The most significant culture shock that I ever experienced came not in heading out to tackle the world, but upon returning home. I was teaching at a small school on the Texas-Mexico border (on the Texas side, though if I dropped you there blindfolded, I doubt that you could tell the difference). I served lower-income, mostly first generation US citizens, in a town where Mexican-American children lived unaware that Latinos are considered a minority population in the United States. For my part, I enjoyed Brownsville—despite the bugs, lack of anything to actually do, and weather that had earned it the nickname, “the armpit of Texas.” Come Christmas vacation, however, I returned to my hometown of Seattle, where my eyes truly began to open to the world I had left behind.
My sister picked my up at the airport, and we drove immediately to her son’s t-ball game in Wedgwood or Laurelhurst or some other, indistinguishable upscale neighborhood north of downtown. I struggle to accurately describe the severity of emotion that occurs when a person that has lived for four months in a poor, Latino town spends an entire day traveling and finds himself dropped into a sea of white Seattle mothers and fathers. I suddenly became something akin to Scrooge, the Ghost of Christmas Future forecasting a desolate, vapid existence of overpriced coffee, form-fitting spandex, and overpriced winter vests.
In that moment, I became overwhelmingly ashamed of the world in which I grew up—a world of materialism, frivolity, and willful homogony and ignorance. It was, for the most part, a world of professional, successful people more interested in the promotion of personal wealth than in any collective good. This was the world of my youth, one in which I even taught myself to say, “I will not feel ashamed for the good things that I have.” After college, however, I served as teacher in an impoverished area of Birmingham, Alabama, and then in Brownsville. In coming home I realized that shame might not prove so invaluable. In fact, we see need on a daily basis, at least on our television sets, and take arms against any sense of responsibility by taking blinding pride in all of our actions, if for the sole reason that they define us.
Greek drama used to treat hubris as a downfall, now pride has become a national ethic—proud to be an American, proud parent of an honor student, proud to drive an SUV, proud to drive a hybrid, proud to own a house, proud to own a gun, proud environmentalist. If my parents grew up in a working class family, I can take pride in the fact that I have what they did not. If I work making a six figure income, I can bask in the parental glory of providing for my family. Even if I see the economic and physical pain prevalent in the ghettos of American cities, I can comfort myself in the pride of my nation’s accomplishments. Hence the damaging phrase, “Well, it’s still the best country on Earth,” as if no matter how broken our education or healthcare systems, a true patriot would never seek answers in the successes of any other—by definition inferior—nation.
The problem with pride is that it closes doors to progress. That proud environmentalist will give no thought to the fact that he promotes policies that might make it more difficult for small business owners to succeed, just as the proud small business owner may take little interest in the plight of those that fail to match her own success. Pride puts a wall between us and our opposition; it creates a winner-take-all status quo, whereby the real prize is not accomplishment of a collective good, but bragging rights over some insignificant or even counterproductive victory.
More than that, though, pride closes our hearts and minds to the need to better anything besides our own social and economic standing. I challenge anyone that contends that we can truly eradicate poverty, reverse global warming, or make our cities more affordable without a collective, authentic sense of shame. A shame in the fact that certain of us have all of our material, physical, and spiritual needs provided for, while people on the street corners we drive daily cannot find steady work or even a bed in which to sleep. After having taught in the ghettos of Birmingham and the poverty of the border, I would take great shame in working in any field that did not directly serve those in need.
Before you label me a dreamer, or envision me cowering from the rain and mosquitoes in a Peace Corps tent somewhere in the jungle, I would invite you to research the number of non-profit organizations seeking professionals with experience in business, management, and administration. Sure, you may not make 100k a year, but then, I never understood why a nation that supposedly extols the middle class spends so much time running away from it. If we want our children to grow up to take pride in something, maybe it should be that their parents worked to serve others and provide for their families, not that they worked to serve themselves and spoil their children.
Unless the message of A Christmas Carol is that a successful man finds himself co-opted by hopelessly romantic, ghost-socialists, then we should all take stock of why we re-tell the story. I won’t discount the possibility that it’s all a con—that Scrooge’s flaw rests not in his selfishness, but in the fact that he refuses to show a little good cheer. Maybe we would like him a lot more if he put the “fabulous” back into “fabulously wealthy.” But then, maybe we know that Scrooge is less the big, bad business boss and more the everyday, educated professional, and that our own conversion of consciousness is long overdue. The only way that we can solve the problems we face will be to give up some of what we enjoy, which is awfully difficult to do if we can’t first give up some of our damned pride.
1 comment:
Well done.
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