This thread and the posted content has reminded me of Charles Dickens and David Brooks.
"“They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.” Charles Dickens
When we watch A Christmas Carol, many of us are probably reminded of our past and to the extent we have not been a good neighbor. We have looked down upon the black and brown sister with a brood of children and scorned them as unworthy as week feast on our meals of two meats and a variety of vegtables, relax knowing our homes are well maintained, and we are assured a "golden years" retirement because of a generous pension because of consistant employment, never having to receive unemployment or getting fired of laid off. We might even convince ourselves that our experience is common or worse, an expectation. Shame on us for being so blind.
I've read Brooks for years. He is a thinker. A bible teacher I knew once remarked "this is teaching, not preaching. You will be expected to think". Here are a couple of abstracts from this weeks op-ed.
“Humiliation lingers in the mind, the heart, the veins, the arteries forever,” Vivian Gornick writes in Harper’s Magazine. “It allows people to brood for decades on end, often deforming their inner lives.”
" If you think anybody who tells the truth is guilty of collaboration with cultural elites, then you are seeing the world through resentment-colored glasses."
"Some days American politics seems to be a futile clash of resentments. But I like to think that flowing through American history there is the recurring tale of people conquering humiliation through creative action. I like to think that scorn has paradoxically been a propulsive force in American life because people find sources of power in places scorn cannot reach."
I personally know what it feels like to be humiliated. I have been reduced to tears by Dickens. May we all learn to "Keep Christmas Well" for then it will permeate our souls and at the end we will have lived for something real.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/o...n-history.html
And, when we inflict humiliation, this is what occurs.
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/...ivian-gornick/
Bookmarks