Great article. The entire time I kept thinking of Simone Weil, She also became a Catholic (pretty much) and spent her life in poverty wishing only to serve the poor – Simone going further and wishing to take their suffering – I read her line below and could never forget it.
‘”every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.””
She ended up essentially starving herself to death in 1943 because she felt such guilt having access to food wile the people on the continent starved.
They had some wild ones then, not like today’s people. I think of Gertrude Bell as Afghanistan is going through its trauma and the Taliban are very much in line with something she wrote so beautifully,
““...the holy men sat in an atmosphere reeking of antiquity, so thick with the dust of ages that you can’t see through it –nor can they.” ― Gertrude Bell “
And I think of Mother Theresa – A wealthy American was so taken with her he flew all the way to India and visited her in person to give her a very generous contribution, which she took, adding – (paraphrased) ‘Next time stay home and include the cost of the trip.
How marvelous they were – Carry Nation with her hatchet and all the huge Publicans in fear of her wrath against their alcohol, such personality – when I see those super creepy Extinction Rebellion gender-non-specific wraiths I get a feel of disgust and revulsion instead of admiration.
Last edited 2 years ago by Galeti Tavas
Peter LR
2 years ago
This is a great exposé of the difference between the activism of love and the activism of hate: or activism that loves people rather than hate them.
Her advice on working with the destitute is spot on:
“there are three things you have to remember about very poor people who live on the street: they don’t smell good, they aren’t grateful and they are apt to steal”.
I would add a fourth from experience: ‘don’t expect too much success with transforming lives’. This helps one not to measure outcomes by success but simply as being the sharing of love and common humanity. It is very difficult bringing up children in that environment as the demand for attention to destitute needs is continuous.
The reason I would add the fourth point is that you are largely dealing with people who didn’t have the human right of a stable family upbringing and support network. I am not aware of any popular high-profile activism for the rights of all children to be raised in secure family life environments with their genetic parents; or do we think this is an impossible ask? (I am not saying this to wind anyone up or make judgments; it’s a fact that children’s rights are secondary to the rights of adults to put their life choices first).
Very true in regards to children, anyone would think they were less human than adults.
Too many today like to signal their virtue without getting their hands dirty as if the thought being there is all that counts.
The entire Liberal Left sick Welfare industry is designed to destroy the family – NOT to strengthen it. They are vastly successful at this.
In USA where I have a large experience of the welfare underclass – the men cannot live in the house paid for by welfare, or they must qualify, and NOT have any felonies – and any income they have is deducted….Women with children get full benefits, men do not except in unusual cases. (and if you know the underclass male they are not the culture of the man staying home as a single father – that is the role of the women. The men’s role is to try to get by with high unemployability, very low income, crime and drugs being a constant background noise, and usually some criminal record)
And so the men father children, but not live with them – and so the women have these many men who just move on, not parenting the children but producing them, but more often making them more messed up by the string of strange men staying in the house.
They call it “The Welfare Trap” Because it is a trap, once in you cannot leave – and it goes from one generation to the next with few breaking free – Liberal/Left social policies are evil because they will not allow what is right – only what is ‘correct’.
“by Theodore Dalrymple
4.21 · Rating details · 2,614 ratings · 302 reviews
Here is a searing account-probably the best yet published-of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does. Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has seemingly seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds even his own considerable experience. Dalrymple’s key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own lives. “
To me, a lot of the “rights” of your final paragraph are privileges. They demand wealth, time, labour, i.e. resource, from others. Which inevitably leads to coercive and compulsory practices by state actors.
J Bryant
2 years ago
“But these days, as others have noted, being an activist is simply another part of one’s career, one’s social life, one’s brand. It’s something you perform on Twitter and brag about on LinkedIn.”
Ha ha. Sometimes an article (and this is a fine article, imo) produces a single, shining quote.
We have been encouraged to be so narcissistic that even when we attempt ‘love’ it is merely yet another ego trip. The ‘death of God’ – or rather spirituality per se means that there nothing else to consider in our decision-making except for our all-encompassing egos – that we are too dim to understand the convolutions thereof. As Jung pointed out ‘consciousness raising is a lifelong job of hard work’ – and who even realises that ???? before they decide that they actually know enough to make a decision about anything……………
mike otter
2 years ago
Great article, i think if the current crop of fake acitivists are not reigned in the rest of us will be living in the same poverty as Dorothy Day but it won’t be voluntary….
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
“…, but then people called to higher ideals so often fail their own families.”
That might well have been Mrs Jellyby’s parting shot at her detractors, so astonished to witness her eccentric, ramshackle household. It sums up Dickens’s funnily teasing portrayal of this character of his in his book, Bleak House. Not Mrs Jellyby’s house, though, who, like the lady Day here, kept proper busy in her activism (in her case, for the poor in Africa), and, as well, seemed to have no time for dishing out contempt for, or ridicule on, those who stood in her way. They did not detest their fellow man, even if they thought too highly of themselves.
John Shaplin
2 years ago
In 1929, when he was only twenty-four, Mounier came under the influence of the French writer Charles Péguy, to whom he ascribed the inspiration of the personalist movement.
Julian Farrows
2 years ago
As a newly minted American, I would vote for any party that does something about the homeless. They are conveniently forgot about in the endless culture wars of our times.
Great article. The entire time I kept thinking of Simone Weil, She also became a Catholic (pretty much) and spent her life in poverty wishing only to serve the poor – Simone going further and wishing to take their suffering – I read her line below and could never forget it.
‘”every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.””
She ended up essentially starving herself to death in 1943 because she felt such guilt having access to food wile the people on the continent starved.
They had some wild ones then, not like today’s people. I think of Gertrude Bell as Afghanistan is going through its trauma and the Taliban are very much in line with something she wrote so beautifully,
““...the holy men sat in an atmosphere
reeking of antiquity, so thick with the
dust of ages that you can’t see through it
–nor can they.”
― Gertrude Bell “
And I think of Mother Theresa – A wealthy American was so taken with her he flew all the way to India and visited her in person to give her a very generous contribution, which she took, adding – (paraphrased) ‘Next time stay home and include the cost of the trip.
How marvelous they were – Carry Nation with her hatchet and all the huge Publicans in fear of her wrath against their alcohol, such personality – when I see those super creepy Extinction Rebellion gender-non-specific wraiths I get a feel of disgust and revulsion instead of admiration.
This is a great exposé of the difference between the activism of love and the activism of hate: or activism that loves people rather than hate them.
Her advice on working with the destitute is spot on:
“there are three things you have to remember about very poor people who live on the street: they don’t smell good, they aren’t grateful and they are apt to steal”.
I would add a fourth from experience: ‘don’t expect too much success with transforming lives’. This helps one not to measure outcomes by success but simply as being the sharing of love and common humanity. It is very difficult bringing up children in that environment as the demand for attention to destitute needs is continuous.
The reason I would add the fourth point is that you are largely dealing with people who didn’t have the human right of a stable family upbringing and support network. I am not aware of any popular high-profile activism for the rights of all children to be raised in secure family life environments with their genetic parents; or do we think this is an impossible ask? (I am not saying this to wind anyone up or make judgments; it’s a fact that children’s rights are secondary to the rights of adults to put their life choices first).
Very true in regards to children, anyone would think they were less human than adults.
Too many today like to signal their virtue without getting their hands dirty as if the thought being there is all that counts.
The entire Liberal Left sick Welfare industry is designed to destroy the family – NOT to strengthen it. They are vastly successful at this.
In USA where I have a large experience of the welfare underclass – the men cannot live in the house paid for by welfare, or they must qualify, and NOT have any felonies – and any income they have is deducted….Women with children get full benefits, men do not except in unusual cases. (and if you know the underclass male they are not the culture of the man staying home as a single father – that is the role of the women. The men’s role is to try to get by with high unemployability, very low income, crime and drugs being a constant background noise, and usually some criminal record)
And so the men father children, but not live with them – and so the women have these many men who just move on, not parenting the children but producing them, but more often making them more messed up by the string of strange men staying in the house.
They call it “The Welfare Trap” Because it is a trap, once in you cannot leave – and it goes from one generation to the next with few breaking free – Liberal/Left social policies are evil because they will not allow what is right – only what is ‘correct’.
“by Theodore Dalrymple
4.21 ·
Rating details · 2,614 ratings · 302 reviews
Here is a searing account-probably the best yet published-of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does. Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has seemingly seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds even his own considerable experience. Dalrymple’s key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own lives. “
*Awaiting for Approval* – any talk of the underclass is banned these days –
To me, a lot of the “rights” of your final paragraph are privileges. They demand wealth, time, labour, i.e. resource, from others. Which inevitably leads to coercive and compulsory practices by state actors.
“But these days, as others have noted, being an activist is simply another part of one’s career, one’s social life, one’s brand. It’s something you perform on Twitter and brag about on LinkedIn.”
Ha ha. Sometimes an article (and this is a fine article, imo) produces a single, shining quote.
We have been encouraged to be so narcissistic that even when we attempt ‘love’ it is merely yet another ego trip. The ‘death of God’ – or rather spirituality per se means that there nothing else to consider in our decision-making except for our all-encompassing egos – that we are too dim to understand the convolutions thereof. As Jung pointed out ‘consciousness raising is a lifelong job of hard work’ – and who even realises that ???? before they decide that they actually know enough to make a decision about anything……………
Great article, i think if the current crop of fake acitivists are not reigned in the rest of us will be living in the same poverty as Dorothy Day but it won’t be voluntary….
“…, but then people called to higher ideals so often fail their own families.”
That might well have been Mrs Jellyby’s parting shot at her detractors, so astonished to witness her eccentric, ramshackle household. It sums up Dickens’s funnily teasing portrayal of this character of his in his book, Bleak House. Not Mrs Jellyby’s house, though, who, like the lady Day here, kept proper busy in her activism (in her case, for the poor in Africa), and, as well, seemed to have no time for dishing out contempt for, or ridicule on, those who stood in her way. They did not detest their fellow man, even if they thought too highly of themselves.
In 1929, when he was only twenty-four, Mounier came under the influence of the French writer Charles Péguy, to whom he ascribed the inspiration of the personalist movement.
As a newly minted American, I would vote for any party that does something about the homeless. They are conveniently forgot about in the endless culture wars of our times.