Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
;
Well thought out and well said, again, Brett. Thank you for having the courage to state it this way. I appreciate your strong position here.
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Of course there is room and need for personal accountability. The Wall Street occupation is an imperfect protest, and no doubt you can find examples of entitled people latching onto it if you look hard enough (see here for a particularly egregious example: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jd-samson/i-love-my-job-but-it-made_b_987680.html ).
But is it really that hard to discern the goals of the movement? They are protesting crony capitalism, a system that removed any semblance of accountability from the people who are arguably most responsible for causing it. Individuals who made bad choices largely *are* suffering for it through underwater mortgages and lost jobs. In contrast, the people responsible for creating a system where it was profitable to take advantage of people going through the complicated and sometimes intimidating process of buying a house by lending them money far beyond what they could afford? They were the recipients of bailouts, and there hasn’t even been any meaningful changes in regulation to prevent something like this happening again.
That kind of anger is what’s driving a lot of these people, and there is nothing wrong with it.
I just think it is important to be angry at the right thing – sin. I wrote a bit about it here: http://musingsinmontage.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/occupy-wall-street-ruffles-my-feathers/
And, like many acts of resistance, the folks Occupying Wall Street and other areas of the country don’t have a vision of a redeemed atmosphere – they’re mostly discontent. I think part of that posture is cynicism and part apathy; they want their malcontent voices to be heard but are not carving space or creating a picture of what their hoped-for life looks like. It goes beyond not merely having a list of demands or plan for socioeconomic change: they aren’t casting a clear or firm hope that others can step into, and the negativity is underwhelming, uninspiring.
There is nothing wrong with average people expressing discontent and anxiety without proposing solutions. Our leaders are supposed to propose solutions, and crafting good policy is a difficult job that not everyone is capable of. That said, it’s pretty clear that our leaders are failing us, and that the surest way to commit a crime and not be held accountable for it is to be wealthy and connected.
> It goes beyond not merely having a list of demands or plan for
> socioeconomic change: they aren’t casting a clear or firm hope that
> others can step into, and the negativity is underwhelming, uninspiring.
Maybe to you, but I bet you have a job.
I’m not saying it’s wrong for folks to express discontent without offering an answer, but it’s far from the most efficient or healthy solution.
And sure, our political and economic leaders do control a whole lot, but we aren’t completely powerless. I understand there are plenty of factors that make it difficult for a huge amount of Americans to obtain employment right now, but blame placing and apathy isn’t helping the situation at all. We have to be individually and communally creative and encouraged if we want to see the atmosphere of America improve.
Hey, matt.
I’ve been unemployed for 5 months after serving 3 years as a missionary in Honduras. I’m not taking unemployment because I don’t want the government to write a bad check, but I AM doing fine. I’m living with my parents and humbly accepting the support of my community as I apply for over 100 jobs across the United States. I know the Lord will provide and I can’t blame anything on sinful people who have lots of money. I just think it is important to be angry at the right thing – sin. I wrote a bit about it here: http://musingsinmontage.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/occupy-wall-street-ruffles-my-feathers/
I agree that many of the problems in our society stem from material entitlement. However, these protests are more than just angry, unemployed 20-somethings looking for their share. Check out this piece by NPR’s Planet Money for a different perspective on Occupy Wall Street: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/07/141158199/the-friday-podcast-what-is-occupy-wall-street
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On the whole, I think this is a very accurate assessment. It’s interesting though because Occupy Wall Street seems like a blowfish revolt. Much of the actual demographic of the 99% who were definitely not present at these “riots” are ethnic minorities, women or long-time victims of systemic imbalance that have dealt silently with not receiving aid that the government said they would provide and also got the majority to believe they had provided. Those who have been vocal of the 99% in the past have really not been heard, until young white twenty-somethings with iPhones decided that not being able to get a job when and where they really wanted one is something that they feel uncomfortable about, and started placing blame on the corporate national economic system, which has been slighting other people we have been content to ignore, for generations.
It seems to follow course that many of these long-sufferers so to speak are taking the opportunity to join up with a movement of vocalizing these concerns, however dissonant, largely championed by a demographic that this nation built itself to hear, but it’s safe to say those people are in it because if change needs to happen maybe this will do the trick. I think that most of the “yuppie” protesters are driven by individualist entitlement, and disillusionment from meritocracy, of which is perhaps the largest socio-psychological basis which we build our economic systems upon. So that is a problematic zeitgeist. I wouldn’t say that a young latino mother who has been denied a job based on prejudices that bleed profusely and directly into economic realities is suffering from an unhealthy fugue state of entitlement that is driving her to complain for unfounded reasons though.
Theologically, nobody deserves anything but hell, and all of us must reassess our rampant entitlement, but not everybody is being affected on the same level by their government and established societal norms and ideas which results in actual injustice. Yes, many of these protesters are privileged kids who don’t know what privilege is, and are demanding actions to help them get back to what they and their culture has defined as their normal, which they assume is a universal normal. But not everybody is speaking from a position of privilege. Maybe a better movement would be Occupy South Bronx, where people just hang out where the distance really manifests itself. Maybe then the playing field can be leveled when it’s made evident that people with real reason to feel slighted by their country have been forced to go unheard for years, and maybe we can take care of a real communal problem far more devoid of a shoddy individualistic agenda, that should have been addressed as such far earlier.
I’m not a huge fan of either the Tea Party or the Occupy movement. That said, characterizing the Occupiers as a bunch of twentysomething losers pissed off at Netflix is more than troubling—it’s offensive.
Not only do you trivialize economic disparity, you naively equate failure with not trying hard enough. Never mind that wealth goes hand-in-hand with power. Never mind that much of the wealth in America has been earned at the expense of those with no influence or power whatsoever. Never mind that honest people who want to care for their families can’t find jobs, through no fault of their own. Never mind that people are denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition they didn’t ask for.
According to your portrait of the Occupiers, if we’re not successful (and by successful I assume you mean “rich”), it’s because we’d prefer to whine about how poor we are instead of doing an honest day’s work. But that kind of picture doesn’t account for the thirtysomethings, fortysomethings, fiftysomethings, sixtysomethings who make up the Occupiers. I can guarantee you those people don’t give a flip about how much Netflix costs or how often Facebook gets a makeover. They see injustice and want to do something about.
When did wanting an equal voice become a form of arrogance? When did we decide that capitalism was better than compassion? When did success come to only mean “being rich?”
Forgive me, but your whole posturing attitude strikes me as the entitled one.
I came across your blog from a friends post on Facebook. To me this piece resembles much of what David Brooks does: presents bloviating as thoughtful dialogue. It is very clear what the OWS crowd is protesting, rampant hyper-capitalism, excess neo-liberalism, and lack of accountability from the people who got us into this whole hot mess.
Your statement on the demographics has been proven incorrect. And I believe it is intellectually dishonest to keep making easy statements that it is just angry entitled 20 somethings.
You may not agree with what these people are trying to change, but to relegate them as just a bunch of whiners? Now that is just utter nonsense. Change does not happen overnight and movements are messy (not from a physical standpoint). The OWS movement is getting more organized every day….let’s hope they effect the change they are shooting for.
Here’s some facts: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1
Good heavens. Your willingness to bend over backwards to avoid listening to what progressives actually care about has reached a new low.
I have to mostly disagree with this article. This is MUCH more than discontented, entitled twenty-somethings, in fact I have been pleasantly surprised at who I have seen at Occupy DC and our Occupy Movement here in little Roanoke. It has by and far been an older generation of people. I think, if anything, (and I fear this) that it is largely a discontented middle class that is angry and I hope with all my heart that those living in poverty get involved too because this probably concerns them the most. This movement should go way beyond politics (again, that is my hope) and look at the mess our culture has created – it’s a culture of financing, of living in debt, of materialism, and of making sure that the poor stay in their place. I believe that the government and our “democracy” wrongly support these things. But mainly, yeah, this movement is trying to end the corruption that comes from mixing corporations and state. That is NOT entitlement!
Good thoughts. I have been interested to see how OWS manifests in other states and venues, but if they are older people going about things more civilly, then of course they’d be less of a media magnet, so unfortunately it’s been difficult to find coverage.
Corporations + State creates a baffling mess, to the point of it achieving a certain level of invisibility to the general public. I also think State on it’s own could turn it’s head back to glaring issues it’s been incredibly adept at skirting around, which leaves people hurt in more ways than just financially speaking.
That said, I think this article is speaking to a cultural symptom of entitlement that cannot be ignored as a systemic psyche that has gone unchecked, and it is not necessarily saying that the goals of OWS are misplaced, but that there are better ways to go about getting these things accomplished which are more effective, mature, and even pragmatic, but which our general ‘I-deserve-(blank)’ philosophical environment will flag as too modest.
The nebulous goal of economic injustice is a bit too broad to really expect the government to take this model seriously, however there are some very real issues being felt by those in OWS and elsewhere that should undergo change, and should have had progress made a long time ago. The issue is still real, but there is something unusual about how our nation suddenly chooses to showcase pushback from these long running economic injustices only now, when our young white citizens start to feel difficulty from systemic operation and subsequently involve their faces and identities in the movement.
Brett – I’ve read your blog for a long time now, and have both agreed and disagreed with things you have said, but I still enjoy every bit of it. This entry, however, is a joke. If anything, you come off as one of the many entitled, pull yourself up by your boot straps, hard work equals success types that seem to be turning a blind eye to the massive chasm that is swallowing the middle class and turning them into the working poor.
My dad has worked for a company for forty years. The last couple of years he has seen the corporate management turn over at an unbelievable rate, worked 70-80 hours a week (and only paid for forty), seen his health benefits go down (along with his health in general), been regularly screamed at by corporate management who don’t even have experience with the goods they sell (while his district has remained in the top three of the entire company for several years) and with the ever present threat of the companies collapse because of the recession, can only stand by and wait to see if he will have a retirement fund waiting for him when he does retire in two more years.
I’m sure some of those protesters may not exactly fit the bill of needy Americans, but I’m glad they are out there, occupying Wall Street and other cities across this country for those of us that can’t. One of those people represents my father – A life time of hard work, with everything he had to show for it swirling down the drain because a small group of people that were playing with an entire countries money decided they could do what they wanted. He can’t be there. He can’t camp out for weeks on end. He has to work, but someone CAN do that for him. Someone can represent him, and that’s who those people are.
This blog is yours, and you are entitled to any opinion you might have. This is, hopefully, the only time I will ever say this, though – You need to rethink this situation. You need to look beyond the surface of it.
Brett, wonderfully written (as always). Couldn’t agree more.
Hope you’re doing well!
“As Christians, though, I think we must first and foremost look within for the blame. We must own our share in the mess. Beyond institutions and hegemonies and Wall Street tycoons, how are we responsible for the trouble we’re in? True revolution begins here. True change begins with what we can actually control: our own lives, an awareness of our weaknesses and potentials, and a commitment to working to improve.”
I really think this is a pretty milquetoast response. Actually, no, it’s worse than that–it’s shifting the blame away from the powerful, it’s ignoring problematic economic trends, including the consolidation and globalization of corporations, especially banks and it’s ignoring economic stratification. I’ve spent years working in anti-poverty activism and in the prison system, the mental health and the homeless system. The trends of a larger percentage of people becoming unemployed and underemployed along with a deteriorating safety net is creating serious problems among all sectors of society, with the exception of the top 10% whose collective wealth has done nothing but increase. There are hundreds of thousands of people whose only source of income is Food Stamps (thanks to TANF); homeless shelters have waiting lists. And there is a crisis of students being thousands of dollars in student loan debt and a job market that is paying everyone else.
No, you can’t act like the system doesn’t matter. You can’t pretend that as a Christian we need to only look within. The system is a problem where the poorest upon us are suffering the most and we have two parties that are constantly working towards stripping the government of any social responsibility. If you ignore the problems of the system, it’s only perpetuating them and it has real material consequences.
The only hope is that there is some collective action that doesn’t cede to this kind of fatalism you are proposing. Because really, not just for the broad swathes of the declining middle class but for people most affected by oppressive systems, who are homeless and food insecure, we should fight for real systemic change.
And I’ll end by saying that I find people who are comfortable enough to feel as if introspection is the answer should not pretend that isn’t an enormously privileged and entitled place to be.
@Andrew and Amelia: Sweet–thanks for saving me the trouble of replying to this unfortunate blog post from Mr. McCracken.
It’s an all too good example of how articulate writing doesn’t necessarily articulate something of insightful worth.
Brett
Love your site, but check yourself on this one. If you want to talk entitlements, let’s look at Wall Street. They operate with a “too big to fail” mentality with no real risk whatsoever. We make poor investment decisions and we lose our retirement. They lose billions, (I’m sorry trillions) and they have zero personal liability and wait for the government to bail them out.
I have to agree with Brett. Virtually all of the coverage that I have seen of the OWS protests has shown people that are primarily within the demographic described in this blog. My observations are that the protests are more of a reaction to unmet personal expectations than they are to advocating for the oppressed. One doesn’t have to look very far to realize that our culture truly is stuck on entitlement.
When I read the statement, “As Christians, though, I think we must first and foremost look within for the blame.” I see the mirror reflecting myself and my own sense of entitlement. I am supposed to live with the conscious knowledge that this world is not my home, yet I find myself stocking up on my comforts and planning for how I will pursue “my” future that is even more financially comfortable than my current situation. Nevermind that the future of my life isn’t even really mine, but rather God’s, since he owns me. When this mirror of entitled-ness is reflected back on me, I know that my responsibility is to repent and to turn toward Christ and prayerfully seek to live out love in the way that he showed us in the gospels.
Politically, we as Americans, have recourse. We can vote; but we cannot simply listen to the rhetoric of each political party villainizing the other. I do not see where either democrats or republicans have done much to reverse the direction of deepening national debt. I’ll admit that no one on either side of the political aisle leads me toward any kind of enthusiasm. I suppose what I am saying here is that we must vote, but not be enslaved to either political party (yet another thing that I have had to repent of).
But ultimately, of course, we have to remember that this world is NOT our home. As people who have been bought and redeemed by Christ’s blood, our home is in God’s kingdom. As I am reminded of these things, I find myself unable to look upon the OWS protests as a righteous cause. Instead, I want to ask what we could instead be doing as Christians to truly take up the cause of the oppressed.
Complete and utter rubbish. You use straw man arguments (like most libertarians) to make the others argument sound ridiculous. The facts is the anti-capitalist/corporatist left is angry and frustrated like you say, but it knows exactly why. It is because capitalism and statism are the same thing and always operates to benefit the current ruling class. This is why they are angry.
Capitalism is not a free market as it always requires at least a minarchist state to enforce it’s privileges ie copyrights, patents etc. As it requires the state it requires to enforce these privileges it requires regulation and is thus not a free market. As both the capitalist and the statist retain the status of the dominent class and dominate the market, entrepreneurs and market risk takers cannot compete fairly and inevitably become workers of the domient classes. This means as a worker is alienated from his/her labour they are exploited, as they do not receive appropriate resources in response to their labour. The libertarian and voluntaryist cop out of “it’s voluntary” is frankly laughable, as it completely fails to recognise humans have a need both for survival and a need to appear successful, so will sell their labour to the domient class. Necessity takes over and people will prostitute their body’s and labour as workers. “Occupy Wall Street represents the natural discontent of an entitled generation raised on the notion that we deserve things, that the government owes us something, that everything we want should be accessible, and that somehow we are not responsible if we don’t end up quite as successful in life as we’d hoped. It’s a blame-shifting problem.” wrong. It is just a small part of the global resentment towards capitalists and governments taking what isn’t theirs and exploiting the labour of the misfortunate.
The solution is simple and has been proven to work in grassroots struggles all across the world. Through the free market decentralised socialism naturally occurs (more reminiscent of Proudhon’s and Kroptkin’s than Marx’s) as scarcity of resources becomes obvious and the community’s need for survival becomes top priority. This has been proven to work in shanty towns all over the world, in iceland, in catalonia etc many times over.
Trying to single this group as a individual occurrence and not a part of a growing phenomena is just simply nieve and ignorant.
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