There is a huge problem looking at issues as if our entire lens can only go back 150-200 years. Go back a few more hundred years and the lines between rich and poor man’s intent start to blur—especially in Ireland. If all things were equal in delivery to people you would still see some people live in squalor and some learn towards some more refined practices. It doesn't matter.
What does matter is this insufferably march “forward” into a world where we can’t allow such individual will for any number of reasons, effectively neutering any real cultural development.
I’ll paraphrase David Bowie—we should all be happy just picking nuts but here we are.
There is nobody qualified to take on “all” human beings and decide what is right on such a scale. No matter how many honours one adorns oneself with.
Case in point: the kingdom and culture of England doing what it did in the 13th to 20th centuries through the Isles and beyond. It needed to modernize and “bring prosperity” through the poor, rural, gaelic regions who just couldn’t “get with the times”. One should wonder if those “poor” rural folks were ever hard up or unhappy until armies trounced through burning their homes and spoiling their land in the name of modernity.
The questions we need to ask ourselves take the form of silly platitudes:
What would we really do and care about if we had it all and had no more labour and toil before us?
Culture, love, beauty. Things that dont really cost anything and nobody is really inhibited from enjoying as long as they are creative.
And if we are not creative, then none of the vices or devices in the world will ever save us from continually seeking to “fix” it all.
Keep looking for dividing lines in the external and you’ll always find them. But the problem is in the human heart.
(Ironically, trying to convince wealthy tech bros of that is like diving into an acid pit. I can definitely agree that I don’t want my future in their hands. The poets may be crafty but at least they seek truth)