"Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth"
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Shaw takes a word that reads like virtue in polite society and flips it into a kind of heresy. "Independence" isn’t attacked as an abstract ideal; it’s indicted as a class fantasy, a comfortable story the "middle class" tells itself to turn structural support into personal merit. Calling it "blasphemy" is classic Shaw: a religious term weaponized against secular respectability. He’s not defending dependence as weakness; he’s exposing "independence" as a moral alibi.
The line works because it turns the Victorian/Edwardian self-help creed inside out. In an age that celebrated the self-made man while living off imperial supply chains, domestic labor, and industrial interdependence, Shaw insists the accounting be honest. The rhetorical question mark after "Independence?" lands like a scoff from the stage, inviting the audience to hear the word as slogan rather than truth. Then he pivots to the communal "we", widening the frame from individual character to social fact.
Subtextually, Shaw is also poking at liberal individualism’s favorite trick: treating dependence as a private shame instead of a shared condition. "Every soul of us" is deliberately leveling, refusing the hierarchy that says only the poor "depend" while the comfortable "earn". In Shaw’s socialist-inflected worldview, acknowledging mutual dependence isn’t sentimental; it’s the prerequisite for responsibility, policy, and a less dishonest moral order.
The line works because it turns the Victorian/Edwardian self-help creed inside out. In an age that celebrated the self-made man while living off imperial supply chains, domestic labor, and industrial interdependence, Shaw insists the accounting be honest. The rhetorical question mark after "Independence?" lands like a scoff from the stage, inviting the audience to hear the word as slogan rather than truth. Then he pivots to the communal "we", widening the frame from individual character to social fact.
Subtextually, Shaw is also poking at liberal individualism’s favorite trick: treating dependence as a private shame instead of a shared condition. "Every soul of us" is deliberately leveling, refusing the hierarchy that says only the poor "depend" while the comfortable "earn". In Shaw’s socialist-inflected worldview, acknowledging mutual dependence isn’t sentimental; it’s the prerequisite for responsibility, policy, and a less dishonest moral order.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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