A particularly odious recent posting that made me wince was a young writer who chose to complain about the beneficiaries of “entitlement programs,” railing against such citizens as the homeless, Medicaid recipients, and food stamp grocery buyers. The supposed “solution” to this handout environment that she feels serves as a drag on our culture, economy and government is simply for those people to just “get a job.” It is an opinion/solution that conveniently ignores the reality of all the jobs that no longer exist due to the structural changes in our economy (decrease in manufacturing; increase in technology and financial services); the jobs shipped overseas; the corporations sitting on their abundant cash and not hiring due to the uncertainty of the chaos in Washington. There are many reasons why we have almost 8% unemployment.
Nevertheless, I can somewhat personally relate to people who have that attitude and point of view. 40 years ago after my separation from my first wife, I found myself living in downtown Boston in a small 1-room basement apartment with the bathroom located across the hall. Money was very scarce at that point in time, even though I was still employed (i.e. one of what we now call the “working poor”). It was all quite a comedown from owning my 3-bedroom ranch house in the outer suburbs. On one of my monthly grocery shopping expeditions, I found myself behind a person unloading her cart for checkout. Item after item of fresh fruits and vegetables, orange juice, meats, and yes snacks and deserts, came out of that cart. All items nowhere to be seen in my cart. And when it came time to pay, she handed over a package of food stamps along with some cash. Over the next several days in the retelling of this incident to friends, I was still angry and frustrated by her “entitlement” while I went under-nourished in spite of holding a fulltime job.
It was only later that, with time, patience, maturity and no doubt with God’s good grace and assistance, I was gradually able to understand the real reason for my anger at that unknown shopper. Making one set of life choices had given me a wonderful family and a “successful” financial and social life in suburban America. Yet it was in my making another set of life choices that I now found myself in that basement apartment. I knew my personal story. But I had no idea what that shopper’s personal story was, why those food stamps were in her purse and not equally in my billfold. The truth behind my anger was that she had exposed my own vulnerabilities; my anger was at myself. She had made me confront my own life’s decisions, and laid bare the starkness of my current end result. As most all religions teach us, no life should be defined by comparisons of what others have or do not have. The only definition that matters is the one we define for our own self, and the spiritual relationships we bring to it.
Are there cheaters who game the food stamp program (and other such assistance programs) and take “unfair” advantage of it? Of course. And they should be identified and prosecuted fully. There will always be some 5% or more of people in any grouping who will act unethically if not illegally. Just as there are 5+% of doctors and medical service providers who collude to defraud Medicare by creating false patients or delivering false services. Or 5+% of businesspersons who stuff inappropriate ingredients into their products. Or 5+% of charity or religious figures who skim donations into their personal pockets. Or 5+% of Wall Street financiers who deceived the public through risky investments and bad mortgages, but still walk around in their $1000 suits and live in multi-million dollar homes. Or 5+% of public servants and politicians who accept bribes and payoffs to give “special favors” and preferential treatment to rich donors. In truth, there is always “the 5%” in any group looking to defraud others. And that 5% knows no boundaries of race, color, gender, religion, economic status, or any other such subgroupings.
When a person (like this young writer) says broadly disparaging things about segments of our community, after 40 years I continue to ask the same question of that person: have you ever personally met a Muslim, Jew or Catholic that you have so universally maligned? Have you ever spent a day together with a limited-education coal miner in Appalachia? Have you ever talked directly to an urban-poor African-American mother and learned her personal story and particular circumstances? Have you ever really LISTENED to a homeless person or a person on unemployment benefits rather than just talking constantly TO them? Have you ever reached out to find a human face of a homosexual man or woman? Ultimately, what do you truly know about “those people” you are so resentful or scared of?
It is easy for us to demonize groups of people who we do not personally know, especially when that demonizing comes from ignorance, anger or our own arrogance. About people whose circumstances we do not understand. Whose way of being is completely outside our own experience. It is much harder to do that when we know their names, see their faces, and have a real listening conversation with them.
When we paint people with a wide, inexact brush, we color all people as the same even though they are not. Even though we know we ourselves are not all the same as others. Such painting is not only disrespectful of others, but additionally has another bad consequence: the brush also drops paint on us, and thereby also colors us into something more unrecognizable with each stroke. Colors us as something we might be horrified to see if we looked into a mirror after we finished our painting. We may think we are just painting a picture of other human beings. In fact, we are painting a very revealing self-portrait of our own true inner being. And sometimes that portrait is not a very pretty picture.
“The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” (Wayne Dyer)
© 2013 Randy Bell
2 comments:
Interesting piece, interesting perspective. Good one.
Another great post from Randy!
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