“Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation …

Twetch ·

“Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit

Replies

Twetch ·

That is an interesting quote. My experience has been a bit different, at least among extremely poor people in South America. They knew of their relative poverty and didn't question why, really. But they didn't hate each other. They took care of each other.

Twetch ·

He wrote the book after experiencing WWII as a soldier and was quite cynical. I guess he hoped French people would have questioned the reasons they had to go to war to fight for the elites instead of supporting one another in their own misery.

Twetch ·

I see. That context fits, I suppose, with the strategy elites have used for millenia... "divide and rule". It is difficult to comprehend how effective it is, when it can be seen today.