What just happened...II

For those who follow the minutia of our personal monetary situation... This is Tuesday, July 26. Still no word on whether or not there will be money coming to pay our past due rent. I am about 90% certain that there will not. The reason is that the landlady is one of those paranoid types who refuse to give their SS#, which is one of the things required on the form that she was supposed to fill out in order for the Community Action For Improvement (CAFI) office to put in the request to whomever they request it from. If that doesn't come through, we are left to manage to slowly catch up the past due amount. We've done that before. We were once more than $1000 behind on the rent and we caught that up. The difference between now and then was that I was trucking and later Melinda had her job at the Wild Animal Park. Now there is nothing but the disability check. There was some hope last Monday when Melinda applied at a truck stop restaurant as a cook. She was told that her app would be on top of the pile and, since the kitchen boss there also rents from our landlady and she had put in a good word for Melinda, there seemed good reason for hope she would be hired. Now, more than a week later with no word at all, I am severely doubting that will happen. Call me a pessimist, most do.

Of course I could be wrong on either or both of these accounts, and I certainly hope I am...I'm just not a "person of faith", except in the sense that, if anything can go wrong, it will. This, based on over half a century of experience. Direct TV has not yet stopped the service, but will as of the 8th unless we pay about $150. Of course that ain't gonna happen, so we will be out of that. Oh sure, no one could possibly drop dead from being without TV. Many people CHOOSE to be without any TV at all. That's not the point. The point is that it is one more cut in the "death by a thousand (or far fewer) cuts" that comes with being poor, at least for those who have a need for TV. I am considering talking with AT&T about possibly getting a "bundle" which would include Direct TV, at a cheaper price than the current AT&T bill plus Direct. We dropped the burial insurance so now, if one of us dies, it will be up to any family, if they are able and so choose, to deal with our "disposal" or up to the county. Doesn't matter to me. Dead people not only don't tell any tales, they also don't have any problems.

August will be the last full payment on the computer, and after that, only a small amount remains and we will have more toward other bills. The computer is another example of how the poor get screwed. We got it through Rent-a-Center. Yes, by the time we finish paying on it, we will have paid somewhere between 2 and 4 times what the actual cost of it should be. That is a cost of being poor. If you are poor your only choices in such a situation are to either pay far more than a rich person would pay for the same thing, or simply not have one at all. There are many examples of the poor having to pay much more than the rich or simply be denied.

Of course there are many millions of Americans, not to mention other people in the world, who have far greater financial and other problems than ours. The typical reaction to such a thing is, "Oh well, it could be worse." Indeed, it could. Why do so few people though, voice the obvious alternate that, "It damn well could be a lot better too." Why do so few people seem reluctant or unable to voice their own sense of justice and fairness about such things?

There is a bit in the CAFI thing above which says something about helping people to become "self-sufficient". I find this hugely insulting, not to mention just plain stupid. "Self-sufficient" is in the same category with "self-made man"...utter bullshit. Everyone knows this, but few will acknowledge it...why? If you use electricity that you did not produce, if you drive a car that you did not build, if you live in a building that you did not build, if you wear clothes that you did not make, if you eat food that you did not kill or grow, don't even give me this "self-sufficient" horse shit. It is a flat lie. Many people seem to actually believe that if they work at some job and are paid money and they then use that money for their needs, that they have somehow "done it on their own". Amazing. If no one agreed to give you any money for your work, where would you be? A job is not a thing one simply goes out and gets, as though it were a pebble alongside a road. Someone somewhere must agree to pay you some amount of money in exchange for your work. Naturally, being a severely inferior person, by virtue of being poor, your pay for spending an hour of your time will be nowhere near the "pay" for a hedge fund manager who spends an hour playing squash, or even for doing his "work" which helps no one at all but himself and the small rich group he is in.

As anyone who has read many of my blogs knows, I am one of those people who most certainly want to live forever, or at least very close to it. A truly intelligent and caring species would recognize that the final defeat of the last disease - death - would be, could be, the zenith of human accomplishment; that it's not even that difficult, now that we have the ability to print out or grow all manner of human replacement organs; that a "waiting list" for people who need transplants, and that based on the death of others, is hideously primitive and unjust. And yet, the thought of living a very long time in such a social system as that which we have here makes even me, grateful to know that death, the infinitely patient friend, awaits me; promises the only genuine freedom there is from the insanity.

There is no hope of "educating" significant numbers of our kind to be able to live in a world of plenty and fairness for all. You could never teach your dog even simple mathematics. A dog's brain, no matter how smart relative to other dogs, simply has no capacity for understanding such things. In principle, IF we knew enough about brains in general, we very well might be able to increase a canine's cognitive capacity to the point of understanding maths. No reason why not that I know of, other than our current ignorance of understanding how. Likewise, although many people across the world do have some understanding of justice and fairness and a world of plenty for all, their numbers are miniscule compared to the rest. And most of "the rest" have no more capacity to understand such things than a dog has to understand mathematics. Human animals still carry a great deal of their evolutionary baggage, some of which evolved long before there was even such a thing as a mammal, much less a human. Such are not actually "mindsets" at all, but far more primitive... instincts; the same instincts that work just fine for constructing the various hierarchies of existence of most other species. We are the only species, so far, with the possibility of surpassing our "instincts". But in order to do this, we must become, in a very fundamental sense, something other than the current definition of "human".

In order to do THAT, we must first, have a complete understanding of the genetic programming, the capacities of human brains, how they do what they do and how to operate them with intent. We are just beginning to have some understanding of that and I'm sure it will take a long time to arrive at a real understanding. I have no doubt at all that, aside from the possibility of total extinction, the human species must and will, at some point branch into at least two different species. One will be considerably "smarter" than the other, and the other will have little chance of survival unless the smart ones, for whatever reasons, see to their survival. Unfortunately, "smart" does not automatically coincide with fair and just and compassionate. In fact some, as some do now, will consider such traits as anathema to their own survival...hence the very rich.

TRB