Reply #32: less stress, less isolation [View All]

[Two Americas]

We focus entirely on the material, and see the solution to all problems as being material. The need to be accepted, to belong, to be able to participate is more important than material well-being, and being excluded and rejected and abused is the foundation and cause, not merely the result, of poverty. It is not that the poor lack material things, it is that the wealthy and powerful - and those who admire and support and defend them - lack compassion and are willing to deny people the things they need to survive.

I know I have related this story before, but it is relevant to this discussion.

Charlotte Delbo, in her narrative about her incarceration in German camps during the war, says that "everyone who returned knows that, without the others, she would not have come back."

She describes the women in the camp surviving unimaginable deprivation and abuse, hunger and cold. But one thing was always a sure to be a death sentence - being separated from the others. Whenever a woman was placed into solitary confinement for the night as punishment, she was certain to be dead by morning.