Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.06.2017, Side 14

BREAKING: Rich People
Find Life Fairer Than
Poor People
New poll from MMR gets philosophical

Words: Paul Fontaine
Photo: Art Bicnick
NEWS Market and Media Re-
search (MMR) is a polling group
that normally surveys people on
their levels of political party sup-
port, or asks where they stand on a
particularly hot social issue. Most
recently, they decided to pose a
deceptively simple question: “Do
you think life is fair or unfair?”
The question is perhaps far too
general. By what are we measuring
“fairness?” By what are we mea-
suring even “life” itself—one’s per-
sonal life or life in
general? An argu-
ment can be made
that the broadness
of the question is
instrumental in
how telling the
responses are, and
telling they are in-
deed. If you ever
needed an illustration of what privi-
lege means, this poll is a good start.
Let’s look at the demographics.
72.1% of Icelanders do think life is
fair. This is unsurprising, as Ice-
land has been near the top of polls
regarding personal happiness, the
best places to be a woman, and the
best places to raise a child. It’s when
we break down the demographics
of these results that we get a clear-
er picture on levels of privilege.
Icelanders in positions of upper
management were the most likely
to consider life fair, while students
and the unemployed were the most
likely to consider it unfair. By the
same token, the more money an
Icelander makes, the more likely
they were to say life was fair—a
result that parallels a YouGov poll
from last December, wherein only
rich Americans believed life was
fair. From this, it follows that vot-
ers for the Independence Party and
the Progressives—the two parties
most friendly towards the rich and
powerful in Iceland—also believed
overwhelmingly that life is fair.
What are we to
make of all this?
In sociological circles, people of-
ten talk of “living in a bubble,” i.e.,
that privilege effectively insulates
people from reality outside of their
immediate vicinity, leading to the
belief that their personal reality is
reality for everyone else. On the flip
side of this, the poor and oppressed
are far less likely to live in a bubble
because, as anthropologist David
Graeber points out in his book ‘The
Utopia of Rules’, the poor and op-
pressed spend a great deal of time
thinking about how the rich and
powerful live, think and operate.
This is due, in large part, to their
own survival: if you want to avoid
deportation, foreclosure, or termi-
nation, it is crucial that you study
and understand the minds of those
capable of doing these things to
you. Unfortunately, this also makes
you keenly aware of just how im-
balanced the distribution of power
and resources are.
It i s u n-
surprising, then,
that the rich and
powerful might
believe that the
same rules and
o p p o r t u n i t i e s
apply to every-
one, whi le the
unemployed and otherwise power-
less have a keener eye for nuance.
This poll might state the obvious,
but the results are demonstra-
bly not obvious to everyone.
14 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2017
TIME CAPSULE
The National
Gallery
Art Deco Meets Eighties

Words: Alice Demurtas
Photo: Art Bicnick
Entering the graceful main en-
trance of, Listasafn Íslands (the
National Gallery of Iceland), it’s
hard to believe that the building
was originally built for storing ice,
back in 1916.
It’s much easier to imagine citizens
of Reykjavik gathering there for
dancing and drinking—which they
actually did, until a fire in 1971 left
the building in a pretty bad state.
But it underwent a reconstruc-
tion, still with the original design
retained along with a new one, and
in 1987 the National Gallery took
over the premises with its valuable
collection of artworks. A section
that easily could be passed by un-
noticed is the Gallery’s elegant and
open glass elevator, which is over 25
years old. The marble floor, ample
reflections and golden elements
create a symbiosis that’s a true
delight for the eyes, and represent
the rest of the building’s appear-
ance well. It deserves some more
attention... And elevator selfies.
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“In sociological
circles, people
often talk of
‘living in a
bubble’”
Rat-race participants doing well, and not so well, in that valley
outside Reykjavík that looks like a Windows XP desktop picture