Are Americans peasants?

dhfenton · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 11:26 am Post subject: Re: Are Americans peasants?

I have to agree with those who say this is an absurd argument. Last time I checked my household income was among the top 3% in the world, and my wife and I don't have any killer jobs. We're pretty much the slightly above average American household, and we make good money for the U.S.; but not an amount to be considered upper income Americans. I'd have to say these well to do folks from other nations are probably more out of touch with their own citizenry than the U.S. government is. They apparently don't know how folks in most of the world live.

Another possibility is that they're viewing the ignorance of G.W. Bush and transferring it to the population as a whole (after all, who elected this idiot?). The collective stupidity of the last two elections would cause someone from outside the U.S. to pause and say "what to hell!!!", these people have got to be uneducated morons. Which may be marginally true at times; but peasants? Not yet.

Cid_Yama · Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 2:08 am Post subject: Re: Are Americans peasants?

Whats your overall impression of these people. Manipulative, predatory, dismissive, arrogant?

I thought a whole day about how to respond to this question. I decided to answer this by telling you about myself.

At 13 I got my first boat. I grew up on the river. At 15 I learned to drive and to fly, just like all my friends. We got our first car at 16 and our first plane when we got out pilot's license.

All your friends are the same as you, the same as everyone as far as you know, except those poor kids, but they are an exception as far as you know. I know it sounds stupid but the way you see the normal world as you grow up is everyone is like you, except for the exceptions.

You grow up within an extended family. You know all your aunts and uncles, great aunts and great uncles, great grandparents, and grandparents. You are part of this extended family and it defines who you are and encompass what is possible for you in your life. (I'm not real sure how to express this concept well as it is just the way it is, a shell that few ever break out of.)

Inheritance, and money have a hold on you although is is unspoken. That's really a bad way to express that. It would be very embarassing to be looked down on by the extended family and one's means is curtailed if you stray. I don't know how better to express that.

Not that we don't stray. Sowing your wild oats, so to speak, but it is expected to be a temporary aberation.

If not you are a black sheep.

There is truth that there is little strength where there is no struggle, and those that never stray are limited in their perspective, hell, let's say it for what it is, delusional.

Unfortunately one of those is President of the United States.

So, yes there is arrogance and dismissiveness, from ignorance.

Lot's of manipulation and predation, as delusions lead to vunerability.

But power resides with the extended family. So, though individuals may fall by the wayside, the family survives, and takes vengence.
_________________
In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
- George Orwell

seldom_seen · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Apr 12, 2005 Posts: 1950

Anyone who lives under the tentacles of the industrial megamachine are serfs, indentured servants. That applies to the US and the rest of the industrialized world. Or just about everybody. Some are a little higher up the pyramid than others so their chains are not as apparent.

As for Americans, Ed Abbey wrote "Never before in history have slaves been so well fed, thoroughly medicated, lavishly entertained—but we are slaves nonetheless."

There are a few hold outs. Some tribes in the remotest corners of Borneo, the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the deepest corners of the Amazon Jungle. A few other scattered and forgotten places here and there. The only people who haven't been usurped in to the machine. Free people.

These people are the best equipped to survive the collapse of industrial civilization because they are not members of it. If we get by without completely destroying the biosphere. These people may be the seeds for whatever comes next for the human species.