position as one of England’s first imperial projects. Early imperial projects seldom fare well, as people generally do not like being ruled by empires in general and tend to react badly to coercion and exploitation.

In looking at the sorry state of the world today, it is not difficult to see where the crisis of legitimacy with governments all over the world comes from. What can be done about our problems, barring miraculous deliverance from our state, is a difficult matter. But the crisis of legitimacy is entirely easy to understand. People around the world are unwilling to suffer so that their political and economic elites can prosper. It is not remotely surprising, therefore, that any government that takes bailout money that is invariably attached to austerity measures that put suffering squarely on pensioners and middle class aspirants rather than on elites leads to massive political consequences. What is a wonder is that anyone could expect anything different.

It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that our world is in deep trouble. But elites, even those who trumpet over and over again environmental or economic problems, lack credibility when they themselves live a lifestyle of privilege while they tell everyone else that they have to live simply and sustainably and suffer to pay off the debts of the society as a whole. Al Gore made a film that he called “An Inconvenient Truth,” but as he flies around in private jets and lives in a 10,000 square foot house, he lacks the credibility to tell everyone else to suffer while he lives in luxury. And he is not alone in this problem–this is the way that elites in general behave. It is not statesmanship or proper leadership to claim that there are immense problems that require deep suffering that they do not take any part of. Instead, that is cowardice.

The way that leaders develop the credibility with those they lead to make difficult and painful decisions is to make sure that they are suffering more pain than anyone else. When someone is willing to suffer for your benefit, or at least so that you are required to suffer less, then how can you refuse to do your share in a state of general crisis. When leaders and elites demand others suffer while they are unwilling to reduce their own standard of living, but only give up a few token extras, if anything, then people have no trust whatsoever that the crisis is truly as grave as their leaders say. For if cuts have to be made, they should be made first to those who are the best able to take them, before anyone else in a more difficult position has to suffer anything at all. And leaders should be showing their own willingness to tighten their own belts before asking anyone else to suffer for the common good.

Why is this so hard to understand? Hardly anyone likes to suffer. I know I personally do not. But some of us (and I would flatter myself to consider myself among this group) are willing to suffer so that others have to suffer less who have less than I do. I’m certainly not a wealthy man with a comfortable standard of living, but I feel it is deeply unjust for anyone more vulnerable and distressed than I am having to suffer so that I can live in luxury and ease. I would rather go without myself so that someone else would not have their own survival threatened. But while all of this talking and storming about our economic crisis is going on, I do not see elites suffering at all. I do not see them changing their ways or tightening their belts so that the common people have to suffer less.

What I see instead is austerity forced on those who can bear it the least and not practiced at all by those who can bear it the most. This is deeply unjust. I am not hypocritical enough to insist that I have no personal blame or share in the greater distress of my society. I have done my fair share, perhaps more than my fair share, in the larger cultural wrong of squandering resources that has led to this global malaise. I am willing to forgive my debtors, so long as my own debts are forgiven. And I am aware that the well being of future generations may require me to suffer some. God only knows how much suffering is enough, but I am not willing to suffer while others who have far more than I do suffer not a bit at all themselves while they piously and hypocritically say that suffering is good and useful and important for the greater good all while they refuse to suffer at all themselves.

And this is where our world is at right now. This is the sort of behavior that leads elites to have their heads put on pikes by mobs of peasants with pitchforks and flaming torches. I do not speak in such drastic terms because I want revolution, but rather because there is only so much unjust suffering that can be borne before a society breaks down into a revolutionary situation. We are very close, if not already in, such a revolutionary situation ourselves. We all see the signs of crony capitalism and of elites profiting from the misery of the masses. We see bailouts being given to banks and large companies while ordinary people struggle under unsustainable burdens without any help whatsoever. This is not acceptable, and the solution to it is not for greater burdens of regulations to be placed on others, but rather for there to be an obvious recognition that the many cannot be expected to suffer for the benefit of the few and a public show of the suffering that elites are willing to bear to make the cost easier to accept for the greater society at large. Until this happens, the common people will not be willing to pay their necessary share for our common distress. Life’s not fair, but some unfairness cannot and will not be borne.