While researching how Charles Dickens did his research, I came upon the story of a woman who was seen shivering on the winter streets of London, holding an infant. The next day, both mother and child were found in the Thames.
This was only a brief mention in a longer discussion about poverty, but a year later, I am still haunted by it. I think about it because I can imagine myself in her place and I can imagine the mental horror of being utterly unwanted. I believe we all can, which is why Europe is not Britain, and even Britain itself has had to take a few steps back from the British ideal.
Dickens’ outrage is directed at an economic system and a caste system that punishes and exterminates people at the bottom of the hierarchy, even people who are guilty of nothing, as a form of social and genetic cleansing. In a zero sum game, there will always be losers. No matter how hard working and clever the bottom ranks are, they will still lose, because they are at the bottom. Combine this with a caste system that guaranteed unfair advantages to some, and the situation becomes intolerable.
Polite British society was able to avoid shame, for a time, by creating a narrative that insisted that at the lowest rungs of society were genuinely stupid, incompetent, lazy, vulgar, and even criminal at heart. Those who are least capable of succeeding through honest work will succeed through dishonest work. Only through ‘stern measures’ would they would be deprived of the opportunity to cannibalize society. British elites were the the good guys, the protectors of civilisation from the brutal, unwashed masses.
The internet has gone to extremes to prove the Victorians right.
The caricatures that Victorians made of the lowest rungs of society are reified every day through self-documentation. Racist and misogynistic views propagate freely on social media. Historical facts are contested and science is held in contempt. Criminals have even self-documented their crimes on social media, or have taken their smartphones along to record their movements. Conspiracy theories have greater audiences than historical facts. There is greater recognition of warp drive than Special Relativity.
People in the greatest need of health care vote for its enemies. People in the greatest need of worker protection vote against unionization. People who live in the most polluted areas vote against environmental protection. People who need a living minimum wage vote for political parties hostile to any increase.
The Victorians would ask, what abuse could we imagine for them that they would not impose upon themselves?
Democracy is only as good as its participants. At some point in the future, democracy will have no civil purpose whatsoever. Its purposes will be incivil, as some modern political parties have already demonstrated. Making life hard on the undeserving might be a high ideal, but it is an ideal never fulfilled until it affects all those less deserving than you, whoever you are.
Democracy means more than occasionally voting. It means putting pressure on elected representatives in the form of letter-writing and public awareness campaigns. It means forwarding/boosting/liking posts that related to your interests. It means distributing pamphlets in your neighborhood. Democracy should be something you do everyday, even if it is a little thing.
