Which Lives Matter?

In modern hierarchical mass society some lives matter a lot, some somewhat, many hardly.

The lives of the Top 10% matter Significantly. These are the people who are most active, most visible, most thriving. They get resources, their voices are heard, they make decisions that matter, they set the tone, they represent the rest. They are the 1% of the wealth/power elites plus the 9% of the managerial class, professionals, cultural creatives, outstandings, articulates, and accepteds.

The next tier can be thought of as approximately the others who might be able to afford to own a house (who have some property and/or have some assets). That would include about 70% (minus the upper 10%). They matter when they participate and when they support. They are in the middle and they are pretty burdened — in that they support the Significant (with their taxes or with their votes or with their labor or their participation) and they support all the rest, the latter being the 30% who don’t much matter. They either support that 30% directly (if related) or by funding the institutions that house, clothe, feed, subsidize, attend to, care for, and pacify those who don’t thrive.

There are a lot of people who aren’t able to thrive within mass institutional-technological society. Such a sorry circumstance would never be tolerated within a real community. It’s impossible to imagine a homeless former resident living in a tent off to the side of Rachel Carson Way at the Ithaca Ecovillage. In a real community all lives matter.