I have had a sort of reverse experience, but which has led me to believe that poverty is a "contagious mindset, nothing more" as well: My family were academics, so our bank accounts were mostly empty, our clothes were pretty old, etc, but we grew in upper middle class New York. I pretended to be blue collar in my twenties, thinking I would be the next great socialist author. However, when I got sick of, well, being poor, I just started taking classes at the community college, schmoozing my teachers and my bosses, and voila, I am a solidly middle class data hacker 15 years later. I don't have the bank account I would have had if I went to college earlier and started investing, but whatever, I am so not poor. For the blue collar people I worked with before the transition, however, the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral; they have probably not done as well as I in the last 15 years.
I hope God appreciates humor, because if I say grace, it always includes something like "and thanks for giving me an upper middle class cultural background", because, well, I would be f*ed with out it (as are LOTS AND LOTS of people in the US).
Also -- note that I have not mentioned race. I think it has become largely irrelevant to the dynamics of poverty, thank god, but only because my experience shows me that you can be totally screwed by the above culture of poverty and be of the same british isle/ german descent as my upper middle NYC friends.
EDIT: And I think we should be throwing our weight into fixing this massive cultural problem, along with the wasted human potential it causes (really expensive to hire prison guards and social workers). However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault", even while the US rots from the inside.
> For the blue collar people ... the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral
Not for all of them, but for disturbingly many. The problem is exacerbated by peer pressure: as soon as one tries to change something, one is booed and labeled a social climber. Because many people base their morals on what their surrounding group believes to be right, becoming rich starts being perceived as immoral.
> However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault"
Far left says there is no cultural problem because it is infatuated with the culture of poverty itself. There is this belief among many leftists that being poor is "moral" while being rich is not. So the left considers the culture of the poor to be superior and more "authentic". Similarly, in a perverse twist, the far right believes that being rich is almost equal to being moral (because wealth is God's gift to men or some other such nonsense). Basically people like to imagine their corresponding social groups as being the most moral of all.
And everyone in the West agrees that nobody should get in and really muck around with the personality internals without permission, even if the person giving/ refusing permission is, like, five years old. And even though it happens anyway.
I am under the impression that other cultural traditions don't have the same value on the "transcendent subject" -- it is easier for them to support training regimes that internalize outside values. Both viewpoints -- ok, not ok -- have their pluses and minuses. We can eradicate cultures and personal viewpoints with enough training, but it is hard to decide when a culture or personality should be eradicated or not. And the left knee-jerks to don't eradicate, period (protecting some really wacked criminal shit along with that). The right knee-jerks to there is only one correct, traditional way, screwing over those who disagree (train alternative viewpoints out of them, or kill/ marginalize them).
I hope readers will understand that not everyone on either side ignores the complexity and relies and their reflexes, but, sadly, the term "knee-jerk" applies to most.
I hope God appreciates humor, because if I say grace, it always includes something like "and thanks for giving me an upper middle class cultural background", because, well, I would be f*ed with out it (as are LOTS AND LOTS of people in the US).
Also -- note that I have not mentioned race. I think it has become largely irrelevant to the dynamics of poverty, thank god, but only because my experience shows me that you can be totally screwed by the above culture of poverty and be of the same british isle/ german descent as my upper middle NYC friends.
EDIT: And I think we should be throwing our weight into fixing this massive cultural problem, along with the wasted human potential it causes (really expensive to hire prison guards and social workers). However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault", even while the US rots from the inside.