Durkheim or some other famous sociologist talked about the sacred and profane when it comes to rite of passage in primative and modern socieities. I’m still coming to grasp with what my most recent trip home was in essence, definitely a rite of passage. Again given the circumstances, I had to improvise and cross this bridge in my own style and fashion. Honestly don’t feel that much different now that I’m back, aside from a new nickname, and some new legal documents in my backpack. Life goes on I suppose, although I am getting older and hopefully a little wiser in the ways of the world. More on this later. I had a good but short break from the office and school.
The morning I flew out was the same morning of the London security scare. Luckily I had been up all night packing and checked CNN at about 4AM to be able to repack my suitcase in accordance to the new flight travel restrictions. Reagan National was a madhouse that morning, with a long ass line and angry airline employees yelling at TSA employees. After ditching a bottle of water, eye drops, and some revita foodpackets, in the end they failed to notice a bottle of contact solution that I had accidentally left in my backpack.
Had some discussions lately about the perceptions of the affluent, liberal youth, namely those that wish to reject the spoils of our capitalist society in its entirety to take on minimum wage jobs when they are easily qualified for something closer to resemble something like a living wage. I suppose it sounds admirable when you’re a poor college or graduate student but it doesn’t change the fact that the impoverished situation that most students find themselves in is temporary at least, and espeically if you’re headed to a steady and otherwise lucrative profession based on your degree, and even more so if you’re being subsidized by your parents. This is especially true if you chose a profession or trade that has nothing to do with their degree, and therefore you are as unqualified for it as the College droppout, or HS diploma holder. I can’t help but have little sympathy for those that choose an impoverished path in life and then feel like they have a right to complain about it to the world for sympathy.
We all have some level of choice in the paths we take in life. Some we have control over, but most of them we have little or no control over. Aside from the class that we are born into as being one path that we have little choice in, it is the one that is most predictive of the amounts of choices that we will have. Simply put, the higher the class, the more choices we are afforded through life, the more time to sit around, brood, and take for granted the things that were given to us by the sweat and hard work of our parents and grandparents. I am eternally critical of the bootstraps Alger Hiss American Dream bullshit that some people toss around. Instead I think that sheer willpower and hard work will only get you so far. While you might be able to eek out an honest living, jumping from lower to upper or even middle class is a lot harder than we have been led to believe. Class lines are drawn so sharply that those who move up in one generation are the exception to the rule.
Achieving a basic level of education or technical training is one way to break out of the class mold and move up. A degree is something that nobody can take away from you, once the ink on the paper is dry it is a credential that is forever associated with you. At a minimum it says that you were able to stay focused for the 4, 5, 6 or 10 years that it took you to take the required classes and graduate, a basic level of responsibility that employers do value. Not taking advantage of the opportunities that your degree provides you is almost like throwing it away entirely.
If it makes you happy to live simply and scrape by, fine. I’m the last to criticize those who find creative solutions to make do with what they have (I’m the guy that constructed a dining table out of an IKEA footrest, a bunch of old Economics books (Micro AND Macro) and a piece of wood), but don’t complain about having trouble making your car payments, the price of gas, or having to eat ramen and not being able to go out with your friends from college because your income is way below what it should be based on your degree. Maybe you picked the wrong major and realized that the job wasn’t quite what they told you it was in class. you can apply the same innovative thinking to scrape by the try to salvage the time and money you put into that piece of paper and use it for something anyway, a foot in the door, or a temporary job while you pursue your real calling in life.
The powers to be are squabbling over raising the minimum wage which is at the bottom of a 50 year curve. This means that minimum wage is moving farther away from what it costs to live on in this country. If you settle for a job with a minimum wage when you could be earning even marginally more, you are playing a pawn to the very corporate and government powers that you are trying to rebel against. You aren’t a rebel afterall, you are a willing tool to the big evil capitalist machine you’re raging against and it’s agents are laughing at you all the way to the bank. You would be better off being a player in the market and using your creativity and intelligence to make some kind of positive change. Go invent something that restores our humanity or soul, do something that inspires your common man, or just get an honest job, pay taxes and be an active citizen. Just fucking read up on candidates in your district and take a stand at the ballot. Exactly how you do this is up to you to figure out - I’ll admit that still figuring some of these details out myself.
But for gods sake don’t you dare apply for public assistance when you’re still wallowing in your own self induced rebellion, especially if you’re still leaching off your parents living at home. In this market if you don’t pay rent you aren’t poor, period. I’ve come to see that being poor by choice to the point of being dependant on social safety nets such as welfare, disability, or even subsidized student loans by choice isn’t really admirable at all, in fact its kind of pathetic. There’s plenty of people in the world who don’t have the access to education or jobs and need those benefits to survive. If you have the ability to earn more than a living wage but chose not to, you’re just a selfish spoiled brat trying to be something that you’re not. There has to be a way to reject the evils of our consumer and material culture and still be able to feed and cloth yourself, and obtain basic level health care for yourself and family without selling your soul to the evils of capitalism. There is a middle ground, really. use you’re creative one-of-a-kind mind to find it and make it a reality.
Went to the DC government recorder’s office to record a deed for a client. I couldn’t help but notice how rude the staff there was. This comes from someone from a state famous for inefficiency and laziness, so I’ll just say that this was pretty bad. I say this in that I was expecting to get some attitude when I went there, its just the nature of the beast. Its just that normally when people are rude they usually back off if you maintain a polite composure and treat them with respect. In this case it didn’t seem to make a difference at all. I suppose if I had to work in a cooped up office all day for several years I might come to think everyone that comes in front of me is a fucking idiot who didn’t bring the right forms and know the right acronyms and number codes. then again maybe not. God I hope not.
As it turns out I was missing an essential bureaucratic form to complete the transaction and make the record official, so I will have to go back to the client, get a signature in the presense of a notary public, and then come back to try again at filing it and making the piece of paper legal, real deal.