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Subject: permaculture
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- From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
- To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [permaculture] People Without Cash
- Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 23:51:25 -0700
Gaden@ziplip.com wrote:
I had to leave it for awhile because the sublime ignorance of the original statement shocked and distressed me.
I would like to think that I've earned enough credit on this list so that if you think something I've said is ignorant, you might check with me and see if you've misunderstood me. I thought it was clear from the context--money as a criterion for acceptance into an intentional community--that by "skills and experience" I was referring to marketable skills (exchangeable for money, right?) such as carpentry, web design, office management, something that would help an intentional community survive in an otherwise unfriendly culture. If from my writing the word "skill" (check your dictionary) anyone leapt to the conclusion that I meant a person's ability to learn, or their "human warmth," and then leapt to yet another conclusion that I was denigrating the poor and concluded I was displaying bigotry, then you might want to reassess your logic, and ask why you're making such judgments.
Here's how uncontroversial my statement is: If I'd said, "often, people who have no marketable skills or experience have no money," it would be trivial and obvious. And unless my understanding of grammar and logic has failed me, this particular correlation goes both ways. There must therefore be a (sadly, large) group of people with no money who have no marketable skills. Or try this one: people with money often have marketable skills. Is that offensive? Or is it only the poor who are off-limits?
So if we then use the relevant set of Gaiden's substitutions, such as "single mothers without money often lack marketable skills," we don't have a bigoted statement. We have a simple, ugly truth. People marginalized by our culture often don't get a lot of job training. (Which is my original statement in different words. Is it offensive?)
Or is it that you don't think my statement is true? Okay, let's plod through the evidence. There are, in my country (US), about 55 million people living below the poverty line. These people fall principally into two categories: the voluntary, and the involuntary poor. Many of the people on this list, like me, and perhaps people like the noble permaculture aid worker Gaiden mentions, are voluntary poor: from financially secure, privileged backgrounds, with marketable skills or the ability to get them, who have chosen to be low-income, and work in service or aid positions if they "work" traditionally at all. In an an emergency most of this group could get a well-paying job or the schooling to get one, or borrow money from a relative, and have any number of options not open to the involuntarily poor. We all hang out a lot with that group; we all run into lots of "poor" people from that group with outstanding skills, as Dwayne and Gaiden have said. But this is a microscopic minority of low-income people.
For the vast majority--the involuntary poor--the proximate cause of their poverty is often a lack of marketable skills or work experience. The ultimate cause of that poverty, of course, is racism or other forms of social injustice that have prevented them from getting a decent education or training (you know ultimate and proximate cause, right?). None of that has any bearing on their worth as human beings, obviously. And these people can't decide, like Dwayne, "well, it's time to get a job now." They probably have job applications at Wal-Mart and McDonald's and every other corporation that preys on the vast army of unskilled labor. And let's not forget the several million who have simply given up looking for work (or lost the "willingness to persevere" I referred to). There are, of course, other causes of involuntary poverty: direct job discrimination, old age, etc. But if you do any digging, you'll see that the principal direct cause of involuntary poverty is the inability to gain decent employment because of lack of marketable skill. Is that really a surprise? Or is it just bigotry to point it out?
Other posts have referred to the reluctance of Pc people to confront controversial subjects. This thread is a good example of why that happens: If someone strays outside of politically correct conventions, there's a collective gasp, cries of ignorance and bigotry, and off-list whispering about how offensive that person is, instead of anything resembling a genuine attempt, as Jamie kindly suggests, to comprehend that person's meaning. If you've had a violently emotional reaction to my statement, and leapt to the conclusion that I think people without cash are useless human beings, it says to me you've got a lot of baggage around the unpleasant truth of involuntary poverty. And for us, the voluntary poor, to compare our state to that of the involuntary poor is the highest and most indecent form of hypocrisy.
If anyone cares to truly grasp my meaning, what prompted my original post was some thoughts I had about of a subset of the privileged voluntary poor (my experience is that the involuntary poor rarely apply for positions at intentional communities). I've observed that intentional communities often get applications from young people fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree in, say, whole systems design or biology, who also have no savings and no skills of use to that community other than a strong back and a willing heart. And it is often difficult for a community to find a useful role for people like this. And often, by the time these same folks have saved up a little cash, they have also gained some useful skills. These observations led me to the more general observation that "often, people without money . . ." since I observed a larger, obvious correlation between marketable skills and financial position.
So give me a break, eh?
Toby
-
[permaculture] People Without Cash,
Gaden@ziplip.com, 07/08/2003
- Re: [permaculture] People Without Cash, Loren Davidson, 07/08/2003
-
Re: [permaculture] People Without Cash,
Kirby Fry, 07/08/2003
- [permaculture] Expanding outreach, John Schinnerer, 07/08/2003
- RE: [permaculture] People Without Cash, jamie, 07/08/2003
- Re: [permaculture] People Without Cash, Toby Hemenway, 07/09/2003
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