In "The Mona Lisa Smile," Julia Roberts plays an art history teacher at Wellesley in the 1950s, a Bohemian from the wrong social circles who disturbs the dowagers and would-be dowagers of the upper East Coast crust. As often in Julia movies, there were a few good moments. Some of the best were the pictures of the wealthy older women, intent on holding on to their power, and totally vacuous in their lives and conversation. One wants to go re-read Howard's End , to remind oneself of what wealth and culture can sometimes give people. I was reminded of racism everywhere, of what the Nazis would have said about wealthy Jews. Fundamentally, this hostility towards the rich is of the same species with the Spanish hostility towards the indigenous Americans: they occupy resources we want, and nothing they are up to could possibly be valuable or first-rate.
Sometimes the impulse to redistribute the resources of the rich is just the same as the impulse to redistribute anybody else's resources: we have plans that don't permit you to live as well as you are now living. We value goods that are incompatible with your goods.
I have great sympathy for the motto, "Live simply, that others may simply live." I also have some sympathy for another motto, "Live in a complex and interesting and passionate way, because then at least somebody is living in a complex and interesting and passionate way." What I don't know is how any social order can make the right amount of space for both of these.
Posted by shea0017 at August 25, 2004 4:37 PM