Low class, high class

As someone from the under classes (my father was a small time criminal in and out of jail and I had more than one Christmas because of local firemen), but who has done fairly well in worldly terms, I think about such things.

And now within the octave of turning sixty I find myself reflecting on where I’ve been and where I am as well as where I appear to be going…

Which brings me to that list which came from a site called Class Matters.

I continue to think it valuable for anyone from the middle classes who wishes to have honest communication with working class folk.

It is almost always going to be a mistake to:

1) overlook necessity

2) overlook intelligence

3) romanticize working-class people

4) impose inessential weirdnesses

5) hide who they really are

6) think they know it all

7) think they know nothing

8) focus on education more than organizing

9) focus on goals and tasks more than people

10) take over

As I said I found it valuable and encourage people to trace back to the original site and read some of the commentary, and decoding of terms like “inessential weirdness.”

And I think number eight needs more hard looking. 

Now I think there’s a real point about how important it is to make things better for the working classes and how there’s actually a responsibility and necessary solidarity that needs to be found among all people who work for a living.

I feel it very important to attempt to bridge the gaps between the working classes and the middle classes.

(And I think those who criticize calls to working class and middle class people to see their place in our current economic structure as adversarial to the “system” as encouraging some kind of class warfare, are obfuscating the fact there is a class war going on and the working classes and much of the middle classes are losing it…)

And…

I also believe from the bottom of my heart I escaped something when I got a formal education.

Before collecting degrees I was well read and pretty articulate. I didn’t need anything more to develop as a person.

And if I were today at sixty on the trajectory I was on without the degrees I earned in my early forties, I would never have had a vacation, I would be living in a rented apartment, I would have absolutely no prospect of any form of retirement. I might well not have insurance. Life would be even more precarious than it is, filled with more anxieties, and frankly, with a lot less grace to it…

(As the sage said “I been poor and I been rich. And, honey, rich is better…)

The one thing that changed those various realities for me was formal education with actual degrees.

I do not romanticize being working class.

It is the fact on the ground for the majority of people. Has always been so. Most likely will always be so. 

And in a world without certainty and with dangers poking around every corner, the working classes are even more vulnerable than others…

And in our culture we have some possibility of shifting classes. This is a rare fact in history and one of the best things about our society…

When I meet younger people who are working class or in danger of being downwardly mobile, I cannot in good conscience not tell them there is another world they might be able to reach.

If they go to school…

I’m not calling for mere chasing after mammon. (Too much in this to unpack here. I’ll leave the simple assertion…)

I am saying there is for many a better way, which reveals many doors…

And it is found when one goes to school…