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The Conscious Lovers: A Comedy In Five Acts

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Author

Richard Steele
Richard Steele

Richard Steele was an influential British writer of the 18th century, known for his contributions to drama, literature, and public life. He passed away on September 1, 1729. Steele is celebrated for his role in founding 'The Spectator', a significant platform for literary and public discourse of his time. more

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“So much seafood was once dismissed as the debris of the sea: eels, snared from the Thames River in sixteenth-century England and tucked into pies in lieu of meat; clams, eaten by New England colonists only in times of desperation; oysters, offered all-you-can-eat for 6 cents at bars in nineteenth-century New York City; whelks, pickled and trundled by wheelbarrow through London streets, which in the mid-nineteenth century the British social reformer Henry Mayhew tallied “among the delicacies of the poor” and which housemaids wouldn’t eat in public, lest they be judged unladylike. Even lowlier were lobsters, scorned as indiscriminate bottom feeders, fobbed off on servants and put on prison menus, or else consigned to fertilizer. Their flesh and shells are still used in this way, as their high concentration of nitrogen and calcium helps plants grow.”

“We're not born equal (Bicycle Diaries, 2766) Astrology is the dumbest superstition of all, your date of birth has zero effect on your destiny, but your place of birth, on the other hand, shapes a great deal of your life and character. Someone born in Paris demands from their parents, that they must go on a world tour again this year, someone born in Palestine asks their parents, can they have a small doll this year. Someone growing up in the blackhole of Calcutta, has to labor 100 times harder to make a name, than someone from Cambridge or Copenhagen. Light bends towards gravity, equality bends towards privilege, some dream of touring the moon, some dream of a roof over head. We're not all born equal, some of us are born with more than two functioning brain cells, but no inherited goldmine, still we chart the cosmos on a bicycle, while monkeys confuse lamborghini with life.”

“I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice. Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of many of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those living around me. During my late teens I worked two summers, against my father’s wishes—he never wanted my brother and me to work around white people because of the oppressive conditions—in a plant that hired both Negroes and whites. Here I saw economic injustice firsthand, and realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro. Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society.”

“Junk food is appealing to the homeless not just because it’s cheap but because it can be bought in places where no one looks at them twice as they stand in fast moving lines to order and pay. This is important for them as they are very alive to being noticed, observed and – usually – judged. They don’t generally buy healthy little quinoa salads from M&S not just because they can’t afford them, but also because they’re embarrassed – people stare at them – they don’t really belong in M&S.”