One of my friends has simplified life to the extreme. His life is full of classical music, a rather limited wardrobe, a few books, and a few great friends. Yesterday night we went to see Mozart's Requiem, we walked back in the starry night, talking about the Benedictine ethos and gossipping around. Then we shared a cup of tea and some rather fine biscuits at 11 pm before I walked home.
Not too far from Durham, there are pockets of another poverty. The one that is hard to tell, because people are not quite homeless. Rather, they own about six or seven of the newest mobile phones. Their home is about to be repossessed, and since they don't have any access to any form of credit anymore, they survive on cheap plastic bread, not getting proper nutrition and feeling quite weak as a result. When you walk down the street you would never know.
So there's an elephant in the room. I'd been secretely hoping that someone in the blogosphere would take up the topic, because I'm just too lazy to spell it out myself, but really someone's got to engage with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of Habitus. It's Habitus that is going to come back and bite us on the ass as we move out of our comfort zone. If I don't get my Requiems, my educated friends and my civilised cups of tea I get grumpy. The result of it all: I watch tasteful "social" movies about people whose taste I don't share, the irony! Gosh do I have a long way to go...
1 comment:
Actually, it's funny you should say that because by "Stylish Poverty" I meant my friend John, the classical music buff. He isn't truly poor, he's just got a extremely simple lifestyle: some music, some books, some simple vegetarian food and he's happy. I find that stylish.
The other form of "poverty" I describe is another league altogether: almost invisible and intractable, it's the nasty sort that can drive people to despair. And you're absolutely right, it is a matter of syle: it becomes important to have the latest mobile phones, or western cigarettes.
So my point was that even if we simplify life to the extreme, these are still very different forms of "poverty". People have very very different habituses. If you tell me about owning six mobile phones I find that stupid and unethical. I'm eons away from the mind of the person I'm with. Or another example: nearly all of the street kids I've ever invited up for coffee wanted to go to McDonalds.
The challenge is to be who you are -someone who likes discussing cistercian architecture maybe- and still care and relate to pretty much anyone. Max is king at that. I don't know how the hell he does it, but I'm really jealous.
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