We can still look out at the show of the turning sun
Firing up clouds, powering the day and exclaim at the beauty
What a tragedy when we took beauty and stuffed it
Into the safety of things
Working so hard to keep it in an object
Either owned, or unownable
But it fights back
Slips through the cracks
Gets caught on canvas
In the strings & horns of desire
How hard we men have tried to
Keep it manifest in women’s curves
Only to find we’re left jealous when it
Taunts us with being so close
And their seeming ease with it
That women can even call each other beautiful
While we strive for stoic and strength
Or work at some vulnerability
What danger to release that frightening equality
To be able to look even upon each other
As beautiful

How did we get to this place where we are all so far from everything? “Father, paint me the earth on my body”, a Sioux chant from North Dakota, is how Galeano opens up Mirrors. Not that the indigenous people here were somehow supernatural, but that they were still closer to that time before we forgot we are a part of all of this that we live in.

Power changes. That is, who has the power to be heard is an evolution.

I know that I feel like some of the groups that have appeared in the last few years have come out of nowhere. Black Lives Matter. Me too. These are the big ones, the two that have been changing the landscape of this country, and elsewhere.
It doesn’t take much reflection to realize that the problems behind these groups are not new. Women have been subjugated to second class citizens for all written history. Black has been a measure of one’s lack of worth, a weird arithmetic where the value of black skin is an inverse relationship in time to their perceived worth as humans as it stopped being the mark of a commodity and slowly becomes just another facet of humanity.
These aren’t new problems, then. So why are they now so public, so newsworthy?

I think it’s because we (all of us) are seeing groups who are finally achieving enough social standing for their concerns to be taken seriously. After all this time, a black man can finally say that the life they have to live is unfair, and we, the public, that is everyone who isn’t black, those who are black, and largely those of us who have been living the privilege of being white, we realize that they are telling the truth. That we owe it to them to listen to them.
This is the same thing that has finally allowed “Me Too” to become real. How sad a story is that? After how many minutes we’ve existed together, women finally have enough social cachet in the Western World to say that they are tired of being paid less and being subjected to rape and molestation. There really isn’t any one thing that led to that realization. It isn’t as if Weinstein is the first famous, powerful man to treat women as toys. He’s just the piece of dust that started the snowstorm.

Talking with a friend we mused about why “Me Too” would be having an easier time, spreading farther and being taken more seriously in the press, the media, and in the actions of companies than “Black Lives Matter”.
On one hand, it’s difficult to play the game of which wrong is worse. On the other hand, there seem to be some obvious reasons. Everyone knows a hundred women. Mothers, sisters, aunts, spouses, partners. Roughly half the people we all know are women, and while the women might be surprised at being finally heard, the men are equally surprised at hearing these stories. Not that they haven’t heard them before, but that it’s not just from the one or two women, but from their mothers and sisters and daughters.
That’s a revelation.
“Black Lives Matter” has a bigger hurdle. We still separate out after school. How many white people are still friends with their high school and grade school friends who had different skin tones? Does that friendship last until college? Graduation? The first job? When do those people fade away?

One thing I’ve heard is that people go to their culture, go to where is comfortable, so we just drift apart.
The more I think about that, the more it seems facile. It’s not necessarily intentional, it’s just what happens, right? Sure- but it’s what happens because we are all affected by the cultural prejudices.

Take me: I didn’t go to “my culture”, I went to where is easy. I want to say that I’m a special case. I didn’t grow up in the same America as most. I know what it’s like to be profiled because of my name, to be profiled because of my clothes. I know what it’s like to have someone say that they didn’t expect me to be… American, White, etc. But that’s not really different- it just means that they didn’t expect to respect me.
I went where it was easy. I could go to Alaska and work on fishing boats. I could sleep on the streets in NYC. I could stay at Sarah Lawrence College and walk around campus without attracting attention. So, no- I didn’t have it really different; I experienced privileges that I didn’t earn.

That’s the same sort of benefit I got in construction. I could open a business because it was easy. No one asked if I knew what I was doing, they didn’t test me beyond practical jokes or crass attitudes. I didn’t have to worry about what I was wearing beyond whether my tools were too new or my boots were too clean. My skin was not seen. At least, not after the first glance.

Being taken seriously is a matter of many little things, little actions.
I didn’t go to any school long enough to have friends for more than a couple of years. There were problems with that- I learned just how little people care about those who aren’t seen as part of their community. I learned how different the curriculum is from one district to another. I learned that education is a small and secondary element of the education system here.
Most of the kids I met were long term residents of wherever. They lived in a couple houses, went to a couple schools. They could name their 3rd grade teacher in 10th grade. They had friends who were multi-year friends. Kids they met in grade school and still knew in high school.
None of those kids said they didn’t want a friend to go to the same college as them. It’s just that they didn’t get to.
They didn’t ask why their friend didn’t get into the same AP class they did, or why they weren’t ushered in to meet the college counsellor in the same year. I remember hearing that kids had counsellors at school, advisors who helped them with applications and talked to them about college and what they would do after school. I never had one of those, never met with one, and was never offered one. I know there were others like me- not seen as part of the community, not valuable enough to spend effort on.
This is part of the little differences, the little things that aren’t done for many here.
It’s not that people go to their culture, they just aren’t invited on to the next part of the game. In the same way that women are subtly directed to social careers, not invited to the more “serious” industries, black students aren’t invited to college, except as some stereotype. Their parents may push the idea, but the schools don’t go out of their way to get them there.

No one person says “you aren’t going to do this”, it’s just not put on the menu.
Then we end up here, where one of the questions should be if the friends you have now look like the friends you had when you were young. If they aren’t, why not? Is it really just the natural progression, or is it what happens when the place we live isn’t questioned. When we do what’s easy, with an eye to what works best for us. We aren’t taught to look around to see if the other people we cared about are staying with us, or why they aren’t still there.

Fortunately, things get better.
Today the women in America are heard more than ever before. Black people in America are taken more seriously than ever before. Both of those overlapping, intertwined groups are today doing better than ever before. And it’s pretty sad to realize that doing better is what exists now. When we hear “Black Lives Matter” or “Me Too” in public, it’s not that they just arrived, but that this culture has evolved enough for all these people to have this much of a say. The culture doesn’t mean everyone, and there’s always some backlash to change. This isn’t the end of change, just another step in the evolution of society as it heads toward the (hopeful) goal of recognizing everyone here as having value. Hell, maybe that’s part of the problem, that there can even be a question of whether “value” has a place in that statement.

Anxiety.
I wish it was a stranger.
No, this is so familiar.
It is my companion. My closest companion.
Never far, there’s nothing to note when it leaves.
But, oh, the return. That’s something to know about.
When with one breath I can feel it coming.
In the second breath it is here.
By the third, it is settling into my chest.
Fourth finds it in my bones.
Restless stomach, I cannot move.
Each breath brings more in.
Each breath is dread, poison.
How much more can I take?
Will I survive this course?
Oh, it is here, and it has everything.
The world is contained in this.
Every piece of sand, every flower.
Every billowing cloud, every smile.
Your laugh, and the hopeful eye,
You all are in this, and you have nothing.
Two dimensional caricatures
Worthless loves and lives
In here, you are just moments
Meaningless, but not weightless
All of you pile into me
Fall onto me
Smother me with your demands
With your chatter
With your cares
Anxiety eats you
Makes you dust
That coats my lungs
Suffocates me

I don’t really know what it means to be a man.

I know what it was like to grow up transient in America.
I am white. I am male. By all accounts, I am in a privileged class, and that has some truth to it.
At the same time, there’s a dialogue happening that seems myopic. It holds generalizations about the benefits of being male and assuming it applies to all as a fairy tale of wonderful benefits and intentional actions.

Hugs were a part of my life when I was young, very young. By the time 1st grade came around, hugging was beginning to be restricted to family and close friends. By 4th grade such a thing was limited to parents and some sort of crisis.

At 18, it became more acceptable to hug a few close friends. Things have loosened up a bit in the past decade, and more people seem to hug upon meeting, but it’s still a segregated action. It is risky.

One did not hold hands after age 7. Holding hands could be done with parents or with younger siblings who needed to be guided somewhere.

Physical touch was reserved for those you loved within your family, and those who you were in a relationship with.
Oh, there was the touching of sports- roughhousing, wrestling, fighting. That’s all okay. But to be touched in an intimate manner, a touch that could be caring, soothing, comforting? No. Those could only be from lovers.

Women touched, hugged, held hands. Men in foreign countries could do those things, but not us.

With puberty came real danger. Here you could become a target of anything.
To look too much like one thing meant exclusion from other things. You don’t really choose, you get assigned.
This is when you learn that you can have some physical contact with others that isn’t violent or abusive. You can hold hands again, you can be held again. The catch is, you have to want to kiss them, too.
To touch is to be overshadowed by sex. You can touch, but only in the context of sex.

These conventions are not optional.
These are the rules, and they are set in granite, enforced equally by the other boys and by the girls.

This is the foundation of so many of the complaints about men. The grabbing, the ogling, the crude language.
How many generations of us are here, for whom human contact outside of family is violence or it is sex.
Fear colors it all. Fear of weakness, fear of humiliation, fear of being misunderstood.
And loneliness.

This is why men buy companionship.
This is what sits behind the crude comments, the grabbing hands.
How many crappy one night stands come from this?
How many assaults come from this loneliness?
A loneliness that can’t be admitted. Might not even be conscious.
This is so much of the pain behind a break-up, a divorce. It’s not the loss of a connubial bed, but that the loss of that partnership means the loss of human touch. Knowing that one will be in solitude until someone else could be found.

This twisted need, cut from us too young, festers into a wound.
We can’t ask our friends for solace, for an intimate touch. We can’t curl up into a friend’s arms, or have a hand held as we grieve. The closest we can have is an awkward pat on the back, the frail hands of parents, if they’re still around. Maybe a hug from a child who we don’t want to burden with this.

This is something that has to be dealt with for the balance to change.
If men are expected to be more gentle, more respectful, they have to be given something in return.
We all need to be allowed intimacy that isn’t tied to sexuality.
If one wants to know why so many men kill themselves, even with all the supposed benefits of being male, this is a large part of the puzzle. We all know it. We know that loneliness, and we all deal with it differently. Some turn to sports. Some turn to violence. Some turn to drink. Some to abuse. Most to abuse of themselves.

This is part of what it is to be a man.
You have to stand alone, and to look with scorn on those who need a hand.
To mock the ones who voice any need for care, for tenderness.
One must feel shame when asking for help, or for concern.
So be strong, feed your shame, and act like a man, whatever that means.

I see that there are a number of ways to perceive most things. I have always liked the idea behind philosophy- the idea of attempting to make sense of the world. This is the basis of what we call science, now. Making sense of intangibles is something that starts internally and then branches off to any number of paths.

When I look out there at how people choose their world, it seems to be ordered by which path they chose to take. Each one gives a vista that is unique to its own meanderings. Once on a path there are many branches, and it is always possible to turn around and walk back, to take an earlier branch that can lead to a different perspective.

What I see in people is that there is a feeling that there is a race going on; whoever gets to the end of the path first wins, or you’re running out of time and there just isn’t time to ponder what-if’s as you go. Keep to the trail and don’t get sidetracked by those little paths that don’t go somewhere obvious.

Economics is something enormously important to the society I live in. In a way it is written into the landscape here. The founding of the country was, in a way, an economic choice; the argument that resounded with many was that of freedom of trade, freedom to build businesses. It was also a revolt against taxation, against a government that seemed too far away and that used the taxes to benefit those far away, with too little benefit here. And it was also a bunch of smugglers who were about to see their income reduced by a new scheme of that government that would benefit the general population, but at the expense of ruining their illicit trade- these are the people who funded the revolution.

It was also a rejection of monarchy. Freedom from the social mores, the layers of rank and privilege. This, too, was seen as a chaotic venture- if you don’t know your place, won’t you waste a huge amount of time trying to figure out where you stand in comparison to your fellow man? This was an argument against the idea of equality. While it seems that we made that choice, there appears to be a wish to see some as innately better than others, and the country has spent the past two hundred odd years codifying how to make sure that the better classes have legislative and legal rights to promote their interests above others. We have never gotten rid of that adoration of the royalty, and transfer it to whomever we can see as royal, special, better.

This seeps into our economic system in a number of ways. We have a study of economics that is famously difficult, famously deep and mysterious. We have “Game Theory” to justify actions and rules, sets of arbitrary scenarios to which rules of logic are tested and results tabulated to come up with what must be the most rational response, and at the same time, we are surprised when people on average don’t act rationally.

There is a tension between simplicity and complexity. For science to work, it is easiest to start of reductively; find the basic foundation that the rest is built on, and work from there. In some places this works wonderfully- in mathematics we have arithmetic, which can be applied to represent just about anything, so long as the right form of question is found. It can represent the entire world, at least so far as we can tell.

In some way, arithmetic is a tool that justifies mathematics as something that is infallible. And it is, to some extent. It works, and it works the same every time. I say it is a lot like opening your eyes; if you have sight, every time you open your eyes, you see. It works every time. But, mathematics is a lot more like comprehension than it is arithmetic- while you see something, and you can look at a rock and it will look the same every time, the closer you look, the more you realize that what you see is an ever changing understanding.

The basic concept of philosophy that became the scientific method is that you work on previous knowledge and test it. You look at the rock and say “it’s a rock”. Then you try to figure out what “rock” means, and start looking at what its properties are- hardness, density, structure. The closer and more intimate you get to “rock”, the more “rock” becomes a complex arrangement of different parts- first different types of rock, then the molecules, then atoms, and smaller and smaller. Coming to understand those leads to figuring out how the rock was formed- was it pressure? Was it lava? Was it lava and pressure? Chemical reactions between different things at different temperatures? It turns out that “rock” is structure, history, chemistry, any number of things, and it never really returns to simply “rock” after that.

This is a path. Once you have wandered down it, the vistas that you see have changed you and changed how you see the world. The way that you have been informed becomes structural to how you view the world around you.

In economics there is a similar path, but it is mixed up with the social mores. On the one hand are the rational rules, applied to moderate transactions. On the other is the legal and philosophical underpinnings of how the economics are recorded, metered, the prism through which the data is viewed.

From my perspective, much of our economics is based primarily on the relationship between only two parties- the seller and the buyer. This applies to work (wages, compensation), to banking, to fines. Caveat Emptor appears to rule the day, not just in warnings, but in the philosophy behind how our judicial system deals with money and banking; if you can be convinced to sign something, the economic advantage or disadvantage is held within that agreement, and it’s your fault or your gain.

As one person put it during a conversation, “usefulness has a very simple definition, one that provides a pillar of free-market societies: desirable for exchange.” I love this definition, as it is apparently simple, looks logical, and is about as close to a perfect fiction as is possible. The statement holds within it a range of privilege that is, from my perspective, stunning. This is permission for anything possible- and at it’s most simple definition, one that exists outside of societies, in a neutral space with no outside forces, it is true. Desirable for exchange means that one party has some use for the thing to be exchanged.

This is similar to the way that economic rules are phrased. “Right to Work” rules are a similar simple set of rules based on the idea that anyone is free to work for whoever they want, and any employer is free to hire or fire as they please. The concept is perfectly true for a society where everyone is perfectly equal and no one needs to work. I don’t know where that is, really. If you were born into a wealthy family, then those are rules that are perfectly justifiable for you; because you don’t need income, the employer has no power to influence you into a less than desirable position. On the other hand, most of the people in the world don’t have that benefit, and the less family wealth a person has, the less choice they really have in matters of work. At a certain real point, an individual’s choice is often either to live through crime or accept whatever terms are available to get a job because the barriers to starting a legal business are too high.

In the “useful is anything desirable for exchange” paradigm, this is a rational extension. The person needs a job to survive, and therefore any job offered is useful. Between the two parties it may even look beneficial all around- the employer gets a worker at a rate that allows for profit, and the person being hired gets income in exchange for work. Fine, it’s perfect- that’s Capitalism at it’s basic.

But, to paraphrase another person in that same conversation once said, Capitalism is a nearly perfect engine, if it is allowed to operate without influence. That point being that Capitalism works in a perfect world, but in a world where people stop looking at efficiency in what they are doing, and attempt to exploit other factors, the Capitalist engine winds up requiring controls to prevent too much exploitation on the basis of power, rather than efficiency.

Here in the US we have a stratified social order. It hasn’t been stratified primarily by inheritance for much of the history of the country, but it has always struggled with the urge toward royalty; the idea that families have better genes, and proof is in their economic standing. Families rise, and families fall, and every few generations there are dynasties that control the country to some extent. Our judicial system and our banking system are in a constant state of tension between the words of the Constitution and it’s warring principles that everyone is created equal, but money makes some more equal than others. Our economics looks at short term issues while ignoring long-term.

Access to capital is a great example- the more money you have, the less you pay for access to other people’s money. The less money you have, the more you pay for it. This makes some sense in that economic theory states that there is more risk in loaning to a person with less money as they don’t have the means to finish paying. This theory is proven by the data in that poorer people end up making payments late more often. In short term thinking, then, this is true- poor people are more risky for bankruptcy. But, because of the higher interest rate, the banks have recovered far more of their loans at any given time from a high interest (generally low-income) borrower than they have from the low interest (generally higher-income) borrowers. So the real losses are less, but the way they can are reported make them “higher” losses. This is a perceptual bias, and creates a self-reinforcing problem in that the person with lower income will suffer more and have a harder time paying the higher interest rate- we don’t really have any proof that this is structural to income, or if it is a problem created by the method of calculating “risk”.

It’s a problem of what path you are on. If you have mostly experienced beneficial returns from the economic system, then it looks like it is a pretty fair system that works well. If you’ve have mostly dealt with the opposite, then this looks like a broken system that punishes people for their lack of net worth. All too often, for those at the bottom of the economic scale the institutions that do make money or goods available on a loan basis do so at rates that no wealthy person can conceive of- rates that dwarf the person’s income, with penalties that are severe, and mostly legal now. These predatory companies are all owned and supported by people who live outside of the poor community, and they earn a very good rate of return, and get to pay fairly low taxes because they often get to claim full losses on loans that have been paid back many times over.

I think it’s a combination of the problems of people who are on paths and don’t want to look beyond what they see as benefits. In Seattle most prostitution is purchased online at about 4PM from an office computer, according to some recent studies. This is probably common. Those are all “useful” exchanges if one is deep down one path where the problems with that are on the other side of a hill that they rarely visit. Then it’s just something that two consenting adults do, and the buyer gets to remain blissfully unaware of what sort of exploitation the other is under- is it just easy money? Seems unlikely considering the stigmatism against sex work in this country. Is it voluntary? Perhaps, but only if voluntary allows for it to be the only thing that person can see to do. Is it abusive? Only if you look at the statistics and history of sex work; it isn’t that common for someone to go onto the streets alone to earn money through sex, most are brought to the trade by someone who has some level of power or coercion over that person.

Low income, low skilled work isn’t really all that different from sex work in that the person rarely sees another choice. The outside forces are certainly less- it’s unlikely that there is a Pimp there coaxing you to do something, and the work you do likely won’t be as socially unacceptable or with as much risk of violence. But it’s too simple to say that there’s another job that you could work. If all the jobs are similar, then there isn’t any real choice. If there are no lending institutions to help start a business and you don’t have family money, then it’s unlikely that is a viable option. If that is where you live, you are probably having to work to support yourself and/or your family, making school something other than an option.

This is simply not visible as anything but a concept to many people in this country.

The opposite is also true- when you grow up in poverty it is very hard to see the benefit to work that isn’t labor. You simply don’t have a conceptual ability to understand that someone can get paid for thinking, as opposed to laboring. They know that the people earning the highest incomes in this country don’t pick up shovels or hammers, they use a mop only if they have a whimsical notion that cleaning is a way to meditate. Useful is something that manages to pay the rent or unclog a toilet, not an idea or a concept.

I guess I am far more on that utilitarian side. What is useful has to have greater breadth than the exchange between buyer and seller. To my perception, that is a view of a person in a perfect little glade, or an idyllic island where the plant that generates their electricity and the farm that grows their food and the people that build their houses and vehicles and computers are all far on the other side of mountains. I am living closer to that glen than to the dark side of the mountain, but I didn’t grow up here. I grew up working, moving, struggling. I don’t have that belief that an idea should pay more than the shovel, and that puts me at a disadvantage in this type of economy, this sort of society, with the mores of this country.

For me to learn to live in that privileged glen, I have to give up the paths that I have walked down, leave the people that I have learned to care about, give up the morality of poverty, and I don’t really know how to do that. I don’t know how to un-see what I have seen, what I have learned, and to accept this life of caveat emptor. It seems there has to be another way. I can see the problems with embracing any one of these views- that it puts you on a path you don’t want to leave. But this path looks like it ends only in misery.