Oppression thrives on distance - on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed.
Interpretation
Understanding oppression requires personal connection and recognition of those who suffer.
In this quote, Robert J. Shiller highlights the idea that oppression often continues unchecked when there is a lack of direct interaction or visibility between the oppressor and the oppressed. The physical or emotional distance creates a barrier that allows injustice to persist, as understanding and empathy are hindered when individuals do not confront the realities faced by those who are marginalized or oppressed.
In practice
During a community meeting about social issues, this quote could inspire discussion on the importance of understanding marginalized voices.
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.
That's the world we live in: when it comes to economics, people have emotions; it's not like chemistry or physics.
Money management has been a profession involving a lot of fakery - people saying they can beat the market, and they really can't.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.
I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.
A god implants in mortal guilt whenever he wants utterly to confound a house.
Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land."
Voyages are accomplished inwardly.
Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.