Research finds that Inequality creates a toxic environment.
MRI scans of thousands of children found that those living in areas of higher inequality had measurable changes to the brain and it is believed that these changes may have long term effects on mental health.
This should be front page news.
I am not surprised with the results or the fact that this is not a major story. As a society we talk about children as important but when it comes to money and effort, we demonstrate a lack of concern. .
If you live in a society where basic unfairness is part of the life you lead, you are harmed. The study showed that children from different social classes, that is, the winners and losers, suffered just the same.
The old simple Biblical principle that doing evil and having evil done to you damages the soul.
Yes, it does.
What are we going to do about it. The standard playbook used by Big Tobacco and currently by the fossil fuels industry will be applied as it always is when social change threatens the established order. And so, the result will be —
Nothing.
The Right Wing media machine will spend tens of thousands of words explaining the results away. They are quite likely to produce several made up studies in which they decisively prove that inequality is good for everybody. They will endlessly discuss avoiding a culture of “dependence,” which is a scurrilous way of describing having people fed. There will be several hundred thousand bots posting derogatory attacks on the specific researches and on academics in general. And there will have to be some death threats to round out the mix. After all, the cruelty is the point.
After these attacks, politicians, public figures and regular people will consider the topic controversial and have “doubts.” that these doubts are cleverly manufactured by evil and well paid advocates will be irrelevant.
(It is possible by careful planning using God’s gift of intelligence to create great and wonderful things.)
Now, what would intelligent thinking and capable human beings do with this research?
Now, that is interesting. Obviously, we need more studies of children in societies with different levels of inequality. We also need to see if there are variations that can be achieved by different methods pf parenting and education.
We have information that leads us to see brain changes in children. So, what can we do and what are we doing now that has an effect on this process.
In other word, we as a society and a people take significant research and use it to improve our way of life.
That is what is supposed to happen.
But right now, the intelligent and cultured are under attack by an increasingly unhinged band of goons who are determined to impose their lack of breeding and intelligence on all of us.
We will see whether or not they succeed.
Here is the Guardian article explaining and linking to the research – along with a short quote.
A study of more than 10,000 young people in the US discovered altered brain development in children from wealthy and lower-income families in areas with higher rates of inequality, which were also associated with poorer mental health.
The data was gathered from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study and published in the journal Nature Mental Health.
Researchers at King’s College London, Harvard University, and the University of York then measured inequality within a particular US state by scoring how evenly income is measured. States with higher levels of inequality included New York, Connecticut, California and Florida, while Utah, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont were more equal.
This article was written by Tobi Thomas for the Guardian.
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