On my way to sunny San Diego, we passed a casino at 4:00 am on a Sunday morning. The casino was packed. Likewise, on Saturday morning going to a mock trial tournament, we passed the Catfish casino in Burlington,Iowa. That casino was packed too. One of my travel companions had a thought that I think is relevant to teachers.
"One difference between those who live in poverty and those who do not is how they view the results of their choices. A person who lives in poverty might believe that they have to get lucky to escape poverty so they might gamble at a casino. But most of us, (meaning those riding to San Diego) believe that our choices can influence the future. If we work hard, for example, then something good will become of it." I think this captures the essence of poverty. Poverty robs the spirit of hope.
At the heart of economics is a chain of thinking that goes: resources are scare; people must make choices; when people make a choice, there's a cost. The cost is opportunity cost or what you give up. People from poverty think their choices are all or none. It would be hard for me to believe that they make choices at the margin.
Ruby Payne's research shows that children of generational poverty believe that exogenous forces will steal their wealth. Economic hardships will make learning hard for these young people. In the movie, Blind Side, one parent made a difference in a young man's life by "adopting" him. I think more kids need to be paired with community resources so help them combat the exogenous forces that rob children of their wealth and hope.
The irony in this is that the reason why people lack "hope when in poverty is the same reason why poverty implies a lack of upward social mobility, thus creating the self-fulfilling prophecy that sustains poverty itself. However, I believe that there exist two types of hope when analyzing socioeconomic conditions. The first is long-term hope, the kind of hope that is discarded when one is in poverty. The second, which can only exist if the first is absent, is short-term hope, the aspiration to achieve immediate pleasure in the highest degree possible, a hope that most people, even those in the upper-middle class, are coached in from birth as one of the central tenets of consumerism. It is this second hope that fuels the poverty cycle and was also the cause of the economic recession. It is implied in the very images that fuel consumerist economic growth and stifle upward social mobility.
ReplyDeleteI tend to be on the fence when it comes to Lacan versus Deleuze and Guattari, but this is one of the many instances when Lacan's ideas don't hold up: If one is in poverty, by the original post and Lacan, they should desire to achieve the ability to hope, thus implying that they themselves lack hope in reality (the Real). But, in fact, this desire to achieve hope is itself a hope, and it manifests itself as a short-term hope for pleasure, a kind of Deleuzian dampening of desiring-production (I will stop here---this is getting way too jargony, and I'm just thinking out loud).
One characteristic of victims of generational poverty is that they will trade in tomorrow for today. They will "discount" the future.
ReplyDeleteDo you believe that all men and all women are born with a utilitarian instinct? If so, then the person would not give up hope. I have seen many students who simply have given up in the classroom and in life.
I tend to agree with Locke with regard to instinct in general (i.e. that most things lack inherency and only basic things, like running when something is attacking you, can be considered instincts), so I especially don't believe that people are born with a utilitarian instinct. Utilitarianism is a doctrine, one that is fatally flawed (it is similar to existentialism in the way that it looks good theoretically, but falls apart under rigorous analysis), and, therefore, cannot be considered an instinct. In fact, one of the shortfalls of utilitarianism is its propensity to make the working class content or nihilistic in their socioeconomic position.
ReplyDeleteI tend to be a hard-line deterministic poststructuralist (which is a mouthful, I know, but it just means that I am a Foucault fan who believes that free will doesn't exist) when it comes to socioeconomic issues, so I am inclined to blame the system before the individual. Thus, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I was only pointing out that the trading in of "tomorrow for today" is itself based on a hope that keeps someone from hoping beyond nihilism. Going more in depth, I am just reiterating something that Deleuze and Guattari said in Anti-Oedipus, that the socius produces anti-production (an oxymoron, but it works) on the body without organs (don't ask for a definition, it took me two weeks just to figure out what DnG were talking about when they referenced this) with relation to the desiring-production of the desiring machine (which is just our decision making).