I suspect conservatives who get into a moral panic about creating parasitic dependency/welfare queenism etc actually *want* to preserve the humiliation-based culture of community charity (not saying those who give *want* to humiliate, but that’s often the structural effect)
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I know this is sincerely the ideal many people believe to actually be true, but is just wildly psychologically implausible on the receiving end at least, *excelt* where both are part of a religious culture twitter.com/unorthodoxxxy/
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The actual effect of being the beneficiary of highly personal charity is often resentment. Beneath the mask of expressed gratitude is often anger, a sense of unwanted burden/obligation, unworthiness, low status in the community etc. It can drive people to leave communities.
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Blanche duBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is of course the best-known American portrayal of the oppressiveness of “kindness of strangers” cultures. Tennessee Williams’ other play Glass Menagerie has similar themes. There was a really good quote by him on dignity I can’t find
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Basically, problems created by industrial scale extraction, negative externalities, or direct cruelty can’t be solved by palliative measures based on family and church scale compassion. Impedance mismatch. You need same responses that rhyme with the causes.
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Taxes and entitlements *are* responses that rhyme with causes. Entitlements are not a dirty word for me. I expect to rely a bit on social security and Medicare when I retire. I would like single-payer nationalized healthcare with an option to buy extra privately. Etc.
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Individual charity is fine and has a place in the scheme of things for those who opt-in to specific webs of mutual community obligations, like joining a religion. It’s just neither the whole solution or one that is even relevant to everybody.
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I’m fine with the law. Culture and religion I am deeply suspicious of. They are powerful primitive forces with great PR operations and closets full of skeletons.
