> So today's poor are richer than yesterday's poor. That's the point.
That is still quite contradictory. The proper way to view this may be stated
as: the standard of living has been raised. No one can convince me that the
"poor" ( which in common semantics means a life without proper shelter,
medical care and adequate food) give a damn if we chose to think of them as
"richer" than the starving homeless who lived in medieval times. It will not
make their lives any richer. Not only that- to use that line of thinking to
ignore the truth of that reality, to NOT acknowledge their very real
experience of starving to death, is denial of the worst sort, and IMO
downright mean.
One could also say stupid people of today are much smarter than the stupid
people of yesterday. It is meaningless.
Of course, people are far less ignorant today, but the knowledge required to
live is much more complex, and specialized, so if people cannot raise their
level of ignorance and stay just below the amount required to deal with this
new and complex environment, they will still not be able to function very
well. They will suffer from it. The bottom is still the bottom. Starving is
still starving. Stupid is still stupid.
....still full of love,
Queen Nadi
"The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need
for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer" Heinz R.
Pagels, Perfect Symmetry