Class

I wrote earlier about a friend urging me to revisit & expand on ideas from the "Labor" blog posted Monday. A few other friends echoed that nudge, one including an article by George Lakey a long-time peace activist currently teaching at Swarthmore College.  The article, Opening ourselves to the realities of Class related an alliance of working-class long-shoremen & activists of a variety of class backgrounds all preventing Nixon from shipping weapons to Pakistan in the 1970s.  It was a powerful, well-orchestrated action that taught many of the participants how to recognize their varied backgrounds & inclinations when working towards a shared goal.  The process generated poems articulating class orientation.  Three poems are shared: one from the perspective of a member of the "Owning" class, the second a middle-class voice, & the third a working-class orientation.

Each poet reflects on aspects of their upbringing they value, such as a willingness to be direct from the working-class poet or a sense of the worth of their own voice by the owning class poet.  As the members of this project began to better understand the impact class had on each of their individual outlooks & sense of strategy, they were able to better merge towards their common goal.

I really respect any environment that facilitates open discussion of class.  Class discussion generates consciousness around the varied levels of access & mobility any of us might possess in any given moment.  It also helps each of us understand how distinct our personal vision of the world might be.  Also, I think money can be demystified in this larger class consciousness.  I was raised in a household where money and class were certainly not discussed directly.  Based on the Lakey's framework, I'd say I was raised in an owning class house and culture.  I often asked my Dad how much money we had not out of greediness but out of curiousity about life & its details.  I wanted to know how and why we paid taxes.  I was always given really opaque answers to these questions.  Implicitly, I began to understand that I better either earn enough to pay someone else to handle this business, or marry someone who could.

Given this personal orientation, it's important to me to speak openly about class and money.  It's important to me that we each have a level of financial literacy so that we each can work towards as much stability as the global economy will afford.  Also, in the conversation of money, I think we get to learn what money means to any one of us.

A few years ago I read a book that made a huge impact on me: "Your Money or Your Life".  Early on the book reads like a money management course.  As it progresses this approach softens to an urging for less consumption, less work-for-pay, & opening up to our true passions & purpose.  The book introduces the idea of what money may mean to any one of us.  For those who scoff that money has a hard & fast universal definition, they offer as evidence money being so potentially combustible in relationships, partnerships, and taboo in general conversation.  Depending on our class orientation or family life money could potentially signify security, status, or conversely bondage.

To the embarassment of many close to me, I'm trying to speak more openly about money.  I want to understand my own relationship to it.  Hopefully, this is not to become more interested or dependent on money, but to better understand how I can relate to it simply as energy exchange & feel balanced and stable in that knowledge.

Similarly, I've tried to chose a working-class life.  My husband & I are comfortable, all our needs are met, but we're hoping to live off of less money.  We love to be rich in resources of home-grown food, our health, community, & trade, but less dependent on a high income stream.  Given our backgrounds we have some say in opting towards one class or another, which for most of the world is not an option.  Our hope is to exercise this choice towards consciously consuming less & contributing as much as we're able.  We'd like to use fewer resources & hopefully free up our time towards the projects that are most in line with our beliefs.

Working in our bodies, Kevin as landscaper and construction worker, me as waitress and landscaper, gives us a better sense of the coordinated intelligence between physical and mental faculties.  I certainly have a greater appreciation for working-class work than I did as a child.

Lakey's article reminded me that self-reflection encompasses the true whole of each of our personal experiences.  As we get personally clearer, potentially we can develop vocabulary to communicate with those of differing origins.  The call to an examined life perhaps can extend to the wider world around us-- not only know our own selves but striving as best we can to know the array of human experience.