Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums; are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
Slums could be thought of as the development of a special organ, or they could be thought of as a tumor that's grown, and in some ways is unhealthy and could ultimately lead to the city's destruction. My own feeling is that slums are probably a bit of both.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
To shy away from human extremes and human sensuality makes for bone-dry fiction. A world parched of our sexual releases and our tumultuous daily emotional lives is deeply impoverished. It is not lifelike, at least life as I remember living it.
The whole drive of western culture, the part of it which is serious, is towards an extreme objectification. It's carried to the point where the human subject is treated almost as if it's dirt in the works of a watch.
With a contained environment, there is the promise of friction. And that is where the drama comes from.
It is all around us, hidden in plain sight. It is walking our streets, supplying shops and supermarkets, working in fields, factories or nail bars, trapped in brothels or cowering behind the curtains in an ordinary street: slavery.
The slums are not a place of despair. Its inhabitants are all working towards a better life.
The slum is the measure of civilization.