By IVOINE INGRAHAM

Every society in every country faces challenges not only from external threats but also from internal decay. Among the most corrosive forces within a community are those individuals who live not by honest effort but by attaching themselves to the labour of others. These people, much like leeches, drain sustenance while offering nothing in return. Their defining traits are insatiable appetite, warped entitlement, and a relentless drive to manipulate individuals and institutions for their own gain. They borrow without intent to repay, consume beyond their means, and treat the government not as an institution for the common good but as a bottomless purse meant to satisfy their desires.

Our social services programme, which provides much-needed assistance for those who have fallen on hard times, has gone far beyond the call of duty, but many exploit the system and couldn’t care less about who they deprive of getting the assistance needed.

Over time, this mentality does more than burden economies; it reshapes the culture. When entitlement is rewarded and system-gaming becomes a viable strategy for survival, the next generation grows up watching and imitating until parasitism is not the exception but the norm.

A distorted view of rights and responsibilities lies at the heart of the leech mentality. These individuals sincerely believe that because they are citizens, voters, or minimal contributors to society, they are entitled to unlimited benefits. To them, resistance from the government in meeting their demands is not fiscal prudence, but oppression. Any attempt to set boundaries, whether through budget cuts, eligibility requirements, or personal accountability, is met with outrage.

Many leeches are people who have already been given special favours and, like pigs to the trough, just can’t get enough. They will terrify whomever tries to get more and never want anyone to have more than them. It’s astonishing how heartlessness is commonplace.

This entitlement transforms into a weapon. Leeches lobby, protest, and pressure policymakers to increase their allowances, subsidies, or entitlements, not because of genuine need but because they have learned that relentless noise often achieves results. Their tactics rely on guilt, intimidation, and appeals to “fairness,” ignoring the fairness owed to those who actually foot the bill. The country suffers.

For these societal leeches, survival is not about cultivating responsibility, discipline, or skill but learning to exploit the rules. They spend their lives gaming the system—finding loopholes, exaggerating hardships, and presenting themselves as perpetual victims. Government programs designed as safety nets for the vulnerable become hammocks for those without interest in standing on their own feet.

This mindset is not harmless. It poisons the social order. Hardworking citizens, seeing manipulation rewarded as richly as labour, lose faith in fairness. The incentive to produce weakens when producers realise that their efforts are not merely taxed, but drained into a system that subsidises laziness and duplicity. Over time, honest work becomes devalued, while “cunning exploitation” becomes admired in some circles as cleverness.

It must be remembered that governments possess no wealth of their own. Every benefit or entitlement granted originates from the taxpayers’ pockets—the men and women who rise early, labour diligently, and shoulder the actual weight of society. As more people adopt the leech mentality, expecting the government to supply every need, the burden on these producers grows unbearable.

What results is a vicious cycle: the more resources are consumed by those unwilling to contribute, the less remains to support those in genuine need. The public purse becomes not a tool of compassion but a target of exploitation, weakened by unending demands and unsustainable expectations. Eventually, economies falter, and nations find themselves crippled not by a lack of resources but by their misuse.

The most insidious effect of this mentality is the lesson it teaches the next generation. Children do not merely hear what is said; they watch what is done. When they witness their parents or community members manipulate the system, pressure officials, or demand benefits without responsibility, they learn that such behaviour is normal, even admirable.

Instead of being taught the virtues of hard work, self-reliance, and sacrifice, these children see entitlement as a strategy. They observe that manipulation can secure food, housing, or luxuries without the sweat of labour. They refine these tactics in time, often surpassing their elders in creativity. The result is a self-reinforcing culture of dependency, a society of parasites that thrives not on production but consumption.

This generational cycle ensures that the problem is not temporary but enduring. Where once leeches were few, now they multiply. What begins as a failure of responsibility in one generation becomes a cultural inheritance in the next.

When this pattern takes root, a culture of parasites emerges. In such a culture, honest producers are scorned as fools, while manipulators are quietly admired for their cunning. Government becomes less a steward of justice and more a dispenser of spoils, constantly pressured to do more, give more, and tax more. Society fractures into two camps: those who carry the weight and those who demand to be taken.

The danger of this division cannot be overstated. A nation in which parasites outnumber producers is a nation in peril. Productivity declines, resentment grows, and eventually, the system collapses under its own weight. History offers repeated warnings from the decline of Rome to the stagnation of modern welfare states that indulgence in systemic exploitation leads to national weakness.

The leech is a person who lives by draining others. Like the parasite that swells with blood yet never ceases its hunger, these individuals are never satisfied. They pressure, manipulate, and exploit, all while insisting that their behaviour is justified. Worse still, they pass on this mentality to their children, ensuring that parasitism becomes a way of life rather than an aberration.

A healthy society cannot survive on such terms. Compassion must always be extended to the vulnerable, but compassion must not be confused with indulgence. A balance must be struck that protects people in need without rewarding exploitation and encourages self-reliance rather than dependency.

If society fails to draw this line, the leeches will multiply, and the public purse will eventually dry up. When that day comes, not only will the parasites be left without a host, but the entire nation will be left impoverished morally, socially, and economically.