Skip to main content

What the Rich Won’t Tell You - The New York Times

Responding to What the Rich Won’t Tell You - The New York Times
First, I can see the resentment in the comments, and certainly, some of it is justified, but it is often overgeneralized so that the affluent are presented or assumed to be all one way of another. It is always more nuanced.

Second, empathy matters, although not for everyone. If one has friends of different economic classes, older people on fixed incomes, women who've gone through divorces - women suffer more than men when couples divorce -, or those who've become victim to the changing job landscape, those still thriving feel some pain when realizing the tough times others might be going through. One avoids [mentioning] those things that are likely out of the reach of others.

Third, for those that are aware of their [fortune] - the 'luck' of having smarts, a good family, social supports, and who lived in a period of government munificence - doing good is another choice, as is charity, not necessarily to offset guilt, but wanting to change the unequal and harmful structures we live in.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Meanings of Ender's Game

In response to an Ender's Game discussion (Goodreads), with a link from Reddit, I posted the following: Much of the Reddit stream seems to focus on military tactics, or the lack thereof, used by the Ender, but who reads Ender and thinks it about military tactics, except the 20-year old grunt that started the thread? For a book written in the 80's, then edited in the early 90's, it seems more prophetic, with its use of game immersion, remote military operations and portable computing. Then when you think about the use of children in military games, one can think somewhat more deeply about sociopolitical indoctrination.  The series itself becomes a broader exploration of empathy and foreign culture.  The criticism seems more like the problem of a man with a hammer, who thinks every problem is solved by hammering, but even worse, every problem is about hammering. An additional post, regarding suspension of disbelief: Some people commented on the suspension of disbelie...

Accomplishments of Mayor de Blasio (as of December 2014)

I realized that de Blasio's accomplishments go unnoticed, primarily because affluent white people do not benefit from them. The benefits the mayor has brought are often corrections to the abuses of Bloomberg's, along with prior mayors', policies: Policing The NYPD conducts fewer stop-and-frisks. The city dropped its stop-and-frisk appeal. NYPD officers are starting to use body cameras. New York police officers are being retrained. Carrying a small amount of weed will probably result in a ticket, not an arrest. Teenage inmates are no longer put in solitary confinement at Rikers Island. The city has settled with the “Central Park Five.” Poverty There are 23 new homeless shelters in the city There's a new rent subsidy program for homeless families. More public housing units are available to homeless families. Traffic Pedestrian deaths are at a record low. The speed limit was lowered from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour. There are harsher ...

The Right to Write - NYTimes.com

In an article,  The Right to Write - NYTimes.com , I commented on the right to write, since writers are sometimes questioned on the validity of their writing, e.g., Harriet Beecher Stowe with Uncle Tom's Cabin: One, people always have the right to write, but readers concurrently have the right to reject said writing. Much personal criticism of depictions from writers is whether the depiction seems valid or plausible, but even that is an exercise in empathy, since it requires one to experience that depiction ideationally.  Two, there is a streak in Americans, and maybe anyone, that states that you cannot understand 'my pain', usually the death of a child or some horrific personal lose. Over a longer term I have sensed that people most easily accept empathy if it is expressed by someone with similar experiences, an aspect I believe is part of human nature. I find both irksome, since they deny empathy.