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The pétite-bourgeois (PB)
To summarize Kierkegaard: "Spiritless, devoid of imagination, as the petty bourgeois always is, he loves within a certain orbit of trivial experiences as to how things come about, what is possible... The petty bourgeois has lost himself and God"
To summarize Kierkegaard: "Spiritless, devoid of imagination, as the petty bourgeois always is, he loves within a certain orbit of trivial experiences as to how things come about, what is possible... The petty bourgeois has lost himself and God"
This is not the yeoman or freehold farmer. He works the land and ties himself to something both material and ethereal; beyond his own mortal self. This is the urbanite at his worst. A true midwit: too clever for common sense and too arrogant for regal wisdom.
Nobles rightfully despises them. Bismarck neutered their liberal and socialist forms for a generation, appealing directly to the peasant and urban prole.
From Hérbert to Beria, these intellectual malcontents died like animals. Even supposed tyrants meet death with more grace.
From Hérbert to Beria, these intellectual malcontents died like animals. Even supposed tyrants meet death with more grace.
The pétite-bourgeois carry no air of nobility but that of the journalist, banker, teacher and sales clerk. They care little for God, country or anything unrelated to their profit or ideological fever which grips them. All the vices of a noble with none of the virtues of one
The High Bourgeois mock them and ruthlessly crush them in even more despotic fashion than a Kaiser. But unlike their lesser cousins, these titans can rarely manage to better their countrymen. The Dandolo, Medici, Carnegies and Vanderbilts were cutthroat.
They spent others lives like currency and hoarded currency like a good general values his troops lives. But they have back to their people art, culture, civilization. They enriched their homeland and made cities sublime. Hospitals and universities bear their names.
But the pétite bourgeois is in eternal revolt. Revolt against the Church with its old and superstitions. Revolt against the economic system because tycoons have bested them. Revolt against the Regime because why should a journalist be lesser than a man who was born for his job?
Ever at the mercy of fashions, the pétite bourgeois has nothing but a fading hold on life. Never to be accepted by his betters and carefully disregarding his lessers; as to treat the peasant as an equal would surrender that status of middle class; guarded like junkies and a fix
And it is for the worker that the PB has the most hatred. Ever willing to sell them out for the latest gadget or exotic fare, the pétite live in Alphaville while others have favelas. They have Westwood while others have Dorchester. NIMBY is the solemn phrase of this mentality.
The prospect of economic advancement is the chief determination of their home. Unlike true proles and to some extent nobility, the pétite bourgeois can move, cut ties with little effect. It is the humble peasant that stands for the ashes of his fathers and the temple of his gods.
