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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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77 Comments so far
Show AllNazis made it illegal for Jews to buy soap, then proclaimed how disgusting "dirty Jews" were. It is the same nowadays. By making "the poor" poorer, by accentuating the supposed differences between "them" and "us" it makes it easier to dehumanize them in one's mind, which leads to all manner of horrors.
30 yrs. ago a punk band wrote a song "Kill the Poor" and everyone back then was horrified , they were in fact the leading edge of this new world we all now live in, where killing the poor is policy not just a Punk song. Welcome to Reagan world , "Morning / mourning in HELL for billions!"
Didn't know that -- !!
But, needless to say, Nazis put people in concentration camps with
no sanitary facilities and then told the world how "dirty" these people
were -- !!
Today, RW is working on trying to re-vilify OWS as "hippies" -- actually
"dirty hippies." They've now moved to shutting down OWS occupy sites
as "health hazards" and if you were paying attention you'd see that they
had those clearing OWS belongings away were wearing "hazmat" suits --
just to make clear to the public how dangerous OWS and "hippies" are!!
Elite/Fascist patterns are the same, repeating over and again.
Also the ways they destroy movements. If anyone gave it any thought,
it would be clear that the aged, well-financed and unlikely Charles Manson
wasn't a hippie -- and the Tate murders more resembled a military operation.
But you do have to be paying attention!
Glad you are --
:)
Resurrecting the dirty hippies dialogue is just reciting what Reagan said to be elected governor of Calif., it was his mantra then. The USA population has no sense of healthy shame and the propaganda for this comes from the so called leaders of politicians, pretend christian's and business. The false christian doctrine promotes and trumpet unhealthy shame. Just as USAn's were horrified at the troops urinating on the corpses of those they had just murdered in Iraq, the urinating was considered to be the atrocity and the fact that the urinaters atrocity was the murder was not even considered as an atrocity.
And Palestinians do not have access to clean water and many basics of life, such as soap and electricity. They are reviled as "dirty cockroaches" to dehumanize them, leading to all manner of horrors.
Blaiming the victim is an old rhetorical trick. And it is invoked in every generation. Recall the (probably apocryphal) story told about pre-revolution France. "The rich as well as the poor are not allowed to steal bread or sleep under bridges."
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." The Red Lily, Anatole France.
Thanks for the correction. I wondered where my paraphrase came from.
Exactly --
good cover story to divert from what actually goes on --
Every poor person has been impoverished -- and at the rate we are going
with half of Americans now "impoverished" it won't be long before this
organized crime we call capitalism succeeds in impoverishing all of us!
Corporate/fascism can have only one outcome --
Capitalism has already destroyed nature on this planet -- polluting most
of our oceans and land. It's a sucidal system we need to bury.
WAKE UP, AMERICA!!
Ha ha ha! If money grew on trees, everybody would have it.
If money grew on trees there would be laws restricting where the money trees could and could not be grown. And guess whose trees would get cut down first. I mean first after all the trees in the Commons where both poor and rich could access them were cut down or otherwise removed from the Commons.
With the ongoing privatization of the Land Grant agricultural colleges, fruit tree varieties, the product of publicly financed research programs at public institutions, are being auctioned off to private firms.
Farmers are being told where they can and cannot plant trees, and which trees. Private firms are gaining copyright control over life forms - food crops.
So, this is now a true statement - if fruit grew on trees, there would be laws restricting where the fruit trees could and could not be grown, and by whom.
A true statement would begin: "If fruit that could be sold at a fine profit grew on trees . . ."
I did not know about the privatization of public research on fruit trees, and now would not be surprised if I next heard that these "copyrights" were sold at fire-sale prices due to current economic conditions. I do not and will not respect these "copyrights". I expect that there will come a day when all copyrights over life forms are disallowed, and the claimants to them left without compensation or copyright.
Pink Lady, Sweetango, Jazz, Pinata, Ambrosia, and Pacific Rose are the privatized apple varieties you are most likely to encounter.
Historically, crop varieties traditionally have always been in the public domain. Privatizing them - copyrighting, patenting - is a dangerous development.
It is a dangerous, and disgusting and immoral development.
I seem to remember that the copyright laws were to protect and encourage the inventors and creators, and the investors who supported them, at least it was that way to some extent, but now increasingly less and less. I doubt that any of the people who were involved in developing the apple varieties named will benefit from the "copyrights".
Will the LORDS who "own" these "copyrights" have some compassion and give some apples to the poor, some of which are likely the children of farmers now or soon without land?
Memento & Two A: I dated an attorney who used to say to clients, "I've been working on your case for fifty years," that is, he brought the entirety of his life experience into play. So, as a writer, if I spend 7 years on a manuscript, I want that copyright protection. But here's where it should end...when courts of law, with their history of being bound to material values (holding--as we so plainly and tragically see--property rights above human rights) decide to copyright LIFE and living processes.
This began when for-profit corps successfully mapped the DNA molecule. And it's seen in how the WTO grants US corps copyright to species of rice cultivated for centuries in India, as one example.
The right-to-life crowd seldom met a claim to property it didn't bow down before. This is what happens when societies worship Mammon and Mars rules and lose any sense of the sacred. Lacking that core value nothing is in place to protect life and living systems from those who see only the artificial mechanisms useful for pricing.
Even an atheist like myself knows how immoral it is to "own" an entire species, or to think that you do. Life existed on Earth before money. It will exist when money is no more, but only if we are very lucky. We may, by that time, have segmented bodies and breathe CO2 but this probably does not matter.
You know me as someone else on another forum. I like your posts there too. I'll bet you can guess who I am. But no matter. Please post more here. The tone needs to be raised and the energy needs to be balanced here more than the other place.
ACE: I'd have to bi-locate to post anywhere else, as this forum, added to my own writing, takes up a good deal of my time. Thank you for the acknowledgement. Is there a forum where someone else is using my name? Or sharing astrology references?
And if shit were worth anything, poor people would have no assholes.
Many studies have shown the rich lack empathy, while the poor have it in spades. When you see homeless people on street corners, the people in the older cars and trucks more often give money. The rich believe in the great chain of being and that they deserve what they have. But modern genetics proves that poor people have the same DNA as rich people. Eventually this point will sink in, and people will rise up against the rich. People have a right to revolt against their oppressors.
"The rich believe in the great chain of being and that they deserve what they have"
Another way to state it is to say they believe in a modern version of the "divine right of kings."
But we have to blame the poor. If we don't blame the poor, then we have to face the full horrifying truth, that it could actually be us in their place, and we never want to believe we could wind up there. So it must be the poor, or we'd simply panic.
Panic ...
What is the general premise that is faulty? What "prejudice" is being appealed to?
How is the author "claiming there is a victim," and on what scenarios is that "an old rhetorical trick," and how does that invalidate what the author is saying?
What is the "simplistic sloganeering" you object to?
The author did not use the word "Nazis" and I can hardly see where the "Grapes of Wrath" reference is "hyperbole." A poster made reference to the Nazis, and the point they made was relevant and appropriate. If you have a problem with what they wrote why not address them directly instead of implying that the author is to blame for alleged "hyperbole?"
In what way could the article be "more balanced" and to what end?
You have made some pretty inflammatory statements in this nasty little post. Actually, it is full of hyperbole, simplistic sloganeering, and appeals to prejudice - ironically. I think it is appropriate that we ask you to defend and support your assertions.
"The general premise of this article is faulty no matter how much it appeals to prejudice."
Yeah, yeah, how horrible that the article is appealing to prejudice against the rich.
"laiming there is a victim is also an old rhetorical trick."
As opposed to claiming that there is no victim>
"Is every poor person a victim. Not even the worst fool would buy that argument."
You want to talk about faulty premises? LOL. Wherever did she claim that EVERY person is a victim?
"Simplistic sloganeering can be satisfactory but usually is not truthful. I would hope for more balanced articles on important subjects like this."
So, point out what is not truthful about the article. Don't engage in simplistic sloganeering.
A lame attempt to divert attention from reality, you did not succeed.
There are millions of families who have lost their homes, jobs and hope too bad the ignorant can't see the forrest for the trees.
Again the forum is graced with the Calvinistic style reasoning of Thomas More, now in the guise of Lanista... as IF the War on Poverty is a causative factor of poverty. It takes a special form of distorted reasoning to come up wih that one, hence why some time ago I posed the apt question as to whether you sustained a brain injury from your marine/combat days. The question still holds... in light of the confabulations inherent to this post.
It is a simple matter to look at the statistics on this, and see the vast difference in household incomes, especially in African American communities, before and after the "war on poverty" programs. (Aside - why does war have to be used as the metaphor for everything?) Anyone who thinks those programs increased poverty, or cause poverty is simply repeating an illogical right wing theme that is not supported by any evidence. Much of the gains have eroded away over the decades, of course.
Often, the same people who oppose poverty programs, with the rationale that it is creating "dependency" in the African American community and destroying bootstrap initiative - called the "work ethic" in Gingrich's recent racist remarks - also oppose affirmative action. The racists can't make up their minds - are Black people a "problem" because they are working, or because they aren't working? Apparently, it is Black people, and poor people, that the bigots have a problem with, no matter what they are doing.
I believe the use of "war" in all of these programs is code to allow certain laws and practices to be ignored or used to achieve generally dishonest ends. War powers. The war on drugs allows the trampling of constitutional rights as in when we are actually at war. Most of the other "wars" on something seem to actually be war on ideas and tactics and the unpleasant results of the warriors' policies rather than things and/or enemies. Why is it necessary to wage war on poverty when its solution is the exact opposite of war? Same with war on terrorism and war on ___ fill in the blank.
Yes. The War on Drugs is the item that's engineered an end run around slavery to acquire the same ends. In Louisiana, the prison population is reminiscent of plantation slaves; plus it's a statistical fact that far more persons of color end up incarcerated for drug "crimes," than their Caucasian counterparts. This splits families up, and low income kids see fewer options for escaping the poverty-to-prison (or MIC) pipeline. Entire communities are being set up to fail. Bill Gates is a former Atlantean, and his recall of technology from that era has provided him with power. It's sickening that he's using it to advance a machine-oriented view of life. Some souls resist the evolution that should be their legacy. He is hardly turning out to be a force for good...
Ianista - you made a number of assertions, and people have responded to those assertions. If you want to be taken seriously here you need to defend and support your remarks rather than merely doing hit and run posts.
Visit your local homeless shelter and you will see the families victimized by the 1% and their corruption.
If you don't see the suffering, it is because of your choice to ignore it, there is plenty to go around.
"Dancing with lamos" surely will not present any homeless victims of the 1%.
It's always been the dirty lie/secret of capitalism that everyone can be rich and if they are not it's their own fault. There simply aren't enough CEO jobs or wealthy relatives for everyone. There simply aren't enough resources for everyone to have everything. It's what allows those at the top to continue to take and trample and keeps people supporting a system that is immoral and unfair. See this poster:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread485239/pg1
But the pyramidal structure you envisage doesn't have to exist. In a country such as Denmark, some income inequality exists, but not nearly to the extent as here. And a seriously progressive tax system exists, which funds a social safety net we can only dream of. Has that hurt their economy? The last time I saw anything about that (fairly recently), Denmark had the third highest rate of economic growth in Europe. So the fact that the 1% versus 99% does not seem to exist has not hurt the country.
This withering away of empathy is the one unforgivable sin, for which the high & mighty, and their smart, paid propagandists, will answer to the REAL Authorities of this planet. They have reached Their active phase of the cycle, and grievances will be redressed. I had a dream 7 or 8 years ago; Athena crying. It was completely unnerving; a sad thing to behold. The Matron of the arts & crafts of civilisation, and capable Defender of same, grieving for the cries of anguish & suffering, ALL needlessly (there are SO many inventions awaiting "in the wings" that will lead to an era of superabundance FOR ALL). How ironic that it seems to begin, in earnest, in one of Her early projects; Greece. Nemesis & retribution is approaching. She must don the helmet & breastplate now, and take up the shield & spear. That is my surmise, my intuition.
Athena, leading Odysseus home, to stand with him to clean house from stem to stern ...
Athena is the rare female archetype that favors war and combat... after all, she denies having been born to or through a mother, to instead manifest express from the HEAD of her father, Zeus, quintessntial CEO of Olympus. As far as dreams go, this symbol is a strange choice for spiritual balance or Divine retribution. It's merely substituting the ethos of patriarchy with the opposing (pair of) genitals.
She is also the Goddess of wisdom, more so than war and combat (and *many* ancient goddesses had warlike sides -- like Hathor). And perhaps she recognizes no mother because she is the Allmother, the preferred name of the original Goddess, who spawned forth the male God out of herself, the myth being inverted by error during patriarchal periods. The Greeks get it right with Ge and Uranus (spawned forth from Ge by parthenogenesis). Or, the myth could speak to the late REappearance of the Goddess, only after the male God achieves enough wisdom to see Her, and thus She is recognized as He acquires wisdom, thus out of his head. Myths have many possible facets. I think Athena is a sound one, not a particularly corrupted one.
And sometimes, combat is necessary, even for the Goddess, as She breaks free. Expect even Aphrodite may put on armor then, as She celebrates her victory over Ares ...
She also may simply be the victim of bad press (ESPECIALLY if She was/is quite helpful to the commoners). I'm suspicious of all orthodoxies. I doubt if ANY of the ancient wisdoms are coming to us unfiltered. This situation, also, is the deceptive work of the oligarchy. I take this as my working hypothesis, at any rate. I don't know what else to do. I had no choice in dream topics. It came to me, I didn't seek it out. I mean, really, I have no "Greekyness" in my background, and do not know why this comes at me. I suspect these Entities are what they are, and one culture's "Athena" is another culture's "Freya" and so on.
I also suspect THEY are the primary Entities of Earth, the TRUE & deserving Oligarchs and the Myths are THEIR "stageplays" in which we act involuntarily (according to karmic needs). They play us like musical instruments, like a wind instrument, and WE think that WE are blowing the air through ourselves. This REALLY is opposite to our sense of individualism & freewill (which may be, in large part, illusionary). Hence the struggle AGAINST this paradigm. We aren't comfortable with a sense of "our Elders/Betters/Superiors/etc...", because we deeply resent these "assclown" oligarchs currently occupying "the throne" as faulty pretenders. They'll deeply regret having sat down on "the throne" that isn't theirs to occupy.
It is always easiest to blame those "below" us. When we blame those that have more than us, we are kept in check for fear it looks like envy. And the media and 1% use this to their advantage.
I'm a little concerned about the evidence of plagiarism in this thoughtful article.
I wondered why the second paragraph ("An addict is the author of their own misfortune....") seemed so familiar.
Then it dawned on me that it could have been cribbed straight from the output of certain small-minded reactionary Internet commenters who compulsively seek to puncture touchy-feely balloons with crooked needles of unsentimental "straight talk".
I think that the second paragraph is intended to represent the reactionary point of view, for the purposes of questioning it, not for the purposes of advancing it.
Thanks. I was being facetious.
Oops. My bad. :)
The real tragedy here is that the poor have come to accept these characterizations . The American poor need a Steven Biko to raise consciousness especially poor all the poor whites living on the down low. Once people get pushed to the margin it doesn't take much to push them off the page.
It should be noted that the primary reason for poverty in any country is the absence of a social safety net. In places where the government represents the public interest such as Scandinavia, poverty is practically non-existent. The mentally ill are cared for, the poor are fed and housed and even inmates receive 'compensation' while they spend time in jail. In countries that cater to the rich like the U.S. and most under developed countries, the poor are left to fend for themselves. There are enough resources, especially in a place like the U.S., in which everyone could be guaranteed free healthcare, a roof over their head, three square meals a day, free education for as long as someone continues to learn, heat and warm clothes and a certain level of dignity that goes along with that. It doesn't exist here in the U.S. simply because the oligarchs don't wish to share their enormous wealth just the way slave owners didn't share their good fortune with their slaves. But the advent of television and the radio has given the elites a tool that was unavailable to their slave owning ancestors. Now the MSM can confuse, redirect, ignore, frame, misinform, tame and mesmerize the masses into believing whatever the oligarchs want them to believe. In this day and age the elites have even tapped into the public education system as well to reinforce the American creed that 'we must all be individually responsible for our own outcomes'. This wasn't preached to slaves 150 years ago because this would have encouraged the slaves to slaughter their vicious overlords, but in contemporary times this reasoning works as the fantasy of a 'just and equitable society' is constantly reinforced by the new corporate overlords. Poverty (and ultimately enslavement?) can now be quickly dismissed as a 'personal failing' with a large percentage of people buying into it. Empathy is for 'pussies' as far as Wall Street is concerned and the 'poor get what they deserve'.
While it is laudable that some wealthy individuals like Warren Buffet have appealed to their fellow billionaires to give generously to charities, it is a government that represents the 99% that is best positioned to address the gross injustices of society. But when the government is nothing more than a tool for the wealthy to secure their unfair advantage, is it any wonder that people like Warren Buffet don't suggest that his rich brethren should pay higher taxes instead of giving to private charities?
To honestly wage a War Against Poverty in America or anywhere else, an honest government who represents the public interest is necessary for success. At this point in time, nothing could be further from that lofty ideal.
S.C:
You said:
"the elites have even tapped into the public education system as well to reinforce the American creed that 'we must all be individually responsible for our own outcomes'. This wasn't preached to slaves 150 years ago because this would have encouraged the slaves to slaughter their vicious overlords,"
Calvinism, this idea that God's blessing is proven in the lives of the well-to-do has been around longer than 150 years. It's taken out, like fine lace, to be served in association with items featured on the menu. In this case, that menu refers to the mass consumption of beliefs, food for thought--i.e. the dominant messages of the era.
I would also add that while it's evident our current economic pyramid unduly serves the small numbers positioned at the top, your post strangely avoided mention of the trillions wasted on war... those sums, could instead be utilized for a policy of defense oriented towards strengthening the nation from within. Right?
At least Santorum loves the poor with his attitude towards birth control l am sure it will lead to more of them.
"An addict is the author of their own misfortune," she writes.
There are many kinds of addictions - food, drugs, sex, work, tobacco - which some think derive from the same source. This source is a lack of dopamine, a brain chemical, which is needed to feel satisfied and good. Gabor Mate, M.D. has written extensively about this.Beginning in utero the environment affects how the brain
grows and continues until possibly age 60. Without certain experiences (nurturing) or with certain experiences (abuse) the cells that produce this chemical do or do not grow. Dr. Mate treats drug addicts and writes that he has never treated a female addict who wasn't sexually abused at a very young age. True also for many males. So much for "authoring your own misfortune". If we could only choose our own grandparents it might help avoid misfortune and subsequent blame.
Thanks for the reminder about Mate.
Extensive interview footage of Gabor Mate and other social scientists of different disciplines and extensive experience in this entire sphere of consideration and its implications in Zeitgeist Moving Forward - first 30 minutes or so
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
Suzanne Moore stated:"Still, malnourishment isn't starvation just as anyone who has a mobile phone isn't properly hard-up."
Malnourishment, depending on how long and how extreme it is can cause slow nagging hunger pain that does not end and can cause temporary or permanent disabilities for children. Food is human right not a privilege Conservatives argue that the poor get dependent on government assistance. It is bad for them. And a study proved that conservatives give more to charity than Liberals. Why is charity assistance different from government assistance don't they both make the poor dependent? Conservatives want the poor to beg them for food rather than food stamps. But they complain when they beg on the streets and they don't want them to steal so what is their alternative when they cannot get a job?