Why do I write this? It is pontification, words thrown into the air to fall wherever they may. Today my words are about the homeless. Millions of words have been written and spoken about the homeless. It is as if they are now a separate species. As if they passed the point where they were a problem that could be solved and entered a state where their existence must be endured, where a border must built in our minds. Our condescending, concern accepts the unfortunate necessity of it. Retrieves the retrievable, rewards the “Deserving Poor”, those who prove willing to pull themselves out of their “condition” and climb the ladder of civilized society again.
As if this is a condition that they somehow brought upon themselves and choose to stay in. And this contrivance is as old as the idea of “haves and have nots” . It is a contrivance that admits no connection between the haves and have nots, certainly no responsibility beyond a vague charitable concern for our fellow humans. It would be an absurd proposition, to suggest that any of what we have, has been taken from, or reduced what they have …to the point that they have…nothing.
But this pontification, and I write it as one who is not homeless…even though I have at times been very close to that state…enough to know that it is a state. It has internal rules and boundaries, means and methods and cultures and communities and a form of society, because while each, like all of us is an individual, to live, survive, without a home, requires alliances, relationships. There, now I’ve said it, accepted the notion of a separate state whose members are not like us. Well It’s true isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
Oh for sure, come on. Now we have to talk about our whole society and its various arrangements and compromises. Let us look for a few sentences at the super rich. There is getting to be a very large number of them, some well known to all of us and some who quietly remain as anonymous as their paranoid ancestors. I have been convinced for years that they are a separate species, some self made , many born into it. WE all know there are separate rules forth…life styles that most of us can’t even imagine. WE know that they posses enormous wealth and power…to do and be whatever and whomever they like. Not an exaggeration. These are the aspirations of capitalist society. There are wealthy people whose lives are conducted in ways that separate us from them in exactly the same way as those who are home less… a separate state. Works that way for whole countries, rich ones, poor ones, ones so devastated and exploited that even homeless people on the street here in Canada may be better off than people who have been bombed and blasted to death and whose towns and cities have been reduced unliveable rubble.
The punch line is that they did not do it to themselves. They didn’t create these separate states of existence and maintain them. We all did. We all created the species of super wealthy and the state homeless have nots. Yes we did. Over the past hundred years our comic growth has become so rapid and pervasive used on new technology and means of production that created explosive wealth…But as a society we saw the wealth become concentrated and soon the wealth itself was generating wealth. Meanwhile those with little or no access to means and opportunities had to be employed by those who do. Then those who had the wealth ( here comes that separate species) used the power of it to advance technology and science and reduce the need for so many employees. Oops. Dilemma . People were still needed to buy the stuff that kept super Yacht gassed up. What to do? Well they got there government on their job. Calculated the numbers of consumers required to keep the wealth machine going and growing and came to their conclusion that governments would need to employ people and also subsidize business and the wealthy (Oh no, really?) .Then we all noticed that people were being squeezed out the edges. Lost jobs…not just jobs but whole factories and industries. Lost families, lost homes, farms, businesses. Became part of the under state.
O.K. let’s wrap this up. They’re not a separate species, neither the poor and homeless nor the super wealthy untouchables, They’re subcultures of our whole society and they are connected to all of and us to them.
And that final pontification is my suggestion of a starting point to think about these things in a different way. Or just more words into the air on a humid Saturday night. For the moment I don’t care, I’ve said what I wanted to say…I’m going to finish my bourbon and go to bed.
Blues: 14 09 24
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