The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The above quote from C.S. Lewis feels like a good summation for chapter three of Class Matters. For while the author makes many good points about current issues, she puts them in a context that to me seems often as dangerous and deadly, if not more so, that the problems she is describing.
I experience that in the way the text of this chapter seems to worship the poor. I know that must sound harsh and cold of me. But the way she describes her church experience makes the use of the words “worship the poor” quite appropriate. “The poor were chosen and closer to the heart of the divine because their lives embodied the wisdom of living simply.” Is one example of this. Her reference text is Matthew 25, the passage of the sheep and the goats, where people are rewarded for “whatever you did (or did not) do for one of the least of these, you did (or did not) not do for me.”
But this is in direct contradiction to the passages in the old testament where we are advised to favor neither the rich nor the poor in judgment (Lev 19:15), not to mention Proverbs 30:8 “remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.” Proverbs reveals that it isn’t being poor or rich that is favored, but the middle ground of simple plenty and dependence upon God. The poor are in as much spiritual danger as the rich.
Now she is quite correct that the same book of Matthew teaches us to give our alms discreetly with no thought of personal gain. And James, among other passages, insists that we are one, and should show no favoritism to wealth (or poverty) within the church. But it seems to me the height of arrogance, not humility, to “claim the poor as ourselves.” That is a denial of who we are, unless we truly are poor. Humility is about knowing who you are, no more, no less.
Now, showing solidarity with the poor, another one of her phrases, sounds fine to me, as long as you can also say showing solidarity with the rich without laughing. If we are one, then neither status should be favored, after all. But this next quote, where she uses her term, just tends to confound me in that gaping-mouth sort of way:
Indeed showing solidarity with the poor was essential spiritual work, a way to learn the true meaning of community and enact the sharing of resources that would necessarily dismantle hierarchy and difference. In the community of my upbringing no one talked about capitalism. We knew the word communism because keeping the world safe for democracy was discussed. And communism was the identified threat. No one talked about the way capitalism worked, the fact that it demanded that there be surplus labor creating conditions for widespread unemployment. No one talked about slavery as an institution paving the way for advanced capitalist economic growth.
hooks, bell (2012-10-02). Where We Stand: Class Matters (pp. 39-40). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
I’d like to delve into the idea of dismantling hierarchy (a favorite of tyrants – see story of Thrasybulus in Herodotus’s Histories ) but it would take too much time which I want to spend on this capitalism explanation.
I presume that Hooks would prefer a world without this surplus, a world where everyone working by the sweat of their brow is needed just to keep everyone fed, with no surplus for anything extra. And of course, if there is surplus, it doesn’t go to the people who create it, but to the favored – whether nobility, inteligensia, or idealogues. No, give me capitalism, with its surplus labor – giving people enough free time to do and think and invent even better things, both materially and artistically, to create even more opportunities for people to work and create.
As for slavery, there I am confused. Slavery held back the south in a feudal society that didn’t advance until it was out of the way so that capitalism could allow the creativity of the people to flourish.
Now I admire the community sentiment below, and freedom shown in how the people share, but find something about her patriarchy statement I want to mention after you read the quote:
When mama would send us to neighbors with food or clothes we complained, just as we complained when she sent us to collect the gifts that were sometimes given to us by caring folks who recognized the material strains of raising a large family on one income, especially since patriarchal heads of households, like our dad, often kept much of their paycheck for their own private use. Women in our community understood this and had the best networks for figuring out ways to give and share with others without causing embarrassment or shame.
hooks, bell (2012-10-02). Where We Stand: Class Matters (p. 40). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
Hooks spent a whole lot of time talking about how her church emphasized all this community stuff, yet it apparently never got through to all these “patriarchal heads of households”. It doesn’t give me as good an impression of her communal ideals in action that she painted earlier. It also shows me that she isn’t above using charged and fashionable words to make her point emotionally when the logic may be weak (I commented yesterday on her use of fascism in just such a fashion). It seems in her hierarchy of values, men get the brunt of the abuse.
Another tension was between the call to identify with the poor and realizing that poor were often harassed and humiliated. “On one hand, from a spiritual perspective, we were taught to think of the poor as the chosen ones, closer to the divine, ever worthy in the sight of God, but on the other hand, we knew that in the real world being poor was never considered a blessing. The fact that being poor was seen as a cause for shame prevented it from being an occasion for celebration.” People prevented the shame of the poor by living in solidarity with them. That didn’t mean just treating them well and with generosity, but also living as simply as you could. Living simply gives you more to share with the less fortunate.
Once again, I think living simply is a good ideal. We don’t need more cars, bigger houses, etc. But where does this shame come from she talks about for the poor. As Tevye notes in Fiddler on the Roof: “It may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. After all, with Your help, I’m starving to death. Oh, dear Lord. You made many many poor people. I realize, of course, it’s no shame to be poor… but it’s no great honor either. So what would be so terrible… if I had a small fortune?” I agree with Tevye – there is no shame to be poor. But Hook finds shame in it that must be covered. It is a shame of her own taking. I was going to say of her own making, except it was probably made by other people and she bought into the lie. Where does she get off imputing this shame to the poor? I see it as form arrogance on her part, an arrogance that some of the poor would find deeply offensive, if they bothered to be bothered by such a silly sentiment.
Hook idealizes the 50s and 60s that she grew up in, where she was taught that possesions did not make a person, did not tell you about their inner person and its integrity. She could see that ideal in her childhood small town, but college brought her face to face with class. She went to college with a romantic ideal of the intellectual hard work and camaraderie. She was not prepared for the hierarchies of academia or the way they protected the interests of the ruling class. Social class was not mentioned, and when it was, it was negative stereotypes of the working classes.
I was left with the realization that my fellow students had no desire to understand anything about the lives of working-class people. They did not want to know or identify with the poor. And they were, above all, not interested in solidarity with the poor.
hooks, bell (2012-10-02). Where We Stand: Class Matters (p. 42). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
She learned that the socialist students weren’t any more interested in the poor than the other students. They were merely desirous of being their leaders and saviors. Her religious reverence for the poor challenged that paternalism. Liberation theology, on the other hand, did stress solidarity with the poor.
She quotes a passage from David Hilfiker about capitalism being treated as a religion that I really want to respond to. Here it is:
“It is important for us to understand that we have chosen this. Neither modern capitalism nor economic imperative requires that necessities be distributed according to wealth. Today’s ‘capitalistic’ economic systems can easily be modified through taxation and wealth-transfer programs, such as Social Security, to provide necessities.”
hooks, bell (2012-10-02). Where We Stand: Class Matters (p. 43). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
It is easy to say just to spread the wealth around. That works for the first round. But then who produces the second round? If you know that whatever wealth you produce just gets taken from you, the majority of people start producing less. And people talk about this distribution as generosity. Hooks associates the idea of generosity with it. But it isn’t really generosity to volunteer to give away someone else’s stuff – which is what all these government programs amount to. Then again, he talks about necessities. What are necessities? Doesn’t take much to furnish those. But most of our poor have much more than that: cell phones and cars and electronic items of all types. And all this started from a conversation about living more simply?
She talks about the 60s and 70s as a time when many people came up with these ideas of living simply and in an alternative way, but eventually petered out in the hedonistic 80s. She blames much of the 80s hedonism on new age thinking. What she doesn’t realize is that many of those alterative ideas of the 60s and 70s are causes of the things she didn’t like in the 80s. All that freedom of the 60s didn’t produce much. People lived off other people. And it caused people to leave that religion she grew up with that cared for the poor. So in a way, the things she lauds about the 60s and 70s created the things she didn’t like about the 80s, which makes me pose the question whether those things in the 60s and 70s were really so great after all.
As she moves toward the end of her chapter, which in case you forgot, was on the benefits of living simply, she once again starts throwing in hyperbolic word choices. For example:
To be poor in the United States today is to be always at risk, the object of scorn and shame. Without mass-based empathy for the poor, it is possible for ruling class groups to mask class terrorism and genocidal acts. Creating and maintaining social conditions where individuals of all ages daily suffer malnutrition and starvation is a form of class warfare that increasingly goes unnoticed in this society.
hooks, bell (2012-10-02). Where We Stand: Class Matters (p. 46). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
To describe the acts she is envisioning as terrorism and genocide is to mock those who have died in real terrorist acts, and those around the world who have actually died from persecution. It is an un-academic and emotional appeal that avoids addressing real issues.
Our church book club is going to be reading a book called “Toxic Charity” sometime in the next couple of months. The book is supposed to describe attempts to do good that cause more harm than good. I am curious to see what it really says. But I know what sort of things Hook suggests in her chapter, and I would like to suggest that many of the government interventions she wants would and have been making the situation worse. Whatever you subsidize you get more of, and we have been subsidizing the poor, in an attempt to get rid of poverty, and all we have gotten is more poor. We need to think of a new way out of it. Or perhaps an older way, of personal charity, instead of government “rights” to other’s largesse. And perhaps one of the ways to show solidarity with the poor is to let them be themselves, and live their lives, instead of insisting they must have shame and other such nonsense.
At The Rainbow 