Just now (Well, a minute or two ago)

[capri0mni]

My cat Trixie was standing on the back of my chair, with her front paws on my left shoulder, purring in my ear. She reached out with her paw, curled her fingers toes (?) around the edge of my hand, and pulled it gently up to the exact spot on her chin that she wanted scritched. :-)

Right now, she's snoozing on the little catnap place I set up for her, on the far side of the desk (a couple of layers of polyester fleece draped over an old mousepad).

...Now, I'm steeling myself to read the Gulistan of Sa'adi (13th C. religious devotional poem from Persia), to find the original source of "I was sad, for I had no shoes -- and then, I met a man who had no feet" (for the next installment of Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream).

I understand, I think, the main point the Author was trying to make (that no one is entirely without blessings). But I still hate that saying, because it puts people's suffering and needs into some sort "Pity pecking order." And life just doesn't work that way.

Oh, well, here I embark. I'll be back in a bit...

Comments

[spiralsheep]

I still hate that saying, because it puts people's suffering and needs into some sort "Pity pecking order." And life just doesn't work that way.

Especially because, in that example of oppression olympics, the comparison is between two different things: poverty and disability. Unless we're talking about a society in which the economically privileged kill all their disabled dependents and themselves if they become disabled (which would be extremely rare) then a rich man with no feet could still be more socially privileged than a poor man with no shoes. /intersectionality

[capri0mni]

Precisely so.

Also: a man with no feet has no need for shoes (he can keep the stumps of his legs warm by tucking his robe around and under him and be quite cozy indeed).

A man who walks needs a good pair of slippers (what it was in the original) to keep warm and to protect himself from injury. So suffering is not about "counting up points" in some quantifiable way, but asking, qualitatively: "Does this man have what he needs to function comfortably?" and: "If not, how can we provide it?"

Unfortunately, our legal and social systems only seem to be capable of asking the first question, probably because it's easier to check off from a list in a ledger.