"I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something, and I am all the more something because you are nothing. And thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me."
(Quoted in The New Yorker, May 19, 2008, page 84, in a review of two plays.)
Thinking that maybe Merton would suggest that there is a "personal responsibility" that is a social good, not a Benthamite "individual" good?
- Bill
Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
> http://theactivist.org/blog/in-the-american-grain
>
> *Continuing our exchange on the Tea Party Movement, here is an entry from
> reader Seth Ackerman.*
>
> Just in-case the mere mention of "Tea Party" isn't stimulating your
> gag-reflex by now*.... *needless to say I'm in agreement with the author, but
> I am quite sympathetic to the virtues of, "personal responsibility, hard
> work, and the ability of the individual to improve his or her own condition
> through their efforts.” I'd rather try to show why these values are
> incompatible with capitalism. ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>