One notable aspect of the Focus Group is that whether the economy is booming or we are in the middle of a recession, the lot of the neediest people in our society remains relatively constant, and most of the Characteristics 1 – 9 hold true.
A booming economy means that more things might be given free by the Government, but the rich and middle classes always seem to benefit more than the very poor.
Generally, those of us who are not poor have a vested interest in keeping society the same or indeed increasing our advantage. We rationalise the maintenance of our privileged position by thinking about all that we have spent on our own and our children’s education, sacrifices that we have made, the exhausting work we do over long hours, the taxes we pay, or even that we competed and we won so we’re entitled. (For some very wealthy it may be privilege by birth entitlement)!
On the other hand, we are continually fed negative type messages about families in the Focus Group. Like, they have more money than us, they get everything for free – they haven’t, and they don’t – they’re a burden on the State, they cause society a lot of trouble, only for them wouldn’t we have a great country, and they have little or nothing to contribute anyway.
This kind of thinking, constantly reinforced by media bias, sustains inequality. As I mentioned elsewhere, trying to change this through continual and energy-sapping campaigning – even though it might be very important – is not really what this website is about.
But it is about raising our awareness!
Many factors in respect of the day-to-day lives of the Focus Group are linked to inequality. Inequality impacts negatively on self-esteem, education at all levels, skills development, trust of self and each other, age-appropriate sexual activity, age of first pregnancy, sustainability of long-term relationships, health and stress. (Obviously – equality has the opposite effect to all the above).
This is all posited in a significant piece of research in a book entitled Spirit Level (by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett).
One of the most telling aspects of inequality is what it does to our self-belief. In the research it was found that feeling unequal has more damaging effects than poverty itself.
In skill acquisition experiments that involve thinking things through and solving puzzles, people were observed to perform well until they were informed that others against whom they were competing were from what they deemed to be a superior class.
What is obvious here (and what interested me most) is that people were limited not by their own intrinsic capabilities, but by the harsh self-judgement that came from comparison of self in the company of others who – they were informed – were superior. (I will be returning to the harmful effects of comparison in the Sub-Chapter on Academia).
And on stress, researchers found that children who are stressed all the time suffer from constriction of blood vessels, which, while manageable by the body in the short term, causes very harmful blood thickening and subsequent clotting later in life if the stress endures over a long time.
Ireland is certainly not the most unequal country in the world but the worrying thing is that we are going in the wrong direction – we are a far more unequal society now than we were a generation ago.