If you had a conversation with a person in 1770 would they understand?

[LizzieMaine]

And all this ties neatly back to the discussion of the Colonial era, in that the early Puritans were practitioners of a cold, austere, decidedly un-Christian belief that poverty was the result of moral failing. Their belief in predestination led them to conclude that the prosperous were blessed with plenty due to their innate moral virtue as the Elect of God, while the poor were impoverished as a public display of their rejection by God. They would have benefited greatly from a careful study of the Book of Job, but they were too busy displaying their innate moral virtue by hanging witches and swindling the godless heathen savages to take the time to do it.

The Puritans may be long gone, but the influence of their beliefs continues to permeate much of American "Christian" culture in that you will still find many people who will try to argue that the wages of personal sin is poverty, even though no such idea was ever taught by Christ.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ The two prevailing views are the one you outline and the other I'll call the glorification of the poor - movies are full of this second one where the poor are the good, moral people who have nothing but share willingly with any unfortunate while the rich are selfish and dismissive of others. Many, many christmas movies, especially during the '30s and '40s, preached this view.

As per my prior post, IMH experience, neither view holds up to scrutiny. People are people and I've found that good and bad, nice and evil, selfish and selfless, moral and immoral, etc., exists in all socio-economic groups.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"And turning His gaze toward His disciples, He began to say, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the Kingdom of God." -- Luke 6:20.

The other thing to remember about the Puritans and their teachings is that they laid no stock whatever in good works, kindness, or charity. The Elect were already chosen by God, and no human works could turn one who was not Elect into a member of the Elect. And the Elect, because they had been directly chosen by God, had no need to perform any sort of good works, because their status was already assured. The result was a religious culture which led to a vicious, top-down oppression of those "outside the Elect," and which found moral and religious justification for all manner of things which Christ himself fought against while on Earth. Whited sepulchers indeed.

 

[Fading Fast]

"And turning His gaze toward His disciples, He began to say, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the Kingdom of God." -- Luke 6:20.

The other thing to remember about the Puritans and their teachings is that they laid no stock whatever in good works, kindness, or charity. The Elect were already chosen by God, and no human works could turn one who was not Elect into a member of the Elect. And the Elect, because they had been directly chosen by God, had no need to perform any sort of good works, because their status was already assured. The result was a religious culture which led to a vicious, top-down oppression of those "outside the Elect," and which found moral and religious justification for all manner of things which Christ himself fought against while on Earth. Whited sepulchers indeed.

Hawthorne did a good job of laying that bare. I've been slowly re-reading "The Scarlett Letter" (on my phone when I am waiting for a meeting or something) and what you write ⇧ comes through in his works loud and clear.

 

[Fading Fast]

I once owned a small (about 100 units) seasonal mobile home resort on a large "all sports" lake. I unfortunately had to sell the park to pay for a raft of medical expenses after my (individual) health insurance was cancelled for a so-called "pre-existing" condition which developed whilst I was insured. It was set up in the 1950's back before our state's DNR strictly regulated shoreline modifications. Each lot had an adjacent dock, for the shoreline had been canalized. The fellow who set this place up all those years ago was a smart cookie. He offered the services of his handyman to lot renters at small cost, allowing them to build decks and room additions to their trailers, permanently tying them to their respective lots. Because of this, the trailers in the park were generally pretty old, mostly "Ten Wides" and "Twelve Wides" dating to the 1950's or 1960's. These old, smaller units are adequate vacation cottages, though they would be considered to be entirely unsuitable as decent year-round housing. A park like this must be meticulously maintained, lest it fall into dilapidation and spiral down into a slum.

The fellow who advised me when I had the park was a good friend, and an experienced operator of mobile home communities. He owned a number of large, attractive parks in a large industrial metropolis. These parks looked like idealized suburban communities with curving streets, lots of mature trees, and carefully maintained houses, all encouraged by active management and careful maintenance. My friend sold out and retired around the turn of the century. Hi parks were purchased by a large Real Estate Investment Trust. It took about six years for them to turn from "Mobile Home Communities" into "Trailer Parks".

Yes, the entropy of physical things and businesses and communities is brutal and relentless.

The nicest home will look horrible if not constantly maintained. Every homeowner knows this - just keeping things status quo takes work as something is always breaking. Additionally, there is the regular maintenance like cleaning, the seasonal things like grass cutting or leaf raking and the bigger "periodical" items like painting or replacing the roof. And the crazy one offs - "the city now require all homeowners..." Or the mailbox is smashed overnight by God knows who but it still needs to be fixed and, between the deductible and higher premiums, it is not worth calling the insurance company.

My grandmother used to say there is no bigger thief than a house. But really, almost anything you own or want to maintain is time consuming, expensive and exhausting.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And when it comes down to a choice between heating that house in winter or painting it in the spring, heat will always win. Nobody ever froze to death from living in an unpainted house.

 

[ChiTownScion]

And all this ties neatly back to the discussion of the Colonial era, in that the early Puritans were practitioners of a cold, austere, decidedly un-Christian belief that poverty was the result of moral failing. Their belief in predestination led them to conclude that the prosperous were blessed with plenty due to their innate moral virtue as the Elect of God, while the poor were impoverished as a public display of their rejection by God. They would have benefited greatly from a careful study of the Book of Job, but they were too busy displaying their innate moral virtue by hanging witches and swindling the godless heathen savages to take the time to do it.

The Puritans may be long gone, but the influence of their beliefs continues to permeate much of American "Christian" culture in that you will still find many people who will try to argue that the wages of personal sin is poverty, even though no such idea was ever taught by Christ.

It never ceases to amaze me how those who insist that the Talking Snake story and the Six Day Creation of Genesis are literal history are the first ones to gleefully embrace social Darwinism. Opiate of the masses, indeed.

 

[tonyb]

...

The fellow who advised me when I had the park was a good friend, and an experienced operator of mobile home communities. He owned a number of large, attractive parks in a large industrial metropolis. These parks looked like idealized suburban communities with curving streets, lots of mature trees, and carefully maintained houses, all encouraged by active management and careful maintenance. My friend sold out and retired around the turn of the century. Hi parks were purchased by a large Real Estate Investment Trust. It took about six years for them to turn from "Mobile Home Communities" into "Trailer Parks".

Yup, you really gotta stay on top of maintenance. Few things in this life remind a person of the temporary nature of all things as rental property management.

 

[vitanola]

Yup, you really gotta stay on top of maintenance. Few things in this life remind a person of the temporary nature of all things as rental property management.

It is not just the physical maintenance. One must also rigorously enforce the rules which promote pleasant living for the tenants. The property managers (and they were changed frequently by the REIT) who operated my friend's former properties tended to show favoritism toward friends, for example not requiring that skirting =be maintained in good condition, or allowing a girlfriend's children to run wild. A lack of firm, rigidly enforced rules leads to decrepitude, squabbles, and ultimately vacancies, which then lead to the acceptance of undesirable tenants and the stereotypical "Trailer Park".

 

[LizzieMaine]

It never ceases to amaze me how those who insist that the Talking Snake story and the Six Day Creation of Genesis are literal history are the first ones to gleefully embrace social Darwinism. Opiate of the masses, indeed.

The more I read about the Puritans and their belief system the more I have to conclude that the first colonists, far from being crusaders for religious freedom to worship according to their conscience, were in fact the moral equivalent of the Taliban. They were not good people, and whatever good came out of that period of history came from those who fought them.

 

[kaiser]

The more I read about the Puritans and their belief system the more I have to conclude that the first colonists, far from being crusaders for religious freedom to worship according to their conscience, were in fact the moral equivalent of the Taliban. They were not good people, and whatever good came out of that period of history came from those who fought them.

Good point Lizzie, looking back at small town Indiana in the 1960's and early 1970's there were still signs of this behavior. If you were on the lower end of the social or economic ladder there was always this undertone that it was your fault and there was something wrong with you.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The more I read about the Puritans and their belief system the more I have to conclude that the first colonists, far from being crusaders for religious freedom to worship according to their conscience, were in fact the moral equivalent of the Taliban. They were not good people, and whatever good came out of that period of history came from those who fought them.

Wasn't just in the colonies, either. Oliver Cromwell's crowd set that mold. Great object lesson in how the medicine can often end up being more deadly than the malady.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I've long thought that the only "ism" that ever counted for anything in America is Puritanism. It's still very much with us. In modern times it takes such forms as dieting. I'm not kidding. How often have you seen an especially tempting dessert describes as "sinful" or "decadent"? Or heard someone say, "I was bad today. I ate a double bacon cheeseburger"? Calories have come to take the place of the discredited concept of sin. We can purify ourselves (i.e. get rid of fat) through suffering. We condemn drugs not because they are harmful but because they are pleasurable. We accept alcohol because, while people take pleasure in consuming it, they suffer the next day. Even environmental consciousness is rooted in guilt and sin. We sin against the Earth so we should suffer. Problem is, all the extremists, right and left, religious and atheist, consider themselves to be God's Elect.

 

[tonyb]

Good point Lizzie, looking back at small town Indiana in the 1960's and early 1970's there were still signs of this behavior. If you were on the lower end of the social or economic ladder there was always this undertone that it was your fault and there was something wrong with you.

Such a sentiment is still very much with us. And, I suspect, few of us don't harbor at least a bit of it.

 

[sheeplady]

The more I read about the Puritans and their belief system the more I have to conclude that the first colonists, far from being crusaders for religious freedom to worship according to their conscience, were in fact the moral equivalent of the Taliban. They were not good people, and whatever good came out of that period of history came from those who fought them.

There's something to be said about the pictures of the pilgrims meeting the American Indian nation reps (these of course being fantastical images thought up by later generations).

The pilgrim is often pictured holding a bible in one hand and a gun in the other. (Think of the Saturday Evening Post's pilgrim.)

 

[scotrace]

When I was in The Crucible a few years ago, studying the colonists was an interesting part of it. I spoke with a judge friend of mine and she pointed out that the Puritans at the time of the Salem witch trials had no social mechanism for forgiveness and absolution. If you were guilty, you were evil and had to die or suffer some life-breaking, horrid physical torment, which created this climate of accusation, assumed guilt, and brutal punishment.

The "prosperity gospel" of today must have direct lineage to the favored by God/wealth line of thinking.
I dislike hearing people say things like, "yes, we have a nice house and this new truck. We've really been blessed." The notion that those who have material wealth must be favored by God or have been materially "blessed" because they have a stronger faith or live right carries the cruel opposite that those who struggle must have some deficiency in faith or belief or behavior. "I got mine, what's wrong with you that you don't have all this?"

In the United States, all Christians tend to get lumped into this group in conversation, it seems.

The point about the Puritans being little different from the Taliban is a good one. Quite honestly, I think the Amish aren't far from that mark either, in terms of repression, keeping everyone at a level of ignorance, and rigid conformity, especially with women.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Which is interesting, because historically the Calvinists and the Anabaptists (ancestors of the Amish), even though they both descended from a common ancestor, hated and violently opposed each other whenever opportunity presented itself. The theological wars of the Reformation era were not fought with gentle words and kind hearts, and in pretty much all cases during that era "Freedom of Worship" meant "freedom for me but not for thee."

 

[HudsonHawk]

^^^^^
Not that this observation is any reflection on your husband, but I am every year amused by the fellows who haven't cooked anything besides a frozen microwave burrito in months suddenly become culinary masters come cookout season.

Three things that every man thinks he can do better than every other man: build a fire, grill a steak, and coach football.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I'm not a huge fan of Wikipedia, but their definition fits how people I know would feel about being called a "redneck":

The term redneck is a derogatory term chiefly used for a rural poor white person of the Southern United States.[1][2] Its usage is similar in meaning to cracker (especially regarding Georgia and Florida), hillbilly (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks),[3] and white trash (but without the last term's suggestions of immorality).[4][5][6]

By the 1970s, the term had become offensive slang, and its meaning had expanded to mean bigoted, loutish, and opposed to modern ways.[7]

Patrick Huber has emphasized the theme of masculinity in the continued expansion of the term in the 20th century, noting, "The redneck has been stereotyped in the media and popular culture as a poor, dirty, uneducated, and racist Southern white man."[8]

Calling someone "white trash", "...bigoted and loutish...", and "...poor, dirty, uneducated, and racist..." is not a way to be civil in the FL.
It has NOTHING to do with being a farmer. Were you really not aware of the present (last 40+ years) meaning of the term?

Just a point of order, but being called a "cracker" in Florida is most certainly *NOT* an insult. It's a high form of compliment. And it most certainly does *NOT* equate to "white trash".

 

[Fading Fast]

Three things that every man thinks he can do better than every other man: build a fire, grill a steak, and coach football.

Okay, time for me to question my manhood (and really, it's always been that time):

• Build a fire better - I'm okay, but far from great
• Grill a steak - nope, not a chance I'm even adequate at this
• Coach football - on my sofa, on a fall Sunday, I know what Belichick does wrong, but in truth, nope, not a chance I should be doing this