I think about Freire's thoughts on this a lot: "Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both..." "Yet it is—paradoxical though it may seem—precisely in the response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors that a gesture of love may be found. Consciously or unconsciously, the act of rebellion by the oppressed (an act which is always, or nearly always, as violent as the initial violence of the oppressors) can initiate love. Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they them- selves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors"
Once you get beyond a certain bracket of wealth, there is no longer any change on your quality of life and yet these capitalists are driven to making these numbers on a screen get bigger and bigger. This inevitably consumes them as they center their whole lives around the acquisition of wealth that does not bring anything with it. This seems indistinguishable from addiction. These people need help and they will only ever be able to break out of this toxicity through our own struggle for liberation. The revolution is necessary to save both us and the oppressors' from their own cruelty. **Mind you, Freire isn't engaging in liberal pleas for pacifism or anti-revolution, they clearly acknowledge that violence is inherent to revolution, but it is a hopeful thought that maybe we can re-educate or rehabilitate former oppressors once they have been stripped of their tools of oppression (similar to Mao's treatment of former emperor Puyi)
You articulated my feelings perfectly! I actually became a leftist because of Freire so his ideas are core to everything I believe and i hope more people get a chance to read him. Cheers comrade ('-'*ゞ
when push comes to shove i know which side im on, but we are all victims of our circumstances.
Yes, I pity them. And the hope would be that in abolishing their class power and status, they'll finally be free to be themselves rather than the cruel monsters they have turned themselves into.
Naw, I don't pity them.
I honestly agree with the assessment that they kinda get fucked by capitalism too, insofar as they are sort of dehumanized and how so many of them end up all weird and seemingly unhappy trying all sorts of nonsensical shit to feel meaning as they get closer and closer to death.
But in the same way that I feel no pity for the Don Jrs despite recognizing their genuinely very tragic relationship to their father, I feel no pity for essentially any hardship that the wealthy capitalists face, existential, interpersonal, whatever.
For Trump's shitty sons I just remember the picture of him with the dead elephant, taking out his issues on a majestic endangered animal. For capitalists in general, I just consider the hardship that they cause to the working class and to the world itself. They'll suffer a little inside or whatever, but it's nothing compared to the hardship they cause others.
