The Better Life

A recent e-mail from my (Republican, of course) U. S. Senator said something about the American Dream of one's children having a better life than the parents.   On face value, this looks like something reasonable.  Don't all parents (except the psychotic ones, and there are quite a few of those around) want Better for their children?  What the e-mail was aiming at was another better and blisteringly hot and surging economy where each generation is able to earn mo' money, mo' money than the previous one.

I thought we learned this lesson in the 60s and 70s when the boomer children turned on, dropped out, and forsook the values of their parents - which drove their parents totally wild. [In the interest of discretion, I will admit to having been a Young Republican and missing out on all of that somehow.  But I saw it happening, if only by being documented in the popular culture of the day - AKA sitcoms, etc.]  Even today I see Boomer parents looking on in disbelief as their children avoid the Professions or any full-time work that involves Benefits.  People who sweated through years of collecting bachelors and masters degrees see their kids, those that actually went to and finished college, waiting tables or travelling around the world camping out on strangers' sofas.  Many of these parents don't understand why these kids are happy.

It strikes me that this particular American Dream was the one where the parents escaped a war-torn geography or totalitarianism and worked hard so that their kids could have the freedom to decide what they wanted to be.  A few of those children may have decided to go on and be financial or industrial moguls, but you can only have so many of those, even in America.   If the American Dream is for your children to be rich beyond your wildest dreams, then you have a sad, sad imagination.

I'm not an economist or know anything about math for that matter, but it's common sense to me that an economy cannot grow endlessly.  I have finally accepted the fact that our economy is based on the endless manufacture and purchase of shit.  If we stopped buying shit, our world would collapse.  If we don't stop manufacturing shit, we're going to drown in it.  I don't see a way out of this conundrum.  If my dad taught me anything, it was the Law of Diminishing Returns.  If being a woman has taught me anything, it's that things go in cycles.  Yes, the economy has a downturn, but it comes back up again.  Then it goes down again.  We cannot keep making it go up.  All we can do is protect ourselves for the times when it goes down.  That may mean protecting people we think don't deserve a hand-out, but that's not our call because when it comes to Stuff, we can't be trusted.  We turn into the formerly docile chimps suddenly fighting over bananas.

People are greedy.  Don't argue with me.  Some may be less greedy than others, but it's programmed into us for when we need it to survive.  However, if we aren't starving, we should leave that tool in the box.  If you have shelter and enough to eat, you are doing well.  In a civilized society, you shouldn't have to worry about not having food or shelter.  If you have more than one house (and I'm speaking as someone who does have more than one house, but would like to get rid of one of them - let me know if you need one), you have excess shelter.  If you, like I, have trouble deciding whether to have Ginger Delight with Pork and Thai iced tea or Keema Mattar and Chai for dinner, then you have an excess of food.  If you begrudge anyone else having any of your excess, you are greedy.  If you have five houses and wonder which country to have dinner in and you still begrudge anyone having  any of your excess, then you are a hopeless bastard.

Where did this dislike of paying taxes come from?  In all my years with my parents, I never heard any bellyaching about paying taxes or where it was going.  You think a Republican apple fell from a Democratic tree?  Guess again.  They would get all excited about Republican candidates [that is, until Reagan].  My parents were middle-class people with a single income and two kids.  We were raised to value Fiscal Responsibility at home.  You don't come much tighter with a penny than Depression Era parents.   You bought a house you could pay for, not the biggest you could afford.  [ In her later years my mother wondered if that were a mistake.  I wish I could tell them now that it wasn't.]  Taxes were not the issue.  "Tax" was not a bad word.

The only problem I have with paying taxes is the forms.  They're so needlessly complicated. I used to solve that problem by organizing all my 1099s and forms and pouring myself a big glass of bourbon.  I figure that if I don't have a problem paying taxes, then rich people shouldn't either.

I also don't believe that rich people create jobs.  I think people with ideas create jobs.  Rich people only create ideas to hold onto what they've got: tax loopholes, Political Action Committees, Credit Default Swaps, etc.  Those things don't help anyone but rich people and then when some of their ideas go bad, everyone suffers.

So what is the American Dream?

I think the kids know: it's the freedom to find what you really want to be doing, what you really do well.  It's being free to be yourself, to love and be loved by someone of your choosing.  It's giving everyone else the same consideration.  It's having enough money to pay your fair share of taxes to keep that Dream available to everyone, maybe.

Stupidy, Stupidy, Stupidy

I have this hanging over my desk at home, over my computer, as a reminder. I made it myself on Publisher, so the Greek isn't perfect - it ain't got the diacritical marks, or whatever they is. One day I saw this yardstick frame at Wal-Mart (back when I used to frequent Wal-Mart, before it became Wally-World, bigger than Alaska, requiring huskies and a GPS to navigate, and left an enormous empty shopping center on the other side of town) and thought it was perfect. I had also read an interview of Yehudi Menuhin in BBC Music Magazine and this quote jumped right out at me. So this is a primitive, real life mash-up.

The Greek means: Of all things the measure is man. I took Ancient Greek a coupla decades ago to see if Aristophanes was as funny in the original as in translation. (He is.) There's more to translation than just changing one word after another into another language, as those of us who use Babelfish or Google Translate or some other automatic device have come to understand. For one thing, there is interpretation. Protagoras does not mean that Man is the example from which all other things are judged. He means pretty much what Yehudi Menuhin is saying: that a person cannot judge anything except by his/her own experience. Menuhin takes a little longer to say that this experience colors that person's perception. Because Menuhin's interviewers had unhappy childhoods, they assume that his must have been unhappy as well.

I have taken this to heart, as you can tell by these framed quotes I keep in a prominent place (I spend hours in front of them). I use them as a yardstick for my own opinions and I have caught myself many times being guilty of this sort of prejudice. My main weakness is stupidity. I absolutely hate it when I am stupid, which is fairly often, really. This self-loathing can be debilitating, so instead of being more careful or more reflective, I project my anger on what I perceive as the stupidity of others. I try to stop myself doing this, take a breath, and remind little me that I make stupid assumptions also or act without thinking.
But ...
I can remain silent no longer.

Of all the stupid, stupid, stupid things I've heard lately is that this election of Barrack Obama is a signal of the End Times. I hear this at work (okay, not that strange, living in the Bible belt), read urban legend debunkings of Nostradamus spams, and I've even heard it on Second Life-of-all-places. In my memory, they've been presaging the End of the World since that idiotic The Late Great Planet Earth book came out in the 1970s and all the Christian-types in college were going on and on about it. Well, Hal Lindsey's deadline has done come and went, chilluns. I didn't give it much of a thought at the time because apparently the brand of Christianity espoused by my family was more of a Say Your Prayers, Behave Yourself and Be Considerate of Others flavor. I don't remember anyone making any kind of a fuss over the End Times, probably because they were like death - something you have no control over, so why worry about it?
I was asked at one point, "What would you think if 20% of the population suddenly disappeared one day?" Ummm, Good Riddance?

So naturally I'm greeting reports of people running out and buying up guns since the election results came out with my characteristic eye-rolling. It's all good for the economy, I suppose. In the midst of the Millennial Panic the most I did was buy a small, disposable alcohol stove which could come in handy in the event of another ice storm which we're prone to in this neck of the woods.

So what do I worry about? Oh, my retirement. I keep telling myself that economic thingummies are cyclical and this too shall pass. With any luck, I'll be able to retire during an upswing. Then again, maybe I'll drop dead before that. My mom said "You always worry about the wrong thing!" - meaning "you" in the sense of "a person." Me, I assiduously worry about everything hoping they will all turn out to be wrong.

And the rest of y'all? Use your heads, people! In the Middle Ages the Black Death killed off a minimum of 30% of the European population, a mini-ice age brought on starvation and was followed by global warming, the ruling classes plied their profession with rampant brutality, in the name of Faith torture and murder by Christians on their fellow Christians as well as non-believers were by-words, and if that didn't bring on the End of the World, I don't think we have anything to worry about now. It's All About You, innit? Well, it's time to look outside your house, your neighborhood, your church, your religion, your city, your state, your country, your landmass, your century ... and look at the Whole Picture. This world is going to end, and no one can know the time or the how. It might be one of them asteroidy things. So just shut up about it, mind your own p's and q's, help your fellow man whether here or somewhere you've never even heard of, and pray if you got 'em.