: : they smell of happy people who have chosen their way of life for themselves without depending upon the world to change for them.: I'm allright Jack. *Shakes Head* I'm OK and fuck the rest.
SDF: This deserves a stronger response RD, but I'm not quite sure what that response should be. Gee has already said he cares, somewhere down on the board where McSpotlight has erased it, so then the problem becomes one of how to deal with the "caring" bourgeoisie. Shiny happy people are illustrations of more ideas than the idea that "capitalism works," but they won't see it.
"The self-made man" is for the most part the beneficiary of circumstances: of having been born into a good family and having taken advantage of generous government policies. A cursory reading of Stephanie Coontz' family history titled THE WAY WE NEVER WERE will reveal the community ties and social support behind the common mythology of "self-reliance" better than I ever could in a BBS post.
Nobody really "chooses their way of life" under capitalism -- there has to be profit in one's way of life, enough profit to pay the rent and the bills for shelter, energy, food, transportation, family costs, etc., otherwise one involuntarily "does without." And most people bend themselves out of shape for the sake of this profit, from schooling onward. And the ones who don't are, among other people, the subjects of lower-class narratives of schooling such as Paul Willis's LEARNING TO LABOUR. People who don't "depend on the world to change for them," in short, already have it good.
None.
