🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (19 tweets)
there seems to be a rite of passage of middling & upper class folk, when they go to live among the slums and find in what they thought would be a cut-throat, every man for himself, low-trust society instead that ppl shared with them, left doors unlocked, and helped ppl be ok
maybe the relentless drive of individual against individual, where some had palaces and others not even pavement —maybe that was the brutal, low-trust society to occasionally venture into, to make money, without losing your soul
when there's only really one class of people, everyone is just other people when there's many classes, the lower classes begin feeling more like a concept than people in people's speech, even when the speech is for compassion
a homeless person seems better off here, than in the city. what is my city doing, they think, that with its prosperity it barely gets homeless people to ok? well, cities have done worse. 6th century athens, 19th century charleston, 21st century downtown LA
modernity prospers not by looking back or down, but by continuing to look up and forward always it can't afford to look down, back, at the bones. those who put a gaze on the bones are a threat to the state, survival, order https://t.co/dreNmdBRIl
compassion must only exist in pre-approved areas. the church humbly calling to take care of the worst off. when they do it, it's not threatening, because the church is part of the order. billionaire charity is part of the order
there is no role for the middle class man. besides cast a different vote, maybe. no self-organising capacity, no creation of alternative familial and friendship structures that might provide the less fortunate aid and be an alternative to the belonging of the state
sometimes the middling to upper class person is so moved by this experience they generalise it to - dysfunction, nastiness, and cut throat competition doesn't exist in rural or poorer communities - social responsibility, humanity, and care don't exist in wealthier societies
when really, all that experience needed to explode was one myth: - that sharing and care are somehow functions of class - that the less you have, the more you definitely can't share, because there's less - that sharing isn't possible, because you don't have more
- anyone with less must be even more numb - there's no room to care at your wealth level, you'd need 10x to 100x more - the permitting for action begins somewhere, somewhere above your current wealth level for sure
these aren't intrinsic outcomes to capitalism, just to a society that's lost itself to capitalism, seced all agency to the professionalised state, and become afraid of any contact with that which cannot be immediately fixed