The random cruelty of the human condition. Or why we need UBI... a rant.
Last edited Wed Mar 14, 2018, 12:41 AM - Edit history (2)
UBI... Universal Basic Income.
The fundamental failing of the conservative mindset IMO is lack of compassion. The inability, or the unwillingness, to place ones self in another persons shoes. The unwillingness to see that we are all the same. We are all struggling on this little blue dirt ball and it's only by sheer fucking luck that one person was born into the lap of luxury, while another was born into the slums. The very act of the refusal to accept this fundamental truth fully, births a horrendously cruel world view.
The refusal to accept the random absurdity of the human condition, that the beggar on the street is me, means that by default one builds into the foundations of ones belief that something else other than chance got you to where you are. What could that be. Conservatives would like to think it's individualism, will power, character, hard work. Of course this unleashes a whole torrent of further cruelties as it again presupposes that those who fail to achieve "success" lack those qualities. I think it's safe to say that anyone who has actually known someone of the working class, as apposed to simply ordered food from for shook hands with them, will immediately tell you how false that notion is. Anyone who has known a factory worker, farm worker, immigrant, retail worker who has scarified much of their own life working long grueling hours to put food on the table for their family so they could have a better life, will know that these are among the hardest working people of character one could hope to meet.
This is a fundamental fact of the human condition. But for a chance shift of the breeze on some random day you or anyone you know might not have been born. Or might have been born to a wholly different set of circumstances. This fundamental truth, and the fact that no matter what ones circumstances are, they are prone to the same fickle changes, is why we desperately need some form of UBI if we are to continue to call ourselves a civilized society.
To argue against some form of UBI is to say that the random suffering of the human condition is conditionally deserved, which is the cruellest of world views. Most modern nations have some form of welfare but this does not actually solve this problem as welfare is almost universally punitive in some form, which simply leads one back to square one.
We need some form of UBI because fundamentally the human condition is one of suffering. Suffering is not contingent on having performed poorly. Suffering is what we are born into. It is universal.
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