Thank You for Bourgeois Banality with Proletariat Personae
Those folks who talk about relating to the struggle of others whom they have never met, let alone hung out with, seem to need a haven of acceptance among those they consider less fortunate than themselves.
Perhaps this is some guilt alleviating mechanism for over indulgence.
Or maybe it is an exercise to activate gratitude for having so much.
Or perhaps they have no reason to be creative so they are relegated to observation (and even imitation) of those who are forced to create.
I can’t know.
Slumming it, has some kind of attraction to folks who know they can go home when they are done participating in an uncomfortable environment from which others may not have the option to escape.
Historically, many of the most creative people among us have lived in conditions which forced them to be resourceful and creative.
Jazz musicians, artists, poets, and most recently, urban hip hop artists,
have used their internal creativity to communicate harsh external realities in their surroundings.
Perhaps, like Plato said “…the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”
Creativity does seem to rise out of necessity or struggle.
Does that mean that those who have no obvious struggles are incapable of creativity?
Again, I can’t know.
But there seems to be a social need to struggle to justify one’s existence.
We do all manner of things to prove we can struggle.
We invent trials for ourselves, mountains to climb, conflicts to resolve.
We challenge ourselves to conquer adversity—even if we have to invent the adversity.
Evidently, struggling has value in defining our selves.
Romantic notions about struggling artists, or those rising above deemed unfavorable stations, generates something within us that wants to relate.
Struggling is heroic.
It is ironic that those who struggle try to become one of the non struggling.
The struggling dream of winning the lottery or getting rich so they can be one of the folks who don’t have to be creative anymore.
The Proletariat wishes to be included in the Bourgeois.
While the Bourgeois seem to be thrilled to be included in the Proletariat’s inspiration to create.
Image: From a previous Post
LEA KELLEY SAYING THANK YOU FOR... 
I often wonder how many of the Bourgeois can really relate to the struggling. I tend to think their support may come more from guilt than association (of any kind). In my experience, those who have truly struggled and risen beyond those circumstances to at least a moderately comfortable degree relate to others in their prior state more as an older sibling, telling them to “See that bootstrap? Use it.”