Thursday, September 24, 2009

Remember A-town and B-ville?

For the book assignment, I am reading a book called The Political Mind by George Lakoff. In one section he describes the conservative view on morals and the free market. He says conservative beliefs are obedience to authority, personal responsibility, and self-discipline Following this, they see the free-market as a fair authority which will lead all to prosperity if they only put in the effort. He concludes this idea by saying:

"By the logic of this system of thought, if you are not prosperous, you are not disciplined, and therfore cannot be moral, and so deserve your poverty. It follows that peoole are given things they have not earned, they become dependent and lose their discipline and with it their capacity to obey moral laws and legitimate authority. "
This reminded me of the A-town and B-ville parable from Hayakawa. In it, A-town acted much in this conservative view. They did not want to destroy the charter of the jobless and make them dependent. In the end, however, they did just that, turning them into criminals and losing their discipline. B-ville, on the other hand, did not feel like anyone deserved their poverty and praised the jobless. I found it kind of ironic that I was seeing A-town again and was wondering if anyone else had thoughts on this.
~Becca

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