I just got back from an exceptionally relaxing trip to the Lake. But, before the break came life, and life is full of lessons.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
On Friday, I ran into two young boys who were part of a magazine crew, selling magazine subscriptions to earn cash incentives to pay for college, a business or vocational school. So they said; so it goes. I talked to them for 20 minutes before I bought their magazines, trying to get a feel for the truth of their situation. When they left and I had 5 minutes to think (and as the afternoon percocet started wearing off), I realised they were half-lying to me and that I had just helped fund the organization that was exploiting them. My level of concern surprised me. It took me a day to console myself with finding out whether their employer is one of the better companies; I felt so angry and helpless. Before they left, Shane had asked me to write him a comment, so he could read it and be cheered up the next time someone answered their doorbell only to yell at him. I, the shamefully flippant academic, quoted Margaret Atwood and wrote, "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." I spelt some of the words wrong and babbled like an ass that I didn't know Latin, but told them it was a motto, like Semper Fi for the Marines, and what it meant. I hoped Shane would understand and I still wish I had done more. But in the end, it's what he had asked for; a reminder that you can't let the bastards grind you down.
Of course, the specific bastard depends on your perspective.
I called around to reporters who have been covering exploitative magazine crews - the most recent expert reassured me that this crew wasn't on his list of most abusive. In fact, it didn't make his list at all. So, at a minimum, there's that.
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A detour into the trivialities that comprise the days of my life.
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3 comments:
My ex-fiancee's brother worked in a magazine crew for many years.
He actually ran away from home and joined them, or very nearly, before finishing high school.
He spent a long time on the road, growing up. I don't know if he would have been better off, trapped in the event horizon of Delaware County, but I think not.
It's just not as simple as exploiter and exploited sometimes. Some people are getting a bad deal, but sometimes they're getting something they need or think they need.
Ultimately, it's ok that we fall down figuring things out sometimes. It's not getting it right the first time that counts, it's getting it better the next time.
Sorry if this comes off too platitudinous.
If anyone's spouting platitudes, it's me. I know I can't really do anything for the two kids I met, and they chose their own life (if even in a limited sense; we all have choices, yeah?). But I'd feel a lot better if I knew they weren't part of one of the really bad/abusive crews.
... because I was flippant towards the kid's fairly earnest request for something good to have on bad days. And I should have been more clear. Even in what feel like impossible situations, we all have choices. Part of one's responsibility to oneself (and one's own happiness) is a certain degree of selfishness and not taking shit (or, at the very minimum, taking shit but not letting the shit own you).
No, I was just trying to make you feel less fearful that the boys were being mistreated.
Empathy is an odd thing. I find it bizarre sometimes how easy it is to feel for distant or sometimes even fictional people, while it's sometimes so hard to muster for people who are closer.
The again, I suppose the real question, with a powerful sense of sympathy, is how much of ourselves we see in them. At a time that I was having trouble with Agoraphobia, I once saw a film about systematic desensitization with a woman who had a paralyzing fear of escalators.
Some combination of her motherliness and her helpless fear just reduced me to tears. But it's relatively easy for me to turn a hard heart to the never ending cavalcade of beggars in Harvard Square I have to face every day.
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