#classism

[theconcealedweapon]

They just want there to always be a class of people who are forever in debt. Whether it's chattel slavery, prison, student loan debt, medical debt, renters who will never be able to own a house, etc.

[airplanecrashingtowardstheground]

dc comics: so should we use this new batman and robin comic to take the opportunity to explore Jason's character and his background as a kid who grew up poor, in an unstable environment, lived on the streets and saw and experienced the harshness of gotham yet was still a genuinely good kid and robin who tried his best? should we explore how his traumatizing death, and traumatizing resurrection combined with his past inform his current ideals as red hood or should we just go the classist "this kid was always rotten" route and continue saying he was both a bad and angry kid and bad and angry robin?

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

In case you needed another reason to hate Lululemon.

[seasaltdevotion]

There’s actually no reason for you to be *required* to utilize or have physical offerings or even alters. The gods are here for those with unstable finances, they are here for the closeted practitioners.

The gods are gracious and kind. They understand your situation. Do not allow your lack of funds or your struggles make you feel as though you are lesser in your worship. Even the disabled.

As someone who is a soon to be college student living off of minimum wage with no parental assistance, it’s difficult to consistently offer physical items. As a closeted Helpol it is difficult to have a consistent altar let alone multiple. As a practitioner with divorced parents it’s difficult to continuously utilize the same alter or keep many things consistent. As a disabled practitioner sometimes it’s difficult to get up let alone create or work for more offerings.

However, the gods do not hate me for this. Nor do they hate you. You can still be a Hellenic polytheist and have struggled. You do not need to be wealthy or better off to practice. You do not need physical offerings if you cannot provide it.

Do not allow someone to tell you your practice is lesser than because of your uncontrollable circumstances.

Your practice is enough.

The gods understand that. You’re human. Struggles are real and that does not make you lesser.

Your practice is enough.

Ok, we need to talk.

TW for heavy undertones of classism and ableism.

Recently I've seen this growing sentiment online that really concerns me. This being the idea that your worship needs to be materialistic.

Handmade offerings, baked goods, art, all of these things are fantastic offerings, but simply not doable for everyone.

We live in a capitalist society where the middle class virtually no longer exists. Most of us on this website are younger as well, meaning that we've been hit hardest by things like the current recession. These things are important to keep in mind.

Societies all throughout time have gone through changes with their customs, their religion, and their worship, for the simple fact that humans adapt. Hellenic Polytheism was virtually snuffed out entirely at one point and has only relatively recently come back into a slightly more mainstream light. We have no historical records to look at how the religion may have changed over time the way we can look at Christianity and see the same.

That being said, to adapt for your time is natural. It is human. A lot of us, if we had to give only physical offerings, simply would not be able to be HelPols, because of disability, financial status, hidden practice, etc. We just don't have examples of this in recent times.

And that's not to say you shouldn't try to give physical offerings when you can. Even just water is a good offering. But as I said before, that isn't doable for everyone for a vast multiple of reasons. That does not make you a bad worshipper. Your practice is your own.

An altar can be a Minecraft world if you need it to be. It can be a tin, your altar can be the outside world. You do not need a shrine with fancy gifts. Your altar can just be your favorite tree. It's okay. Your altar does not have to be covered in physical things, or have any at all. You don't need a permanent one at all. An altar is a place of offerings. Having a permanent altar is a massive privilege.

I'm also a very firm believer in the idea that devotional activities are good offerings. Things like cleaning up the earth, volunteering, just being a good and kind person, these things that serve the domains of the gods especially. If you are improving the world around you, you are bringing glory to the gods. Argue with the wall tbh, because if you have a problem with people making the world a better place for the love of the gods,I deadass can't help you. To offer improvement to the world we live in is one of the best things you as a worshipper or as a human being can do. Especially in these hard times we live in.

Also come on, let's think about this critically.

Most of the records of altars, festivals, rituals, etc, come from historically wealthy and well-off cities, like Sparta and Athens.What do y'all think poorer people, especially in less wealthy areas, didn't have to adapt their own worship and altars and practices accordingly?

The point of this faith is honouring the Gods and living our lives to do right by them, not trying to act as an ancient Athenian. You can do it if you want to, but you shouldn't enforce your own practice onto others. That's called evangelicalism, and there are plenty of churches that would love that kind of energy that are literally BEGGING for new members.

Times change. Religion changes. People adapt because of their circumstances, and that genuinely shouldn't be a problem to anybody. It is not only for the sake of money, it is for the sake of accessibility. Your worship should not put you in danger of being in debt or missing a meal. Your worship should not put you in danger of flaring up or pushing yourself. Anyone who tells you something contrary to either of those is simply not worth listening to. Nobody worth listening to will tell you to put yourself in harms way.

[dystopian-intellectual-pigeon]

For so long, the US has been a battle of left vs right. But CEO Brian Thompson's assassination has kinda done something incredible..... The conversation has shifted from being "left vs right" to "rich vs poor." The cracks have begun to show, and maybe, just maybe, the conversation will continue...

[assiraphales]

some of the worst classism is white collar middle class americans against blue collar & minimum wage workers. “why does that plumber make more than me” because he’s been perfecting his craft for 30 years and you send emails. “they’re in the trades bc they’re too dumb to do anything else” ok take that engine apart and put it back together real fast babe. “they’re boring bc they never left their home town” have you considered they financially couldn’t? I am not saying it is anyone’s job to educate, nor you need to respect people who do not respect you, but while you maybe never sympathize we need to learn to empathize. consider why (who) allowed for massive parts of country to be uneducated and how many impoverished areas of this country haven’t had a voice for a very long time. we are all victims of the rich. remember it is up vs down

[justsomeantifas]

Lavish CEO’s Wife, sobbing hysterically after CEO assassination: I don’t know I don’t know I guess he killed millions of people for our money??? I don’t know I don’t know!!!

[theconcealedweapon]

[disableddyke]

if your class solidarity doesn’t include people who are on SSI, food stamps, or are unable to work it’s not solidarity

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

[gayhenrycreel]

leftism would be a lot more efficient if people realized this: the working class and the lower class is not the same thing.

as a child, my family was middle class. dad made $100,000 nzd per year. we moved and bought a new house without renting at any point, simply so we would be in a convenient place closer to dads workplace. dad bought a $10,000 dollar motorbike just because he wanted to. we were well off and if we had better budgeting skills our family could save a million bucks by the time my parents retired.

we lost everything.

middle class people still need unions. they still need to deal with abusive bosses. they can still lose all that financial security just by divorcing the worker of the family or making a bad decision.

now im lower class, as are both my parents.

upper class people dont work. they are ceos, upper millionares, and billionares. people work for them and they dont answer to anyone. there is a huge difference between a very well paid worker (hollywood actors for instance) and a ceo who never has to negotiate his pay with a superior.

dont get it mixed up. an upper middle class person is not the same as the billionare who can buy his way into a goverment or fund a goverment to change the way the law works.

just because someone is well off does not mean you have no shared experiences. they may or may not be out of touch, but you should organize with those who also answer to a boss.

[hyperlexichypatia]

This is a semi spinoff of this post, but really its own thought.

When a job pays less than a living wage, it generally attracts one of two types of employees:

Desperate people (usually poor and/or otherwise marginalized or with barriers to employment), who will take any job, no matter how bad, because they need the money, or

Independently wealthy people (usually well-off retirees, students being supported by their families, or women with well-off husbands*), who don't care about the pay scale because they don't need the money anyway.**

And sometimes, organizations will intentionally keep a job low-paying or non-paying with the deliberate intent of narrowing their pool to that second category.

People sometimes bring this up when discussing the salaries of elected officials -- yes, most politicians are paid more than most "regular people," but they're not paid enough to sustain the expensive lifestyle politicians have to maintain, and that's on purpose. It's not an oversight, and it's not primarily about cost-cutting. It's a deliberate barrier to ensure that only rich people can run for office.

The same is true, albeit to less severe effect, of unpaid internships -- the benefit of "hiring" an unpaid intern isn't (just) that you don't have to pay them; it's also that you can ensure that all your workers are rich, or at least middle-class.

When nonprofits brag about how little of their budget goes to "overhead" and "salaries", as if those terms were synonymous with "waste," what they're really saying is "All our employees are financially comfortable enough that they don't worry about being underpaid. Our staff has no socioeconomic diversity, and probably very little ethnic or cultural diversity." ***

This isn't a secret. I'm not blowing anything wide open here. People very openly admit that they think underpaid workers are better, because they're "not in it for the money." This is frequently cited as a reason, for example, that private school teachers are "better" than public school teachers -- they're paid less, so they're not "in it for the money," so they must be working out of the goodness of their hearts. I keep seeing these cursed ads for a pet-sitting service where the petsitters aren't paid, which is a selling point, because they're "not in it for the money."

"In it for the money" is the worst thing a worker could be, of course. Heaven forbid they be so greedy and entitled and selfish as to expect their full-time labor to enable them to pay for basic living expenses. I get this all the time as a public library worker, when I point out how underfunded and underpaid we are. "But... you're not doing it for the money, right?" And I'm supposed to laugh and say "No, no, I'd do it for free, of course!"

Except, see, I have these pesky little human needs, like food. And I can't get a cart full of groceries and explain to the cashier that I don't have any money, but I have just so much job satisfaction!

And it's gendered, of course it's gendered. The subtext of "But you're not doing it for the money, of course" is "But how much pin money do you really need, little lady? Doesn't your husband give you a proper allowance?"

Conceptually, it's just an extension of the upper-class cultural norm that "polite" (rich) people "don't talk about money" (because if you have to think about how much money you have or how much you need, you're insufficiently rich).

*Gendered language very much intentional.

**Disabled people are more likely to be in the first category (most disabled people are poor, and being disabled is expensive), but are usually talked about as if they're in the second category. We're told that disabled people sorting clothing for $1.03 an hour are "So happy to be here" and "Just want to be included," and it's not like they need the money, since, as we all know, disability benefits are ample and generous [heavy sarcasm].

***Unless, of course, they're a nonprofit whose "mission" involves "job placement," in which case what they're saying is "We exploit the poor and desperate people we're purporting to help." Either way, "We pay our employees like crap" is nothing to brag about.

[crippled-peeper]

telling people living off of social security to “start saving in case it collapses” is so SO out of touch that it’s almost funny. most of us have negatives in our bank accounts at the end of the month and barely eat. we barely are surviving. there is nothing to for us to “save”. what the hell are you talking about

I’m gonna need yall to actually fight back and protest DOGE and Trump or shut the fuck up. your advice sucks

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so theres a lot of posts going round about the titanic wreck and the missing submarines; all of them that ive seen have made very good points about how shoddy the submersible seemed to be and how the company decided to wait eight hours before reporting it, and how this is a play stupid games, win stupid prizes for the ultra-wealthy who paid like 250grand a ticket for this thing.

but what i havent seen any posts about is how the titanic wreck is a gravesite and this tourism is disturbing the graves of over 1500 people.

sometimes its kinda hard to remember that those on the titanic were real people; it was over a century ago, the story has been romanticised in so many ways (like the movie), theres conspiracies theories galore that cloud everything with misinformation, but at the end of the day, those who died were real people.

do you want their names? heres a list of them; its a long read. and for fun, heres another site where you can see photos of the children and babies who died aboard.

their bodies are long gone and their lives long forgotten. all we have to remember them and honour them is the wreck itself. its all we have of them and it is their gravesite. its their tombstone.

caitlin doughty/ask a morticians video on the great lakes discusses the topic well, and why we should leave these shipwrecks alone because again, they are the gravesites of all the souls who died aboard those ships. we rarely have bodies to recover so we really are left just with the wreck.

and what really upsets me about titanic tourism is how the majority of those who died that night were not the ultra-wealthy rich folks you might picture when you think of ocean liners.

61% of the first class passengers survived

42% of the second class passengers survived

24% of the third class passengers survived

24% of the crew survived **

the majority of those who died that night were regular folk; not to be cliche, but they were just like us. titanics wreck is not only a gravesite for over 1500 people, its also a majority working class gravesite.

and look at us now. look at what were doing. the ultra-wealthy can pay the equivalent of peanuts to them to disturb a mass gravesite of the exact kind of people they exploit today to hold onto all their wealth. 

its easy to point and laugh at these dumb idiots in their playstation controller submarine, seemingly held together with super glue and duct tape, but its also important to remember that what they were doing was simply disturbing a gravesite for fun. though the company does research, these guys werent down there to conduct research, they were there so they could brag about it to their friends. its like “climbing mount everest” while your sherpa does all the work.

if you cant tell, i have a lot of feelings about this. shipwrecks and ocean liners are one of my special interests and im currently building a (beginner’s) model of the titanic, for fucks sake. but i would never go down to see that wreck because its a fucking gravesite and we should not be disturbing their final resting place.

[assiraphales]

“people who have never left their home towns are so small minded and boring” is something I wish we could leave behind because on one hand it’s an incredibly classist statement (what if they don’t have the money to leave? what if they have family obligations? why is the default to call them uninteresting when they didn’t have the funds or privilege to go to school or travel?) and on the other………….have we considered that some ppl are happy? that keeping roots in the soil you were born, staying in a community that nourishes you, isn’t embarrassing or shameful?

[trans-ylvania]

everything is awful right now so im making a 4 year survival plan, put in the tags any ideas you have

my ideas so far:

trust self & focus on values

get new copies of govt. papers

medical history binder

avoid self censorship

get high quality masks

research where my data is being shared

care for body as if theres already no healthcare

buy condoms

make sure vaxxes are up to date

self defense classes

renew passport

reblogs for a bigger idea pool would be very appreciated

don't kill yrself im so serious that is exactly what the government wants you to do stay alive out of spite even if yr miserable (& you will be) (joy exists in and amongst grief)