Tuesday, April 1, 2014

For the Power is In Them

I thought this article was interesting, the author's underlying assumption being that our circumstances essentially determine who we will be.  Change the circumstances and you change the individual.  He says for example that 
Certainly there are cultural differences as you scale the income ladder. Living in abundance, not fearing for your children's safety, and having decent food around will have its effect.
It is not clear what effect he refers to, but it is clear that in his view material surrounding affect a person's behavior.  Change the surroundings and the behavior will change. 

This view has always seemed rather demeaning.  It contains within itself a message of powerlessness.  The message is that you completely lack any means of transcending your condition that you are at the mercy of whatever circumstances in which you happen to find yourself.

I do not disagree that circumstances can affect how we feel about ourselves and can encourage or discourage behaviors, but an individual who cedes all of his power to the circumstances in which he find himself does so by his own choice. 

The sense of powerlessness engendered by this philosophy leads to despair which leads to nihlism.  If one can do nothing nothing one does matters.  We are all protagonists in The Stranger.

Moreover, the author's world view is internally inconsistent as demonstrated by his view of rich people.  If we are all controlled by our circumstances then a rich person is no more to be blamed for actions the author perceives to be pernicious than are poor people.  If violence by poor people is justified by reason of their circumstances (as the author clearly suggests), then the actions of the rich are equally justified by reason of their circumstances.  After all they are only acting according to the programming inherent in their surroundings just as the poor are.    

The author by suggesting that rich people are somehow guilty or responsible for the plight of poor  people is completely at odds with his argument that actions are dictated and absovlved by circumstnces.  One cannot argue that only certain people and not others are controlled by their circumstances and therefore blameless regardless of how they act.  

The author's insistence on maintaining this inconsistency, by implying that rich people should change the way in which they act in order to assist the poor, clearly implies that rich people have a power, the power to transcend their circumstances, that poor people lack.  

I prefer not to think of certain groups of people as being helpless in the face of their circumstances. All God's children have power, the power to choose, the power to live a happy life, the power to change their circumstances.  Some require assistance.  Some who are incapable of taking care of themselves need to be cared for.  Others who lack the knowledge or habits to be able to care for   themselves require teaching, encouragement and material assistance until they can do so.  But they have the power and if they never use that power they miss one of life's great experiences. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.