A brief common description of peasants anywhere:
Almost anywhere that peasants are encountered, they are likely to give the same impression of being conservative, individualistic, prone to suspicion, jealous, violent, superstitious and unthrifty.
That sounds a lot like anyone from the South or really any red-state. The unthrifty part is particularly applicable to all Americans with their entirely negative savings rate till the recent depression-recession.
The excerpt wasn't there to talk about how idiotic peasants/americans are but more to describe that peasants have these characteristics because they live in a finite world which is very un-American.
Their behavior is not irrational at all, given the realities of their existence. In fact, the attitude of peasants is probably the only one possible for them. A modern observer of peasant life has defined their adaptation in terms of "the image of limited good." In other words, peasants view their total environment as one in which all the good things of life-land, wealth, power, friendship, sex, health, and honor-exist in only limited quantities. As they see it, the limitation exists for two reasons: 'There are more of themselves than there are of good things, and they consider themselves powerless
to increase the quantities available. Peasants have unconsciously extended a truth about the limited nature of their arable land to include all aspects of life. Like the land itself, good things can be divided and their ownership changed-but they cannot be increased.
Because not enough good exists to go around, a peasant family can improve its position only at the expense of other families in the community. A family that actively works to improve its lot thus represents a threat; whatever extra good it obtains must inevitably be taken from someone else. Peasants consequently regard modern farming techniques as ways to deprive others of their rightful share of wealth rather than as ways to increase productivity and thus to create new wealth. Even enlightened peasants realize that they cannot modernize, although they understand the advantages in doing so, simply because the other villagers would see it as taking unfair advantage if they were to augment their share of the limited good. 'The peasant belief that everything desirable is limited lies behind the social behavior that to outsiders often appears ludicrous, pathetic, or maddening.
This is why it's so awkward when you stroll into a lil ol' native village in some country we bankrupted via the IMF and World Bank and wonder if they hate us. Nooooooo, that's just your imagination.
Now it's great that peasants typically totally local and self-sufficient. This is typically how things existed until China made things cheap as shit. But this self-sufficency also has a big negative, lack of cooperation which is what defeated nearly all hunter-gather societies (ie. Native Americans and the story of Tecumsah) and is eerily familiar to the "DIY" attitudes of the Tea-baggers.
No wonder, then, that peasant behavior is characterized by extreme individualism and the absence of cooperation. To cooperate, peasants would have to delegate authority - but no one wishes to assume leadership lest gossiping neighbors complain that their own share of authority is being taken away from them. In thus shirking community responsibilities that might thrust them into prominence, peasants deprive their own community of the leadership essential for breaking the cycle of poverty. They pay no immediate penalty for their lack of cooperation, as do hunter-gatherers (whose very survival may depend upon it) or people living in modern societies (whose complex political, social, and economic systems could not function without it).
And just a little shout out to Idiocracy, a very hilarious and frighteningly relative film:
And while seemingly making no attempt to lift themselves out of inherited poverty, they even worsen the situation by rejecting birth-control measures.
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