I hate it when my refugees - who've left their home and everything and everyone they own and know behind - don't look the part of my poverty porn fantasies. Toilet rolls and clothes! The nerve!



Get fucked.

Ah, the truth! Where is the truth?! Somewhere, no doubt, between the OP and StreetlightX's reply, at a kind of center around which at great distance they both revolve and cancel each other.

What is the main proposition of the OP? It appears to be that media alters people's perceptions of their own lived reality. Well, isn't that the point? Media covers a lot of ground, has lots of forms and purposes, but for a guess they're all pointed toward altering perception in some or another way.

The pictures. If the captions mean anything, it appears that empty-handed Venezuelan's cross the border into Colombia to shop and then return with their purchases to Venezuela.

That leaves the OP's question (that I've edited):

Are people victims of the group-think and collective-thought of mass media, and the gradual erosion of personal independence, as a mechanism towards personal happiness? — Marcus de Brun

This is almost a pretty good question. The quick and dirty answer, as I sip my Folger's estate grown Costa Rican reserve coffee, is Of Course, from time immemorial! Sophistry is as old as stones.

If it's not the manipulation itself, then is there anything about the most modern forms of it that could be interesting? Have we got beyond Orwell? My own view is that media - news my drug of choice - has a narcotic effect and function that paralyzes most folks, even as it energizes a few. There is something reassuring about a story as a story. As story, it cannot hurt, it hurts only when it becomes real, and once real, it's no longer just a story.

We have a current example, the political situation in the U.S. In Washington's time, a Trump would be, simply, dead, challenged to endless duels by men of honor who would find it distasteful and dishonorable to breathe while he lived. No doubt there were Trumps then, and at all times, but collective honor until today has kept them under the rocks where they usually live. At least in the U.S., for the most part.

There is little or no rage, today - and there should be. But there is the story, every day a new chapter, a new "thrill," each new one making the others yesterday's news.

But even with this there is nothing really new. History shows the same repeated behavior - the collective judgment of lemmings until there is an explosion, preferably a controlled explosion like Watergate, as opposed to a French revolution.

That leaves us really with little more than a question about the efficacy of modern media compared with old or ancient media, and the comparative effects on personal honor, liberty, and understanding and practices thereof.

(Edited. Response to @StreetlightX below)

Reflect for a moment what it would take to get you - and not only you but your entire town - to leave everything you have and move - not to another town, in a country that might still at least be familiar to you at the level of history and tradition - but to another country entirely. Consider still not bringing anything with you but the clothes on your back, perhaps a small backpack, and a few rolls of toilet paper (because getting by with a little food and water is possible if still miserable; but imagine now being unable to clean yourself after a light soiling in a foreign bathroom or outdoor pit: I mean really think about what might have to go through your head that planning for this might become a real consideration in your life).

Now consider a shitstick of a commentator, observing your flight, and not only questioning your status as a refugee ('refugee', in scare quotes), but, because you don't look like you're in a state of 'extreme depravity' (one imagines the bar for this is when you're matted, bloody, crying, and half your family is dead), your plight is really just a 'philosophical crisis', and that it's in fact caused by a bunch of 'group-think' or whathaveyou.

Nevermind that 'the destitute' are always entitled to whatever dignities are in fact their own - quite literally their own possessions (like, say, some decent clothing); nevermind that the majority of poor people don't really look like the caricatures on TV, and in fact often dress quite decently; nevermind that problems like obesity are a frequent symptom of the working class (lacking the money to afford a healthy, well-balanced diet, and an environment that would encourage well-rounded eating habits); nevermind too, the conceited middle-class expectation (stemming, one imagines, from a coddled, sheltered existence having never spent a lick's time among the poor) that the poor should look the part otherwise, well, how it is possible that the poor could actually look like perfectly normal human beings?

Nevermind all this, no, these people are just the 'relative poor', and the real issues are matters of 'philosophy' and 'thought', and not, say, conditions of living and wellbeing that would literally drive one from one's home. Yeah, I stand by my initial comment that the OP should go fuck itself for its excremental detachment from reality. None of this is an argument by the way. It is dismissal and disdain. No joke.

My point or question is this. Collective thinking as consequenced by media, television, and the internet. has heightened or refined the notion of 'relative poverty' as compared to real actual 'poverty' of depravity. — Marcus de Brun

First a note on vocabulary: the word you want is 'deprivation' not 'depravity'. Depravity means moral corruption; wickedness.

Two or three billion people around the world are overweight because high calorie fat and sugar is cheap. That doesn't mean they have abundant nutritionally adequate food (fruits, vegetables, protein...).

People are not pulling up stakes because of "relative poverty". They are leaving their country because normal economic life has collapsed. For many people wages have remained fixed while the cost of food, clothing, shelter, etc. have been subjected to severe hyperinflation. If someone is making $100 a month (whatever that is in local currency) and the cost of a weeks worth of groceries is $500--if they can find anything on the shelves--they are in trouble. Remember also, Venezuela's economic/political crisis has been going on for several years. Private reserves of resources are eventually exhausted.

Refugees are a problem for the countries to which they flee. They saturate the labor market, cost the destination state money for necessary services, alter the local culture, and so on. That doesn't mean nothing should be done on their behalf, however. Neighboring and/or destination countries might consider other options:

1. Bar refugees from entry AND
2. Establish and support economic refugee programs inside the source country (here Venezuela)
3. Work with, or attempt to work with, the refugee source country's government to stabilize the economy
4. Accept refugees only as a last resort IF there is a long range plan to integrate refugees into the economy

In other words, don't force refugees to solve their problems individually.

Refugee response is going to be a recurrent issue as time goes on because of water shortages, crop failures, over population, political and economic collapse, and military activity. Aiding refugees in place (or as near as possible to "in place") may result in less long-term destabilization of other countries.

Alright... thanks for the explanation. Fair enough, I guess. I am convinced by your feelings and reasoning. But I still think that (in general) responses are weakened, rather than strengthened by Ef you’s and the like. It comes across as desperate, hysterical, or childish, imo. But, whatever.... Do what you think best. I’ve read the hot mess of an OP that started this three times, and I’m still not exactly sure what the hell it is about. :chin: There have been some eloquent posts by “M”, but this isn’t one of them. As @Bitter Crank pointed out, the misuse of the word “depravity” instead of “deprivation” only made it worse.

Carry onward... :victory:

0 thru 9, you are quite correct to chastise Streetlight for the reasons you cite, but he/she is partially justified, only partly, in spanking the OP [corrected attribution later]. He/she knows the OP can do better because the OP has done better, even recently.

Bitter Crank replied to you as I was about to until I saw his third paragraph explaining that these economic refugees are fleeing a conflagration of epic proportions in their country, something quite beyond them; hyper-inflation. When you go to bed, a loaf of bread costs 200 rubles, and the next day they are 300 rubles each. Have your wages gone up by the same percentage overnight? Probably not, eh? Worse, you had managed to cobble together the price of a loaf of bread last night, but you'll go hungry today. It won't be many long days...and nights...before you decide to do something drastic, like leave. Flee.

I love it! Nowadays to lack food, clothing and shelter is not poverty, it's stupidity. We are too well informed not to be able to sought ourselves out, even if it's not decent. Modern day poverty is not a lack of any of the basic human needs, it is more of a lack of social needs. I bet they also tweet and instagram themselves while on their journey to salvation.

What’s going on in Venezuela is an absolute tragedy and a crisis for the region. If only the UN or some other global body had the means to intervene, get rid of the criminals in charge of the regime and restore order and stability.

Thanks for the note on diction BC, poor English corrected.. I'm tempted to blame the spell check on my phone but in truth I often make this err with the same word, It is an old bad habit that I frequently stumble on and in doing so afford my erudite critics with a stick to beat me with. I am ...all too human.

By the by "high calorie fat and sugar is cheap" would be more correctly stated as "high calorie fat and sugar are cheap" :)

Thanks for the reminder on what poverty and deprivation are, however having worked in Africa I am most familiar with the realities of real poverty, and am (ashamedly) intimately familiar with the meaning of 'depravity'.

In a remarkable essay called "The soul of man under socialism" Wilde makes the profound observation that we are far more inclined to have sympathy with suffering, than we are inclined to have sympathy with thought'

Unfortunately the thought in the OP is being missed and rather is being used as a platform to offer some moral guidance on the point of our collective obligation to feel sympathy for impoverished peoples.

Tim has generously and honestly pointed out that his own misunderstanding of the OP, and his sympathy for poverty, is being dispensed whilst he reclines in his arm chair and enjoys a folgers coffee.

(fair play to ya Tim)

There are two points of clarity that need to be made.

Firstly the OP is referring to the subjective experience of poverty in that this subjective experience (if it is outside of actual real privation, real hunger disease and squalor etc.,) is a poverty that is derived from self-appraisal: my view of my place in the world, and of what I should have, relative to what others appear (to me) to have.

If indeed I have enough to eat and I have the basic requirements to sustain myself in a reasonably healthy manner I cannot lay claim to the status of real poverty or real deprivation, hunger, squalor... etc. My poverty is of an entirely 'relative' nature.

When Thoreau moved to Walden pond, he did so with practically nothing, and yet he lived for some years, a life of great pleasure and great intellectual achievement. He did not consider himself poor, but quite the contrary.

When one examines the claims of 'the poor' in Western societies it is clear that for the most part the poverty described, is one of a relative nature. In general terms the 'poor' in western societies are not starving and totally deprived of access to emergency medical treatment, clean water, basic education etc. There are rare exceptions, but in general this is true, and the contrary would not be tolerated in a civilized society on any large or appreciable scale.

The poverty in Western society is predominantly of a 'relativistic' nature., and most 'poor' westerners if they are mentally stable and in reasonable physical health, are far wealthier than Thoreau was in his cabin. Now of course it is unfair to compare the mass of men to a man like Thoreau, however in practical terms the poor of Western societies are not really poor but rather they are relatively poor.

In the social and self assignation of relative poverty one's philosophy of life, one's world view, or ones view of ones place in society is crucial to the application. There are many relatively poor people who are much happier than wealthier people and, this is generally down to the fact that these 'happier' poor people do not in fact consider themselves to be poor, but rather consider themselves rich in other ways that are often entirely alien to their un-happy wealthy counterparts.

To the great loss of Western civilization, the thought of Thoreau is not universal, but is almost entirely alien and academic. Yet Thoreau's wisdom is both timeless, logical and philosophically sound. One does not need to purchase a cd of the latest music, if one can hear the inimitable song of the blackbird. The later being far more or at least equally precious and beautiful, yet it is a currency that has little value for the relative poor and rich alike. This song of the blackbird or the beauty of nature, hold little social currency for the mass of men, because the mass of men do not know the relative value of the simple and generally free things in life.

British Philosopher Allain de Botton has a very interesting documentary called Status Anxiety, [ https://youtu.be/edX7hdpKdbQ ] which looks at American society through this same relativistic lens.

Status is an entirely relativistic notion and is the basis of much relative poverty.

The thrust of the OP is to point to the reality that Thoreau's notion of wealth and independence are the real and only viable antidote to relative poverty.

The usual soap-box and high moral ground stuff that is shouted out, when someone points to the distinction between real and relative poverty, produces nothing but puff and smoke and creates an opportunity for the ostensibly moral, to gather a herd about them, and begin the predictable mud sling. My point is not being made for the benefit of the tired and vulgar game of mud.

Now (the second point) why all the opprobrium at the recognition of relative poverty? Well the main contributor to the continued existence of 'relative poverty' (second to the lack of philosophy in the individual who considers himself to be a victim of relative poverty) are the apologists for Capitalism, people who believe that their own personal accumulation of wealth is their right and entitlement... because they have worked hard, earned it etc etc and so on.

I might for example choose to buy a new car as it is my right and I have earned it etc etc. However when I exercise my right... what am I effectively saying to my neighbor? I have inadvertently or covertly informed him that his car is 'old' relative to mine. I have in essence contributed to the 'relative' poverty of my society. I do this (impoverish my peers) each time I buy something new and discard something old. In western societies the primary reason things are discarded, is not because they no longer function, but rather and quite simply because they are 'old' or no longer fashionable etc., they are discarded primarily because of the notional construct of relative poverty.

As such relative poverty is not only a principal cause of environmental destruction, it is a cause of human unhappiness on a massive scale. A scale that enlarges via the collectivization of thought that is consequenced by media and the internet. Indeed the real deprivation that occurs in Sub-saharan Africa for example may be considered as a consequence of the wealth that is hedged and wasted in western societies in order to feed the voracious appetite of OUR 'relative poverty'.

The media, television and the internet have resulted in a contraction in thinking that is often referred to as 'globalization' We in the west can show our new cars our relative wealth to populations in relatively poorer countries, and thereby increase the relative poverty experienced by our neighbours further and further afield.

Oftentimes we do not like the notion of 'relative poverty' because if we are to accept it as real, we must then take ownership of its cause, not just conceptually vis 'the poor man who is not really poor but simply unenlightened,' but also WE the not so poor are a cause in that we feel it is our entitlement to become richer in a material sense.

We solve much more poverty in the world by simply taking what we need from it and nothing more. How to determine what one needs has been explained in much detail by Thoreau, however his point is absent from the dialogue on poverty. His point can no longer be heard above the usual and predictable hue and cry that is raised by the herd, as soon as one suggests that real poverty is actually caused by imagined poverty.

M

By the by "high calorie fat and sugar is cheap" would be more correctly stated as "high calorie fat and sugar are cheap" — Marcus de Brun

Touché! (howls in relative pain)

Any given human misfortune will be "relative" to another human's misfortune. The Black Death killed 25,000,000 people in the late medieval period. Influenza killed between 30 to 50 million people in 1918. About 35,000,000 people have died from AIDS so far. Which plague was "really bad" relative to the others two?

There was a much better chance of surviving Influenza than the other two, but if one was going to die from influenza, it would be pretty quick. The Black Death killed a high percentage of those infected, and death also was mercifully quick -- maybe not quick enough, but still pretty fast. AIDS has killed about half of those infected, but the disease is quite prolonged. The terminal phase, however, is quite bad and can be quite slow.

Establishing the Aristocracy of Suffering isn't going to help us here, as far as I can tell, whether we are talking disease or bad economies.

Thoreau (one of my favorite people) grew up "relatively poor". His father was an unsuccessful business man. Despite his families relative poverty, Thoreau attended a progressive prep school and graduated from Harvard. Relatives chipped in for his education. "Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants," he wrote.

Thoreau was infected with Transcendentalism (seems like a branch of the Romantic Movement) by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a speech Emerson gave at Harvard around the time HDT graduated. Emerson owned the land around Walden Pond on which HDT built his cabin. What really turned me on about Thoreau was his Civil Disobedience essay which was against obeying immoral laws or immoral governments. His immediate beef was objection to paying a tax to support the Mexican American War. Thoreau refused to pay and would have spent a bit of time in jail, had it not been for Emerson paying the fine.

There are a number of people (not a huge number) whom one might emulate for their minimal demands for materiel and comfort. I'd nominate another of my favorites, Dorothy Day (Catholic Worker Movement). Jeff Miller is another one -- Jeff was an ardent Minnesota socialist who devoted his life to the cause (he's since retired from political work). Jeff lived as close to voluntary poverty as anyone I know of. There are some guys involved with the Mayday Bookstore in Minneapolis who I would also nominate for the Thoreau Prize.

We can grade the various refugees, like grading potatoes, on their merits. What is significant, though, about refugees is that they all found the existing conditions of their lives unsatisfactory and finally intolerable. They all decided to take the grave step of uprooting themselves and their families and hiking on down the road, all the way from Damascus to Darmstadt or from Caracas to Quito. I can't judge them as to whether they hit the road in pursuit of higher quality cargo or freedom or to avoid bombs, or riots, or whatever was on offer.

Becoming a refugee is a very fraught act -- too freighted to be readily dismissed. The material losses to the refugee are unlikely to be regained. If they are regained, it will probably be through hard-earned wages--not some windfall.

BTW, I'm relatively poor, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'm poor but not badly off by any stretch of the imagination. I've been poorer, actually. Like my family I've had some stretches of deprivation, but I was never badly off. Never missed a meal; never had to go out in the cold without a warm coat, always had decent shoes, didn't have to forgo medical care, books, education, and so on. But relative to suburban success stories, my situation is pathetic! I mean, "a small crappy state college? Such a small house; no car; no regular travel abroad; only 1 suit, and that one out of date."

This picture depicts a mass of people fleeing the economic crisis in Venezuela. — Marcus de Brun

No it does not!

Read the article it came from, which you can get to just by clicking on the photo. At no point does it say these people are fleeing. They are returning from Colombia, which they have briefly visited to buy goods unavailable in Venezuela.

The photo caption says:

Venezuelans carrying groceries cross the Simon Bolivar bridge from Cucuta in Colombia back to San Antonio de Tachira in Venezuela,

Your assertion is based on the words 'Refugees fleeing crisis flood into Colombia: UN', which is not the photo caption but the headline of the article from which it was taken.

You have no idea what plight the actual refugees are in, and the picture has nothing to do with the refugees. Indeed, it is a picture of those people that are in a good enough situation not to have to flee Venezuela.

If I were you I would delete the OP and request that the mods delete the thread in its entirety. All it demonstrates is a failure to perform due diligence before making an accusation.

Tim has generously and honestly pointed out that his own misunderstanding of the OP, and his sympathy for poverty, is being dispensed whilst he reclines in his arm chair and enjoys a folgers coffee. — Marcus de Brun

If you look at the pictures in the OP, you will see empty-handed people entering Colombia, returning across the border to Venezuela with bags full of what appear to be purchases. As such, these pictures do not portray what the OP says they portray, and in any case are irrelevant to the question of the OP, which I attempted to rehabilitate from its own irrelevancy by clarifying what I thought might be of interest after the irrelevancy had been shorn away.

As to my coffee, that was a piece of irony fired at a height of about four feet, but apparently far above your grasp.

Are there poor people in South America and in particular in Venezuela? Of course there are. But what does that have t do with the OP?

BC

You are a brave and kind soul, and I admire the fact that you choose to engage with the 'horrible' OP, rather than join the chorus singing the old psalms of self righteous indignation.

I wonder if part of the reason you can afford to be courageous or independent in your thinking is because you have the immaterial wealth of the Philosopher, and you occupy the esteemed position of having no "car and one suit". You are as much a candidate for the Thoreau prize as any of the others you have mentioned, and your austerity (whether by accident or design) contains more environmental potency and philosophical validity than an army of cappuccino quaffing, economist reading, electric car driving, moral and environmental 'Philosophers'.

It is a pity that kindness is an essential ingredient to wisdom, or you might then prefer to ram the truth of Thoreau, (foie-gras style) down the throats of the assembled choir, (as I would like to do). I am not as kind, and am not so wise as to simply smile, or sing with my fellow parishioners.

You mention Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience, which I read many years ago, and also love. Not to get side tracked, but I despise the term 'Transcendentalism', when it is used to describe Thoreau and even Emerson. The use of terms and labels, is perhaps a powerful tool for learning, but it is a powerful tool for the enemies of Philosophy, and it is more often used to imprison truth into a cubbyhole behind lock and key, where it is safely contained, lest it interrupt the choir of angels singing.

That is what the label 'transcendentalism' does to Thoreau's thought, it locks it behind a name-tag that can then be filed away upon the book shelf of philosophy so that the herd might continue to enjoy the self-salvation of 'indignation'.

Thoreau's thought is not a 'branch' of Philosophy, but instead contains fundamental truths that should be administered to the singers 'al dente', via the same mechanism that their staple fois-gras is generally prepared.

America, to coin an analogy that the choir is familiar with, began as a Garden of Eden, her wealth was 'bequeath' to mankind with the same inviolable imprecatio that Adam was presented with. A single rule that would transform paradise in to a hell hole. That apple-eating dictate has been elucidated clearly by Thoreau and is the missing caveat to the American Dream: materialism is the antithesis of true wealth.

The absence of this 'maxim', its imprisonment into 'Transcendentalism' has broken the dream and broken man's potential to be more than himself.

If we cannot murder the Christian when he has the audacity to stop singing the same old prayers, we can simply lock him into a cubbyhole and sentence him to obscurity upon Old Philosophy's book shelf. If Thoreau could have been a Hitler and if Hitler could have been a Thoreau, the choir of angels would perhaps be singing a different tune.

To return to Civil Disobedience. You rightly point out that Thoreau took his stand upon the basis that he would not contribute to the Mexican war, through the proxy of taxes. This is technically correct, however on a more fundamental level what Thoreau was trying to protect was the 'independence' of the American 'individual'. However to enjoy Thoreau's independence one must also be an individual in the Thoreauean sense; an individual who is capable of independent thought, and an appreciation for the real and true wealth of the immaterial. This is the single greatest characteristic of 'relative poverty and the manifest absence of individuality is the very basis of its self-imposition.

It is this Thoreauean notion of independence that is truly at issue here. Of course when we look at a refugee from the perspective of our own wealth it is hard not to feel pity,

However, that same pity is in truth an inversion of something rather sinister and grotesque (the deeper truth of self); it is an inversion of the reality of our own causative role in the suffering that we are ostensibly indignant about. It is an ugly validation for the preservation of our own wealth when confronted with the distant privation that it has caused. There is nothing more human and more vulgar than the indignation of the rich (us) at the suffering of the poor( them.) This indignation is little more than a validation of ones private faith in ones own relative poverty, and as such, it serves as the ultimate cause of the real privation that is to be experienced by the distant other.

When the indignation is dispensed from the comfort of the arm-chair with folgers in hand, it reminds one of the conscientious slave owner, who tried to think of ways to be kind to his slaves. There remain many 'conscientious' slave owners, who insist upon 'kindness' to the slaves of today. One hopes that their God (if they have one) will be equally kind to them. Philosophy on the other hand has little time for their genuflections ,and must preserve itself from their kindness.

And if a Christian soul attempts to undermine the self indulgent pleasures of the indignant, he shall suffer the wrath of the choir. in the form of whatever mud can be found at their feet; poor spelling, points of inaccuracy, wrong dates, wrong photo, wrong color... any wrong whatsoever must be flung into the air to protect the herd from the truth, and let the choir sing louder in mellifluous indignation.

We MUST preserve the true horror of the self, and conceal it behind the usual song of pity.

Let the choir sing louder, and let old philosophy laugh (or cry) at the crucifixion.

M

"...By the by "high calorie fat and sugar is cheap" would be more correctly stated as "high calorie fat and sugar are cheap" :)…"

Not so fast! Is this statement grammatically correct: "Too many cooks spoils the broth?"

Not so fast. Is the following grammatically correct: "Too many cooks spoils the broth?"

Yes, it is. Or, it is not. It depends on what you intend for the subject. If the subject is 'cooks', then no, it is not. If it is "Too man cooks...", then it is indeed grammatically correct.