The Predicament of Impoverishment in America

In 1968, CBS aired a documentary called Hunger in America. It awakened many Americans to the fact that a very large number of their fellows citizens were underfed and malnourished. 

This led to significant legislative initiatives aimed at combating poverty and hunger in America during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Then, in 1976, came this ditty: "She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

The 'she' is the infamous 'welfare queen' and the person making the lumpen remark would become president of the United States in 1980.

Words matter. And the remark marked a significant turning point in American attitudes toward their fellow citizens receiving financial and/or food assistance from the government.

This is the way things bounce in American politics and American peoples' opinions.  It's a democracy; things should bounce and change.

In the meantime, though, the problem of poverty and hunger in America got worse: The percentage of Americans living in poverty, in real terms (adjusted for inflation) has increased from around 11% in the 1970s  to 15% now. That's a lot of people. This took place while at the same time our national income per person is now more than twice as high as it was in 1970.

So what's up? (And down?)

A couple of things: one, there's a recognition, based on statistics, that many of the 'anti-poverty' programs of the 1970s did work to reduce poverty and hunger. And two, our attempts to deconstruct these programs in the name of improving them has failed -- failed to reduce hunger and poverty, which is the only yardstick I'm interested in here. (If it makes you feel better knowing that government cuts increased the number of your fellow Americans living in poverty and going hungry,  well that's another gauge for someone else to measure -- perhaps your shrink or pastor.)

The point is, we already know how to reduce poverty and hunger in this country because we've done it. (Was it perfect -- yeah right, tell me what is?) But instead of learning from those programs how to make them better, we've taken a step back and made things worse.

Like I said in the middle of this essay, we are a democracy, and democracy's bounce.

So let' s bounce. 

Please read and consider signing the petition below that seeks to protect housing  assistance from budget cuts: http://signon.org/sign/exempt-housing-assistance

  

How the Hell Have We as a Culture Become so Inauthentic

This does, of course, beg the question,''What do I mean by 'inauthentic'?'"

Being a story-teller, I prefer to answer the question this way. There was, once upon a time,  an infamous  gun-slinging Western cowboy who became so vexed with angst, so desperate, so fraught with anxiety, that he sought out the counsel of an American Indian healer, or Shaman.

The Shaman wanted to help him, deeply, but had to turn him away saying,  "Son, you have gotten so far away from who you really are that I don't think I can bring you back to your self."

Did you know that in the 19th Century our first 'psychologists' were know as 'alienists'? They defined themselves that way because they felt they were treating people who had become alien to themselves.

Okay, so to my point here: we are presently living in a culture that not only supports being inauthentic (or being alien to oneself) but promotes it.  Not to shoot at sitting ducks, but have you watched morning TV talk shows lately? It's a competition among the hosts as to who can be the  more superficial, inauthentic and unengaged in any real way with either the news they report or the guests they interview. Not actually being there is evidently more charming, interesting, and profitable, than being there with the people who have done something in order to get on the show. (Sorry, but I only recently learned how much money these a-list, a-holes earn.)

But in a larger sense, I feel, these kinds of goings on are a reflection of who we are and what we are becoming: alien to who we really are; and no longer fully  engaged in our own experiences.

Seeing that, as a result of recent experiences, I have become a defacto spokesperson for the neglected, downtrodden, homeless -- pick your epithet -- I would like to point out that we as a society  have our least authentic relationship to these people. We fear them, label them, ignore them, (alienate them), do anything but engage with them personally (authentically).      

Therefore we exist, culturally, in a 'Make Believe Ballroom', in which all the guests come to the party on equal terms and everyone gets their fair shake. Would be nice, if it were true. But we don't all come to the party in the same shape; though, with help, we can all learn to dance -- at least adequately.

So enough with the metaphors. We are living in a society that has become alien to itself as a people, as an organic entity  in which all persons depend on and nurture one another for the greater good of the whole.   

Pollyanna? Maybe. But ask yourself this: Do you feel more authentic when you feel connected to your fellow citizen, or when you feel alienated and separated?

It's a choice; and a choice that makes a big difference in the lives of many people living  in America who are feeling alienated from their own society and nation. 

It's not necessary; it's inauthentic.

(Please check out the petition below. Stop Sequestratian cuts to Housing Assistance.)

Petition

http://signon.org/sign/exempt-housing-assistance

How the Hell Have We s a Culture Become so Inauthentic

Why All the Anxiety (and Self-Destruction)

Cold Hard Fact: Incidents of chronic anxiety, clinical depression, and suicide are taking place at epidemic rates in America.

Why?

Is it because we are a nation of weaklings who can’t deal with ‘real life’ without resorting to freaking out, falling into deep depressions or killing ourselves?

Or is it in our collective DNA, or ‘something in our water’?

Or could this thing we call ‘real life’ actually be a collective cultural nightmare we’ve unconsciously constructed by repeating the same actions over and over that make us feel anxious and self-destructive?

The highest rates where these chronic ailments and lethally self-destructive behaviors take place is among two (relatively) small but important segments of our nation’s population: our military personnel (including their families) and the working poor and unemployed.     

Unfortunately, too often these two groups converge.

But taken separately, the first group, active and former military, can hardly be blamed personally for showing the wounds of the physical and emotional damage they experience while defending our nation on the  front lines. There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, a pill that can make one immune from the effects of partaking in the horrors of war.    

But if we are going to continue to ask, and depend on, literally 1% of our population to physically defend  the rest of us, shouldn’t the other 99% be willing to do whatever it takes, or costs, to insure that they are taken care of when they come home – including, especially, receiving counseling and jobs that pay a living wage?

Now imagine yourself in the latter category, trying to support yourself and a family by making a wage at or near the national minimum ($7.25/hr.)?  I hope you have a good imagination, because you simply  cannot do it in realty.

In 20012, it cost the US economy (its taxpayers) more than 40 billion dollars in uninsured medical care to cover the cost of ‘collateral damages’ done to people (inlcuding many veterans) living at or below poverty in America.   

Would it not be cheaper, and more humane, for us to simply provide proper care for our veterans and provide livable wages to our working poor.  It would cost less in the long run, and not have such a devastating effect on our fellow citizens.      

Please read and consider signing the petition below:

Help  Reduce Poverty & Homelessness
  

The Human Cost of Maintaining Our Economy & the Creative Challenge to Change It

Contrary to some modern myth-making that suggests our economy was created organically by ‘market forces’, (or 'blessed' winds of fate) the economy we find ourselves in is the one we have created for ourselves.  

If it were a purely free market capitalist system, we would not have government financed assistance programs for the aged, unemployed and disabled;  and if our economy was engineered exclusively by socialist dictates,  the ‘super-wealthy’ would no longer be welcomed here, and the ‘horse-trading’ of our basic living commodities, including money itself, would not be tolerated.

We have a hybrid system that combines elements of a variety of economic practices and social ideals.  

Which is my point: it’s an amalgam, and a peculiarly American one that we have collectively created over time. As such, does it directly reflect our attitudes about how an economy and nation should function?

To me, it seems there is a fundamental contradiction between the values most Americans maintain and promote, and the economic system we find ourselves in. On the one hand, when there is a major catastrophe taking place in the world -- be it an earthquake, tsunami, or other form of natural disaster – Americans, through their government and individually, are usually the first and most generous providers of aid. 

Even while, at the same time, there exists an ongoing tragedy of catastrophic proportion taking place right here in our own nation, affecting the lives of one out of every six Americans. It’s a problem that we largely ignore and deny, squabble over briefly during election cycles, but do nothing to fix: domestic, American poverty. And the real potential social, political and economic cataclysm is that it’s getting worse, not better.

Right now, there are more than 40 million Americans living at or below the official threshold of poverty; that’s nearly 20 percent of the population. These are the highest rates of poverty since The Great Depression; and, from the 1990s until the present, the most dramatic reversal of fortunes in our history.   

If you’d like to throw around a political football trying to guess at the causes for this dilemma, go right ahead. But the fact of the matter is that this crisis is devastating the lives of millions of Americans, and at the same time depleting the government’s financial resources and helping it to rack up unprecedented and arguably insurmountable debt.

So who or what is benefiting from this socially bankrupt and financially bankrupting situation?

Statistics bear out that it’s the wealthiest Americans who are benefiting the most by owning larger and larger portions of the nation’s economic pie.  Plus, recent judicial legislation has virtually allowed the wealthy to own politicians outright.  The system is, undoubtedly, a mess. And, during this particular swing of the political pendulum, political and economic power appears to be moving decidedly in favor of people who already own wealth.   

But the wealthy do not as yet live here by themselves (or with the rest of us in debtor prisons).

  

This, I feel, must make one wonder whether or not the wealthy know how the rest of America lives? I would argue that a central reason why the problem of more and more Americans living in poverty is being ignored, and is persisting and growing worse,  is that most wealthy Americans are oblivious of the devastating effects living in poverty has on their fellow citizens.

One reason for this – despite the fact that anyone who has not been living in a cave knows about the glaring growing disproportionate gap between the poor and wealthy in America – is that no one,  rich or poor, wants to be reminded of it all the time.

Another reason, I observe, is that we are becoming an increasingly segregated population: the ‘haves’ are safely ‘gated'  in communities among themselves, while the’ have-nots’ flail around where and if they can. For the most part, wealthy and poor Americans live in separate worlds within the same nation. This is not a successful blueprint for maintaining a healthy society, democratic or otherwise.    

I propose that what is needed are not more stats and facts on the issue, or political discussions, legislation,  and 'resolutions'; but more real human interaction with one another and increased actual interface with the problem.

How do we do that?

 First, it starts with individual initiative. Whatever your view is on the subject, express it. If enough people agree with you, that will then lead to group endeavors and eventually the formation of a social movement. This is also something Americans do peculiarly well:  we are very good at expressing ourselves individually, and creatively, and in the process setting in motion movements that in time lead to progressive changes in our society.  

I believe that the social movement of our time, the one that affects more Americans than any other, is addressing the issue of the increasing numbers of Americans living in poverty -- before the problem expands, destroying us individually and socially and bankrupting us financially.    

If you agree (or disagreed) express yourself!

(One small way that you can begin to express yourself is to review the following petition:)


Help  Reduce Poverty & Homelessness
 

An Ode to the Petition Slinger

The idea of creating a petition to reform some aspects of Social Services did not come to me until I received a suggestion to write one from SignOn.org -- the petition-initiating branch of the populist progressive group MoveOn.org.

So now that I've agreed to launch it, what do I hope to get from doing so?

In a word, CLOUT.

Okay, then why do I want CLOUT and what do I expect to do with that?

First of all, it is very difficult for a simple private citizen like myself to get the attention of the politicians and bureaucrats who run a large entity like Social Services. (Throwing a brick at their window didn't help -- but that's another story/play...).

Now, the above mentioned 'Pols' and  'Crats' make a fairly decent income for running Social Services.   I, the petition-slinger, have no interest in doing their jobs for them for free (nor would I want to do it even for money). Nor do I want to get personally involved in the homelessness situation (again).  I'll explain that shortly. 

A person working in/for the Social Services system is not in a position, nor does he or she have the power, or CLOUT, to initiate changes.  If you have ever had the pleasure of being in the Emergency Services office of Social Services, then you know that the people working there feel pretty much like they are the small band of Injuns getting overwhelmed and run over by the Calvary in an epic John Houston Western.   Reform What?!

Those who work there also have never been on the other side -- receiving Social Services. They know how to dole out what the state has to offer someone in an emergency situation, and how to smile and say 'Good Luck', or 'Have a Nice Day,'.  But they have no actual idea of what it would be like to try to not only survive on the assistance given, but, and even more importantly, to try to get one's life back on track so you won't be visiting them again -- soon, or ever. (Now, that's a Nice Day!)

So the social worker doing the ground work is too overwhelmed by the sheer number of people they have to serve in order to have time to think about how to change things. Plus, they don't know what to change because they have never experienced what it is that might need reforming ( or changing). And certainly the higher up politicians and bureaucrats don't have any better perspective on the situation.

So then who or what is to step in?  'It's a bird, it's a plane...'. Nope. Wrong movie again. It's your humble petition-slinging private citizen.  

And how did the petition-slinger get such a special perspective? Well, this petition-slinger also happens to be an author, and perhaps a bit of a masochist, because he wrote a book on the subject: An Odyssey in the Great American Safety Net. So if you enjoy gory details, read that; but suffice to say, as the title of the book indicates, that the petition-slinger has first-hand knowledge of the workings of Social Services. (Or as Jimmy Hendricks would put it:  He's Experienced.) 

But as this petition-slinger wrote earlier, he does not want to either work for Social Services or be personally involved with the homeless.  Well, that certainly deserves some explaining?

In a nutshell, (again I refer you to the book if you prefer the fruit of the nut) if you've ever lived through it --an 'Emergency' -- you do not want to revisit it, up close and personal.  It is simply not healthy to do so.  

Which gets us back to the petition. If the petition-slinger can get enough signed petitions to earn some CLOUT,  he can then, from a safe personal distance, explain to the 'Pols & 'Crats' about some very simple changes they could initiate that would allow the state to get more bang for its bucks, and those in need to get more realistic and fruitful help.  

Here's the petition. Please consider signing it and passing it along:

Help Improve Social Services to Reduce Homelessness

Thank you.

The Petition-Slinger.

'Darwinism' Debunked -- By Charles Darwin

One of the pillars of modern Western thought, and lodestars of our cultural beliefs, is the 'scientific finding' that human existence is based on the principle of 'the survival of the fittest'. This 'sobering discovery' is attributed to Charles Darwin and his book, The Origin of Species (1859).

Why this has become such a popular notion -- justifying all kinds of bad behavior -- is something I'll get into later. 

Right now, I'll allow Charles Darwin to debunk the infamous postulate so steadfastly attached to his name and work: 'Humankind arose through the higher agencies of love and altruism. Selectivity and survival, being foundational, are retained, but in service of this higher and more complex life-form." (The Descent of Man, 1871.)

The Origin of Species was Darwin's treatise on pre-human development. It is in The Descent of Man that Darwin posits his scientific findings on how human beings developed and distinguished themselves from other earlier life forms. 

Okay, so then why have we grasped upon the first 'sobering and realistic' notion -- and made it into a defacto Materialist's Bible -- while ignoring his later, more mature and uplifting observations? 

First of all, biology itself. The human brain did not simply appear one day out of nothing. It evolved from its predecessor, Neanderthal. A ripe old age for a  Neanderthal  was into its early 30s. Until then it lived a life based on the principal of devour or avoid being devoured in a landscape dominated by beasts and behemoths with gargantuan meat-eating appetites.   And when it wasn't doing that, it was reproducing as many offspring as it could. It's brain, such as it was, was perfectly hot-wired for carrying out these functions. Neanderthals, and their brains,  successfully plodded along on earth for a whopping 650 thousand years. 

On the other hand, we humans have been here a mere 40,000 years -- and look at the unprecedented  amount of destructive havoc we have manged to reap upon ourselves and our planet is such a relative short amount of time.  

So then how did a creature that purportedly developed or evolved from Neanderthal because of a higher capacity for love and altruism, turn into such a self-destructive little brat?

A combination of biology and cultural self-programming.  One doesn't just slip out of a hundreds-of -thousands-of- years-old  mode of operation overnight. Additionally, in a twist of nature that seems unique to humans, we can also use our increased brain power to control and manipulate others by stimulating the 'veteran' Neanderthal brain over the 'rookie' human one. They are both still there.

If we human beings manage to survive this 'evolutionary adolescence', future cultural anthropologists may look back at this period with jaw-dropping bewilderment.  They would see our everyday cultural reality -- our so-called entertainment, and news, and economic systems -- shaped in a way to stimulate our Neanderthal fear-based brains and make us act out accordingly. (I think that if Neanderthals had TV, you could easily cut a few hundred thousands of years off of their existence.) We are, in effect, clothed Neanderthals with brains more advanced than we know how to use discerningly.

About 6,000 years ago, nature, the Creator, what-have-you, tried to send humans a reminder or wake up call with a new cultural phenomena for us to make hay from: religion.  Take your pick of which one, or ones, that you prefer, but all of them have one thing in common: an urgency for human beings to recover the lost virtues of altruism and selfless love that are the keys to our continued development and existence on earth -- which, by the way, is not guaranteed anywhere.

So, my point here is to try to imagine how different the human landscape would be now -- how we might have addressed our major issues of poverty, famine, racism, sexism, war and peace -- if our cultural mantra over the last century had been something more akin to William Blake's 'We are placed on earth for a short space so that we might learn to bear the beams of love', rather than the bastardized Darwinian interpretation of life as being a dog eat dog existence where only the fittest and most selfish among us survive and flourish.

I'm just sayin'....