[MD] Sin

[Case]

On 11-6-06 Steve H. asked:

> Does capitalism require that some people suffer in
> such extreme poverty?

[Ham]
Of course not.

> If it doesn't than why do some people suffer in
> extreme poverty?

[Ham]
How do I answer this?  Let me recount the reasons:

-- Ignorance
-- Stupidity
-- Irresponsibility
-- Immaturity
-- Profligacy
-- Laziness
-- Apathy
-- Unstructured goals
-- Lack of foresight
-- Fear of making choices
-- Preference to live on welfare
-- Disorientation (due to drugs or deleterious life styles)
-- Criminal behavior (and time in prison)
-- Inability to assimilate in the workforce
-- Inability to assimilate in society
-- Sociopathic attitudes
-- Low self-esteem
-- Celebrity worship
-- Physical disability
-- Mental disability

[Case]
I haven't seen Brandy in several months. She entered Kindergarten this year.
I have been caught up in this and that. I lost track of time and lost track
of her. She is a slightly chubby little thing, with straight blond hair that
wraps in a pixie around her face. When she smiles you can see a hint of
tongue through a gap of missing tooth. When I first met her she would pout
and cross her arms if I looked at her. If I spoke she would look away
pretending not to be interested until she thought I wasn't looking and then
she would creep closer to listen to a story or to peek at the pictures.
After a while every time I saw her she would throw her arms out wide and run
at me squealing to hug my leg.

Her father's missing front tooth is gone for good. He was released from
prison months before I knew them. The woman he had married left him with
Brandy, her older sister and a brother. I don't know how long Bob was in
prison or why, but he seemed willing to do the right thing by children that
were not his own. He passed regular drug screenings mandated by the state
and looked for day labor to earn a living. But with three children and no
real skills I figure the odds aren't his favor. Will power and love can
conquer all but he is facing long odds and his history is not in his favor.

Brandy's friend Joey isn't right. It's not quite Down's but there is
something wrong. At four years he can barely speak and there is a rage
inside him that flairs in tantrums that are more often than not self
directed. Joey's sister, Julie is just this side of the toddler stage. She
doesn't speak clearly either but it could just be her age. There are always
traces of her last meal in smudges on her cheeks. She loves to swing and
stands in your path with her hands outstretched whining a bit if she thinks
there is a chance you have a few pushes in you. She is reckless on the
playground and every week she has new booboos taped over with cartoon
Band-Aids to show. Hoping for sympathy she sticks out her lower lip and her
eyes get misty until she casts them toward the swing and you know that
flying through space suspended on a string is what she lives for.

Joey and Julie's mother has dull depressed eyes. She can manage custodial
work but without enthusiasm. She seldom smiles and never without effort. For
her, joy requires an act of will. She needs a makeover. A polo shirt and
jeans is her Sunday best and burden she carries would crush my spine.

On the street where these children live men walk to and fro with 40 oz
bottles wrapped in paper sacks. They are the gentry. Their demons are easy
to bribe and their reward is the sweet haze of oblivion. In sober moments
they shake their heads at those whose 20 minutes of heaven comes at $10 a
hit and leaves a craving so intensive a woman will kneel in soil soaked with
urine giving blow jobs to feed it.

As I watch like some sick peeping Tom from my office window I wonder if
anything but the power of God will deliver Brandy and Joey and Julie. I
transcend Ham's abstract spacio-temporal dimension and see their future in
this sordid present. Because the only incentive offered to help those
children is the call of God through faith based initiatives. We have decided
that Brandy is not a problem we can solve by throwing money at. When Joey is
old enough to put on his own boots all we owe him is directions on how to
pull the straps. I fantasize that playground mishaps will toughen little
Julie enough to let her face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

It is easier for people with offices to sit in to make lists of the reasons
people suffer than to wonder what level of personal responsibility a four
year old should have. To a man flying down the road in a fine automobile
life offers up its rich rewards and in his perfect world the wealthy stoop
of their own accord to offer platitudes on self reliance. 

I think I will compose koans about commissars with leaden lamps to read to
Brandy. Maybe Joey would enjoy a Randian ditty on the virtues of
selfishness. For little Julie arcing through space with the wind on her face
perhaps a haiku on the importance of reminding mommy to take her meds.

Christians speak of Sin. It is a word we all think we know. If pressed to
define it we might say it is the kind acts that landed Brandy's Dad in jail.
We can point to those failures walking the streets with their brown bagged
bottles. We can pontificate on Karma and Life out of balance. 

But Sin comes from a Greek word that means to miss the target. We define our
own Sin, together and alone, when we speak of what we aim for. Material
comfort and the good life, the American dream, a chicken in every pot, is
that is what we are shooting at? By what margin can we miss and sleep at
night?

I don't think we well ever see heaven on earth. When Jesus had a fine lady
pouring sweet oil in his hair, Judas bitched that it could be sold to feed
the poor. Even Jesus said, "Chill out dude the poor will be here forever.
I'm a short timer, shut the door on your way out."

But spare me the talk of starving kids in Africa and Objectivist
epistemology and personal responsibility. Don't try to tell me that welfare
mothers are bankrupting our economy. Explain to me how the state can take a
man's life for five years and dump him on the street with three kids and no
marketable skills. And tell me how to judge a woman pursuing her version of
Value and the only Dynamic Quality she has ever known by renting her body at
free market discounted rates. I suggest that it is easier to see through the
"world as illusion" when your lens are ground from brown glass and smeared
with fermented hops.

The only reason you all can yammer on about rational abstraction and walks
in the woods is because in most places we hid our Sin two blocks off the
main drag and nobody but fools or strangers makes a wrong turn into THAT
part of town. Don't get me wrong here, Jesus was right the poor will be with
us always. The Sin of Capitalism is not to be found in the fact that poor
stupid lazy people are out there. 

We miss the mark by claiming virtue in looking away. 
We miss the mark by demanding that people see things our way when we can't
even imagine seeing things theirs.
We miss the mark when we make and abstraction of other people's reality.
We miss the mark by visiting the sins of the fathers and mothers on Brandy
and Joey and Julie.