tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1763883859696167228.post1816729538309294791..comments2023-11-03T03:37:02.548-05:00Comments on WEBSTER'S BLOGSPOT: Why does anyone need a "monster truck"?Terry Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00166609562028309038noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1763883859696167228.post-42944859736795902482008-06-19T13:43:00.000-05:002008-06-19T13:43:00.000-05:00This comment, IMO, sums up the attitude of the wea...This comment, IMO, sums up the attitude of the wealthy.<BR/><BR/>"The rich" as Locke calls them, are just like anyone else in that some are, indeed, mentally ill on different levels. However, the fact that they see no difference (and most do not) in people based upon their skin color has to do with utility--i.e., all serfs are serfs, so what difference does it make what color their skin is? Remember, many people (like the family my grandfather in the article married in to) have had servants from all races. My grandfather and his children would be the first to tell you that the best servants they had were Japanese, the most surly--the Irish. When one attains a certain cultural level, and again I stress that Mr. Locke only knows the nouveau riche and not old money, all those below it tend to blur. What I mean to say is, is there really any difference between the trailer park whites and the ghetto blacks? Not really."<BR/><BR/>David Cannadine, in his tome, <I>Ornamentalism,</I> put forth the class versus race argument in his examination of the British Empire.<BR/><BR/>"The concept of 'race' today is so intertwined with the idea of 'colour' that it is often difficult to comprehend the Victorian notion of racial difference. For Victorians, race was a description, not so much of colour differences, as of social distinctions,. The English lower classes were, to nineteenth-century eyes, as racially different as were Africans or Asians. A report in the Saturday Review about working class life observed that 'The Bethnal Green poor are a caste apart, a race of whom we know nothing, whose lives are of quite different complexion from ours, persons with whom we have no point of contact.' 'Distinctions and separations, like those of English classes', the Review suggested, 'which always endure, which last from the cradle to the grave, which prevent anything like association or companionship, produce an effect on the lives of the extreme poor, and subject them to isolation, which offer a very fair parallel to the separation of the slaves from the whites.'"<BR/><BR/>Wealth correlates strongly with adaptive traits. Longevity, morbidity, maternal and infant mortality, education and general quality of life. IMO, it's evolved. As Darwin suggested, competition exists not just at the group level, but at the individual level as well.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com