Saturday, November 19, 2011

Everyone will be rich here!

What William Faulkner understood about why the middle seldom, if ever, opposes the top:

"There was no literate middle class to produce a literature. In a pastoral cityless land they lived remote and at economic war with both slave and slaveholder. When they emerged, gradually, son by infrequent son, like old Sutpen, it was not to establish themselves as a middle class but to make themselves barons, too.”

[William Faulkner, describing the class structure of the prewar South to Malcolm Cowley.]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rich are evil
Middle are better
Lower are best

Anonymous said...

Strikes me that an alcoholic serial adulterer finds economic aspiration to be an immoral act.

Anonymous said...

I don't think what Faulkner is describing is economic aspiration. What he's describing is delusionsal thinking.

Consistently, when surveyed, some 75% of drivers place themselves among the top 10%. Delusional thinking.

Similarly, the middle class all vaguely want to be in the top 1%. I say vaguely because it's not that they really have a plan to get there, and most have no better chance than the lottery of that actually happening. But they can kind of see themselves there. Clearly, less than 1% will actually make it (since some started there to begin with). Again, delusional thinking.

And Anon 1:32, again, criticizing the speaker, as opposed to the substance of what s/he says, is sloppy thinking, and doesn't advance the discussion.

Ken
Dallas

Ralph said...

It won't really have success, I consider so.
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