There Is Hope For Us

Sorry for the delay.

This past weekend I did something I never thought I would do. I took up gardening.

I had a busy weekend, Adrianne’s aunt Meg was in town and we got together a couple of times. It is always great to catch up and show off Richmond. It’s just a very cool city. Saturday and Sunday were also filled with dirt, plants, watering cans and our desire to keep plants alive.

We will see how it goes.

I was raised in a household that gardens. My mom and dad both do it still today. They have a much more expansive garden than I ever will. Saturday mornings used to be spent getting up early (something I hate) to help my dad with chores (something I hate) and tending the garden was one of those chores. Mowing the lawn too, but hopefully with this new garden our yard will be so small cutting the grass will take 10 minutes.

I still don’t love gardening, but I am excited to get better at it. I certainly don’t love cutting grass, but I have a new electric mower coming soon. We had been paying someone to cut our grass, but if I am not working that’s a frivolous expense.

What does this admittedly bland slice of life story have to do with the rampant railing against class culture in America? Well, I’ll get there in a roundabout way. I just wanted you to know why this was late more than anything.

Let’s get on that roundabout.

The American Dream

One of the more insidious parts of our corporatocracy in America - the erosion of self-reliance. Not in the sense of community support, that’s very important. More in the sense that so many essentials of life have been obfuscated or devalued to the point of insanity. What is the highest paying position, outside of owner, in almost any field?

Chief Executive Officer.

What does a CEO do? In larger companies, they are essentially a liaison between the board of directors and the company. The board of directors that is typically made up of other CEOs or owners. Executives are the most valued position in a business. What do they do? Enact decisions. That’s it. They provide direction for a company. Good or bad, they are rewarded handsomely.

They don’t help customers. They don’t create products or provide any service. They make decisions. They don’t train people. They make decisions. They tell other people what to do and work with other people to maximize profit. Now, I understand there are CEOs who do work. That are on the ground floor and putting the work in. They are typically at smaller companies.

When you look at the world as it is today, what would happen if we lost every CEO over night? Would our lives change in any meaningful way? Taking that down to middle management, any change? No? Why not?

Because their value is in exploitation not in production. I say this as a former middle manager.

That’s not to say there isn’t value in leadership, project management and training. That’s what managers should be doing. Helping provide direction, accountability and a pathway for success. A good manager is hands on, putting out fires and addressing issues as they arise. The further you get from the actual work, the less valuable the work is but the more it is valued.

One of the most interesting things in our current battle for class consciousness is how effective rich people were at devaluing things that really matter. Think about the lowest paying jobs. Teachers, people who prepare food, farmers. I could write an entire essay on the “starving artist myth” and how that has been weaponized. Trade people rank just after the military for biggest abused prop by right wing propaganda.

How would you survive if you didn’t have people to grow food for you? How would you survive without someone to teach you how to use tools or develop skills? How would you survive without tv, music, books, films, video games, board games or paintings?

Can you fix plumbing issues in your home? What about foundation issues? The tools required to maintain newer cars are more expensive than the cars themselves. Farmers are currently at war with John Deere over the right to fix their own tools.

It’s actually happening to the healthcare industry since it became for profit. Commodifying health care has had deadly consequences, but the people that make that decision don’t care because they have access to things you don’t. They also control the sources.

The more essential something is to life, the more someone will exploit labor for financial gain. Food, water, housing, health care, education! Look at Nestle bottling water outside of Flint, MI as people were going through a massive water crisis. There is enough housing to end homelessness in America.

But how do we get to a place where we are okay with these atrocities?

Historically Doomed?

There’s a lot of angles under which you can examine the fall of the American empire. Most of them are well worn territory. It’s something I have always found interesting. The cyclical nature of history. Why do we continue to see the same things over and over?

Is Human Nature so clearly defined? Honestly, something I find comical as an agnostic, the oldest battle in humanity is the war for our souls. Good vs Evil. I don’t tend to view people exclusively through the lens of morality. Our actions define who we are, but what powers those actions also matter.

Why do I see articles about generational fallacy? Self-serving myths becoming truth? Tools for equity being eroded? Historically, societies tend to have regressive rules countered by progressive movements that lead to prosperity followed by a regressive rule. America certainly isn’t unique in that regard.

The area we are unique (and again, well-worn territory I know) is that we are a nation founded solely on exploitation that allowed for easy immigration. The decimation of indigenous people coupled with the (relatively) easy journey to Europe and the suitability for habitation made us a prime location for exploiters to relocate.

We got the worst of the worst from Europe. Criminals who would never be prosecuted because they were the 3rd son. People cast out of Europe for dangerous political or religious beliefs. People who would do whatever it takes to survive. The entitled, disgruntled people with the knowledge of people with a measure of accountability. People who knew how to exploit at the highest levels. A melting pot of the worst parts of so many different European nations - Spain, England, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Italy and so on and so forth.

We even had built in xenophobia about other Americans based on their European ancestry. How wild is that?

The common thread that bound the US was profit exploitation. Everything in our history has been built around the exploitation of resources, people and labor. While that is common in other historical cultures, there was also a history of rebellion against poor leadership. This was a group that found a common binding that required even that rebellion be exploited.

The key to exploitation is to make something less valuable so that you can profit. Revolution in America is quickly commodified because our founding principle is profit. Any major cultural revolution is quickly sanitized for public consumption, but Americans are master exploiters and how we’ve seen that manifest is the devaluing of things that other places hold sacred.

Things they know people will revolt violently over. Things that we sanitize in our history books to exploit the situation to our advantage. Our country was founded on violent revolution and has had them constantly since. The American Revolution (December 15, 1791) to the Civil War (April 12, 1861). My Grandparents would have been old enough to fight in the revolution and have lived through the Civil War. We had Labor Wars from the end of the Civil War through the 1980s. The Civil Rights movement was violent and deadly.

All of those are sanitized and exploited. American Cultural Myths that are less violent. Or paint the people who died for change as villains. And since our country is so great at exploitation we make money off our atrocities. We sell them globally.

Tangled Webs

So what does any of this have to do with me planting my own food? Well, did you know that some commercially sold produce doesn’t have seeds?

Isn’t that a feature? No Seeds? Why would we need seeds in our foods? And since seeds are a BAD thing, why would we care that some produce has seeds that are sterilized? If you can’t grow your own plants and private farmers are almost non-existent, where do you get your food?

And all of that feels like a conspiracy theory, because we have so many conspiracy theories spread. Misinformation seeded by the very companies that stand to benefit from it. Look at the controversies around GMOs. People get mad about a lot of things in GMOs that they shouldn’t. But we should care that companies can OWN SEEDS.

Exploitation requires a devalued product. We know that. It’s in our DNA. How do we devalue a product? Education - what is a good job? A CEO! What value do they bring? Not making food. Or teaching you how to do that.

We live in a world where planting a garden at your home could be seen as a radical act. Do HOAs want you to have a garden? Only if they approve it. Why don’t you go into farming? Because you can’t make any money at it. Why don’t you learn to cook?

Let me be clear, I don’t view me gardening as a radical act or think I’m doing something transformative. I’m just trying to find a way to be more fiscally responsible so we can afford for me not to go back to work.