Anyone can have it.
In this world, everyone has free will.
Everyone can have a good standard of living should they so choose.
Perhaps.
Oh, you can blame the welfare state. You can blame the breakdown of the family all you want.
You can talk all you want about a culture that is content to survive on benefits and crime.
Because it exists, to be sure. Though content is not the word, it isn't.
The fact is, we can't organise our society properly. We can't organise it so we can find tasks for everyone. We can't let people starve and we can't let people sleep in the streets. But we find it hard enough to find ways to fill the hours of people's days as it is. We think we're being generous to the underclass. We give them too much.
Do we? We give them a subsistence allowance and tell them they're useless. It's a uselessness allowance, an allowance we give them that says, we want you to consume stuff, but we haven't actually got anything useful for you to do.
The idea that the rest of us could actually do a bit LESS for our money so as we could at least give everybody the dignity of being part of it, seems to escape us.
So we write people off. But we've been doing at a long time. Whole generations have grown up expecting to be labelled useless all their lives.
Because they are, the way we structure it.
You are born to a mother who has never worked, all your siblings have different fathers, there are different men around your mother all the time, none of them show you any love, you are treated as a hindrance from your birth, the only good you do, is earn benefits for your mother.
You will never have a job. No one you know has a job, no one you know has anyone in their family with a job.
You will get paid fifty pounds a week by the state all your life. So, if you survive on that, you'll never have all those good things. The good things you cannot help but know exist. Things that brighten up your life. TVs, Stereos, designer label clothing, hell, even a beer.
But out there is a vast society that has all those things. One that looks down on you.
Why follow their rules? What's in it for you?
So, you go to gaol, you go to gaol. It's a risk you have to take. You have nothing to lose. You might as well find some way of getting the good things in life, because you're never going to have them any other way.
Life will ALWAYS be crap. And your best bet is to become a heroin addict. Anaesthetise yourself through your miserable life in a cocoon of cotton wool.
In this world, a man is a man who grabs what he can from a society that despises him, and a woman is of value if she sells the only commodity she has that people want. Herself.
That's what lies underneath. That's the reality of the underclass people are so quick to judge.
Of course people make it out. That's not the point. If you're not born into it, you probably won't end up in it, and if you got intelligence, good looks, or something, something, you can make it out.
I'm not saying the people stuck down in the underclass are the brightest and the best. But they can't get out. And it's no use saying they can.
Now reflect further.
Immigration.
I'm not talking about all those LEGAL migrant workers. They come in to this country already guaranteed a higher status than the underclass I've just described.
I'm talking about the ones the right get all stressed about.
The ones who cram twenty of them into the back of a lorry full of animal carcasses to be driven halfway across Europe to get here. Who started their journeys in Somalia, or Sudan, or China.
Many of whom are carcasses themselves when the lorry is opened this end.
They are prepared to risk that.
And once let out, they will go into the underclass. Only they're not even in that.
They'll find work. They'll find work on the black market doing a full weeks work TO RECEIVE THE LIVING STANDARD OF THE UNDERCLASS.
They'll work a forty hour week, more, for fifty quid a week.
And without any of the benefits of a UK citizen.
If they get ill, they daren't even go to a doctor.
They will risk their lives to come and live BENEATH our underclass. They will work as hard as you and I do, to live a life even worse than that I have described above.
And they will leave the land of their birth to do so.
So I watch all these adverts for the January Sales and I reflect, it's hard times for us all now, I think. But maybe that's no bad thing.
Because too many people in the west, too many people have been content for so long to live in their boxes, watching boxes, and as long as the paycheque has gone in, the fact that that has only been possible because we, the white collar workers of the west, the sedated hirelings of Capitalism have been blinded to the pyramid of human misery we sit at the apex of.
I really hope that enough people now are starting to realise now, that it doesn't have to be like this.
But we just have to stop being docile rats on treadmills.
It's a good time of year to see these things as they really are.
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13 comments:
I have a first cousin who is a person who endeavors to be an under the underclass person. I think she's a piece of shit and has been a manipulative birch since I've known her. She's three weeks younger than me and about to become a grandmother. Let me just say I am nowhere near grandma age.
My great grandparents were all European immigrants to the US, poor as dirt, one fleeing from Russian occupied Lithuania after everyone else in her family died of small pox. My grand parents were factory workers. My mother was the oldest of three and grew up avoiding the bill collector on her parents' behalf while babysitting her younger siblings.
When I was a kid, we couldn't afford meat every day on my dad's salary. We never had a bill collector problem, but we didn't have too much to start off. My dad worked constantly. Eventually he became very successful with lots of support from my mother. They were and are an inseparable team. For better or worse.
Why did my cousin, my uncle's child, become such a leech? Our backgrounds aren't that different. We share one set of grandparents with the same values who I know loved us both very much.
Consider this: I think my parents are not good parents, albeit successful on paper in every other measureable way. A good deal of what went down in my childhood would make a zinger of a tell all. My sister, in some ways is replicating that past. I am doing my damnedest to break out of it.
Is this society's issue or up to the individual? I think some people are going to go down a bad path no matter what their opportunities and others will find a way into a better one.
What I am trying to say is that things go on th e way they have until someone decided to make a leap into change. I think it is seldom started with a group. Most likely, it begins with the courage and conviction of one.
Part of the problem is that the "solution" that people come up with is that everyone should just work harder and get a better job and then everyone will have more money. The problem is that everyone cannot be the boss- most people have to work for someone else. The answer is not to tell everyone to try to be the boos and wash your hands, the answer is to pay a living wage for EVERY job. Otherwise you might as well suck the government teat, rather than to work a degrading job for slave wages. Either way will break your spirit, but getting a check from The Man can be less humiliating and certainly smells better.
I applaud you for standing up for human dignity. You are a good person.
You make some good points. But, because your other views are so extreme and in the background all the time, it is difficult to engage properly with your work. There is no balance.
Also, I assume that you are only speaking of England? Because your views do often tend to come across as very anglocentric. What about other countries approaches to elitism? India being the most obvious example. Having spent several months traveling there, it has a very complex and unbalanced societal structure. You see Crushed, your plan is flawed because the majority of the world is going to see you as a spoilt little anglo boy that is trying to tell them how to live their lives, what's good for them and how your way is better. Also, other Western countries (i.e. Australia) have different approaches to benefits. Here, you have to work for the dole in community projects etc.
I also want to say, that I think that you need to seek some support. It is very unhealthy that you would feel that your life has no purpose other than this blog. Very, very, very unhealthy. Actually, when you wrote your posts on that topic, I almost sent them to your local mental health service.
I hope that your family is reading this blog and that they will give you the love and support you need.
There's definity a place for some folks working less to provide others with work to do to earn a livlihood. I feel so bad for teh children of families who don't care, or who are so beaten down they can't care.
So far the troll hasn't visited me. I did just get rid of another. If you need any help, call on me. Trolls suck.
A timely post, as I've been thinking about this again.
Before I traveled abroad from the USA, I thought homelessness and despair was an american trait. Then I saw the homeless all over europe, and I realized that there was something systemic at work.
Would that we could live as villages again, and care for our wayward kin as humans. Life is hard upon some people, as you would be the first to note, Crushed. The purely clinical approach to care is wrong, and any concern about money or pay when it comes to helping another person is just horrible.
I'm lucky. What I do is completely funded. We never have to ask a patient about their insurance, or prioritize them based upon that information. It should be that way for all people in need.
Yeah 'free will'?
Is it something we are 'born' into
Depending which country you are in you can exercise your free will in varying degrees - some succeed no matter when or where.
Others lack the same free will, the same opportunities, ...
and not that many of us have the free will to 'actuallu' do what we would like to do, when we want to do it, and who we want to do it with
there are just many varying and different degrees of compromise
VR- I don't know. I think some are born into hopeless situations. I've met people who I've talked to and realised that they never stood a chance.
What we have now in the west is a new form of poverty, those who lie beneath the glass floor. They can never come through it. I'm not talking about people with talent. This is what people often misunderstand. They point to people who've made it out- but these were people with a lot about them. I'm talking about people who often don't.
Born into the underclass, but with less than the average intelligence, no good looks, no charm. But still people. And had they been born to a 'goog' middle class home, they'd have a chance.
It's the expectation all around, it's noe bnecome a culture in its own right. You actually have to see how these people think. their norms are totally divorced from the norms society upholds on TV.
Improbable Joe- The answer is in restructuring the whole system, methinks.
We need to work out what needs to be done, and then simply allocate tasks.
But Capitalism needs more consumers than producers, that's the problem.
Enemy- It's just what I see, really.
I try to be :)
Femnme- My views are extreme, because I think we need drastic solutions.
A world government, abolition of all powerful executives, TRUE democratic control of the infrastructure seems the only answer to me.
And part of that whole paradigm shift also includes things others find distasteful, such as the ending of the nulcear family.
I understand it's a hard message to sell, and I take your point that not all cultures are ready yet for such a change. Because in a sense, it takes globalisation to the next level.
But there's time yet.
I think a lot is going to change in the next few years.
This 'recession' is the begining of the end for Capitalism. We won't escape this one. It's over.
Re your last remarks, well, no it probably doesn't, in many ways.
Regrettably, there was much I wanted to achieve when I was younger that I cannot now do, as me. I will never get elected to parliament, I will never get a book published under my own name. Those were the things I wanted to do once.
But still, I believe I can make a difference. I believe the things I say on this blog are right.
You got to devote your life to SOMETHING. If you haven't got a cause to fight for, what are you?
All my life I've secretly despised those people who simply devote their lives to earning a living and raising a family. Wasted lives. If that's all your life is worth, it ain't worth much.
Most people lead lives with no purpose at all. I don't choose to do that.
If you look at the people in history worth any degree of respect, they sacrificed everything to a cause, everything to their beliefs.
Of course it's important. I'll know how much I was worth as a human being by the time I die, by knowing whether or not this blog succeeded.
If it succeeds, my life was worth something.
If it doesn't, it would have been far easier if I was just another miscarriage.
Unfortunately, it has come to pass my parents DO read this blog. I think you can guess how that came to pass. In a way, it's not a problem, though it does mean I have to think carefully what I write. Not in the areas you might think, either.
I don't mind them knowing some of my more extreme beliefs, nor do I mind them knowing some of the more shocking aspects of my past, or my peccadiloes, etc.
But it does mean I do have to worry about what they might piece together from reading it about things in real life. They only live fifteen minutes walk away and this is quite a close knit little dormitory town.
I did find myself wondering when I wrote about Haydee what would happen in the unlikely event Anything ever happened with myself and Haydee.
I mean, from the blog point of view, had anything happened long term and my ultimate dream come true, she would have re-emerged under a new guise on this blog. She would have been 'my flatmate' and none of you would have been any the wiser. No admission would be made here that my new flatmate was quite a bit more than that. But of course, I'd be worried that my parents would twig that the new flatmate that I made a point of never introducing them to was, in fact, Haydee. In fact I don't like the fact that they've read my feelings about her.
I like to keep my family at a distance. It's hard to explain. I'm actually a very tactile person and will let almost anyone touch me, male or female. I am quite happy to be petted by almost anyone. But I won't let members of my own family physically touch me.
My family are not my support network in that way. I closely control their access to me. I have it so that I can contact them, but they can't do it the other way round.
Since I know they read this blog, it has changed things between us, yes. I no longer trust them to the same degree I once did, because I no longer feel I can control the distance. They will always now have a closeness to me- as readers of this blog- that I'm just not comfortable anyone having in real life. Except a few close friends.
I don't really WANT love and support. Not from anyone. Not in that way. And I want people who seek to give that to me kept a LONG way away from me.
All I want from people, is help and support in doing something constructive with my life.
Charles- And they're the ones who grow up in a malaise of hopelessness.
And end up in a life spiral of hopelessness.
Enemy of the Republic- Be careful what you wish for ;
8xyxxy8- It is systematic, yes.
Part of the reason I advocate communal living, is the hotel-villages I envisage would be just that. The social dynamic of a village into which our current concept of the nuclear family would be subsumed. It is the nuclear family which no longer serves our human needs. The hotel village would have as all able to pursue far motre individual lives within a unit far better suited to seving us all. And us it.
Quasar- The idea we all have free will is such an illusion.
People cite it when they have been lucky, been at the right place at the right time.
But we can fight to do what we can with what we have. Indeed, it is our duty to do so. We owe it to all the rest who don't.
Because I think we CAN create a woorld in which all have free will.
(1) One of these days, I'm going to blog about my opinion of "free-will." Personally, I don't know if it exsts or not. But I can confidently say that if it does exist, it's not the critter we think it is.
(2) I wholeheartedly agree that the cretion of an underclass is just that: a creation. The question isn't about how to change it. That part's easy. Th question is if you can find the hman will to do it. It's not a question of simply redistributing wealth (although that would certainly constitute part of it), but of re-ordering society away from a oligistic,pseudo-capitalistic model to something else--not neccessarily communist, but something else.
The reason there is an underclass is because there is a ruling class. The work that the underclass supplies to society creates the wealth enjoyed by the upper class. In other words, you need an underclass to subsidize a wealthy one. The greater the disparity between the upper class and everyone else, the greater the output for less the compensation by all other classes. After all, wealth doesn't come from thin air. It comes from the exploitation of resources: animal, mineral or vegetable.
Well, Crushed, we disagree on one major principle onour views of the individual: you see people as having rankings of importance in their contribution to society whereas I believe every individual possesses the potential for excellence in something, regardless of whether the majority of society appreciates it or not.
Your response to La Femme troubles me. You say you would better have been another miscarriage than to not have done something you've deemed worthwhile in your mind. You despise people who simply fulfill a work role and raise a family and would consider your life wasted to follow such a path. Following that axiom, you must have a mighty high opinion of yourself a a great contempt for the human race. I wonder what makes you think you are so much better than the rest of us losers.
Btw, why is 30 too late to have a book published under your name? Sounds like an excuse to me. I plan to get my first published in the next year or so, and I'm in my 30s. Is it that you have a problem with, say, doing actual work? You're above it? To busy stream-of-consciousness spouting to bother with craft and coherence?
I'm sorry, but if you want to be someone in this world worth remembering, you'll need to step up to the plate. And, frankly, your obsession with your legacy while ignoring who you are living as today puts you ok my ballot for megalomaniac without any true empathy.
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