samothrace
Joined 4 years ago
Joined 4 years ago
"Like very few Americans of my generation, I come from the physical world. ...earning a living from things I could touch and smell."
What is the majority of the workforce doing, then? People working in fast food, welders, plumbers, carpenters, laborers, people working in slaughterhouses, janitors, cooks, waitstaff, the people working at the grocery store and gas station, people that stay at home and take care of their children? All of them are demoted from reality? Can't touch or smell any of that? Poor struggles in the city don't count?
I forced myself through several more paragraphs before I let myself post, but could barely keep my rolling eyes on the text. "We, we, we..." We were the toughest, the hardest, the roughest. The unstated implication being that the rest of us soft, inner-city, fake Americans could never relate to the realness. Blah, blah, blah. How about some humility, things have been pretty tough and unfair and extreme and real for a lot of people in a lot of places. People have real relationships and peculiarities wherever they might live.
I don't know, maybe the article goes further than that, but I couldn't force any more of it down.
I'm good, thanks.
Are you implying that OP hypocritically supports Larry Ellison and Elon Musk? Are you implying that not supporting Larry Ellison and Elon Musk by not promoting their media or avoiding their products is absurd? Are you implying that people should hold Larry Ellison and Elon Musk accountable for US actions, but don't, and therefore doing it to other oligarchs is unfair or unreasonable?
Would you buy an art book by a Nazi officer in 1942? After all, the officer would only receive a very small portion of the proceeds of the book, in reality providing an infinitesimal benefit to the Nazi party itself. Would you recommend said book to people you know? After all, you wouldn't be providing even that tiny amount of material support. And after all, it's simply the creative work of another human, unrelated to the war or atrocities, not representing the interests of the Nazi party itself.
I'm sure that there are plenty of people that will show up to argue that actually, yes, they would gladly buy the book if they liked it and they would recommend it. And some will have the logical devices to show that there are no moral obligations involved. I disagree. Generally speaking, each of us only have tiny levers to pull, and we should pull them.
Kind of stupid, but I decided to make one final search through my huge bookmark list after posting and just came across the story. The bookmark was to a list, not the story itself, and I missed it in the first couple passes.
That Shape Had None by Henry Weikel. https://starlightconvenience.net/posts/that-shape-had-none/
Doesn't seem like I can remove my post at this point, but hey, at least I can recommend it to you.