Well, that was a pleasant little sanity break. Followed by the mini-Apocalypse. Followed by a deadlining break. Followed by a car-problems break. Which is why I should need no excuse for not popping back in earlier.
I have been thinkin’ aboutcha, though, and have pages of incoherent notes to run past you. Starting with this one:
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The difference between us … I mean some of us … well, I really mean me … and the devil-may-care types is that for us, life is always “just one more thing.”
For example, I find myself the possessor of a woodstove for the first time in 20 years. I didn’t particularly want one; I wanted propane as my alternative heat source. But here it is. The story of how it got here is fabulous, riveting, classically cool. I could take days to recount it and I’d tell it so vividly as to have you rolling on the floor laughing or holding your nose. If I told you the very basic simple truth, you’d applaud me wildly — while seriously doubting my sanity. And possibly coming to rest on that side of the divide. But I am never going to tell that tale. Sorry. Some things I don’t even tell the NSA.
Nevertless, here is this woodstove. It’s an old beater,but it has a newly checked chimney and a big glass door. Fire roaring behind a glass door! What could be more relaxing? And I’ve earned it! So here goes …
Yeah. Tonight I crouch down in front of the stove after a good, but long and chaotic day, see paragraph one. I open the door and the woven seal that was already loose and sagging catches on something and tears farther off. I must fix.
Sigh. “Just one more thing.”
Then as I went through all those many steps you go through (well, we who never learned how to rub two toads together to produce sparks or whatever) to get a fire going, I remembered that I have almost no firestarters and will need to cook up another batch. (I just threw in that bit about cooking up a batch in case the DEA is lurking out there behind the NSA and needs some entertainment.)
“Just one more thing.”
Where are the candles to melt for wax? Which wick materials worked best and where do I find them?
“Just one more thing.”
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This doesn’t drive me to go do anything, mind you. I can procrastinate as well as a Jimmy Buffett fan with a snootful and a parrot on his shoulder. Still it drives me.
And very likely you.
By the time we actually start to relax in front of that fire, we can barely keep our eyes open.
Early this morning (up at 2:30 a.m. and driven, though only to surf the ‘Net), I read an interesting article about how the rich and the poor were very much alike in their values, while the middle class was entirely different, and always became prey for the other classes, no matter how much anybody blathers about democracy land of the free etc.
Well, of course, this drivenness (including the kind that drives more ambitious and accomplished people than I) is the epitome of middle class values.
Right along with honesty, giving the other guy a fair shake, trusting our leaders, paying our taxes, and submitting to our Stasi.
Yup. We’re suckers.
I must go back and look for that article. I’ll add the URL if I locate it. (ADDED: Clarence found it. And while I think the author was painting with a pretty broad brush, I also think he’s right.
Now you probably know that I, myself, am not from the middle class and am not part of it now. My dad wore a blue collar, or actually a old-fashioned tee shirt with straps and holes in it (and a tan shirt with his name machine-embroidered over the pocket on bowling night). Our neighborhood was “No down to vets” post-WWII housing. Mom thought she was real lucky to have graduated from high school. We’d have once been looked down on as “lace-curtain Irish” on Dad’s side and “stubborn German peasants” or “Scots-Irish hillbillies” on Mom’s.
But down the the core, we had middle-class values. That was fairly common back in the day. Less so now.
We tend to look back at those times and pat ourselves on the back for having the foresight to select such industrious, upright ancestors. But now I wonder: how did so many of us get played for suckers? The rich played the middle. The middle played us. The poor were played by one and all while also playing the rich. Who then played …
And generations went by before our generation noticed it. (Though of course too many generations of the world have observed the same thing on their own.)
Several of those generations had it pretty good. They had no reason to think they were being used. No reason to disbelieve the American mythology they’d been so carefully taught in government schools. They had it great … well, despite being worried about a Commie under every bed and annihilation imminent because of the nuclear arms race. Yeah. They had it good. Especially after the hell the Depression generation and the World War II generation endured. They were prosperous — thanks in part to a little thing called the Federal Reserve.
Now we’ve still got towelhead terrorists wanting to sap our precious bodily fluids slaughter our children. Somehow, things like that are always with us.
But we don’t have it so good any more.
Now here I am poor, but in a type of poverty where I could afford some leisure time, some mental breaks, some time in the literal or virtual hammock with an umbrella drink in hand. And here I am still stuck with freaking middle-class values. Busy, busy. Protestant ethic.
And how many of you … how many of you … despite all your freeing of yourself, no matter how far out of the mainstream you live … think like a middle classer is supposed to think?
Even when we’re the freakin’ grasshopper we think like the ant!
Ahem. So to broad brush it again: rich and (a certain type of) poor can enjoy being devil-may-care because they both have these handy cows whose milk they can sell at market, these busy bees producing them honey (even if the distribution is a tad uneven), these servants “yas’m” and “no’m”ing (even if the servants are starting to misbehave a bit).
Whether it’s aboard a yacht or on a street corner, rich (I should hasten to add a certain type of rich; i.e. crony rich or sociopath rich or sometimes just the lucky-born rich who have no clue how the rest of us live) and that certain type of poor can just relax. Chill. Hang loose. Hang out. Toss care to the winds. And annoy the hell out of me tonight the rest of us.
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Yet I know the mantra is “We can create ourselves” and “we are free when we declare ourselves to be.” I’ve said it. Still say it. I agree that neither the rich nor the poor can “make” me feel or be anything I don’t choose to be.
But recent evidence is that 50% of our temperament is determined by genetics, and heaven forbid that middle-class values actually got programmed into our genes by selective breeding.
And by that I do not mean lizard-brained aliens holding us in cages as part of a gruesome genetics experiment.
I mean what if, through all the centuries, the most “useful” (in terms of docile character and willingness to work like a steam donkey) survived and bred and the “troublemakers” got themselves burned at the stake or sent off to war or shipped to the colonies to survive if they could in a world without women before they had enough chance to win the breeding competition?
Which, come to think of it, was pretty much the way it happened.
So even rebels today are usually bedrock middle class by both upbringing and genetics. Centuries of double whammy. Which keeps them us me behaving their our (oh, just forget it!) damn selves even as they grumble and perform small acts of sabotage.
What if being forever middle class, wherever we actually fall, is our doooooooooooom?
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The above is “The End,” actually. But before you think I’m going away mad and feeling helpless, let me assure you: not so. My scattered notes contain optimism.
Somewhere.
I think the one with the optimism is under that copy of last month’s S.W.A.T., the water bill, a jar of assorted nails, and that bag of MamaLiberty’s RoadKill dog cookies.
When I find it, I’ll be back with more upbeat blogitude. And some links unless some Commentariat detective wants to ferret our the source of that rich-poor story and post it before I do.
Right now, though, I have a fire going with the very last of my supply of wood. And I am going to go enjoy it.
Just One More Thing is karma’s way of letting you know it’s not the destination/completion that one should be focusing on. It’s getting there. Nothing is ever finished finished because there’s a few new ones that pop up along the way…..it’s always something….and those of us who tend to think constantly always seem to find more loose ends than tied up ones, too…..
I guess by the standards you describe I was probably middle class brainwashed….and I do remember my family totally buying into the whole “do what everyone else is doing” type of lifestyles (in the ’50s especially) ..but when life changed to poverty, I changed along with it…and the longer one remains at that poverty level, that changes things as well….and the foundation of that change is based entirely on the results that didn’t come along with the rest of the “middle class promises”……interesting way of looking at it, though……
Don’t know what you prefer, but my firestarters are balls of dryer lint soaked in paraffin. I’ll use store-bought wax if it’s handy, or candle stubs if it isn’t.
The leftover lint is excellent tinder, and there always seems to be some left over.
Don’t know, Claire, my bedrock may be middle class values, but I’ve taken a ninety degree turn from the complete rest of my family as far as lifestyle goes. I was raised in suburbia by a nuclear family (six kids) with a dad who took the bus downtown for an office job while mom opened boxes and cans for the meals.
I had the unbelievable good fortune to win and marry a woman who sees my family as weird. I’m now on 40 acres and can take a deer from field to freezer in my basement, day after tomorrow I’m likely replacing the pump in my well (long ugly story), and while my arsenal would probably make a Texan laugh, it’s light-years ahead of most other people I personally know.
My point, and I do have one (thanks, Ellen), is that sometimes people *do* change the characteristics they grew up with.
As far as the ‘one more thing’ goes, the weekend I was working on plumbing (part 1), I was supposed to doing woodworking.
Do you know how to make God laugh? You tell him your plans.
Peace.
“(I just threw in that bit about cooking up a batch in case the DEA is lurking out there behind the NSA and needs some entertainment.)”
That’s good stuff. Feed the beast all the empty calories possible. It will starve to death in a mountain of iceberg lettuce.
As for one more thing, I tend to have “thing days”. I’ll spend two or three hours and get twenty things done, like fixing the gasket on the stove (“Cool, fixed in 5 min… but gotta keep moving, stay off the internet and focus on what you want done”) Of course on Monday my truck broke down and is beyond my abilities to fix… and seemingly also beyond the abilities of the automotive repair community to fix, meaning $800 minimums.
I’ve heard this business of similar values before with the difference being the rich have more energy. In other words a worthless whore/financial adviser and a retail meth salesmen/consumer are really only separated by the time they get up in the morning… or afternoon if you’re poor.
I’m not so sure I have middle class values. Middle class and libertarian do not slide into a comfort zone very often. Middle class means working hard, I’ll give them that. But it also seems to mean you love an extensive array of rules to govern behavior and spend most of your life being shocked that someone doesn’t follow them because they’ve discovered self interest. “The Common man” (as my politician Grandfather used to call them, himself man who never saw the rules as something that applied to him) abhors self interest, not being able to recognize it very often. They are easily duped by both the rich and the poor. It’s not a secret that invading Afghanistan and fighting a war in Vietnam couldn’t possibly work out… but the middle class loves that shit, even though they are the ones who pay with their lives. I’m just not like them.
try here: http://woodpilereport.com/html/index-340.htm top of the pile.
clarence
Thanks Clarence.
I think the part of the middle class that we retained is called Conscience (and perhaps a lttle guilt when conscience is not working that day). Certainly conscience doesn’t seem to come from the extremes (“rich” and “poor”), so it must have come from the middle.
Another way of saying we learned the “right way” to act from the Middle Class, but have taught ourselves what are the important things to act upon – and because the two don’t mesh, we are left dangling with no place to land.
(This in fact is the basis for insisting on no initiation of violence, and The Golden Rule – good and decent tenets both, but guaranteed to hamstring us when attempting to act against our enemies, who feel no such restrictions.)
clarence — Yep, that was it. Thank you! I was so whacked out and dead beat last night I didn’t even try to find it. Just finished that rambling screed, sat by the fire a while, and fell into bed at a crazy-early hour.
And thanks to all the Commentariat and silent readers for both patience and good follow-up.
Deeeeeep breaths, Claire, and start by backing slowly away from the “one size fits all” stereotype.
1. Actually, there are demonstrably FOUR classes, each of which also has a subset of three (upper, lower, middle). You neglect – well the original writer neglects – to take into account the working class, which has some of the values you attribute to the “middle” class, and some values of its own.
2. So where do you stick me? Looking at your “middle class characteristics,” I note: “drivenness (including the kind that drives more ambitious and accomplished people than I) is the epitome of middle class values.” while that’s a middle/upper class value, – for me Heinlein’s “The Man Too Lazy To Fail” is a fair description of my aspirations. I am good at “loafing,” which has a great article somewhere out there on the interwebz, The Arkansas Traveller bit about the roof needing repairs resonates with me nicely, and “no thing shall be done before its time” would do for a motto, if I had mottos. Those are demonstrably lower class values, though, in my makeup.
Then: “Right along with honesty…” Middle and working. The upper and lower tend to be more predatory in that regard. Again, TEND to. They have a selfishness (as opposed to self-centeredness) that easily gives them an “us v. them” outlook on life, and it’s always okay to prey on “them.” I clearly fall into the middle class on that one.
Next: “giving the other guy a fair shake,” correctly described as middle/working, see earlier bit about “predator/prey.” I’m up for that, right until the point he demonstrates that a “fair shake” is just going to be used against me.
Then: “trusting our leaders,” If I had leaders, I would probably trust them, but any leaders I have would be personally appointed by my own self, not set over me by others. Those would be “commanders,” and I have never in my life trusted commanders. All too often, for starters, they have no “skin in the game,” as they say, and as such they will suffer no personal consequences for their crapola decisions, regardless of how much those decisions may wreck MY life and well being. I view “our leaders” as just another predator – which means that I have much more of a “lower class” value there.
Followed by: “paying our taxes,” – too nebulous, you need to ask “why” those are getting paid. If you’re paying them because it’s “your duty and obligation as a citizen,” then yes, those would be middle/working class values. If you’re paying them, as I do, because somebody will come to your house and shoot you, and I’ve no desire to get shot right now, then that’s more a predator/prey value system – i.e. lower class.
And ending up with: “submitting to our Stasi.” Go do a ride along with the police when they’re patrolling in the lower class neighborhoods. You will see plenty of submission to authority, though only when it’s physically present. Equally, I suspect that you would see lots of non-submission to authority among working and middle class (it’s a given in the uppers) when there is no authority present *and* the rule/law is one that inconveniences the individual. See further comparisons at “traffic court,” for instance.
In short – it’s dangerous to pigeonhole people and then attribute to them all the aspects of the hole. People simply have too many facets to make that effective – I have an upper class education and job, middle class income, working class vocabulary and language use (spoken, anyway), and lower class attitudes toward work and authority. So …. what am I?
As to whether those attitudes are nature or nurture – I’ve got no idea, though it’s a fun question. It’s also irrelevant to some degree, because as to your self, as with all things, the old prayer comes to mind: Lord, give me the strength to change what I can, the patience to endure what I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. Whether you’re driven because of your genes or your upbringing … you’re driven. But an ant can become a grasshopper far more easily than the other way around … so, by way of conversation/discussion, why not become a grasshopper?
Hobbit, I did admit from the get-go that both the original author of the rich/poor/middle piece and I were painting with very broad brushes.
And neglecting the working class? Heck, I went on at great length about the working class (from which I spring). Even mentioned bowling-league uniforms! Whaddaya want? Nothing could be more working class than that!
But yeah … I also agree with your refinements on the theme. Mostly.
Broad strokes – them’s the sort of thing that can get ya in lots of trouble. 😉
Interesting ideas… I second all that hobbit said. (Shocked you, huh!) LOL
I’ve been really poor, and I’ve been “middle class.” Never really knew any rich folks, so don’t know much about them. No envy, sometimes even a bit of sympathy, strange as it may seem. Most don’t seem to be any happier or healthier than I am. Just more stuff.
Worked hard all my life, did a lot of different things, overcame some physical challenges – or learned to live with them. Wasn’t worried about retiring either. I’ve always had ten things to do with every minute of the day. Now I get to choose which ones to do pretty much all the time. My schedule, my pleasure, my pace.
Seems like life should be that way much more than it is now. But that’s an individual choice too. I guess some prefer to be driven and a lot of folks seem to need a “leader.”
I won’t be “led.” I won’t be driven either. Sometimes I can be persuaded…
We were discussing this very topic over coffee at church Sunday and discovered most of us are not middle class any more. We’re lucky enough to own homes but that’s about it. Most live month to month.
However, Claire, we agreed with you even before you posted this article. We still work hard, tend to respect authority, but believe the American dream is no longer there for us.
Sad, isn’t it, Betsey? I wonder how long ordinary people will go on tolerating this state of affairs?
BTW, thank you for your kind comments in another thread last week. I couldn’t respond then, but I appreciated what you said.
Agree with the pigeonholing comments. People are pretty variable and change over time. However it may be better to break down society into producers and parasites?
I think about the concept of being bred to be “middle class” too. Stuck as I am between Chinese and sorta-Eurocentric society, to me it looks like Chinese is where we will be in a thousand years. They have had a functional society for so much longer than the Europeans who were running around with blue paint on faces when the Chinese were already civilized. I see some serious drawbacks to civilization. Nose to the grindstone all the time, never asking why? I just shake my head at times.
I had a middle class upbringing but I am all over the place. I don’t mind working hard but slack off as soon as I see the fruits of my labor siphoned off by the parasites. I have known people with little money but with imagination living quite well, albeit unconventionally; so they have been examples for me too.
ML – what is this universal need people seem to have to issue a disclaimer before agreeing with me? It’s not even just in fora I infest, but in real life as well!!! 😛
Paul, I’d actually suggest a three way view: Parasites, predators, and prey. The difference between the first two classes being how “active” the person is in working to extract resources from the third.
I would point out, however, that the people with blue paint on their faces (that’d be some of my ancestors there) had a structured and organized social group…..