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Instead of Being Disgusted by Poverty, We are Disgusted by Poor People Themselves
Empathy has crashed. No more cruel to be kind. We must simply be cruel.
She is there whenever I go the shops. Every time I think she can't get any more skeletal, she manages it. Wild eyes staring in different directions, she must have been pretty once. I try not to look, for she is often aggressive. Sometimes, though, she is in my face and asking me to go into the shop, from which she has been banned, to buy her something. A scratchcard. She feels lucky. "Maybe some food?" I suggest pointlessly, but food is not what she craves. Food is not crack. Or luck. She has already lost every lottery going.
An addict is the author of their own misfortune. Her poverty is self-inflicted. All these hopeless people: where do they all come from? It is, of course, possible never to really see them, as their distress is so distressing. Who needs it? Poverty, we are often told, is not "actual", because people have TVs. This gradual erosion of empathy is the triumph of an economic climate in which everyone, addicted or not, is personally responsible for their own lack of achievement. Poor people are not simply people like us, but with less money: they are an entirely different species. Their poverty is a personal failing. They have let themselves go. This now applies not just to individuals but to entire countries. Look at the Greeks! What were they thinking with their pensions and minimum wage? That they were like us? Out of the flames, they are now told to rise, phoenix–like, by a rich political elite. Perhaps they can grow money on trees?
Meanwhile, in the US, as this week's shocking Panorama showed, people are living in tents or underground in drains. These ugly people, with ulcers, hernias and bad teeth, are the flipside of the American dream. Trees twist through abandoned civic buildings and factories, while the Republican candidates, an ID parade of Grecian 2000 suspects, bang on about tax cuts for the 1% who own a fifth of America's wealth. To see the Grapes of Wrath recast among post-apocalyptic cityscapes is scary. Huge cognitive dissonance is required to cheerlead for the rich while 47 million citizens live in conditions close to those in the developing world.
This contradiction is also one of the few things we in the UK are good at producing. I heard a radio interview recently with a depressed young man with three A-levels (yes, in properly Govian subjects) who had been unemployed for three years. The response of listeners was that he was lazy and should try harder. Samuel Beckett's "fail better" comes to mind. Understanding what three years of unemployment does to a young person does not produce a job, any more than the scratchcard will change a crackhead's life. But pure condemnation is divisive. This fear and loathing of those at the bottom is deeply disturbing.
Three years ago I was on a panel with Vince Cable at The Convention of Modern Liberty, when Cable was still reckoned a seer for predicting the recession. He said then that the financial crisis would mean civil liberties would be trampled on. But what stuck in my mind was a sentence he mumbled about the pre-conditions for fascism arising. Scaremongering? The emotional pre-condition is absolutely this punitive attitude to the weak and poor.
Our disgust at the poor is tempered only by our sentimentality about children. They are innocent. We feel charitable. Not enough, perhaps, as a Save the Children report tells us that one in four children in developing countries are too malnourished to grow properly. Still, malnourishment isn't starvation, just as anyone who has a mobile phone isn't properly hard-up. Difficult to stomach maybe, but isn't all this the fault of the countries they live in?
At what point, though, can we no longer avoid the poor, our own and the global poor? Or, indeed, avoid the concept that frightens the left as much as the right: redistribution, of wealth, resources, labor, working hours. Whither the left? Busy pretending that there is a way round this, a lot of the time.
The idea that ultimately the poor must help themselves as social mobility grinds to a halt is illogical; it is based on a faith for which there is scant evidence. Yet it is the one thing that has genuinely "trickled down" from the wealthy, so that many people without much themselves continue to despise those who are on a lower rung.
The answer to poverty, you see, lies with the poor themselves, be they drain-dwellers, Greeks, disabled people, or unemployed youth. We will give them bailouts, maybe charity, and lectures on becoming more entrepreneurial. The economy of empathy has crashed, and this putsch is insidious and individualized. No more cruel to be kind. We must be simply cruel.
The argument that there is enough to go round is now a fairytale, like winning the lottery. Poverty is not a sign of collective failure but individual immorality. The psychic coup of neo-liberal thinking is just this: instead of being disgusted by poverty, we are disgusted by poor people themselves. This disgust is a growth industry. We lay this moral bankruptcy at the feet of the poor as we tell ourselves we are better than that.
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Show AllIsn't Willy Romney "unemployed"? If he's so lazy, then why is he wealthy? Hmmm. Anyway, maybe this is the reason the candidates or politicians cannot "fix America" or the economy. The only unemployed people they know are wealthy and that's their only view of "poverty". I wonder how many of these self agrandizing blow-hards could survive without any money but just a T.V. and claim they were not poor.
It is a myth that people get rich by working hard. The primary reason that people are rich is that they inherited wealth and in some cases because they built on that inherited wealth. The second way they get rich is by being ruthless - in other words they steal their wealth, either within the law or outside of the law. It pays to be a sociopath.
Hard work is rarely a path to great wealth; it does happen, but not as often as by winning the lottery.
Donald Trump, George Bush 2.0 come to mind.
Or, as John Lennon put it, "First you must learn how to smile as you kill,
if you want to be like the folks on the hill."
IMO, Working Class Hero even tops Dylan's many jewels regarding social protest songs. Good quote, too.
"All these hopeless people: where do they all come from?"
They come from the dead parts of our brains that rot in our skulls while we carry out orders from our elite masters, to konsume, konsume, konsume, race, kompete, win!
"An addict is the author of their own misfortune. Her poverty is self-inflicted. All these hopeless people: where do they all come from? It is, of course, possible never to really see them, as their distress is so distressing. Who needs it? Poverty, we are often told, is not "actual", because people have TVs. This gradual erosion of empathy is the triumph of an economic climate in which everyone, addicted or not, is personally responsible for their own lack of achievement. Poor people are not simply people like us, but with less money: they are an entirely different species. Their poverty is a personal failing. They have let themselves go."
it's true, suzanne's description of how the poor are characterized by the middle class and the rich. reminds me of another time, when people were falsely characterized as something else. although it's painful to examine, it is instructive to go back in time and see how propaganda is used to marginalize those who do not have the political clout to protect themselves.
Der Ewige Jude. English Subtitles 1/7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnWqko2AOiQ&skipcontrinter=1
the callous malicious discontent projected towards the poor is merely a reflection of what we've become as a nation. war mongers who huddle around our electronic blankets as those other people live, suffer and die (or do whatever it is the other does).
...peace...
Great Nations are measured by how they take care of their own. Enough said.
A silly essay by a silly journalist.
Susan Moore does not realize that the Progressive/Socialist policies - endemic in Governments in the US, Canada, and Europe - is the main cause of the decreased empathy for the poor. The Welfare State encourages the poor to consider poverty as an asset without which the poor cannot get the welfare benefits. Eventually the Welfare State will run out of other people's money.
There is a difference between being generous and being a fool. On airplanes, one (the adult) is instructed that, in times of emergency, to put on one's own oxygen mask before helping the child to put on its own mask. It is logical: you need to assure one's own foundation before helping others. Many Samaritans, who cannot swim, dive into the water to rescue a child and drown. 2 people dead. Pity.
Suzanne Moore states:"This gradual erosion of empathy is the triumph of an economic climate in which everyone, addicted or not, is personally responsible for their own lack of achievement."
Reply: Incorrect. If there is an erosion of empathy, it is due to the SOCIAL climate cultivated by the Progressive/Socialist which clashes with the Conservative social culture. In the past, it was no shame to work as a toilet cleaner and somewhat shameful to be on the dole. Now, it is shameful to work as a toilet cleaner (the work that Brits won't do but the Poles will) and somewhat a point of pride to be able to be on the dole. In the past, with few Government regulations and constraints, people are personally responsible for their own lack of achievement. But now, with Government restrictions and Government becoming more Socialist, people are actually less responsible for underachievement. The paradox is that the Progressive/Socialist claiming to be empathetic to the poor is the main driver of poverty.
Suzanne Moore states:"Look at the Greeks! What were they thinking with their pensions and minimum wage?"
Reply: A statement of an immature mind. Let us compare Greece and Japan. Greece has an average personal savings rate close to zero. Japan average savings rate is about 15%. The Debt/GDP ratio for Japan is more than 220% while that of Greece is 168%. And Greece is in a bigger mess than Japan. Why? Because Japan's sovereign debt is 95% owned by the Japanese themselves and only 5% is owed to non-Japanese. For Greece all of its sovereign debt is owed to foreigners, mostly Germany. It has nothing to do with pensions and minimum wage. It has a lot to do with National and Personal cultures and value systems.
Suzanne Moore states:"bang on about tax cuts for the 1% who own a fifth of America's wealth. ... Huge cognitive dissonance is required to cheer lead for the rich ..."
Reply: Lots of silliness in the statement. The tax cuts relate to capital gains. Capital Gains result from productive entrepreneurial activity. Sweden, more Socialist than the US but becoming less Socialist with time, has a lower Capital Gains tax than the US and a HIGHER personal income tax rate than the US. Why? Swedish economists say that the entrepreneur can leave the country faster and easier than the common citizen. There is no cognitive dissonance to cheer lead the rich since if the rich leave, the means of production go silent and the poor become poorer. Now the poor may take over the means of production but the Progressive/Socialist Government perversely put barriers between the poor and economic and cultural well-being.
Suzanne Moore states:"redistribution"
Reply: A vague and evil concept. Who is going to determine the redistribution mechanism? Who is going to determine from whom to take and to whom to give and what amount? The word "freedom" does not appear in Ms Moore's essay. The work "Liberty" shows up as "Modern Liberty". What is "Modern Liberty", in contrast to "non-Modern Liberty" or just plain "Liberty"? Ms Moore does not say. Her essay is so much mental masturbation.
Suzanne Moore states:"The idea that ultimately the poor must help themselves as social mobility grinds to a halt is illogical;"
Reply: Incorrect and stupid. Many thousand years ago, all of humanity was poor. And yet today, many people are rich. Poor people had - by themselves - lifted themselves from poverty. And they can do the same today if not for the malignant empathy of the Progressive/Socialist. The Progressive/Socialist is keen on subsidies and said subsidies are the cause of the so-called social immobility. Allow the enterprises of the rich (or anybody else for that matter) to fail through the mechanisms of the free market and allow the entrepreneurs amongst the poor to pick up the assets.
To quote Mark Twain: "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Your little rant here rests upon several false premises. Once those are exposed, nothing remains but a mean-spirited and anti-social attitude. I strongly suspect that, as is true in most cases, your mean-spirited attitude came first and your so-called "philosophy" came subsequent to that as a justification for that attitude.
You assume that people object to "success." That is false. The objection is to access to capital giving certain individuals the ability to control and harm others. Achieve success to your heart's desire, but try to control and dominate others and there will be resistance. Success and wealth are one thing. Using wealth to control others is another matter entirely. You fail to make the distinction, and misrepresent the viewpoint of those objecting to your "philosophy."
You are correct when you say that many progressives and liberals would seek to create dependency, and use government to control and dominate people. However, you are incorrect when you propose "free enterprise" as the alternative, and you thereby set up a false choice. If creating dependency is the problem, a society controlled by the wealthy few does not prevent that problem. That means that your objection is not really to dependency being created. Rather, you think that people should be dependent upon the wealthy few, and not dependent upon government. That is not, as you claim, an argument for "freedom" but rather an argument over who should do the enslaving. You say that it is better to have those who have amassed capital to control and dominate people.
You cannot possibly deny that the wealthy few control and dominate the rest of us. Your way out of that dilemma is to claim that any or all could become wealthy and become one of the dominant ones. Leaving aside whether or not that is true, your argument still collapses because there is no reason to believe that achieving a dominant position within the public sphere is any less likely than achieving dominance in the public sphere. I think you know that, and in fact resent any such success.
You make the false claim that the human race lived in poverty, and that then a few individuals - themselves and by themselves - lifted themselves out of poverty, and that therefore these few should be left entirely unrestrained because the only alternative is that we all fall back into poverty. The historical record, as well as logic and common sense and accurate perceptions of objective reality, demolish this claim. In any case, it is incumbent upon you to support that absurd notion, and I do not believe that you can do that. It might be interesting to see you try.
You say that "many thousand years ago, all of humanity was poor." Do you mean Egypt? Rome? China? Your assertion is laughable. 300-400 years ago most people in the UK were poor. A replacement then arose, a substitute to feudalism, that allowed a few, previously poor, to ascend. But that ascension came as the direct product of the greater impoverishment of the many. There is not ambiguity or controversy about this. It is not about "philosophy," but rather historical fact. With the rise of Capitalism. poor people who had previously been living in cooperative agricultural communities were driven from the land and herded into ghettos in the cities where they became a desperate and easily exploitable source of labor. This process was then repeated around the world, and goes on to this day.
You then object to redistribution. "Who is going to determine the redistribution mechanism? Who is going to determine from whom to take and to whom to give and what amount?" You imply that redistribution is not already going on, yet another absurd and unsupportable notion. Yes, who is determining how wealth is redistributed? That is a very good question. Wealth is now being redistributed from labor, from those actually doing the work, actually holding society together, into the pockets of the predatory few, those who seek to smash society apart and who seek to benefit from the labor of others and to then control and dominate them.
Would you deny that you are antagonistic to society, are working against holding society together, are hostile to those advocating cooperative and communal efforts? Your pathetic attempt to recast selfishness as a civic virtue, as moral, is common among self-styled "libertarians." It is so illogical and absurd that it is a mystery to me how anyone could present it as a "philosophy" or even as a serious point of view.
There are dozens of other absurd and illogical statements in your rant.
You make the bigoted claim that "National and Personal cultures and value systems" explain why people in one place are suffering and others are not. Would you say that the reason that imperial Great Britain prospered while the people of the Indian subcontinent suffered under colonialism can be explained by superior "National and Personal cultures and value systems" in England over those people? Is genocide against the indigenous peoples of North America explained in this way? Slavery?
You make the absurd claim that "if the rich leave, the means of production go silent and the poor become poorer." How then, did humanity survive for so going without capitalists? Would you suggest that when the rich feudal lords were overturned - when they "left" - that the means of production went silent and the poor become poorer?" How about when the rich plantation owners were stripped of their power to own other human beings? Did the poor become poorer?
"When the rich leave the poor become poorer." Do you have any sense at all what a howler that one is? LOL.
One final thought: does your mother know what you are doing? You would have us believe that life started when you reached puberty and became obsessed with establishing your independence and that everything revolves around you. At the same time it is quite apparent that your adolescent efforts were unsuccessful and the anxieties and unresolved issues stemming from that have been carried into adulthood and now express themselves as a so-called political "philosophy." Every single complaint you have about human interdependence, the "malignancy" of the ethic of helping others and working cooperatively and of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, could be applied with equal validity to motherhood itself. We have to assume that you benefited from that.
friedfish2718, long story short: you're talking out of your arse.
[I saw his eyes again last night.] But he was Hong Kong,
1968, he lived on a platform on a median strip.
And as commerce rushed past on its way to a deal,
he was starving to death, to their cars just a blip.
His fairy tale: 'The clothes that had no emperor'
(he held vanishing court over lifeless legs).
'Till one day...gone, yet he gifted me
those beseeching eyes as he begs.
I saw them again in San Salvador,
pulled to our table by her withered mom.
Hands out, pleading. Dad said, "Don't give
or like 'Night of the Living Dead', they'll swarm.''
So, women versus men, they stood there mute.
Heads down, ashamed, weakening as we ate.
But not going anywhere, 'till ya wanted to yell!
'Til that futile 'indebtedness' turned sorrow to hate!
Those eyes again, only just last year.
When, left behind by her countrymen,
in Kazakhstan, blond Russian girl
Statistic of empires cold hubris again.
A group of kids, really, hands out in hunger.
You avoided their eyes, tried not to turn.
But late at night, when the tube goes off,
the eyes come on. They accuse. They burn.
The poor and unemployed, the rejects of society, are useful tools to keep the rest in line, prevent them from making too many demands.
"Poverty, we are often told, is not "actual", because people have TVs"
and microwaves too!
As the numbers of poor and homeless are increasing, more municipalities have made it illegal to sleep in public, to wash in public, even to lie down in public, and then we spurn the poor for being tired, hunger, and unwashed. Didn't Dante describe a special place in the Inferno for people who treat the poor this way? Didn't Jesus command the rich to sell everything they own and give the money to the poor?
Truly Machievellian isn't it? I'm thinking today's leaders are all well versed in the guidelines of royalty outlined in the "Prince".
I am thinking if a "messiah" was to visit earth as a pauper, he wouldn't be invited into many homes or hearts. S/He'd have to do a pee test and have a credit check first. And since he or she would lack a valid ID, address or even a Visa the individual would probably face at least temporary incarceration for vagrancy.
Being a "divine" messenger, the individual would not espouse any allegiance to a particular, race, nation or organized religion and thus would probably be held indefinitely for suspected terrorism or sedition.
More likely - chased down, threatened, arrested, detained, and deported as "illegal" and as an "alien."
And even more likely considered "insane" and put away in a mental institute for proclaiming and telling the truth ....
Cat in Seattle
The War on Poverty is officially ended and the War on the Poor is escalating. One can only wonder what is hoped to be won by the battle.
it is helpful and remarkable that this article reflects my experience and characterizes people's attitudes towards the poor in Canada and as Suzanne does in the U.K. yes we are perceived to be lower than working people and our tv's and telephones supposedly prove we're not suffering. but if tv's and telephones existed 2 hundred years ago, would not the slaves have them along with indoor plumming and electricity?yes, it is the sight of inhumanity of the system invisible that that should disgust people.
however, i caution leftists from becoming as narrow minded and judgmental towards our critics as they are towards the poor. it is only human to be repulsed by the ugliness of our material condition. what is inhuman is to make that the sole basis for how people are treated. if we as leftists honestly acknowledge our own limitations to ourselves, we can better see and accept that of others. when our critics feel understood and acknowledged, they will tend to respond in kind. and then the issue is no more who is a 'bad person'- the poor or their critics but what we are prepared to do to achieve what we want.
The "ugliness of our material condition" is an effect, not the cause of how we are "treated." It is important that we do not obscure that, or allow ourselves to be misled.
The cause and effect sequence goes like this: the hope of material gain leads people to enslave others; the slaves are then denied community, education, and are forced to live in debased conditions. The conditions of the slaves are then blamed on the slaves - "that is the way they are" - and their debased condition is used as justification for keeping them in bondage. "They don't have the skills or education or temperament to live as free human beings. Look at the squalor and terrible conditions they accept."
And, no, we should not worry that we are being "as narrow minded and judgmental" against the slave owners as the slave owners and their defenders are to the slaves, We should pass judgement about slavery, and we should be narrow-minded. We should not fall for the foolish idea that we would then "become just like the slave owners."
The problem with the slave owners was not that they were "narrow minded and judgmental." The problem was that they were forcefully holding other human beings in bondage.
These ideas are as true today in regards to the oppression happening now as they were before emancipation in regards to slavery.
Ms Moore, this is a compassionate and insightful article. I cited in my book a study by an imminent scholar that disproved the myth that the poor are poor because of their own doing and not doing.
Now write another article on how religion and religiosity are among the most indifferent to the poor and in the forefront of tolerating, even promoting America's wars. It will all come home to roost some day.
Gary Brumback
www.uschamberofdemocracy.com.
Chris Hedges short video on responsibility of the poor: http://youtu.be/TRIctlb3xa0
Until we admit that poverty, no matter what country, is an INSTITUTION we will never see the end. An institution is a well established and structured part of a culture. Institutions are kept in place because they benefit somebody:
1.Large corporations and even the middle class benefit from poverty’s cheap labor for their goods and services.
2. Large non-profits: as tax breaks, 6 figure employment for rich relatives, cheap labor for the poor doing the dirty work. Also “volunteers” since low income people are often forced into labor (and corporations) that these non-profits get for free such as TANF, court ordered work because fees and fines are not affordable
3.The Prison Industrial Complex corporate prisons who not only get huge tax breaks for imprisoning the poor, they also use forced labor for their side businesses of manufacturing and other money-makers
4.Blaming the poor keeps the middle class in place by living on the edge of fear that they will be next.
5.“Work” is only defined as paid work when in fact women lose on the average of $275.000 a lifetime because of caregiving for children, elders, and spouses. Creating institutions to replace paid work would cost $Billions
American poverty is directly the result of inequality. The claims that it is the fault of the poor is just propaganda from the right in the class war against the majority of Americans. Believing the propaganda is a symptom of reification.