ideologies

I just got off the phone with an old friend. Speaking of politics, we got into some kind of debate. Well, she did all the talking, I was not left much space to interject.

The issue was equality, or notions of equality, I tabled the idea that Freemarket economic thinking sees everyone as born equal to the same opportunity, and that an individuals lack of fortune comes down to one thing. Effort. She feels, if you don't try hard enough you will not succeed, that you are where you are because you are too lazy to try, if you are poor.

I was surprised she was in full agreeance to such fundamentalist thinking. She is the same age as me, and has very affluent parents, her partner works for a high end New Zealand clothing retail company, she wears nice clothes and eats her dinner at a 10,000 dollar custom made table in a house in one of the most affluent East Auckland suburbs. Selling her the idea of inequality was never going to be easy, but I didn't ever think she would be that entrenched.

And to her merits, she was very very convinced of her own ideas. I offered that the statistical social research I have seen makes inequalities a hugely structural issue and not merely one of 'putting in a hard days work', but she was having none of it. " Im very black and white in my thinking" she said " if your an alcoholic, don't come asking me for help because as far as Im concerned you got yourself into that mess and its entirely up to you to get out of it. You are the master of your own destiny".

I wondered what it was that shaped peoples rhetoric in that moment, to become so very distanced. It would be fair to say my friend has no brown mates, knows noone in South Auckland, in fact gets lost even coming to my house in industrial central east. Her world is more about affluence and the middle class, and so her opinion is shaped by her surroundings, and the voices and the conversations of the people she associates with. I guess that makes me the dissentor.

The funny thing is that we both have experienced wealth, drive european cars, know fine dining and fine objects, understand the comforts of money, and yet, our opinions seem to be in alignment with the company we keep, not less the education we receive. My knowledge of money hasn't changed my leaning towards collectivist thinking, or my desire to have the needs of the poor and disenfranchised recognised.

Ideology is such a strange thing, completely untangible and yet powerful like a storm unleashed.