Tag Archives: class

On Kurt Vonnegut

Posted on by

Kurt Vonnegut passed away last week, at the age of 84. Wish we had the chance to hear him about this past week’s events, from Imus to the blogger Code of Conduct. But we’ll always have his books, and the innumerable writers he influenced.

NYTimes: Kurt Vonnegut:

…the time to read Vonnegut is just when you begin to suspect that the world is not what it appears to be. He is the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text.

He is not only entertaining, he is electrocuting. You read him with enormous pleasure because he makes your hair stand on end. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what -as a mild young person – you know it is forbidden to say. No one nourishes the skepticism of the young like Vonnegut. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.

So you get older, and it’s been 20 or 30 years since you last read “Player Piano” or “Cat’s Cradle” or “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Vonnegut is not, now, somehow serious enough. You’ve entered that time of life when every hard truth has to be qualified by the sense of what you stand to lose. “It’s not that simple,” you find yourself saying a lot, and the train of thought that unfolds in your mind as you speak those words reeks of desperation.

And yet, somehow, the world seems more and more to have been written by Vonnegut and your life is now the footnote. Perhaps it is time to go back and revisit that earlier self, the one who seemed, for a while, so interwoven in the pages of those old paperbacks.

David Shenk, author of “Data Smog”, posted an interview with him that took place back in the beginning of Shenk’s career, “Duty to One’s Country: A conversation with Kurt Vonnegut about freedom of expression, life, liberty, and happiness”.

InTheseTimes: Joel Bleifuss interviews Kurt Vonnegut back in 2003: “Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@”

InTheseTimes: Kurt Vonnegut essay: “Cold Turkey”:

…When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.

Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.

I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who’ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?

How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

What is success?

Posted on by

Every time I’ve been interviewed about Philly Future, inevitably the question comes, “what is your business model?”. This is where I pause, mention the site currently has none, and that one day I expect it will emerge. I hypothesize on a few ideas, but lay down we’ll only go with one if it benefits the community. The bottom line is I have no concrete idea what that model is yet.

Admitting you don’t know something is sign of weakness in some circles. I can tell in these interview situations, I’ve made myself and Philly Future look bad. Since Philly Future, is not a big, well known, “grassroots” (with millions of investment dollars) service, this makes it harder to get taken seriously by some. I’m blessed to have it associated with a terrific team which doesn’t think so short sighted, and with a growing community that is pushing the boundaries of what it can do.

I’ve always felt admitting I don’t know something has always been a source of strength. An opportunity so that I can learn and grow.

One thing about success I’ve recently come to peace with is that cash alone can’t define it. I recently mucked up a generous offer, with a team I respect and want to help, because I wouldn’t walk away from Philly Future, was already quite happy (and challenged, I have much to learn) where I am, and didn’t want to sacrifice the already meager time I have with my family.

Past a certain point, past the struggles of poverty, once you get to a place where you can realistically dream of where you want to go or experience in life, cash, and the struggles to find it, can drag you down and will distract you from what’s really important.

Shelley Powers, in a post about BlogHer, says:

I won’t write on BlogHer again. No truly, this time I won’t. I would ask that the company remove the tagline “Where the Women are”, because it really isn’t all that true anymore. Is it? Still, if they don’t, such is life.

I also wish, and I mean it, much success for the organization. I have no illusions that I will change anyone’s viewpoint with this writing. Perhaps the emphasis on women’s purchasing power can, this time, be used as a weapon for social change. In this, I hope they succeed.

I’m going a different path, though. One that doesn’t measure success based on ads, links, and revenue. And I’m not going to look back.

Wish more thought that way in the world. But everyone is selling something aren’t they? It’s human nature. Shoot, Shelley is selling something to us in her post. A set of ideas and ideals. Take them or leave them.

Success, for many, seems to be about fame, fortune, power, and inclusion in some exclusive group. Is it human nature that we subconsciously exercise the 48 Laws of Power and use them on a daily basis? A question to ask yourself is what is your effective truth?

It’s not success when we let these drivers define success for us. It’s something all together different.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on by

On Vietnam: (listen to the whole speech):

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death… America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

On political strategy/solidarity:(listen to the whole speech):

Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively — that means all of us together — collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.

On Equality:(watch it):

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

(via MFA)

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

(via Pax Romano)

More at Philly Future

TONIGHT: The Project H.O.M.E. Young Friends Event and Wal-Mart

Posted on by

In light of yesterday’s article at the NYTimes, maybe some will have a new appreciation of this. The article summarizes a memo (downloadable here pdf) in which Wal-Mart’s board of directors propose ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits. Ways that those of us who have been among the working poor are all too familiar with. Ways that have been in practice for years – not just at Wal-Mart, but at other employers. Practices that are passed down word of mouth. It’s practices like these that make it near impossible to move from poverty to working class, from working class to middle class. Wal-Mart just got caught putting it in writing. Good. Hopefully this will shed some light on what we have gone thru and what others face every day. I’ll have much more to say, relating personal experience in a later Philly Future post.

As for now – I’m looking forward to tonight and the Young Friends of Project H.O.M.E. event we are participating in. If you’ve been following Philly Future recently, we’ve been trying to raise discussion and interest about the event and in Project H.O.M.E. itself, for the important work they do in our community. More at PhillyFuture:

This evening, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., the first ever Project H.O.M.E. Young Friends Event will be happening at the University of the Arts. It will be a great opportunity for concerned folks in the Philadelphia area to come down and have the opportunity to meet some of the movers and shakers behind Project H.O.M.E., a hometown organization that has helped more than 7,000 individuals break the cycle of homelessness and poverty since 1989.

The evening will include light supper and drinks, a silent auction, as well as performances and artwork from some of the people taking part in Project H.O.M.E.’s extraordinary programs. WXPN’s Michaela Majoun is the emcee, and among the others in attendance will be at least half of the Philly Future team.

This is a perfect chance to come out and learn more about a great organization, share some great conversation, and further a good cause while you’re at it. If you haven’t already made reservations, you can still get in at the door for $50. And it’s all for a truly worthy cause, so if you can make it, why not come down? And even if you can’t make the event, perhaps you can afford to part with a few dollars for the cause. If so, please consider a donation to Project H.O.M.E.

How do I resolve social mobility?

Posted on by

An interesting question: Ask MetaFilter: How do I resolve social mobility?:

Any anecdotes about fitting in with a new class that’s not the one you grew up with? This isn’t so much “selling out” versus “keeping it real,” but just the ways that people adapt to the change.

I’ve found the people I meet and spend time with are more and more from a higher social class than the one I’ve grown up in (we’re college-age, here). Further, the more ambitious I get, the more I notice the effect. So how does one resolve the issue of living in “two worlds?” It’s started to feel like I need to make a choice between alienating all my old friends/family, or giving up on whatever big, important things I want to do with my life. Obviously, that just ain’t gonna work, so I’m looking for advice from people who have felt the same way at some point.

One other thing to note: at least into the forseeable future (next 5 years), I’ll be in the same socioeconomic class, in that I’ll still a college/professional student, without some new level of income. It’s not that I’m nouveu riche all of a sudden, I’m just socially conflicted.

NYTimes: “Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide”

Posted on by

A new series in the New York Times discussing social class in America is opening discussions in various blogs I read: Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide. I haven’t had a chance to read the first article yet, but for now here goes the relevant posts:

Metafilter: Rich get richer, poor get poorer.

Ed Cone: “there is a big difference between being a partner in a Wall Street law firm and handling traffic tickets and simple wills in a small town”.

Want a simple rule to define class in America? I have one – and it is sure to offend:

On average: If you shop at Dunkin Donuts for your coffee – you’re middle, working class or poor. If you shop at Starbucks for your coffee – you’re upper middle class or richer.

That’s it.

I am the only person I know who shops at both. Most thumb their noses one way or the other. I go to Starbucks in the afternoon at work – even though might I bitch and moan to my co-workers that Dunkin Donuts costs less and has better coffee. Sometimes we do a double stop – we go to Starbucks for them and they walk with me to Dunkin Donuts for mine. These same co-workers chide me when I buy a drink there every now and then. Three dollars for a small hot chocolate. Three dollars for six ounces! I admit it – I’ve had a few of them!

Dunkin Donuts is a left over from my economic past. I continue to drink it because Starbucks smells of elitism to me – even if I can supposedly afford it – and I love it over Starbucks – even some try to convince me that Starbucks is just better.

I need to get around to reading that article…

Homeless

Posted on by

I have a lot to say about this post by Jeff Jarvis. That’s obvious from some of the comments I left there. Part of me is insulted by the massive generalization he laid out: “…the real issue isn’t homelessness. It’s insanity. The laws in this country make it impossible to commit and help even the obvioulsy and often the dangerously insane.”. The other part of me is relieved to see any discussion that trods (plods?) into these waters since discussion of the topic is so rare. And for many very raw.

Nickel and Dimed

Posted on by

In my off time I’ve been reading “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich. I highly recommend it. Speaking from experience – it is a clear look into reality for the forgotten America – the working poor. Ehrenreich, by jumping in the trenches with those that actually make this country work has written a highly readable book. Not facts and figures, but stories of daily struggle thru the eyes of an observer. The kind of stories that are lost in the daily din.

Are there any related weblogs people would recommend? I’m not talking about hard-core rant sites. I’m talking about sites that are as focused as this book is on the daily struggle, with additional tips on how to not only survive it, but overcome it.

That Was The Deal

Posted on by

I am not sure, in this economy, someone can do what I did the last ten years. I don’t think the same opportunities exist. But what can be done about it? Will the coming tax breaks help or hurt?

Democracy presumes and enshrines equality. Capitalism not only presumes but requires and produces inequality. How can you have a society based on equality and inequality at the same time? The classic answer is that democracy and capitalism should reign in their own separate “spheres” (philosopher Michael Walzer’s term). As citizens, we are all equal. As players in the economy, we enjoy differing rewards depending on our efforts, talents, or luck.

But how do you prevent power in one from leeching into the other? In various ways, we try to police the border. Capitalism is protected from democracy, to some extent, by provisions of the Constitution that guard individuals against tyranny of the majority?for example, by forbidding the government to take your property without due process of law. Protecting democracy from capitalism is the noble intention, at least, of campaign finance laws that get enacted every couple of decades.

Separation of the spheres also depends on an unspoken deal, a nonaggression pact, between democracy’s political majority and capitalism’s affluent minority. The majority acknowledge that capitalism benefits all of us, even if some benefit a lot more than others. The majority also take comfort in the belief that everyone has at least a shot at scoring big. The affluent minority, meanwhile, acknowledge that their good fortune is at least in part the luck of the draw. They recognize that domestic tranquility, protection from foreign enemies, and other government functions are worth more to people with more at stake. And they retain a tiny yet prudent fear of what beast might be awakened if the fortunate folks get too greedy about protecting and enlarging their good fortune.

That was the deal. Under George W. Bush, though, the deal is breaking down.

Read the rest by Michael Kinsley in Slate Magazine (via rc3.org). Today Paul Krugman in the NYTimes asks and anserers, “The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn’t exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today’s tax rates?”

A great conversation related to all this is taking place over at Oliver Willis’s.

No bonuses for jobless, hungry

Posted on by

Imagine a place where in two short years a budget surplus has been magically transformed into a deficit. A place where millions of people are jobless, many of them laid off in the past 24 months. Homelessness is steadily increasing, millions of children go to bed hungry and terrorists have recently attacked, killing thousands.

Then imagine that this country’s king decides to deny government workers scheduled raises and new government workers civil service protection, but confers upon the appointed members of his court bonuses of up to $25,000.

Read the rest of this editorial at Yahoo! via therablog.