Snopes: Did Aunt Jemima Die A Millionaire?
In the case of Aunt Jemima, this "monetary mindset" presupposes that people have no right to complain about the exploitive racial component of "Aunt Jemima" because she was well-compensated.
Money is America's panacea, the mechanism be which America literally "papers over" any wrong.
It's true that we use green paper to hide our shortcomings and sins.
But it is paper nonetheless.
Money is our national excuse for refusing to embody virtue, for putting the enactment of sound principles on hold.
The next time you, or a friend, or a relative, suffer permanent physical damage at the hands of a negligent third party, ask yourself whether "the lawsuit settlement" made it "alright."
Or even close to alright?
There is a huge component of truth in the lemma: "If you don't have your health, you don't have anything."
Not only is this observation self-evidently true for physical health, it is also true for social and political health - what we might call "metaphysical health."
Tragically, we Americans are crass, materialistic, utilitarian, unusually greedy people, and so -- "out of the gate" -- we hold "the metaphysical" in contempt.
Consider this deeply-contextualized quotation by Hannah Arendt, a 20th century intellectual titan and a woman of great personal integrity.
"What has come to an end is the distinction between the sensual and the supersensual, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses... is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears; that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the world of the senses... In increasingly strident voices, the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilsim inherent in this development. The sensual... cannot survive the death of the supersensual." Hannah Arendt
In similar vein, Einstein observed: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
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