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Could that 4th wall be given a disambiguating 'u'?
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Be kind to yourself and to others, treat yourself if you can, don’t be ashamed, no one is better than you and you are not better than anyone else. Then you die. Fin.
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More of this stuff please. The tru labour types that infest cyclo Kultur need some reeducation (probably in a camp somewhere to learn real class consciousness or alternatively death). Beatings will be administered to those failing to distinguish between "dominant" and "secondary" contradictions.
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@tmevans
I admit I don't have these thoughts all the time, only a fraction of the time I am on here actually, but something like these ideas are always in the background, pestering. I feel very silly having done this now. Below is a chorus of voices. I have turned the issue, as I imagine it, into a sort of Brechtian play, where ideologies are given avatars and replied to by the play's other protagonists. I have added exclamation points everywhere because that's just how it was in the Weimar Republic, everyone exclaimed. I thought people could join in with their own parts or give the parts to people on here (without being nasty) who fit the roles. New lines and speech marks indicate different characters, but where this needs emphasising I have indicated it.
Chorus, sung: "If you don't li-i-ke it, you don't have to look-at-it!"
"Greed is good! Didn't you hear the Iron Lady?"
"But ostentation isn't just about how high you are, it is about how high over others you are!"
"Anyway, it isn't greed, I just happen to appreciate well designed and independently produced bicycles [another voice interjects "kitchens!"] and can afford to pay the asking price!"
Someone sings: "I can jus-ti-fy the ex-peeeense"
"Yes it is greed, it 100% is greed! Just because you are not a glutton and your life is a picture of tasteful self-restraint, doesn't mean this is not a question of greed. If I can admit my envy you can admit your greediness."
"No one is making you feel ashamed."
Another voice "Yes but sometimes you can't help it. It is a shame to scrounge, to worry, to depend; poverty is relative to the cost of participation. Not having enough is depressing, humiliating. If others feel it too, should we not care for them and try to keep away hurtful material or sentiments if we say that those others belong here and are welcome?" Some people nod, some bluster with incredulity.
Another quieter voice: "I binge eat mincers to compensate myself for having mismatching tyres and my social isolation, then I have to go on a [singng, voices join in] 'eeeeepic riiiiiide' to burn off the calories!
"If, that is, my bike is actually working."
A hollow-cheeked ghostly female character sounds out from the rear of the stage. "Class war is death by a thousand cuts!" There is a moment's quiet.
Centrist dad in Ciele running hat: "Brecht was a communist, like Stalin, a psychopath who killed millions in a genocidal, man-made famine. Communism is discredited, you are a disgrace to good sense and the moral order."
"Wasn't there, as is often the case today, the problem -- as you indeed state -- that he was a psychopath?"
Another voice: "Shut up"
A reedy voice comes from a mole-like man standing in the curtain, stage left "There's an 'Overheard at the Bar of the London Fixed Gear and Single Speed Golf Club' thread where the others come together to shame those ostentatious ones!"
"But doesn't that indicate that this is all about shame? And if that is intrinsic to the nature of the place, is that not something bad that should be dealt with?"
The characters, in spot light, break the fourth wall and turn to the audience, the stalls also now brightly lit up ( by the screens of all the Apples). Their combined stare implicitly demands an answer to this last question. The actors hold this stare in a freeze until the lights go out.