A Class Act
As a nation, the U.S. denied from its inception the limits of class just as much as it deluded itself about the effects of hosting a slave economy. As with the 3/5th rule and disenfranchisement of native peoples, the Constitution was turned against itself again when it provided for the indirect election of senators: the assumption was that good men of solid station would choose from among their ranks the men who would run the more powerful half of Congress. Both of those contradictions were eventually resolved by means spelled out in the self-same document that created them.
But these legal changes don’t alter the fact that, to this day, we kid ourselves about class in this country. Heavy doses of rags-to-riches tales taught in our schools were meant to teach that “your fate is up to you.” Hence, students who leave that safe high school explanation for the complexities of class-jumping are set against a system they didn’t know existed.
Most of us take comfort in remaining safe within our social group. When that social group is well off, we are often free to look over at the less fortunate with pity or disdain, depending upon our predisposition.
But wherever we are stationed along the prosperity continuum, we often look in both directions and take comfort that we are not like “them.” At the same time, the rebellious or ambitious among us will go to great lengths to separate themselves from their own upbringing––try to run to another spot on that continuum. And this is a dynamic repeated up and down the scale of wealth.
In any given family, one child may choose to separate from family patterns and go up or down in status. If the family is wealthy and/or patient enough, there may be a prodigal son event, but plenty of families break and remain on opposite sides of the resulting fault line.
Yet for most of us, our group provides our comfort, our identity and our refuge. We are emboldened, by group safety, to branch out, but we most often accept our home group as that which is genuine in our lives.
The distinctions among classes have a central attitude in common with discrimination among colors: the attitude of denial in the dominant group that the problem is as bad as those other folks think.
Class distinction doesn’t go away, but our constitution confers to it no lasting, defensible legal status, and actively limits its power.
A class act, that constitution.
CoEternity
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Intelligent?
Intelligent design implies a permanent solution; all truly scientific reasoning presupposes a continually changing set of discoveries leading to new, different science based on more complete data. No matter the structure of theory––or how orthodox some scientists may sound about evolution––science by definition does not purport to offer immutable truth. Forcing the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools is, therefore, a blatant attempt to establish government religion.
To social agenda activists of current religious conservatism, the poetic nature of Judeo-Christian tradition is lost. The practical work done by early Jews who wrote the foundational scriptures of their faith gave an agreeable explanation of creation in metaphorical terms. The veneration of scripture beyond reason is a tension suffered in every religious tradition, yet there is no place for our government in this realm.
The Wanted Child
That babies deserve life is beyond debate; that they should be forced to enter the world under the care of someone who isn’t prepared for them––or forced into a lucrative baby adoption economy––is another question. Why, to some, is it so clear that children are worthy of life, yet unclear that they deserve to grow up in a place where plans and actions have made a home for them, before they arrive?
We have foster homes already overflowing with children of such circumstances. There are unfortunate kids who find themselves on the margins of attractiveness to potential parents. Thanks to a publicly ignored, under-funded piece of state social work, they are shuffled about in a nearly unmanageable foster care system that pays temporary parents to care for children––by the head.
The pro-life movement should dedicate half its resources to our existing, distressed, life-deserving children to whom we already owe the care of our hearts. The other half should go to effective education about using birth control.
The pro-life movement wants to pretend that human behavior will finally change, that unwanted pregnancies can be ended before conception if women will just behave differently, the way they did back in the good days of our ancestors. Of course, there was never such a time, when women were not made pregnant out of wedlock or kept pregnant in a large family at times when there was scarce room for another mouth to feed. Shotgun weddings were so common as to be routine in the generations leading up to the advent of the pill; propagation of those huge farm and city families came to a screeching halt almost at the very moment when a woman finally had a choice.
Early termination of an unplanned pregnancy saves multiple lives, including that of the tiny victim of forced birth. The glorious gift given to us nearly two generations ago––when doctors literally put effective birth control into a woman’s hand––was the power and beauty of preparing the way for the wanted child.
Anti-rational Anti-intellectualism
Working It Out
As a stage actor who left the business and later returned, I appreciate the lifelong pursuit of printed words by those mentioned above--those sounds that can so please an audience when spoken.
Planning and playing for audiences has dominated my actions for fifty years. Though my muse and I communed privately until our puberty, my urge to speak with justified conviction showed itself early when I attempted to join adult conversation, imposing my eight year-old wisdom whether invited by the elders or not. Because Dad and I had private, weighty conversations during all our years, from the time I began to talk and until the day he ceased, I practiced organizing thought in the most benign of climates. Dad listened without succumbing to a father’s dismissive prerogative; he massaged my growing brain muscle and never gave it the impatient punch.
When my poetic urges grew chest high, that is to say, to heart level, I had no quashing timidity to temper enthusiasm. Some teachers perhaps wished that I’d had a better self-censoring ethic, but others asked me for more, demanded more. It is my eternal burden that I haven’t written enough. I don’t even have a little diary to irritate the ex-wife. No, wait–that’s sounds like a fiction opportunity, one that must be marketed as creative non-fiction.
Just now, writing has taken over from performing. I first went onstage to read my own poetry out loud and took the prize from my high school talent show at age seventeen, beating out folk singers, rock bands and instrumentalists. Doing plays in college the next year, I realized that how words are said is at least as important as the words themselves to the ears of an audience. Now, having spent literally thousands of hours before live audiences using the (mostly) well-shaped paragraphs of others, after turning words in my mouth and discovering the infinite utility of alternate readings, I long to set down words that may ring silent favor in the ears of unsuspecting readers.
An actor friend of mine with Broadway credits found our audiences in Atlanta charming, and his term for “standing ovation” was “surprised and delighted” as in, “We got another surprised and delighted tonight.” The hope that any reader of my words could be surprised and delighted by what I smear on a page sends me back to the laptop with the same sense of urgency and confidence that used to drive me to audition.
All of an actor’s skill is marshaled in order to move the play forward, bringing the audience along, employing the same patience, the same ability to get out of the way of the story that a wordsmith must own. The capable actor compels the viewer to bring himself into the story, to apply his own mood, his intelligence and doubt to the action before him. When in the wrong body–that of the wrong actor–action is crushed by heavy-handedness, embarrassed by self-consciousness or undermined by condescension. Self-importance lurks in the wings, calling to the insecure performer as if supplying a cue. The competent actor shares space with the incompetent and is exposed from head to toe without the protection of a favorable camera angle or Vaseline on the lens to soften the wrinkles. You put your whole self in, and when the show is over, the only proof that this event happened at all lives in the fading memories of strangers leaving the theatre and starting their cars.
Now, off the stage, I usurp the roles of producer, director, male lead, ingénue, costumer and sage writer. The mere possibility that all this role-playing can be accomplished within my twitching brain is seduction itself: who needs to share the credit, the genius, the shining light of matchless insight?
Enter the writer's public website to calm the ego, to kick the ass and to coax performance in the direction of plain honesty, honesty that is upheld by competence, fueled by insight , emboldened by surrender.
May we all be surprised and delighted.