Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
I grew up low class, and expected my life to be hard - only I didn’t process it as “hard”; it was just how life *was.* I was going to have to spend the rest of my life doing minimum-wage physically-hard labor, and then getting pregnant. That was the plan, but more importantly-
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I didn’t register this plan as a bad one, a sad one. It made the “I need to set aside my feelings and use my willpower” part of my brain very active, a dominant way of being. The pain in my legs from being on my feet all day was just the *way life was*. And I was grateful! -
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I’d grown up reading stories throughout history and was intimately familiar with how new and different my current lifestyle was. I was happy I wasn’t working in coal mines, or under threat of war, and that there was no famine. I viewed it as a normal feature of human existence-
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
That you had to set aside your feelings and use willpower. This is the way everyone had to live in history, this was a default of existence - and anything more than this was luxury. I felt hyper aware of how unusual our state of civilization was, how luxurious my life was already
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
And this is why I feel a little confused when people get really angry at stuff like the minimum wage, or having to work two jobs and live in a shitty apartment. People are complaining at working conditions that I went through with actual gratitude.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
It seems very clear to me that the issue is not absolute working conditions and living standards, it is narrative and contrast. People have been much happier with much less, but these people are less happy with more. And I can’t help but think - have you tried being grateful?
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Nobody had to give you your job. Nobody owes you anything. You are incredibly fortunate to be living this far into an advanced civilization at all. This is a matter of perspective - and sure this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to improve your life, but the entitlement is bizarre.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
There’s a good chunk of people who would like to lower the wealth of the very rich even if this benefited nobody else, even if the wealth didn’t get redistributed at all!
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𝙱𝚞𝚒𝚎
@JCorneliusBuie
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Ehhh. Yes and no. The immiserated working class of the past didn't live in a world where poverty was legitimately eradicable. We do. Indignation is absolutely justified towards the people who structure, perpetuate, and benefit from this awful, immoral stratification.
Erik Johannessen
@erikrjoh
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
People have a visceral, gut reaction against unfairness. I think there's a large divide between those who consider inequality to be inherently "unfair", and those who do not, to the point where it's difficult to even have a coherent conversation across that divide.
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Big Worker
@Big_Worker
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Inequality is inherently wrong in a utilitarian sense due to the declining marginal utility of wealth. What else does "wrong" mean if not "more harmful than the alternative"? Some inequality may be a necessary evil like some killing or some pain, but it's still an evil
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