[jackhack]

I would heartily recommend "Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass" by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple.

It gives keen insight into the cultural mindset of victimization that produces the persistent underclass. From the overview: "Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has seemingly seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds even his own considerable experience. Dalrymple's key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own lives."

[influx]

Isn't this self contradictory? Instead of taking personal responsibility for a failed set of values, instead the author blames an "elite culture searching for victims".

[thanatropism]

This "everyone has ultimate personal responsibility" way of thinking is uniquely American as far as I can see. Even without giving much leeway to self-victimization politics, analysis leads clearly to (1) you not being a coherent agency, often getting besides yourself or outside of your mind; or even not being the same person who shoplifted as a teen and (2) you been in many important ways a drop in an ocean, an atom of mass being. Of course individuality plays a very important role in the Enlightenment kind of rational civilization we strive for, but it doesn't mean non-individuality ("dividuality" and "collectivity") are not huge aspects of how we live.

As Alain de Botton once put it, in England the poor are "unfortunates", in America they're losers.

In Dalrymple's world, elites have a duty to set the tone and the agenda; and they are instead shirking from making judgement calls and saying "good is good, bad is bad".I don't agree much (we have elites telling us how to think as it is), but he points in the general direction of something without hitting the bullseye.