Day 440: Hiding Our Economic Apartheid in Plain Sight

Origin of the word Apartheid:

1940s: from Afrikaans, literally ‘separateness’, from Dutch apart ‘separate’ + -heid (equivalent of -hood)
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We are living in a time of Economic Apartheid, have you noticed?

The rich are living in a different world from 99% of the population. Two thirds of this 99% live in another world still, a world with no sanitation, no healthcare and barely reaching the poverty line.

So, we are somehow aware that there are ‘lines ‘ that divide this world, we have the Poverty Line, the Line Above the Poverty Line and the Filthy Rich Line.

The other day as I helped my student to review the history of the 3 Orders of Society according to Chaucer, I wondered how do we go about missing the fact that we are still exactly where we were a thousand of years ago: noblemen, Clergy and Peasants.

I watched a piece of ‘Capitalism, A Love Story‘ a few nights ago and they were telling the story of how corporations take out Insurances on their ‘Peasant Employees’ for thousands if not millions of dollars, so they can make money on their death as well as on their lives.

If Corporations have gained the State of Personhood, where do we place them in the 3 orders of Society today? I would place them with the noblemen, above the Law, no, better, writing The Law to Profit from every possible situation imaginable and to Keep The Order of Society Intact, while giving up every responsibility and accountability for their deeds, an amazing step ahead if we consider that there have been times in History in which the Kings have been asked to be accountable, to moderate their requests for scutage and tributes and to generally not push the envelope too much or war would be waged against them.

We can say we have it worse today, especially because the Kings of this world now own the Media as well, so they can tell us what to think and how to think about anything, favoring the logic of Profit over Any Matter, which made us compliant slaves of a system of Abuse.

We can become aware of our blatant unawaress by reading the news, here is one from today’s newspaper:

Residents at housing flats in South London have criticised the building’s segregated entrances policy, where one doorway is set aside for the rich and the other for its housing association tenants.

London Mayor Boris Johnson recently faced calls to ban ‘poor doors’ in upmarket blocks of flats, which force people on low incomes to use different entrances.

But developers in London are promising wealthy tenants they will not have to share their smart lobby entrances, courtyard gardens or secure parking with people living in flats classed as ‘affordable housing’.

The problem stems from rules which are supposed to stop areas becoming ghettos for the very rich.

When planning permission is granted, developers are often told to set aside a set number of units for affordable housing.

From the outside, there is often no way of telling the more basic homes from the hi-spec apartments aimed at the super-rich.

But behind the façade, less well-off tenants are forced to enter through different doors and use separate bicycle racks, bins and post boxes.

Labour’s shadow housing minister Emma Reynolds told MailOnline: ‘I am strongly against this kind of segregation. There shouldn’t be separate doors for people living in affordable housing.

So today I wondered what is the outrage about such news? Why can’t we see the wood for the trees?
If we live in a world where Money decides who lives where, what one can eat, drink, what one has access to, what kind of health-care one can afford for themselves and their children, who can travel and who cannot, which passports are worth more than others and to whom we apply travelling restrictions in fear they may try to move across those lines looking for a better life – Why do we get so surprised that there are separate doors for rich and poor inside the upmarket blocks of flats?

Aren’t there separate doors just about everywhere in this world, according to the money one has to unlock access to the planet’s resources and the peace of mind of having enough to take care of oneself and one owns family?

My guess is that we publish this kind of articles to keep our cognitive dissonance going, if we can get outraged for separate doors entrances in an upmarket block of flats, we may fail to notice all the other doors that are locked in this world and that we can’t access because we don’t have the money to unlock them, we are not free, we are not living in a supportive, just world, we are the Peasants of this world living at different degrees of peasantry.
Those of us with a home and a computer and the time to write blogs to expose what is going on – are the upper crust of the Peasant Class but not less peasant, because our lives are dependent on what has become a Mean mean to keep us locked into a system of dependency, Money, where our lives and everything that could make it more pleasant depend on the amounts we can generate, grab, steal, con out of someone else, lost in the same conundrum as ourselves – how do we get out of this?

The first point is that we have to broaden our view to see All the ways we have accepted and allowed ourselves to be enslaved and separated from each other, the effort that have gone into making this world compartmentalized are humongous, we are divided by gender, race, languages, nationalities, food preferences, soccer teams, religions, culture, belief system and desires – most of these things we haven’t even chosen for ourselves, they sort of ‘happened to us’, as we settled into a specific system vs another at birth. This doesn’t mean that we can’t overcome those imaginary separations to unite for a common goal.

Of course it won’t be easy, we have put a lot of energy into our allegiances, a lot of ourselves, so it will take some effort to consciously withdraw our support from any divisive cause, idea, ideal we have invested ourselves into, to come to a solution that can benefit the whole and as such, each one of us.

We have a proposal, we start with guaranteeing a Living to every person on the planet, a Decent Living and we make that a Principle we all accept to live by, simply because it makes sense that everyone born on this planet should be Given a Living and Not Asked to Earn it – if Earning a Living is Not the Name of The Game for Everyone here.

Of course this will require as well that we solve our Cognitive Dissonance about our situation – we have to realize that we are currently Slaves, that’s right, if We have to give something to someone to guarantee Our Survival, be it out time at best or our bodies or body parts – We are Slaves, We don’t currently own Our Life, We are Owned. But we are Owned with our Full Ignorant Consent, the simple fact that we accept this from birth to death makes us equally accountable as those that plotted and planned to design such a world for the benefit of the very few.

To stop our existing state of enslavement we have to design proposals for a different kind of world, we have designed one such proposal, it’s called A Living Income Guaranteed, the Money is there to give it to each other, we’ll have to give up our Military investments – to name one possible path- and some other idiotic ‘Conflict Resolution Habits’ we have subscribed to and redirect our Death Money to Life – to Give a Life to All.

If you have started to awaken to the weirdness of finding scandalous separate entrance doors in upmarket blocks of flat in a world where Money is keeping everyone tightly confined into specific, predefined boxes, start thinking Solutions, join our Forum, spread new ideas, stay focused on the outcome we aim to reach, forget the System Diversions we are deliberately fed daily to keep the mental divisions going, and 1+1 we can join to move as a force toward a New World Order, not the one Planned For us, but a New Order that is Inclusive and Considering All Its Parts as Equally Worth of a Life and of Unconditional Support. Join Us.