Flatland: How Hope Maintains Inequality

A friend recently gifted me his copy of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott. As he read the novella himself, he became increasingly convinced that I would love it. And I did! So, here I am to share some brief thoughts on a short piece of social commentary and satire from 1884.

First, I want to highlight the passage that resonated most with me.

The occasional emergence of an equilateral from the ranks of his serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by the poor serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by the Aristocracy at large; for all the higher classes are well aware that these rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize their own privileges, serve as a most useful barrier against revolution from below.

(Edwin Abbott, Flatland)

When I hear or read discussions today regarding the absurd gaps in wealth and resources between the few elite and the overwhelmingly many, discussions exploring how and why such systems remain unconstrained, ever-perpetuating further disparities, I will forever be reminded of this passage.

Why do so many people who have only ever known poverty go to such great lengths to defend the ultra-wealthy and privileged, both in discourse and voting? Well, one reason may be the hope of social mobility. It is a part of that classic American Dream; the rags-to-riches story; the “myth of meritocracy.” It is an exceedingly rare possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.

Though the lower classes constitute the vast majority, and thus have the greatest potential to force change, it is the theoretical possibility of upward mobility that keeps them in check; the narrative that keeps them invested in the same hierarchical system that perpetuates the poverty by which they are bound.

Struggles within socioeconomic structure have been documented for centuries. Power grows for a select few, the system becomes too unbalanced, people fight and die to restore balance, and the cycle continues.

Flatland was given to me at a strange time (perhaps the oddly right time). With the distribution of wealth so exceptionally skewed (and especially at a time with a government shutdown in which SNAP benefits among other things were threatened), with so many protests against the government but nothing escalating beyond that, the reading felt far more reflective of current times than that of Victorian England.

So, as Abbott implied in 1884 with such timeless social commentary, the greatest hope for a better life may actually be the greatest impediment to achieving it.