^^^
June 7, 2003
The
Suburbs
[asfo_del]
Suburban dwellers, although usually relatively
affluent, arguably receive more government
assistance than people on welfare due to the
added public cost of building and maintaining the
infrastructure to serve far-flung
communities: massive networks of roads,
utilities brought over greater distances, public
commuter transportation, and so on.
[The average welfare
payment is less than $400 a month for a family
of three. In some states, it's as little as $160 a
month for a family of three.]
The suburbs make driving a necessity. Driving is, of
course, a major source of greenhouse gases and other
pollutants. The demand for oil, which is created by
the only practical way to get around in sprawling
communities, has been a source of geopolitical
conflict and wars, (as we all know), which of course
cause terrible human suffering, at least some of which
we could perhaps have avoided if we were simply
willing to live a little closer to one
another.
The suburbs are isolating. It is very rare for someone
who lives in suburbia to come in contact or have
friendships with people of a different social class or
race, unless that contact happens at work. When we
live this way, we lack perspectives other than our own
narrow one. We become much more susceptible to the propaganda of corporate interests and
government because we lack any first hand
knowledge or testimony of experiences that might deny
or render suspect the assumptions that are presented
in the media as universal.
For the sake of quiet enjoyment and manicured lawns,
we sacrifice democratic principles, the environment,
and even human lives.
I don't know of any other society, outside of suburban
America, in which people live in such hermetically
sealed bubbles. People reside in detached, clearly
demarcated parcels, where they are unlikely to have
anything but the most cursory connection with
neighbors; move around in cars, often shutting out
even the weather, to travel to dystopian shopping
centers that are not within living, existing human
communities--or are near them but set far apart by
vast parking areas and vehicle-only access ramps; and
then come in contact with the outside world only
through the heavily spun images and rhetoric of the
media. There is little hope in this set of
circumstances to shake loose large portions of the
public and demand that they care about things they
never see or hear about--things that fundamentally
have no impact whatsoever on their lives, like
worldwide poverty or unnecessary and deceitful wars
waged only for the profit of the few. I myself care
about these terrible injustices but don't know what to
do about it. I'm no less ineffectual, in any real,
useful sense.
I know it's easy to look down on the suburbs, to treat
them as humdrum and boring and lacking in urban
sophistication. That's just our snobbery talking. The
fact is that on a broad, societal scale, the suburbs
are the place where most people have to live, simply
because they're what's there. That's where the housing
is. It's where the services are, the less alarming
schools, the strip malls, the pretty lawns and open
space--all the conveniences that people have become
accustomed to.
For every bohemian type who is willing to put up with
a cramped, barely functional apartment in a
crime-riddled, dirty, and congested city neighborhood,
in which the only stores around sell nothing but lotto
tickets, malt liquor, and chips, there are hundreds of
families who just want something nice. They're not
thinking about the wild spaces that were destroyed to
build their new development, the pollution and oil
consumption caused by their and thousands of their
neighbors' long commutes, or the fact that only having
a Wal-Mart as a
shopping choice means having to support unfair labor
practices and the homogenization of the
culture.
It's not an excuse. But it's the reality.
::|::|::|::|::|::
^^^
June 4, 2003
Brief Notes on
Poverty and "Mental Illness," Part Three
[Richard]
It's pretty clear that increasing alienation in the workplace negatively
affects "mental health." It goes without saying that some people like to
feel that the work which they do has some value beyond generating profit for
the bosses, as there are good reasons why the word "alienation" might apply
not only to an economic or sociological process but a psychological
condition as well. There are tons of books that you can read to be educated about this connection (lots of Marx-related stuff), but most people can already feel and understand it at a basic level -- i.e., anyone who's ever had to do work that had no meaning for them other than trying to pull in enough money to pay the rent or utilities...
Now add to that the feeling of utter powerlessness that comes with always
depending on varied forms of contingent work, being completely at the mercy
of the whims of abusive/neurotic/harried bosses, who may, themselves, feel a need to
bully their employees in order to compensate for their own general feelings
of powerlessness. Take a good look at what it's like to
endure these kinds of experiences on a constant basis, over and over again,
and it's not hard to see how being a contingent and/or low-level wage
laborer might challenge or compromise personal "mental health."
Of course, the consequences of severe alienation at work and constant
subjugation to the whims of bosses probably aren't as great as the
consequences of severe poverty, homelessness, and/or complete dependence on
an inadequate system of public assistance. Often, when I hear dreary
statistics about the high rate of mental illness among the homeless, I can't
help thinking that this must be a chicken-or-egg situation most of the
time...or that it must simply be the homelessness or the poverty leading up
to the homelessness that drives people into states diagnosed as "mental
illness" in the first place.
Personally speaking, I can't imagine living out in the street for a week
without becoming at least slightly insane. In the past, I have had to
endure maybe a day or two here and there trapped in another town with no
housing or money, and maybe one night spent in a "homeless shelter" that
consisted of a carpeted floor inside a church. A few other times, I've had
to endure sleeping within crowds on the floor of some school or squat
(usually in either freezing or sweltering conditions) the night before a big
protest/activist happening, and I have to admit that I've found that
experience to be horrible. When I think about my own reactions to such
minor simulations of homelessness, it becomes even harder for me to imagine
what it would be like to actually be homeless for real,
indefinitely.
This is not to say that all homeless people live in the street...
Homelessness exists in various degrees and gradations. I have a few
activist friends who have not been able to afford to pay rent but have
been able to get by more or less living in other people's places. The
amount of hardship involved in that kind of situation depends on the
permanency thereof. People who can stay in one place a long time (even if
it's an office of the Indymeida Center) will have it better than those who
must constantly shift from place to place, always looking for someone
generous to put them up. Always, the hardship increases with the lack of an
end in sight. (I've known some young anarcho-punks who've gone and slept
under bridges along with other A-Ps for a while, talked a lot about being
homeless, then ended up moving back to their suburban parents' comfortable
homes for a while -- not the same situation, I imagine, as those who sleep
under bridges without an eventual option of suburban parents'
homes.)
Yet, getting back to my present, not-quite-homeless (yet) situation, I
sometimes do feel that the constant anxiety that comes with wondering where
my rent or meals are going to come from next week or next month is not
nearly as bad as the depression and feelings of despair that come with
having to spend 40 hours a week or more doing things I have no interest in
doing, in an environment that I can't stand, in order to command a "real
salary." (On the other hand, I haven't forgotten for a minute that I've
never exactly worked in a sweatshop either, and many other people probably
must endure a much closer approximation of Hell.)
It has been said that our present society is experiencing an "epidemic" of
anxiety and depression, as Prozac, Zoloft, and a host of other mood cures enjoy unprecedented popularity.
Many people in the mental health professions would like us simply to accept
the "epidemic" of these problems and other "mental illnesses" as some sort of physiologically determined disease developing within each of us individually.
This naturally helps the pharmaceutical industry and "mental health" profession while discouraging people from thinking too much about changing the social conditions that might be at the root of any sickness that they feel.
Sometimes I think about all that money that gets poured into the "mental
health" industry and related pharmaceuticals, and I wonder what would
happen if the bulk of it instead somehow went toward a guaranteed social
wage and available housing for everyone. Maybe it wouldn't do much for
troubled and neurotic rich people, but surely, it would do a lot more than
most of these drugs and institutions to ease anxiety and depression in many
of the rest of us. It wouldn't be the complete answer -- we've got to do a
lot more to create a healthy (i.e., totally different) kind of society -- but it
could be a constructive start.
<>=<>=<>=<>=<>
^^^
June 2, 2003 Simpler, Tax-Free Living Blog
[Guest Comment - Dave]
I saw your Living on Less blog and thought you might be interested in mine:
http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/
It chronicles my recent experiment in learning to live below the tax line on a lower income.
Dave Gross
dave@eorbit.net
+*+*+*+*+*+
^^^
June 2, 2003 I'm Not Poor
[asfo_del]
Although statistically I am below the U.S. poverty threshold, [and even that is debatable*], I have never considered myself poor because 1) I have everything I need, 2) I have nearly everything I want, 3) I have an expensive education, 4) I am part-owner of a house (in Texas), and 5) I am not in danger of falling off the edge into abject misery.
[However, I am not able to support myself due to chronic illness, so if I were not a privileged person I would be in very serious trouble.]
As poverty is relative, so is privilege. We are, all of us, generally so accustomed to complaining about barely being able to make ends meet, no matter what our income, that whenever somebody talks about being privileged the immediate assumption is that they must be comfortably affluent.
To me, privilege is the luxury of being able to survive peacefully within one's means, without constant struggle or worry: by that I mean survive with plentiful food, reasonably serviceable shelter, and enough cash left over to enjoy a treat now and then, like going out to a show or a low-priced restaurant, while stashing away, little by little, a small fund for a rainy day.
[Most of the people who are alive today cannot even dream of this kind of security. According to the U.N., more than 3 billion people have to survive on less than two dollars a day; 1.3 billion on less than one dollar a day. There's no doubt that unremitting poverty is a fact for the great majority of humans.]
It's slightly shocking to me that American culture [European culture is not that much better; there's only a shift in people's priorities to emphasize different ways of wasting and consuming] actually abhors the notion of squirreling money away. People who save are treated derisively as "cheapskates," "tightwads," and "misers," as if not spending wastefully were the same as being selfish. Should Wal-Mart and the cable company be the recipients of our generosity?
_______________________
* U.S. poverty thresholds:
1 person (unrelated individual).... $9,182 [I easily fall under this figure; my yearly income, including gifts, is less than $7000.]
2 people .......................... $11,752 [But if I were to include Mike, who is after all part of my household, although we are not related and we do not pool our resources, our combined incomes would be more than this.]
3 people .......................... $14,351 [Even if I were to include Mike's son, who is 11 and lives with us part of the time, my income and Mike's combined is still higher than this.]
/\=/\=/\=/\=/\
[Continue to May Archive.]
