Baudelaire via Benjamin

From "The Paris of the Second Empire" and Baudelaire's poem "Abel et Cain":


Race of Abel, sleep, drink, and eat;
God smiles on you indulgently.
Race of Cain, in the mire
Grovel and die miserably.

(Translation, 55) Edited by Michael Jennings.


Recently I posted Wordsworth's "The World is too much with us" poem. Of course, Wordsy protests materialism and insipid religious doctrines that distance us from each other and nature. But my sadness recently has been that the world is too little with us; basically, we are too little with the rest of the world in compassion to make it any better. Churches teach that races deserve their sufferings because of some ancient ancestor. This only lessens our feelings of guilt or increases a misguided sense of entitlement, perhaps both. It's a very selfish and sinful teaching to propagate.