Quote from: jupiviv on Mar 30, 2024, 03:26 PM

Quote from: RE on Mar 30, 2024, 02:31 PMMoney doesn't buy happiness, but neither does poverty.

Takes the sting out of being poor though.

Define "sting"? Those of us born into the condition didn't even really think about it, or consider ourselves that. In part because there was also someone poorer down the block. By comparison, with a working man in the family at a factory rather than just a farmer, we had a TV and some rabbit ears and sure looked "rich" to some other in the holler. They only had a radio. Nobody had health care, black lung was knocking off the miners regularly so we attended family funerals couple times between the age of 10 and 15 that I remember, what college educations handed out with unlimited loans to anyone who wanted them, so they could major in ethnic studies or symbolism in prehistoric art of whatever passes for upper level education nowadays. We were 14 years old and most already smoking because it was cool. You want protein? Here is a trap and a gun..go figure out how to get some meat or go hungry.

American changed as to even what "poor" means. Look at what "not poor" means to RE. To heck with that, folks feel poor if they don't have the newest iPhone. Whoa is me...I am poverty stricken. So a lifestyle that today might seem Third World in modern America isn't even what "poor" is nowadays. 

So what is the sting of modern poor? Not living up to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or poor as in how some of us grew up that wouldn't even be recognized by modern welfare recipients? Collecting mailbox money and cards, provided health care, job training, education benefits and help, able to afford TVs and heat and electricity not provided mostly by woodstoves, FOOD STAMPS. We knew some people we referred to as "reliefers", I think that meant they collected something government wise that was terribly embarassing, now THOSE folks were the poor. The rest of us started at age 10 with the trapline, firearms at 12 and were damn proud of helping to support our families because we weren't none of them damn "reliefers"...whatever that ephiphet meant. I just knew it was bad to be one.

Quote from: jupivivYeah, collapse is a sum greater than its interconnected parts. I see it (the phenomenon itself) as a critique of the capital system.

I think collapse is just the result of humans being human, the way we treat each other, our economic and social systems, the things we strive for and turn to bad ends, the dismissal of the collective good in favor of the individual gain, and all the other mechanisms that have encouraged us to be selfish, mean spirited, dogmatic, anti-science, conspiratorial and just outright self centered "me first" humans.