1
The Poverty Of The Rich
And The Poverty Of The Poor
T
hese are reflections about poverty in our world -- voluntary and involuntary, real and symbolic -- the kind that brutalizes, and the kind that would renew the face of the earth.
They come from years of living with very poor people in very exotic places, all part of what’s called the Third World. They represent my flailing efforts to put into communicable terms what remains a mute emotional singularity for me: the impact of what I saw fused with the shock of returning home. It’s happened many times; the first was in 1964. I was 25 years old. I never got over it.
I’ve lived in Peru, Puerto Rico, the American inner city (another third world location), Mexico, Central America, and now Appalachia. My wife Mary was in Chile for three years, and through her stories I feel I’ve been touched by that experience as well. The extraordinary people who lived so far from my “home”, pushed me beyond my stereotyped definitions of poor and rich, good and bad. They forced me into seeing the world without shopping malls and suburban subdivisions, interstates and office buildings, and without the peculiar anguish that paradoxically accompanies so many of the careers we in the First World call “work” that in fact have no direct bearing on basic needs: food, clothing and shelter. Ultimately, they opened me into imagining a new world, a new society and way of life that I believe would be better for all of us.
I say “us” emphatically because if at one time in the distant past I ever thought of myself as helping “them”, I do so no longer. The poor have taught me that we in the First World have more to learn than to teach, more to ask for than to give. I’ll go even further. It’s my opinion that they offer us a model to live by, a model that can sustain our staggering world. But I worry that the model is fading, as the Third World turns inexorably in the direction we have laid out for them.
Such a range of locations as I mention here might at first seem perplexing. But my life was once dedicated to Institutional Religion and its self-proclaimed “missions”. I severed that institutional connection thirty years ago, but the sense of mission remained, as I believe, transformed into something more docile, more awestruck -- more sacred.
I was supported in that difficult transition by visionary religious and political movements that promote the highest ideals of solidarity based on our common immersion in a Sacred Matrix. They provided a focused energy that continues to influence my life. These movements and the great, suffering idealists who trudged in their parade spoke of Poverty in ways that shattered the categorical stereotypes.
They claimed it could change the world.
I. Where we are
I
begin with where I am, because where I’ve been led me here. Mary and I live on a farm in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I grow food, some of which we sell and some of which we eat. Mary works an outside job and shares with the farming as she can.
Farming doesn’t say it all, but it says what, for me, is the central core. We have seven acres of grapes. Two years ago, when the big Château that used to buy our grapes told us we were too small for their newly expanded processing equipment, we decided to become a licensed commercial winery ourselves, much smaller, of course. I consider wine a food but frankly, I would rather have simply farmed. Becoming a winery was a compromise to stay afloat.
We used to grow an acre of spectacular unsprayed broccoli every year also, about 5,000 head. That would not qualify us for agribusiness, to be sure, but it earned enough to offer hope that a larger planting might actually provide us a modest living. But it was not to be. After five years, the ever-increasing deer population that share these hills with us discovered, almost overnight it seems, the benefits of broccoli, and abruptly eliminated the income from that crop. That awakened primitive desires for vengeance that, sublimated, became an added incentive for our enological venture.
We also have 250 blueberry bushes, planned as a “U-Pick” operation. They never produced more than a small harvest when the spring frosts were merciful; and, even if we put in more, we could see that they would not support the farm. And so the winery. It’s not what we intended, but with it, perhaps, we may at least continue to farm. Time will tell. In the meantime, we depend on outside work, which also gives us health insurance.
A local wine enthusiast heard my reasons for starting to sell wine. She was appalled. “You mean you started the winery because you wanted to make money?” Well, I wouldn’t have put it like that. She apparently had fantasized that winemakers are “artists” lost in the passionate grip of gastronomic creativity. Another victim of wine-hype, I thought. Yes, I enjoy and make a good wine; but no, I’m not a gourmet. My motive is to keep the farm going. Sorry.
We were lucky. We bought our 48 acre farm-with-house 12 years ago for about what a brand new, full-sized four-by-four diesel pick-up truck costs today. We live as simply as our circumstances permit, given the demands of contemporary American society, with which we are determined to stay connected. That resolution is not rhetorical. We realize that our projected life-style could easily marginate us. We live in a society based on another model. Many think we are isolated anyway, in spite of our efforts. We are different from most Americans; we try to sustain ourselves directly by our own work and resources. This is quite intentional.
Some examples: We logged our own woodlot ourselves for lumber; we do our own carpentry and cabinetry, electrical and plumbing work, repair of vehicles and machinery, and the farming, processing and marketing. We cut, split and burn our own wood for winter fuel. We grow and preserve the food that we eat, vegetables, fruit, chickens at times, and the occasional venison (all the more delicious de venganza). We make bread, cheese and of course, wine. We are trying to follow, in the context of our time and place in the world, a model suggested by the Third World peasants we’ve known -- and our gurus of voluntary poverty.
We are gratified that we have been able to pursue these ideals, but we don’t kid ourselves about what we’ve actually accomplished. We depend on outside work. We don’t always have the tools and experience to turn our subsistence labors into efficient skills. We are slow and awkward. We depend on the advice of our neighbors who toil professionally at these crafts; and we count on the support of our friends. In a real sense, we are not self sufficient at all. But we are attempting this in the context of a society which functions on a different dynamic altogether.
“Do one thing well ...”
I’ve been told that my grandfather, whom I never knew, emigrated from Sicily at the turn of the century with a philosophy of work: “Learn to do one thing well, earn your living from it, and buy everything else. That’s the way the new world is.” He was putting European peasant society behind him. He knew what made modern industrial society tick.
I know it too. But I think you can go too far with that way of thinking. I believe in its extreme form it can make those of us who are locked into its machinery, narrow, truncated, undeveloped, unfulfilled and dependent in ways that atrophy our abilities and annul our freedoms. The industrial model is not just a simple “division of labor”. It’s a compartmentalized conception of society and an over-rationalized view of human nature that in practice denies certain fundamental aspects of our humanity, and therefore distorts us, dis-integrates us.
For one thing, it tends to forget that we humans are, inescapably, physical organisms, bodies. I believe as bodies we were made to work -- physically, strenuously -- in order to survive as we are. And when we don’t work hard, apart from all other considerations, it makes us sick. Ironically, the doctors tell us that we have to imitate hard work with vigorous exercise in order to maintain or regain our health. Furthermore, I believe the desire and decision to escape from this basic natural responsibility is what creates the demand for slaves, human and mechanical. We plunder the labor of others or create machines to meet our needs so we can pursue “other” endeavors. I wonder if this could be the source of our troubles, the “original sin” of our technological society, the tragic flaw of the modern world. How would it be if each did their own work, were their own slave?
Human beings are the product of the forests of Paleolithic times. We might prefer that weren’t true. But it determines what our bodies require. It conditions our nutritional needs, the limits of our environmental tolerances, our social and intellectual reflexes, and our sense of Sacred Awe. All this may change eventually with the slow sculpturing of evolution under the influence of the society we have created -- but that will take a very long time. Someday, in a future calculated on a geologic scale, we may develop immunity to the chemicals and contaminants that presently are the known causes of the cancers that, increasingly, are killing us. Someday we may come to thrive on a pool of nutritional elements that, as we are now, do not support a healthy life. Someday our mental-emotional needs may no longer plunge us into profound depression when we are faced with the unsatisfying and often repulsive work and career goals offered by modern industrial society. Maybe someday we’ll be different.
But as we are today and into the foreseeable future, we can say that the industrial model disregards our intelligence and stultifies us. The minutely apportioned division of labor that is the hallmark of the technological process, goes well beyond the balanced cooperation imagined by my grandfather. (His vision may owe more to village life than he might have been willing to admit). The industrial mode partitions the worktask into such monotonous repetitive routines that it cripples the worker mentally. The mindless mechanization on which our economy is built, robs any substance or security from grandpa’s idealized picture of divided work. There is, in fact,nothing tolearn, so everyone is instantly replaceable. To my nonno, I would respond, if I could, “I think it’s better to use your mind to learn as many things as well as you can, take care of yourself by doing them, and then go help your neighbor do the same.” This is not meant to deny a place for specialized skills. But it’s a different model of work for a different model of society.
Views like these are potentially marginating. I’m well aware that this intended lifestyle stands in patent contradiction of the economic patterns that characterize contemporary society. I try to live out my ideals of self-sufficient labor, but few agree with me, and avoiding isolation necessarily involves compromise, maybe too much. It hardly needs saying that by all appearances our farming project, if its purpose was to engage and recruit others, seems to have had little effect besides its own survival.
Those who question our efforts say, “get real”, there is no alternative to what mainstream society offers.
No alternative?
The opportunity of choosing one’s own lifestyle is, most assuredly, one of the privileges of living in the First World. Such choices are only possible where there’s a certain amount of economic autonomy. And that depends more on the general wealth of the community, than on a specific instance of personal affluence. It’s a characteristic of the First World. Many, many First Worlders have that opportunity. Some, for sure, because of poverty, responsibilities or closed doors, do not. They are like Third Worlders; their options are limited and they have to survive.
I address myself rather to those of us who benefit from the wealth of the First World, like young students among many others, who do have a choice. They may very well be looking for a way to avoid the insipid, meaningless and humanly mutilating routines, the jobs they call “work”, and the rewards they call “wealth” that loom before their lives like towers of welded chains. I am definitely wanton enough to seduce them if I could, to try a way-of-life that engages all their powers and capacities to the full, challenges them to dominate technology and subordinate it to real needs, gives them hard work for their strong bodies, keeps them close to our earth and the companion species (yes, even the deer) with whom we humans share life -- and the Unknowable Source of all this. I would say to them, with minimum initial skills, such a life is immediately guaranteed to keep you alive, eating healthy food, getting natural exercise, with access to pure water and air. Nor would you have to relinquish the great pursuits that have enlivened humanity through the ages: proficiency in technical and interpersonal skills, science, creativity in the arts and music, the quest for knowledge, wisdom, and the face of the Sacred. This way of life connects you to the whole human race, and can serve as an excellent support base for what is the great call of your generation: the Promethean task of global economic transformation.
So, to those with choice, I say, choose wisely. Ponder long and hard before you choose “career” and “wealth”. Don’t choose the American dream; choose another dream. I suggest there is a lifestyle choice for the First World that will support the dream of justice. It may feel like you’re choosing poverty, and they may try to scare you with that. But quiet as it’s kept (a little known secret), you will never really be poor.
Don’t be afraid. You’re stronger than you think. And your humanity is yours, not your parents’, not your partner’s, not your children’s, to challenge, to explore, to donate. Don’t sell yourself short. Far from joining the frog-throated chorus of the professional protectors of the status quo who repeat endlessly that such an escapade might grow you Pinocchio’s nose, I am quite capable of conjuring another story, another dream: that with this adventure you may change the world -- and keep the world from changing you.
But, relax; there’s no hurry. Take your time and prepare yourself. This offer is unlimited.
I would love to pass the torch to the new generation. If it weren’t for so much apparent lack of success, perhaps I wouldn’t feel driven to write these reflections. I had always hoped this way of life would speak for itself and carry the weight of its own argument, persuading by proof, by example, by its fruits. But now I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Perhaps it’s because there’s been so much compromise. Or maybe with retirement age looming, there always come these misgivings and a sense of failure. So many have told us through the years that these “ideas” weren’t “real”, they were never anything more than romantic dreams. Grandpa, after all, never returned to Sicily, not even for a visit; and they say he never looked back.
The young people will have to decide for themselves, which “dream” is worth living for, more transforming, more real. Maybe these reflections will help influence their decision.
Bodies, Food, Labor
How did I get here anyway?
Some of our friends might say it was probably our eight year experience living and working among the peasant people of Mexico and Central America. They were subsistence farmers, eking out of the land -- owned by very few, sharecropped by most -- a very meager existence. They grew food. Some they sold and some they ate. But for the vast majority who didn’t own their own land, not only a share of their crop, but a great portion of their labor had to be dedicated to the patron on whose land they lived and for whom they toiled, working in coffee and cotton, bananas and avocados. Yes, they were paid, if you can call it that. In Mexico even today an agricultural worker can ordinarily expect to be paid less than $5 for an entire day’s labor. This money, such as it is, might be used for shoes, clothing, perhaps a small radio, tools or other items they were incapable of growing or making themselves.
Agricultural wages are market-generated. I cite these wages to point out how poor these poor countries really are. I remember how shocked I was when I first discovered that even though wages were so low, the price of beans, the staple of their diet, in US dollar terms was the same as it was in the States, at that time about .50¢ a pound. This is true for most foods. Before going to LatinAmerica, I had been under the impression that wage disparities were relative to local cost-of-living. Where wages are higher, it’s because prices are higher; lower wages are usually balanced by lower prices. This was not true; and it’s still not true. Self-subsistent agriculture, a preference for me, for them was a necessity. They wouldn’t survive without it.