I learned something new today

[some of you may notice that i am now reverting to writing everything in lower case--it's quicker for me and i'm naturally always in a rush, so don't care much about conventions and 'proper writing'...tis the truth]

tuesdays and thursdays i teach anth 2000, introduction to cultural anthropology. today's class was interesting and personally challenging for me. i hate when that happens. the class is divided up into four groups and each group is responsible for presenting one of the texts [there are four] to the rest of the students. it's partly to insure that at least one of the books is really read by them, but it's also to see how students can take a book and make it real for others. in a sense, it's practice for students who go on to get their MAs or PhDs--they'll be doing a lot of talking and presenting of ideas to others. today's group did a couple of interesting things.

they first gave the students (and me) a quiz on the book [barbara ehrenreich's _nickel and dimed_], assuming everyone had read it so could easily answer the questions. unfortunately for me, i couldn't see a thing on the ppt (small words, no glasses) so refrained from taking the test. as a result i ended up failing and had to hang out with the low scorers :-) the top 5 or 6 scorers were asked to remain in the class and the rest of us went outside to the hallway near the elevator. we could hear those inside having fun, laughing a lot. we weren't having so much fun. we had been divided into two groups: one group wrapped plastic knives, forks, and spoons in paper napkins and the other group cut up little pieces of paper and piled them into stacks. both groups had supervisors. ours was pretty laid back, so no problem, but what boring work! we did that until we ran out of stuff to wrap. the other group had a supervisor who seemed less patient and way more business-like. he stayed on their case until they got it exactly right. in the meantime, the group in the classroom continued having a good time. we couldn't see, but we could hear.

the second thing was the discussion. when we were done outside, we were invited back to the classroom and the presenters commenced the debrief. what exactly happened and what was the message with that exercise? people who go to college and do well get 'picked', have fun, probably attain some measure of success. people who don't go to college or who drop out end up taking dead end jobs for minimum wage. one of the facilitators asked the question: how many of you would take a minimum wage job? several said they were already working minimum wage jobs but no one, in the future, would even consider it. that's why they were going to college. so college was a way out of the rat race, the minimum wage/two jobs per person, poverty path. then we got into a discussion of poverty and minimum wage standards globally. as it turns out, while the u.s. is supposedly the richest country in the world, the possibility of earning a living wage, as opposed to minimum wage, is dismal in america. the two countries that actually try to approximate minimum wages as living wages are australia and new zealand.

part of the discussion focused on a definition of poverty. measurements of poverty rely on real income: money as wealth--how much you make determines where you fall on either side of the poverty line. but if you move away from money as sole criteria, then the situation changes. social relationships provide alternative economic scenarios. an informal economy exists side by side with a capitalist one. just because you don't have money doesn't mean that you are impoverished. cash poor people still live in homes/houses, still eat, still live quality lives, etc. their idea of wealth is not vested in how much money they have but in how many relationships they have built over time. so the measurement of poverty, and maybe even the creation of such a category, seems not to be based in reality. it is totally irrelevant when applied to real people's lives. the indicators of wealth and poverty were created by economic advisors and bankers to measure wealth, something other than real life--to keep track of how money and goods flow. informal economies don't fit in.

i always give the example of the baby luau as the best way to illustrate this principle. and why i titled today's post as "i learned something new today" allows me to connect back to lono, whose story i'm trying to tell, even as i weave in my own story, my own revelations.

lono was the best person to do the baby luau. he spent his time building relationships, helping other people, sharing resources, teaching skills, practicing aloha. so when lono wanted to do a luau, and he had no money to do it (of course), he called all his friends and relatives and asked them to help. lono and his brothers always knew there would be fish--even if there was no poi, there would be fish. so fish became the staple, and the rest of the meal was built around it. everybody committed to something, right down to the paper goods. if there was no room at the house, the luau was at the beach--plenty of space for spreading out, plenty of parking, restroom nearby, no cost for any of it (except maybe toilet paper!). each gathering was successful, meaning that every party was a good party. and really, no one had any money to host a party, so lono's party was actually a group party, a community celebrating itself. cost effective. friendly. warm. seductive, even. go to one and you want to go to more. i've said in my classes that the purpose of life is to get high. and here was a perfect example of how to get a low-cost high hanging out with good folks and sharing food, friendship, and spirit. once you experience it, you get hooked. you want more. and its effect is to transform the (sometimes lonely) individual self into the warmth of family. in addition, money and goods don't flow in this model. they come together and transform in the celebration, like matter transforming into energy--the wealth and reality of relationships take on life in a different form.

as i think back on how profoundly lono lived his life, and how he affected those around him, i realize how lucky i was to have witnessed different phases of his life. i think it's tough when a parent outlives his/her child, and i know my sister is really having a hard time. death, especially untimely death, jars us into realizing that life is a crapshoot. we need to love a lot, as often as we can, because it may all fall apart tomorrow, or next week. nobody wants to think about it, as if holding the thought at bay keeps it there. silly us.

at the end of class today i shared with the few students who stayed afterward that the bible states something like "the poor are always with us". and from an anthropologist's point of view ( mine, anyway), this statement is indicative of structure within different cultures. religion and governance models resemble each other. that's another way of saying that religions with a pyramidal structure that posits a god at the top will mirror a political structure that has a president or king at the top. tribal cultures, on the other hand, that worship many or multiple gods tend to have governing councils, a flattened pyramid with perhaps one or two layers. in such tribal communities, people tend to take care of each other. class or status divisions still exist, but to a much lesser degree, and the communities are more egalitarian and more concerned with relationships and responsibilities. so if the bible states that "the poor are always with us", what that indicates is that in biblical times the hierarchy was so pronounced, and the power so embedded at the top, that the poor would, indeed, always be there. the stratification of both religion and governance ensured that the place of the poor was permanent. one of the students mentioned that an instructor had asked in another class 'who would do the dirty work if there were no poor people?' indeed, the structure demands that a place be set aside for the poor.

lono was part of the cash poor, but i don't think he was in poverty. he didn't have much money, but he certainly had resources and people who cared about him. his death caused other things to happen. it certainly caused me to reflect on everthing.

tomorrow is another day with more lessons to learn...