--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It is a passive lack of concern based on ignorance of > the experience of others that are not privledged. This > has always been the curse of America's ruling class. > There is no intent to be uncaring, there's just a lack > of awareness of the daily grind that most people call > life.
I tend to agree. I encounter the same thing here in France, where the term "upper class" means some- thing quite different than it does in America. It's more like in England, in the sense that "class" is hereditary. No matter how much money you make, you essentially are going to die in the same class that you were born in. Your children may be per- ceived to be upper class, but you will not. In America, you can earn enough money to buy your way into the upper class and be accepted there in your lifetime. However, there is still a vast gulf between that "level" of the upper class and the level of "old money." Old money, in the US, means that your grandfather had money. Old money in France means that your great-great-great-great grandparents had money, and possibly a title. When I meet people here from this background, as nice as they may occasionally be, there is almost always this ignorance of the real lives of the common people and this passive lack of concern that you speak of. It's like what the Buddha must have been like when he was still being kept inside the palace by his parents. He had no IDEA what lay outside the palace gates; those people and their daily existence was just not part of his awareness. And it was not part of his awareness until he snuck out of the palace and encountered reality for the first time. That experience set him on the pathway to compassion. A lot of rich folks on this rock need to sneak out of the fuckin' palace. Their ignorance and their passive lack of concern is adding to the suffering of millions of people's lives. I really like it when I read about someone who is rich and famous doing something that involves gettin' down in the mud and interacting with the common people. It can indicate that this person is open to experience outside his class, outside the walls of the palace. Like when Sean Penn went down to New Orleans recently to help out. I read one account, from a firefighter there who encount- ered him, that shows *just* how down in the mud he got. The firefighter wrote of how Penn dived into the sewage/chemical stew to save people who had been swept away in the current while trying to reach the boat that had come to rescue them. It's easy to hear stories like this and go all cynical about them, like, "Oh, that's just a pub- licity stunt." But then you read a little bit further into the matter and you find out that Sean Penn actually used to be a firefighter, back in New York, before he was famous. He had the skills; he cared; he went there to help, by put- ting those skills to use. If George W. Bush, or Tony Blair, of any of the pissy old upper-class men who run the world would just get down in the mud once or twice in their lives, I think the world would be a much better place afterwards. But they won't. They think they're too good for the mud. Fuck that. The mud is too good for them. Unc ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/JjtolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
