I have a large seashell collection, which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world
(© Steven Wright)
(© Steven Wright)
While people desperately try to be more powerful, more respected, get richer and own more 'things' - I found the above quote quite apt.
I suggest with each new "Rich List" they publish a "Poor list"; highlighting the world's most stark deprivation. Oh, but wait, it's not fashionable or aspirational to be poor. The societal machine works in such a way that you work as hard as you need to, for your own gain - at other's expense if necessary - to get bigger houses, more money and faster cars so that people can look on at how brilliant you are...
1 comment:
Agree...it's not fashionable to be poor, but its long been an aspiration for the middle-classes to appear to be so. The 1970's sitcom The Good Life, for example, relied totally on an aspirational device (leaving paid employment for the innocence of sustainable living) juxtaposed upon an affluent, home-owning suburban context; the private joke between the writers and the audience (a middle-class demographic, mostly) was that anyone genuinely poor would never actually have that aspiration, and those who did could afford to do so anyway. Gently cynical, astute and strangely prescient comedy.
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