RE: Finish the Fiction Story Contest - Week #36 - @bananafish
Hmm... But stealing bread in order to survive starvation is something other than stealing because you don't want to adhere to a basic principle of human coexistence even though you could. Susie is representative of those who regard themselves as victims and therefore receive legitimation before themselves, even though they could have chosen a different path at any time. Although I do not condemn Susie, but only her act, she has my empathy as a human being, but my clear rejection of the theft.
I agree with you that there is something wrong with the framework conditions and that we people in modern societies often treat small children and old people as objects for safekeeping and thus violate intergenerational contracts - in some cases unintentionally but nevertheless. Since, realistically speaking, we cannot change the system, but have to develop with it, it would be good if everyone who looks for a job made the best of it, because in this way there are more winners than losers. We cannot blame the circumstances for our own misconduct.
I think that @theironfelix didn't consider the possibility of someone actually contradicting his raging river of arguments.. go proud Erika!
This is not a contradiction. This is merely a statement that so happens to disagree with me. And that can only happened to be produced if such a statement was something they couldn’t agree to. And I so happen to disagree with @erh.germany here, thus it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have written a comment that disagrees with @erh.germany. To pit us as some grand fighters in a boxing ring is to do more harm to both of our disagreements than it is to even to do justice to @erh.germany.
On contradictions, this easily could be said to be one. But I favor the word “disagreement” more since the problem had been identified, our perceptions towards it does not line up. If it were a serious contradiction, then neither of us would dare to comment to each other and instead write pieces that expresses our disgusts towards each other as we write why the other’s position is alien to our own.
Regardless, this chain of comments was bound to happen due to our own biases, due to the prompt and ending and due to the nature of wanting to protect one’s ideology no matter where one talks.
Anyways I find ir cutesy @bananafish that you mystify me there. To suggest that I do more than simply read something, think for a second, spurgle out my biases which the author may or may not like and get back to my work.
Anyways, if this was an actual debate, we would’ve not done it here. Steemit is no good fertile grounds for debates. We probably done it front of each other were we can be both awkward, gazing at each other and having to say what we have to say. Because here with comments and how the Internet has been, we’ve been nurtured to think that since we’re granted unlimited time to think our responses that we can and must obsess over nitpicking and “pwning” them. And while an individual may be at fault for reproducing it, do they really have alternate avenues or just pretenses of such? Such is ecosystem of the Net.
Somewhere I said I "agree with you", didn't I? ;-)
Keep in mind I am tipsy here. Regardless, that’s why I said to the Great @bananafish that we only disagree and not contradict each other. We generally disagree and we should recognize that. Regardless there are points with you that I agree with but we shouldn’t refrain from acknowledging our differences.
But even so, let’s both scream together that we should tolerate each other! Not because we shall accept our differences. No! Because we shall tolerate each other by denying our differences should make any impact on how we treat each other. More-so, that since we are not threats to each other at all, that we should think our differences came of chance and nurtured by conditions that spawned such. Yet never a reason to be intolerant of each other. (Which intolerance would compel us to accept our differences should affect our treatment towards each other.)
Good point. I acknowledge our differences, but I think debating them here would lead too far. I chat in Discord from time to time. If you want, we can talk there. :) So long stay warmly greeted.
Oh I didn't mistify anyone! I was just joking with you bud. I would make a distinction between a behaviour born out of mere greed and one dictated by poor conditions, tho. It's not by stealing from a person who cannot defend herself that you fight against social unequality (which by the way may hit with the same intensity both the granny and the nurse). So I'm closer to @erh.germany position.
Nowhere, Great @bananafish, did I state explicitly or implicitly that Illegalism against the proles and defenceless -> radical action to challenge Capitalism. Even if one were to cite such directly, the over all attitude is to not be suprised that this action was taken. More-so, her actions are nurtured by the system since it comes to help the system propagate itself. That reading of my comment is more sustainable than saying I support Illegalism 100%. Or to make clear a thing which may be obfuscated: her actions, though morally condemnable, are still propagated by Capitalism because it comes to the benefit of Capitalism. Which I might add is an argument in just not being suprised by the action. Already the discussion was to fail. Which I might add again, we still view the same problem but we have different reactions to it and different ways to resolve it.
lol :-)
😜
If only that were the case that people can fully be pinpointed for their actions. That is to say that humans had full control of their destiny when they clearly haven’t. And if thou speaks of that one Socrates quote, I have done my digging and found it in a book that mentions a character named “Socrates” but not the “Socrates” of the Heroic Age of Greece.
Regardless, people do have an ability to outright overthrow the system if they band together. Thou hast to remember that the revolutions are the cry of the people who wish to no longer be oppressed. Yet, wherever a revolution spawns, it must not only search to increase the freedom of the people but also maintain those freedoms by securing the material conditions that can continue to propagate those conditions.
Yet ah, thou may step back and say what of Susie’s World. And I would say, she lives in a NeoLiberal World that has broken and torn asunder the notion of Human Coexistence way before she was born. So already she cannot know what coexisting means, only from the footnotes of history can she dare to muse it. But ah, the footnotes; why are they merely footnotes? Is it because NeoLiberalism had done better than Human Coexistence, well no. It’s because it’s afraid of people organizing around interests of the people for the people. NeoLiberalism can’t stand others realizing and abandoning the false dichotomy of individualism and collectivism; for if people done that, they can see that the system propagates their class for the benefit of those that rule and they are only given the minimal amount to reproduce their labor-power for another day. The only thing the people have to realize that the only thing they have to lose is their chains and they have everything to gain.
For, as to quote the Greeks, “a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” And I must remind thou that there are many people around the World that yearn to Coexist as Humans and not with someone that forces people to be subordinates. And those very same people long tried to appease and ask for more scraps, only to rarely get those granted to them. And realistically, most of the time, they get brutally beaten for suggesting it. So don’t dare to say that they must continue to beg when they decide instead to go to the people and show them the history of the system and say a better World is possible. For these people have already declared “this is a life not worth living and I shall fight, even if it hurt me immensely, to take control over my destiny with others that have been also robbed of their destinies. And why to do so: that the future generations will never have to feel alienated, estranged and can fully experience having control with their own destinies.”
And we can bicker of moral rights and wrongs, but remember that a revolution is only the self-defence of the people and can never be more than that. And remember this also: the building of the New Social Order will always be on top of the Old Social Order. As even our current Social Order had to come into existence somehow, and we know it didn’t make an excuse for itself. Because if it did it, then that would be an admission of guilt. And to further this, know this: only humans can change their own conditions, but the conditions had to be revealed to them by the conditions in order for that change to happen.
The day we can act in accordance with Kant’s categorical imperatives is the day when Humans have control over their own destiny. More-so, that they can truly coexist without a breath of hatred for one another. A day when thy dreams can be realized and lived, and that’s equally the dreams of the revolutionaries fighting for a new World.
One can feel imprisoned between the free and feel completely free between all the prisoners.
Susie is one who lives in a modern world (like us now more or less). She doesn't seem to feel free and is only interested in herself, represented by her selfish behaviour at the old lady's bed (disinterest, impatience). She didn't need to steal anything because she wouldn't have starved to death. The context of this story makes this clear.
Another nurse (as I cast "Natalie" in my own sequel) is so free to react to the situation and Mrs. Ellerton in a completely different way. The class struggle and the revolution should not take place at the senior's bed. I believe that political thinking and action can be found precisely in such scenes. You see a Susie as a victim. But who wouldn't you want to sacrifice in this scene if you told the story differently? What would you do to let everyone win in this specific situation?
I don't think we disagree. I think you and I have the heart in the right place. ;-)
I think I have done bad to even misread thy reply @erh.germany. For methinks at first thou was talking of humanity fighting for a future but thou was sincerly talking about illegalism. So lemme take the courage to fix this error in both of our readings.
So lemme reconstitute my argument clearly:
- Within our World and the World of the Story, we find parallels to class struggles and class interests.
- Though the action is morally condemnable by assumed human coexistence. It is more condemnable that Susie is hurting the class interest of Mrs Ellerton because the boach could’ve helped the grand daughter.
- However Capitalism had forced her to compete within her class to survive.
C1. Her theft and stealing of the possession was necesitated for her to live another day.C2. We, as observers from far away, shouldn’t be surprised of the act though we can have our passions stirred by it.
C3. This action in no way implies radical emancipation of the Working Class, nor has my argument stated she’s a revolutionary. It is possible she could become one, but she is not one now and her consciousness is still plagued by individual survival in a system that benefits with her committing these actions. Or to say, she follows symptomatic behaviours and she has yet to realize such.
And for such I do apologize for not realizing and helping steer the argument back on course. Yet before we go and discuss things, we should make clear what we do say. Or forever we shall be blind that we never thought ourselves one-and-in-the-same and bickering about two different things when we both were talking of the same thing originally.