When do people realize that they are slaves?

Joe,

A while back I badgered you to check out some essays on American schooling (none dare call it education) by the likes of the late Richard Mitchell and the still living (I think) John Taylor Gatto. I think you must have scanned some of it since I noticed that you mentioned the derivation of our system from those of Prussia and India.

Having thanklessly toiled in a subordinate capacity in the intellectual cesspool known as "special ed" some decades back, I can attest to the utter lack of interest on the part of the system in imparting the slightest spark of thought in these charges. Since by the time they hit school and for the few years they stay before becoming parents or prisoners they are already damaged (blasted is a more descriptive term) beyond any hope of intellectual development.

Those in "mainstream" classrooms fare little better academically, but if they come from the right neighborhoods, they will be made just competent enough to become the next generation of management scumbags with all the material inducements to persuade them never to give it (or anything else) another thought.

But that was long ago. Now, having mouthed my way out of that occupation, I have spent the last couple of decades washing dishes for around twenty grand a year (minus what management steals from our checks using the very latest software designed for just that purpose). This means, among other things, that I now share the workplace and the company of the likes of those whom I was preparing for just this fate. And it is here that things become disturbing for subtle and more obvious reasons.

Leaving aside personality differences that transcend class, most of these folks are of course decent, upstanding consumers no more objectionable than I find most people to be (although honestly, that has come to be quite a lot). But, were I to attempt to explain why and how they came to be where they are and how they were being degraded and exploited, most would simply think I was crazy or a dangerous malcontent worthy of being "reported".

Here is where my sense of solidarity begins to go sour.

At what point do people become responsible for their own understanding? At what point can they realize that they are just being good slaves, utterly complicit in their own exploitation? Of course, I can't politically abandon them, but as Paul Simon recently sang, "It sure don't feel like love."

And it is only more of them that are being made -- here as well as in the Third World.

And not just the materially impoverished. Layers of management parade before me every day, distinguished from their slaves only by their possession of football-field sized TV monitors on which they can absorb "Dancing with the Stars" or "CSI: Newark" or whatever the fuck it is this season. Clueless to a man and woman, these characters are as deluded in their smug sense of superiority as their serfs are. They see it all as being just the natural order of things. See? I'm just paraphrasing you.

Longer ago than my stint in the gulag of American schooling, I lived in New York City in an SRO (single room occupancy, inexpensive residence hotel) once night-managed by Nathaniel West and boasting as tenants the likes of Dashiell Hammett and other urban low-lifes. (Later, it became internationally famous as a horrifying thirty-story crack den and was seized by the feds in '91 or so).

Anyway, by day I was a doorman on Central Park South for a small celebrity hotel and saw the "rich and famous" daily. Unimpressive to a man, woman, and child they were. Spoiled and with such an air of entitlement, I couldn't wait to split and spend my (then lucrative) tips at jazz clubs like the Vanguard and others long gone. This was when you could still see the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Archie Shepp, Benny Bailey, Sun Ra, and innumerable other irreplaceable masters for under ten bucks. You could also read the Village Voice in Washington Square while swilling beer from a bag if you were discreet enough about it. I loved the City then, and the multitudes that inhabited it.

When I go back now, I stay in hotels that afford me views that can still take my breath away. But now I know that behind every one of those millions of lights is some miserable little cocksucker responsible in some small way for the eventual destruction of it all.

Needless to say, I can afford seldom to do this and the pleasure palls with each return now. The great musicians are dead along with my innocence about what it all really is.

I come back here to my exile in Maine, where I have lived without television for four or five years now. (Okay, I watch Stewart and Colbert on-line). I read the increasingly awful New York Times, but mostly get my news on-line. My one indulgence is a subscription to the Times Literary Supplement. I donate whatever and whenever I can to Planned Parenthood and wait for early retirement.

Unfortunately, as I look back even farther, I don't believe that we were any closer to seizing the levers of power thirty-five or forty years ago than we are now. We were just a little more idealistic and a lot more ignorant of the way things work.That's maybe the most discouraging thought that I've had in a while: that even our youthful dreams were a scam.

Sorry this turned so depressing. I'm just rambling. See why I don't write more often?

In parting, here's this from Diderot: "It is at least as important to make men better as to make them less ignorant."

I wish us all luck with that.

Barry
Maine

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Barry,

What can I say in reply? Yours is the story of sentient Americans of our generation. About all I can say is that I would truly enjoy hanging out with you sometime. We both have ringside seats at the twilight of America, maybe even civilization, and it would be nice to have someone to talk to as the show rolls on.

In art and labor,

Joe