As I see it there are two distinct ways to perpetuate these psychopathic inequalities to a wider population.
One is through "othering" where people are convinced through propaganda or mass formation that another group of people really are effectively less than human or worthy of death. This allows the attacks to be carried out in plain sight. This is the phenomenon of the covid wars that is on a continuum with genocide.
The second is through abstraction, where the product is effectively decoupled from the suffering involved in its production. I know plenty of people who will happily eat chicken but could never bring themselves to kill a live chicken. (For the record I don't have a problem with eating meat but I also participate in all parts of the process.) The global economy is designed such that "products" are value-neutral objects that appear on store shelves guided by the "invisible hand" of the free market, and any link between a t-shirt and the sweatshop where it was made exists only in the most abstract sense. It's not that people believe sweatshop workers to be less than human; it's that those workers only exist and connect to a clothing purchase in the most abstract sense.
Inequity by othering is "Nazi-ing".
Inequity by abstraction is "not seeing".
Perhaps not so much of a difference in effect, but it is the othering that we are confronting here and the abstraction is a different problem in which probably all of us are complicit and that has different solutions.
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branchandroot
Re: Eisenstein - The Mask of Derision
Date: 2022-11-10 09:29 pm (UTC)One is through "othering" where people are convinced through propaganda or mass formation that another group of people really are effectively less than human or worthy of death. This allows the attacks to be carried out in plain sight. This is the phenomenon of the covid wars that is on a continuum with genocide.
The second is through abstraction, where the product is effectively decoupled from the suffering involved in its production. I know plenty of people who will happily eat chicken but could never bring themselves to kill a live chicken. (For the record I don't have a problem with eating meat but I also participate in all parts of the process.) The global economy is designed such that "products" are value-neutral objects that appear on store shelves guided by the "invisible hand" of the free market, and any link between a t-shirt and the sweatshop where it was made exists only in the most abstract sense. It's not that people believe sweatshop workers to be less than human; it's that those workers only exist and connect to a clothing purchase in the most abstract sense.
Inequity by othering is "Nazi-ing".
Inequity by abstraction is "not seeing".
Perhaps not so much of a difference in effect, but it is the othering that we are confronting here and the abstraction is a different problem in which probably all of us are complicit and that has different solutions.