From: QueeneMUSE@aol.com
Date: Thu Sep 11 1997 - 09:24:04 MDT
Lee:
>
> I never said that /they/ give a damn. Self-perception is not reality.
No Lee, you missed my point. what I said was " 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. "
Take for example the issue of Affirmative action. One could say " I don't
care for it, it is obviously not working, it is discriminatory in itself, it
has F**cked up many businesses, and it creates far more complex problems than
the simple one ( racist hiring practices) it was conceived to deflect".
But many people chose INSTEAD to claim : RASCISM IS A THING OF THE PAST.
It sounds bogus and it is. Saying poor people are richer may sound
comforting, but it doesn't address the reality * of those people*. Self
perception may not have anything to do with YOUR reality, but it does for
that individual. If I am hungry - you saying i am not doesn't do much to
change it.
> What's "proper"? "adequate"?
Again, it is a perception. But it is up to the individual to decide, not some
golden mean you make up. I say it means a fairly comfortable creature
existence. Enough money to make ends meet.
>>Why is a recent invention like medical
> care considered a necessity rather than a nifty new product that lots
> of people like?
Because it is a standard, because we are a technological country, because
other countries provide it, for MANY reasons. However, I assume you throw it
in as a rhetorical device to illustrate that "entitlement" is not a viable
means of obtaining it. In that I agree with you.
>Name a single person in the US who does not have more
> than sufficient food available to him at no cost.
I am not on first name terms, but there are plenty - and lots of them are
mentally ill and infants. BTW, I want to stop this now and make it clear: I
am not saying that this problem exists because WE SHOULD FEED THEM -that is a
different subject! It is maybe because they are too mentally ill to claim
it, or on drugs, or brain deficient, or remote - or something else...but I am
not going to be persuaded they don't exist because one cannot state one
individual personally on a first name basis. This argument fails to convince.
>If you keep redefining
> "poor" whenever everyone's life gets better, then there will always be
> poor by definition--and 100 years from now poor people will have to
> live in old unsafe wooden houses and drive along the ground in antique
> cars and will have to have cheap plastic glasses instead of corneal
> implants, and have to suffer all kinds of indignities by the standards
> of that day.
Exactly. I do hope the standard of living keeps raising. If those houses
TRULY are unsafe ( you dramatic ending is CUTE) then we should strive to
eliminate them Just as we should strive to eliminate poverty and other
societal ills. Listen, the poor of tomorrow WILL exist. I don’t know if
things ARE getting better, I hope so.
If one lacks the necessary tools to survive in that culture ( and by your
description they will) then Evolution will be as unkind today as it is on our
homeless little brothers in the streets...
>And they will live like the kings of today, just as
> today's poor have benefits today that the rich of 1897 didn't.
The kings of today? Name one single king that is living in America today.
-- peace, Nadia
"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
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