Feelings are the realm of the emotional cripple - if that is the entirety of an argument - We feel, we believe ... and should be relegated to the closet, rather than being given the prominence we oblige emo today.
We are not unique nor are we all that special, and certainly we are not better human beings than most other people we know, even if we are convinced that we are.
I walked into a space with another person, someone was already sitting down - there were three of us. I mentioned that I did not read, at any time, the paper version of any newspaper. I did not elaborate on the fact I have a subscription to pressdisplay.com. I don't feel the need to defend myself to people who are the mental equivalent of a sheepdog. One of the two people blurted out 'he gets his news from the Drudgereport.' I responded with a so what, it is a compendium of news sources and I usually visit about five such sites regularly for all sorts of news. The individual who blurted it out said it with such relish, like the were revealing a dirty secret, or that by visiting said site, my facts were immediately questionable versus their facts which came directly from the LA Times (the altar of truth). Petty. So what do you do.
Digression -
Mohammad al Fayd, father of the late Dodi Fayd, who was involved with Princess Diana - is a very very rich man. he has, quite possibly, more money than nearly any Englishman (but the Queen /Royals), yet he cannot get into the same circles - is not allowed invited to the aristocracy shindigs, doesn't get called to the palace for tea. Some people said at the time Fayd and Diana were killed, that the father wanted his son to marry her to gain access to English society. Wealth alone does not make you nor does it grant you access to culture and society. One is born with it, even if one does not have the wealth, or one is not. One does not spend a decade collecting bits to become ... one is or is not, one does not become.
We can be raised in the lowliest of places, yet possess more class than some people who are born into extreme wealth. Class is not defined by economic status, yet some people who grow up poor, resenting those who have, believe it is, and live their lives in a constant state of us versus them. It plays out in all facets of ones life from something as simple as going to the dump to be rid of trash, to comments made to a grocery store clerk, to ad nausea commentary about how everyone else has fucked up their life in some form or another, or why other people are screwed up. You grow up wanting, never getting, always being made to feel like you are worth less even if no one actually says or does something to define as you as being worthless, it comes across in behavior, and you grow up resenting. You learn a trade to become useful and you become one of the masses, but you always loathe your position in society and want to find a way up - to be something you were not born into, to become someone respected.
I see it often, and unfortunately, more often than I care to consider.
When you grow up wanting, desiring, and resenting others who have, you develop a personality that compensates for whatever it is you do not have - you use your skill in your trade to provide some degree of knowledge about something, an edge of sorts. Yet the better question is not the fact we feel worth less, it is how we live that defines class, not how angry or resentful we are, how much we overcompensate for what we don't have ... class is not something you can buy, nor is it something you gain as you get more money. It is something you are born with, or not.
Spitting out the drudgereport comment, or stubbornly refusing to open discussion on the various possibilities of a question - refusing to even court alternative views because it flies in your face and forces you to accept the fact you are not the top dog - class, or rather in those two cases - lack of class.
I have seen the resentment and compensation, the desire to have, to become, and it is very sad. In the United States, we can all be whatever we want, for we do not hold to the class structures as defined as they are in Europe - we are free of titles, as Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, wrote in: Letters from an American Farmer (1780s) - Who was this New Man.
He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds... Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle... The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor; his labor founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, ... gladly help their father to clear those fields [which] feed and clothe them all. … The American is a new man who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. - This is an American. [The abundance of land, and lack of feudal traditions, said de Crevecoeur, had molded this new man:] Where is that station which can confer a more substantial system of felicity than that of an American farmer, possessing freedom of action, freedom of thought, ruled by a mode of government which requires but little from us?
[An enlightened Englishman visiting these shores would rejoice to see an almost ideal society:] Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where a hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and uncultivated! ... He is arrived on a new continent; a modern society offers itself to his contemplation, different from what he had hitherto seen... The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe... We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, ... united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their power, because they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry, which is unfettered, and unrestrained, because each person works for himself. If he travels through our rural districts, he views not the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the clay-built hut and miserable cabin, where cattle and men help to keep each other warm, and dwell in meanness, smoke, and indigence. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations... Lawyer or merchant are the fairest titles our towns afford; that of a farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of our country... There, on a Sunday, he sees a congregation of respectable farmers, and their wives, all clad in neat homespun, well mounted, or riding in their own humble wagons. There is not among them an esquire, saving the unlettered magistrate. There he sees a parson as simple as his flock, a farmer who does not riot on the labour of others. We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world. Here man is free as he ought to be; nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are. Many ages will not see the shores of our great lakes replenished with inland nations, nor the unknown bounds of North America entirely peopled. Who can tell the millions of men whom it will feed and contain?
Europe remains locked into a social caste system that breeds anger and resentment, and worse - it breeds complacency and ambivalence.
I very much appreciate the history of Europe, but there is nowhere on earth I could ever be as happy as I am, here, for we are the best of all the rest, and despite what Obama says about cultures and American uniqueness not being all that special - we are, not because people are unique or special, but because our country and what it represents is better than all the rest.
We have our nitwits who relish criticisms about petty and inane things, just as they have their pettiness - overall, we are the best of all the nations, for our history is one where we have embraced people from around the globe. We are the world in its truest and most simple form.
people
Posts
