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In quarantine I've been binging "The Americans", a TV show set in the cold war about a family of Russian spies living in the US. A line by the Russian minister (explaining why he hid his family's suffering under soviet oppression from his son), "so you could live this life." /1
2/ mild spoiler to follow (probably not too big of a deal, not a big plot point, but you've been warned.)
3/ the soviet minister's wife had been placed in to a concentration camp for 5 years around world war 2 for some minor violation (real or perceived) by the soviet authorities. Now she's the wife of a senior minister.
4/ the father and mother had hid this from their sons. Why? "So you could live this life." The son grew up with a silver spoon, now works for the KGB, is a casual member of the elite.
5/ What does "so you could live this life" mean? IMO - the father is saying that if he had informed his son of his mother's suffering at the hands of the soviet government, could he have been a care-free member of the elite?
6/ if he really understood and felt the dark side of his society and government, could he have lived the life of an elite? At least relatively guilt free? Ignorance is bliss. To some degree, the same applies to all of us in every society.
7/ if we really understood the suffering of a laborer in China, locked into a factory overnight, forced to work 18 hours a day to make our iphones, would we be able to tweet so freely from them?
8/ if we really felt the child labor that went into making our shoes a couple decades ago, if we saw the civilian casualties from the drug war, if we understood the turmoil wrought on south america to ensure open markets for US importers and exporters...
