The issue of class guilt

The act of guilting someone

The issue of class guilt is a relevant one to most middle-upper class sections of the society, especially among a younger generation of people who are "educated". 

It exists because most of us can’t shake away that nagging feeling that we are only who we are, and only think what we think because of an upper class upbringing. And this is true. The importance of context cannot be argued away by any logic of essential identity.

But where this truly gets problematic is in the area of academics or “intellectual” discussion. If you’ve ever been throwing around literary or philosophical jargon casually in some conversation, it’s likely you’ve in some form encountered other people accusing you of your upper – classness. And it’s likely you jumped to defend yourself.

There are two problems with this social exchange though. Firstly, the problem lies with the fact that someone thought to de-legitimize an idea by referring to a discourse of social inequality.  It’s problematic because of an underlying assumption that any idea that isn’t liable to be understood by everyone isn’t probably legitimate as an idea. But such an outcome is inevitable with our system of education. As people gain more expertise in a field, it’s natural that their ideas will become less accessible due to others not having a grasp on basic ideas/jargon that is exclusive to the particular field. 

Secondly the problem lies with the act of defending your ideas. There is no cause to defend such an accusation, because their accusation is true. Your thoughts are the result of what social class you belong to. People of poorer social classes have other concerns and other ideas wholly exclusive to them as well. I don’t mean to equate the two situations, but am only trying to point out that ideas are born out of context. Even poor people have their own societal value and cultural codes just like any other section of society. The feeling of guilt over the fact that high-brow notions are not inclusive of them brings us to our next issue.

To guilt someone about something is to appeal to their understanding of your belief system.

The valuation of Intellectualism

The poorer class of society is one we are constantly reminded of in our arts and education. People everywhere seem to be paranoid that we’d forget about them, or even worse, just not care. In this way, they have become an indelible part of every conversation. I’d say even this very discourse is a result of such enculturation.

The negative side though is that we are all also taught the value of education and knowledge, and over time, it’s likely we ourselves continue to form a scale of intellectualism to different subjects and ideas.

These two notions mentioned above come into conflict within our consciousness. The issue here is that we’re well aware that the notions we discuss are what could be termed as “intellectual”. We’re aware of the narcissistic pride we get out of discussing these things. The problem though is that we feel pity that the poor do not also get to be like us.

I’m just going to disregard the notion that this is only concern and not cultural imperialism that makes you feel this way.
 I mean, if you only cared about the poor people’s well being, you’d just care about their physical needs. But like Americans and missionaries, you also feel like they should be able to know the things you do. After all, their cultural system cannot be legitimized because it’s only the result of a living condition that shouldn’t even exist, right? If your thoughts align with these lines of logic, then congratulations, you have just successfully removed the poor people’s existence from your mind, except as some thing to be uplifted and pitied from time to time. In order to frame things into perspective, this is no different from Americans having seen every black or Native American person as being a savage.

A personal anecdote

A few years ago, after having first watched Into the wild and having been exposed to other similar streams of thought (Throeau and Tolstoy and whatnot), I had a notion that I’d love to go off and live in the wild somewhere, away from societal conventions and ideas of responsibility, accountability and school and all that.

It was only a teenage escapist fantasy, sure, but when I’d shared this notion with a friend, she accused me of my class being the factor that decided this notion, and that I should be thankful for what I do have, since I knew nothing of meager survival, or how it meant to be not middle class. Back then, I’d just somehow tried to defend my position and thereby salvage my pride, but looking back, it indicates other problems to my mind.

What’s problematic here is that her argument completely denies the poorer class’ culture or their role in society, and views them as a default position when you’re not rich. But such an argument is problematic because poverty is the result of societal conventions. They are a part of society as well, and they hold distinct opinions on things as well, even if they might be completely different things from what I held back then. And it’s not as if I was suddenly poor, I’d become like people who have been poor all their lives. I’d still look at things based on past experience.

The problem here was with the fact that such a line of thought also denies me my own context, and instead forces a thought process of not wanting to do middle- class things onto me. Its powerful (powerful in the sense that it can quickly assert its authority) implication is that if I were poorer, then I wouldn’t treasure such a fantasy in the first place. Such ideas seem to function on a notion that only anything that is equal and available to everyone is legitimate in the first place. It’s an idealist, unrealistic idea that is toxic- albeit perhaps born out of good intentions- to any worldview as far as its agency-denying capabilities goes.

A Reconciliation?

I don’t know if such modes are thought are escapable. It would seem that such prejudices are essential to our identities and to the status-quo. I do not know if it’d be easy simply throwing all that off.

But I think a good start would be to look at the poor as people, who not only suffer, but have things they derive happiness from. They’re not simply objects to be pitied and helped up so that they can be more like us.

Oh, and time for a cheesy insert here to end this article (cue Good Will Hunting and stuff):

It’s not your fault.