Extract from David Graeber’s Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
“Curiously, it was Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, who first observed the phenomenon we now refer to as “compassion fatigue.” Human beings, he proposed, are normally inclined not only to imaginatively identify with their fellows, but as a result, to spontaneously feel one another’s joys and sorrows. The poor, however, are so consistently miserable that otherwise sympathetic observers are simply overwhelmed, and are forced, without realising it, to blot out their existence entirely. The result is that while those on the bottom of a social ladder spend a great deal of time imagining the perspectives of, and genuinely caring about, those on the top, it almost never happens the other way around.
Whether one is dealing with masters and servants, men and women, employers and employees, rich and poor, structural inequality—what I’ve been calling structural violence—invariably creates highly lopsided structures of the imagination. Since I think Smith was right to observe that imagination tends to bring with it sympathy, the result is that victims of structural violence tend to care about its beneficiaries far more than those beneficiaries care about them. This might well be, after the violence itself, the single most powerful force preserving such relations.”
~David Graeber, ‘Utopia of Rules’
David Graeber is an American anthropologist, activist and author. He is a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
Find his books here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/1501143336
https://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Rules-David-Graeber/dp/1612195539
https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290
Or if you are in Hobart, you can order them from Cracked and Spineless, just send them a message on on Facebook here to place an order:
https://www.facebook.com/CrackedNSpineless/
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