• Passerby6497@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    136
    ·
    6 months ago

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

    -Upton Sinclair

    • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      54
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just what he had been-one of the packers’ hogs. What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity-it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit.

      • Upton Sinclair

      I read The Jungle a few months ago and its aged so depressingly well. Nothing has changed, it was obvious what was happening long ago, but we’ve done nothing but watch it get worse.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        6 months ago

        “The Jungle” famously spurred large reforms. The FDA exists and has a lot of power because people were disgusted by what they read.

        That’s why you’re reading a hundred-year-old book: it was influential.

        • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          it was influential.

          But only on one topic. Yes the FDA was created in large part from outrage over food condtions described in the book. But that really is only one chapter of the text, the majority of it deals with the exploration of workers in ALL sorts of industries (not just food), how preadatory home loans lead to finical ruins, how voting systems are rigged and how our policing system only produces more experienced criminals, not reform.

          The last 2-3 chapters are explicitly socialist talking points that are still being said, for good reason, today. If the book was as influential as Sinclair wanted it to be, then we would’ve seen FAR FAR FAR more than the FDA.

          I mean, heck, reread the passage I copied in. It’s not really about food.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            6 months ago

            The last 2-3 chapters are explicitly socialist talking points

            My high school English class (in the Deep South) explicitly left those chapters out of our study of The Jungle lol.

          • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            14
            ·
            6 months ago

            So you’re intentionally exaggerating when you say “nothing has changed”. Yeah nothing has changed, except an entire Executive Branch department that didn’t exist before. It was more influential than many other books written at the time.

            Of course the author wanted the book to be even more influential, that’s why authors write. No writer says “this book kinda sucks, I hope people read half of it and put it down”.

            • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              15
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              6 months ago

              intentionally exaggerating

              🙄🙄🙄

              You can “uh actually” my phrasing if you really want to, but playing tone police is to miss my actual point how these are long standing and well known problem that Sinclair spoke about extensively.

              If you don’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation, it’s okay to just keep scrolling.

              • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                11
                ·
                6 months ago

                😂

                Tone police? That’s rich, coming from the comment police. Besides, you said it twice:

                Nothing has changed, it was obvious what was happening long ago, but we’ve done nothing but watch it get worse.

                Do you think no one can provide context for your comments? Everyone has to agree with you 100%?

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        6 months ago

        We haven’t done nothing. There’s Rojava and the EZLN building whole competing systems. There’s loads of people doing mutual aid or building cooperative economic structures all over the world, and those movements are gaining a lot of traction as people are waking up to how shit things are.

        You don’t usually hear about all these projects, in the same way you may not notice termites hollowing out a structure until it’s far too late to save it.

        • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          6 months ago

          Do you have any links at hand for all that?

          If not, I will try to add find and them to this chain for future reference.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          6 months ago

          I hope you have noticed that Rojava is next to Turkey, has lost much of its territory to Turkey, and can lose the rest anytime. Definitely fighting against it better than a certain UN member state too bordering Turkey (I’m being ashamed of Armenia here), but still.

          EZLN may be in a better situation. Mostly because in Latin America “live and let live” seems to be not such an idealistic approach, since I’m confident there’s a lot of force which could squash them.