inequality

And I did work out something: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it. They are weaklings and fools just like you. As long as they have enough to eat and can grease their floors with butter so that even the crumbs that fall from your table grow fat, they can't look with indifference on a man collapsing from hunger - although, of course, it must be in front of their house that he collapses.

The rich aren't paying for luxury - they're paying for basic humanity.

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

I am not posing these questions only to the world at large. I query us who own Christ as our life. Can God be pleased by the vast and increasing inequities among us? Is he not grieved by our arrogant accumulation, while Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere languish and die? Is it not obligatory upon us to see beyond the nose of our own national interest, so that justice may roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream? Is there not an obligation upon us to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God is we want to live in his wonderful peace?

Treat people like people. Beware of pity and patronization because in them, you can't see when you're unashamedly looking down on someone.

Venice was a contrast from Los Angeles itself, where you might see a woman with $15,000 tits, a face frozen in place by Botox, wobbling with her $4,000 Gucci bag right past a child with a sunken belly and exposed ribs encaging a heart too weak to scream.

Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?

By God, if women had written stories,As clerks had within here oratories,They would have written of men more wickednessThan all the mark of Adam may redress.

A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated _ and turned out to grass.

Never having experienced inequality, therefore, the majority of straight white men will be absolutely oblivious to their own advantages _ not because they must necessarily be insensitive, sexist, racist, homophobic or unaware of the principles of equality; but because they have been told, over and over again, that there is no inequality left for them _ or anyone else _ to experience _ and everything they have experienced up to that point will only have proved them right.Let the impact of that sink in for a moment.By teaching children and teenagers that equality already exists, we are actively blinding the group that most benefits from inequality _ straight white men _ to the prospect that it doesn__. Privilege to them feels indistinguishable from equality, because they__e been raised to believe that this is how the world behaves for everyone. And because the majority of our popular culture is straight-white-male-dominated, stories that should be windows into empathy for other, less privileged experiences have instead become mirrors, reflecting back at them the one thing they already know: that their lives both are important and free from discrimination.And this hurts men. It hurts them by making them unconsciously perpetrate biases they__e been actively taught to despise. It hurts them by making them complicit in the distress of others. It hurts them by shoehorning them into a restrictive definition masculinity from which any and all deviation is harshly punished. It hurts them by saying they will always be inferior parents and caregivers, that they must always be active and aggressive even when they long for passivity and quietude, that they must enjoy certain things like sports and beer and cars or else be deemed morally suspect. It hurts them through a process of indoctrination so subtle and pervasive that they never even knew it was happening , and when you__e been raised to hate inequality, discovering that you__e actually been its primary beneficiary is horrifying _ like learning that the family fortune comes from blood money.Blog post 4/12/2012: Why Teaching Equality Hurts Men

The seeming imperfections of Earth, the hazards and inequalities of life, the cruelty, harshness and apparent indifference to suffering and affliction are not what they seem; as it is Earth is perfect for its purpose. It is ignorance of that purpose which makes it appear imperfect.

Power is a fickle mistress, easy to seduce, but even easier to lose. That's how it works. One moment she is your closest confidant, whispering the secrets of the universe into your ear; the next, she is your vilest oppressor__nd once her ears close to your plights you are well and truly screwed.

Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.

The real debate about both the horrific inequality in the world and about the terrorism and frightening instability in the world requires analysis of the differences in upset-adaption or alienation-from-soul between individuals, races, genders, generations, countries, civilisations and cultures, but until the human condition could be explained and the upset state of the human condition compassionately understood and thus defended that debate could not take place.

Clearly it's not easy for women in modern society, no matter where they live. We still have to go the extra mile to prove that we are equal to men. we have to work longer hours and make more sacrifices. And we must emotionally protect ourselves from unfair, often vicious attacks made on us via the male members of our family.

Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence.

The tourists had money and we needed it; they only asked in return to be lied to and deceived and told that single most important thing, that they were safe, that their sense of security__ational, individual, spiritual__asn__ a bad joke being played on them by a bored and capricious destiny. To be told that there was no connection between then and now, that they didn't need to wear a black armband or have a bad conscience about their power and their wealth and everybody else__ lack of it; to feel rotten that no-one could or would explain why the wealth of a few seemed so curiously dependent on the misery of the many. We kindly pretended that it was about buying and selling chairs, about them asking questions about price and heritage, and us replying in like manner.But it wasn__ about price and heritage, it wasn__ about that at all.The tourists had insistent, unspoken questions and we just had to answer as best we could, with forged furniture. They were really asking, 'Are we safe?' and we were really replying, 'No, but a barricade of useless goods may help block the view.' And because hubris is not just an ancient Greek word but a human sense so deep-seated we might better regard it as an unerring instinct, they were also wanting to know, 'If it is our fault, then will we suffer?' and we were really replying, 'Yes, and slowly, but a fake chair may make us both feel better about it.

The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272)