#282: Today's Moral Prejudice

EXCERPT: The Gospel of John depicts Jesus’ own disciples wondering about the man born blind:
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

Perhaps such moralizing on health is largely extinct (although all readers may well know someone who assigns moral blame to alcoholics, for example ). But it seems the old prejudice has been replaced by a different, equally irrational, prejudice: imposing moral judgment on individuals due to their socio-economic condition!

In effect, today’s moral prejudice poses a revised question: What did these people (people born poor who have stayed poor, for example) do, or their parents do, that left them so deficient in achieving success ?

The underlying assumption is that success and failure must reflect moral character, because we all start on equal footing and strive in the equal conditions. This assumption results from a huge cultural blind spot. It is as if we just cannot see how much "chance" -- meaning forces beyond our individual rule -- shapes our social destiny. So we keep believing that success comes from individual effort, and failure results from a lack of effort.

It astounds me that any modern person can ignore the forces shaping us. Each life brings its unique blend of pluses and minuses, and common sense tells us that some people get more pluses the others, while some lives seem almost all minuses. And all of these differences result, not from effort, but from fortune or misfortune.
The fact is that we have no choice or control over many factors shaping our lives. Some people simply have advantages that others do not. Those advantages are not chosen, or earned, or merited. They are privileges.

The fact is that American society includes extraordinarily privileged classes – people born and raised with great advantages over their fellow citizens – but they represent a tiny portion of our population. It also includes a vast middle class whose lives include both privileges (of education, home ownership, unprecedented access to consumer goods and energy resources ) and detriments (healthcare costs, debt troubles, a leisure famine, declining real incomes). And it includes a vast underclass living lives shaped mainly by their misfortune and their lack of any privileges at all.

Thus it is that, in America, those with good fortune have fortunes and those with misfortune stay poor.