Wolfgang von Skeptik

SOME SYNCHRONISTIC NOTES ON SELFHOOD

TODAY’S LINKS ARE AN example of what Carl Jung called synchronicity, the seemingly-random convergence of facts and data that turn out to be “impossibly” closely related – the convergence thus suggesting supernatural revelation rather than accidental discovery. I had been thinking for most of the past two weeks about how I as a member of the impoverished underclass have really two sets of priorities. One is identical or at least closely akin to the priorities characteristic of most Americans (especially in terms of the post-9/11 emphasis on national security); the other is dictated by my poverty and is tightly (and always fearfully) focused on opportunities and things most Americans take for granted: money, work, medical care, dental care, housing, transportation, clothing, yes even food. Lest this seem like hyperbole, I will acknowledge here and now that twice in my life – thank God only for very brief periods – I have actually been homeless. And though I am not likely to lack shelter again, I am now compelled to work until I drop dead: since I have been forced back into the city and required to pay urban rent, Social Security alone will never be adequate to spare me the ultimate humiliation of food banks and welfare offices.

Thus mine is a miserably hard old age – one that will only worsen with the passage of time – and its wretched difficulty is inflicted by two inescapable facts: (1)-that because of my refusal to compromise my own ethics and become a whore, I was never granted employment adequate to support a pension plan, nor work lucrative enough to earn sufficient money to support any such investments on my own; (2)-that because of the 1983 fire, all the lifelong work that was intended to guarantee me a small but reliable income in retirement – two eminently marketable books and 30 years worth of historically valuable photography (much of it related to the content of the books) – was destroyed beyond hope of recovery. I understood the magnitude of the blow fate had dealt me at the time, and it was precisely this understanding – the fact the fire-loss had dropped me into a terrifying abyss from which there was no possible escape – that triggered the clinical depression that then further laid such waste to my life. It would have been nice had life treated me with more kindness, but in the ultimate sense, I can blame no one but myself.

In this era of Enron-Nation moral imbecility, the combination of my two distinct value systems – one American, the other ghetto – probably labels me schizophrenic. So be it. For as long as I can remember I have insisted on a velvet-gloved but iron-fisted national defense – an insistence that was my chief objection not only to the Clinton Administration but to the Reagan Administration’s infuriatingly craven response to Islamic terrorism – and I cannot recall a time when I did not also demand the fairness that is today called socioeconomic justice. Of course in the Democratic Party of my youth – the party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and (yes) Lyndon Johnson – such values were not mutually exclusive, an expression of yearning for The Good Old Days that no doubt also identifies me as a dinosaur. Call me Schizo-saurus Rex.

Which brings me back to the archaic notion of synchronicity as supernatural intervention. Pondering my own seemingly antithetical values – a jackbooted military and red-armbanded social-services (speaking metaphorically of course, and with considerable facetiousness as well) – I found myself wondering if there existed any data contrasting the viewpoints of socioeconomically “normal” Americans with the values of the American underclass, the people who are my socioeconomic brethren and sistren. And – just as if I had plunked some metaphysical magic twanger – there it was, on the Beliefnet site: “Poll: Poor Americans Most Concerned About Jobs, Healthcare.” The link is here; all I can say in response is, “Indeed.” Then I discovered I had inadvertently (!?!) saved a second relevant link, to a Tech Central Station analysis describing the under-reported problem of America’s growing impoverishment as a potential point of convergence and coalition between leftist academia and increasingly social-justice-demanding evangelical Christianity. This link, equally vital reading, is here; (scroll down to items 2, 3 and 4).

Perhaps it will turn out that with my odd combination of values I am once again where I was in much of my younger adulthood: on the cutting edge, behaving like a small fierce mammal rather than a huge lumbering reptile. But if this is true, I can take no credit for my avoidance of the tar pits. The only thing of relevance I could possibly add is that while Roman Catholicism is hardly what you’d call “evangelical,” I know of no branch of Christianity (or any other religion) anywhere on this planet that is more committed to socioeconomic justice for all.

Posted by Loren at January 12, 2005 11:55 PM