“The quality of education given to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so that the moat of ignorance isolating the inferior class from the superior class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class. With such an initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of slavery is essential to maintaining some measure of social order, peace, and tranquility for the ruling upper class.” Milton William Cooper
add to this, the alienation of aspirational middle class capitalism: the entire middle class is ...how to say...cosumately ABSORBED climbing the rat race corporate ladder. The end all and be-all of middle-class-dom. And the lower class, can not even look to the next rung (middle class) for community or even discussion because the middle are all douche bags. And we all know the "rich"....less said the better! There you have it......the entirety of life on this planet!
I'll answer kiers and Guy both here. What I see in my daughters' generation are guys trying to make enough to buy some fixer-upper in Detroit. At my recent daughter's wedding, two had moved there unbeknownst to each other with the same goal. Of perhaps 8 couples in their early 30's, my daughter is the only one where both want to have kids. Most others feel it would be too much of an economic hardship.
I know PLENTY of people without the house, healthcare, education, corporate job. One's figuring out whether to go to Mexico to fix her tooth if she can't get MediCal to cover it. Another moved into subsidized housing with her two kids and boyfriend after living in her van (her boyfriend was on the streets for 11 yrs.) Do they have time to be human?
The only choice that I see is being dependent on some system or another, or playing within the system while you work to change it. I'm open to other options.
Jan 19, 2023·edited Mar 9, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio
Your observations are testament to the 'reality' of the removal of the middle class. I didn't comment on that point because it is a bigger argument. The middle class is largely a memory of a very short-lived time frame.
A really good discussion of that is in this RSA Animate called 'Crisis of Captialism'.
Hello, Guy. I did just watch this. David Harvey is interesting, I quote him in my book from Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. In this video, he looks at home ownership as an American value at 68%, compared to Switzerland at 20-some %, and seems to think that's a sign of greed. It seems like he's an early adopter of the philosophy that you'll own nothing and be happy. I have two of my three daughters looking at rentals right now, for San Diego and Oakland, and it's pretty damn depressing. Shoeboxes in shady neighborhoods for $2500. A friend of mine who lost her house in the fires last year is renting for $5000/ mo. and can't buy anything because she keeps getting outbid by hedge funds.
I agree with DH that we can't keep living like this. I wish he'd join me in how to change it, since he says he doesn't know.
Yikes, kiers, so the only way to be not a douche bag is to be poor? I've never been entirely comfortable with that slur, btw, which seems denigrating to women. Enema bag? Colostomy bag? It needs upgrading.
If EVERYONE in the middle class is absorbed in the rat race, that says more to me about the system, not the people. Is it possible to be an honest, hardworking person and have what your great-grandparents took for granted: to own a home, raise good kids, have healthcare, retire? I don't think so. Today you need lightning to strike twice in the same place for any of those things. Don't blame the people, change the system.
the system engulfs all, of course. the middle class are completely taken by the system. they have to have that education....then they end up paying it down. the house. the health plan, running running running keep up with the joneses get that promotion. do they really have time to be human?
I agree with Tereza that this a a bit strong and 'sweeping.' In my travels I've met mostly middle class people who are disenchanted with that climb, and are part of the waking movement against the established 'woke,' I'll call it, of the need to climb up and buy for personal contentment. These people are waking to the perniciousness of wokeness and the structured described in the quotation above. I was one of them, kind of, being born into middle class aspirations that never sat well with me and within which I 'rested' while my interests and pursuits led me to disenfranchisement with the very life I found myself in. Too funny.
The real question, for me, comes down to why people do what they are told to do? Tereza is all about the system, and yet the system is an expression of the people. Yes, the mother-WEFers (or their past equivalent) have rigged the game system, and yet it only continues to exist because enough play along. Why?
I come to the conclusion that we have it within us, the individual, to wake up to the system game via waking up to our own authority and removing our enslavement to the have/have not system inherent within an agricultural society and amplified by the 'control freakism' of the haves.
Wonderful article. It gives me hope. Here in Canada, I too often feel the waters rising around us and we’re getting so tired of treading water. And too many don’t know that we’re not waving, but drowning.
“The quality of education given to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so that the moat of ignorance isolating the inferior class from the superior class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class. With such an initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of slavery is essential to maintaining some measure of social order, peace, and tranquility for the ruling upper class.” Milton William Cooper
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7144413-the-quality-of-education-given-to-the-lower-class-must
add to this, the alienation of aspirational middle class capitalism: the entire middle class is ...how to say...cosumately ABSORBED climbing the rat race corporate ladder. The end all and be-all of middle-class-dom. And the lower class, can not even look to the next rung (middle class) for community or even discussion because the middle are all douche bags. And we all know the "rich"....less said the better! There you have it......the entirety of life on this planet!
I'll answer kiers and Guy both here. What I see in my daughters' generation are guys trying to make enough to buy some fixer-upper in Detroit. At my recent daughter's wedding, two had moved there unbeknownst to each other with the same goal. Of perhaps 8 couples in their early 30's, my daughter is the only one where both want to have kids. Most others feel it would be too much of an economic hardship.
I know PLENTY of people without the house, healthcare, education, corporate job. One's figuring out whether to go to Mexico to fix her tooth if she can't get MediCal to cover it. Another moved into subsidized housing with her two kids and boyfriend after living in her van (her boyfriend was on the streets for 11 yrs.) Do they have time to be human?
The only choice that I see is being dependent on some system or another, or playing within the system while you work to change it. I'm open to other options.
Your observations are testament to the 'reality' of the removal of the middle class. I didn't comment on that point because it is a bigger argument. The middle class is largely a memory of a very short-lived time frame.
A really good discussion of that is in this RSA Animate called 'Crisis of Captialism'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsEUs0xK5KY&list=PLF1p1oStAl4kh4KikdJPBFe0e2o8na2vF&index=2&t=28s
From my own examination of economics, summarised in my two courses 'Economics Debunked' and 'Banks Skanks', the argument is a good one.
Hello, Guy. I did just watch this. David Harvey is interesting, I quote him in my book from Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. In this video, he looks at home ownership as an American value at 68%, compared to Switzerland at 20-some %, and seems to think that's a sign of greed. It seems like he's an early adopter of the philosophy that you'll own nothing and be happy. I have two of my three daughters looking at rentals right now, for San Diego and Oakland, and it's pretty damn depressing. Shoeboxes in shady neighborhoods for $2500. A friend of mine who lost her house in the fires last year is renting for $5000/ mo. and can't buy anything because she keeps getting outbid by hedge funds.
I agree with DH that we can't keep living like this. I wish he'd join me in how to change it, since he says he doesn't know.
Yikes, kiers, so the only way to be not a douche bag is to be poor? I've never been entirely comfortable with that slur, btw, which seems denigrating to women. Enema bag? Colostomy bag? It needs upgrading.
If EVERYONE in the middle class is absorbed in the rat race, that says more to me about the system, not the people. Is it possible to be an honest, hardworking person and have what your great-grandparents took for granted: to own a home, raise good kids, have healthcare, retire? I don't think so. Today you need lightning to strike twice in the same place for any of those things. Don't blame the people, change the system.
the system engulfs all, of course. the middle class are completely taken by the system. they have to have that education....then they end up paying it down. the house. the health plan, running running running keep up with the joneses get that promotion. do they really have time to be human?
Hello, kiers.
I agree with Tereza that this a a bit strong and 'sweeping.' In my travels I've met mostly middle class people who are disenchanted with that climb, and are part of the waking movement against the established 'woke,' I'll call it, of the need to climb up and buy for personal contentment. These people are waking to the perniciousness of wokeness and the structured described in the quotation above. I was one of them, kind of, being born into middle class aspirations that never sat well with me and within which I 'rested' while my interests and pursuits led me to disenfranchisement with the very life I found myself in. Too funny.
The real question, for me, comes down to why people do what they are told to do? Tereza is all about the system, and yet the system is an expression of the people. Yes, the mother-WEFers (or their past equivalent) have rigged the game system, and yet it only continues to exist because enough play along. Why?
I explore this in my substack called "Obedience to Authority: ... Exploration On Obedience to Authority, Mass Formation, Woke and Corporatist News: Saviour from What?" https://gduperreault.substack.com/p/obedience-to-authority-a-rumination
I come to the conclusion that we have it within us, the individual, to wake up to the system game via waking up to our own authority and removing our enslavement to the have/have not system inherent within an agricultural society and amplified by the 'control freakism' of the haves.
All the best.
Wonderful article. It gives me hope. Here in Canada, I too often feel the waters rising around us and we’re getting so tired of treading water. And too many don’t know that we’re not waving, but drowning.
Beautifully put, Donna.