Yesterday I accidentally listened to Elvis Presley singing In The Ghetto. Accidentally because I try not to, at least in public, since it’s one of the songs that make me talk back. I also read this post by our very own Phantom. And this is my way of talking back to it.
“Now, Phantom? NOW? The left has always been about discrediting free will or what we now call individual agency.”
Take “in the Ghetto” — do, I don’t want it — yes, I know that all of Elvis biographers go on about how he was being caring to sing it. Maybe he was. Or maybe he thought he was. Maybe he even believed in the message, though G-d only knows why given his own life trajectory. And maybe the reason everyone thinks this song is “caring” is that they have a massive Marxist black hole in their heads.
Because what “In the Ghetto” does is show someone whose life is pre-determined from the fact he’s born black, in the Ghetto, to a mother who doesn’t want him because she doesn’t need another “little hungry mouth to feed.” He’s going to grow up to be an angry young man, and try to steal a car and get shot. It’s DESTINY. It’s all PREDETERMINED.
It’s tripe. It’s insulting tripe at that. No, it’s really insulting tripe. I won’t call it racist, because honestly Elvis probably never thought of race as a factor in it, just of poverty. And never realized how insulting that was to most people who are born poor. Because the vast majority of people who are born poor NEVER steal cars or try to shoot people, okay.
They might not get very far. I’m not going to pretend the circ*mstances of your birth don’t influence your life. Of course they do. Of course people who are born poor are more likely to live at that level of society than people born to a multimillionaire family. BUT THEY’RE NOT MORE LIKELY TO BECOME CRIMINALS. Maybe more likely to be caught and not to be able to get our of the charges — stares Hunter Bidenly — but that’s about it.
Here’s the thing, though: most people who are born at whatever level tend to stay at that level. Downward movement is slightly more likely than upward, but even that is not extremely likely. And the reason is not that their future is predetermined, but that most people tend to understand and like the subculture into which they were born and in which they were raised. That’s all.
Look, I look at the way a lot of other people — richer and poorer than I, to be fair — live and I don’t want that. I also don’t understand why anyone would like that.
Let’s take richer, first. I could have chosen to become a lady who does lunch. It would have meant a considerable reduction in our real life quality, as it would be hard to find time to write, or read as much as I do. And I’d have had to zip my lip. But the thing is, I’m an introvert. Cons are a chore as much as I love my fans. If I didn’t love my fans and meting them, I’d never go. Why would I want to have that kind of social club close up and personal. Yes, I do realize it might have helped with Dan’s work opportunities, and heck, with opportunities for the kids too. And all sorts of access. I mean “Ladies who do lunch” work. And the work helps their families. It’s just a different kind of work. And one I’m not suited to and which would make me mortally unhappy.
I no longer do much furniture refinishing and such, though Is till do house repair and fixups and probably always will. But the thing is I realized long ago if I won the lottery, I’d still live more or less as I do. I really don’t have interest in the “finer things.” We’d still buy our cars used, because buying them new is wasteful. I’d still repair things rather than replace them, because to do otherwise is wasteful. And though I’ve been forced to give up buying clothes from thrift stores, because they suck in this area, if they didn’t I still would. (You pay in time rather than money.)
I can imagine something from an “upper class” wondering why I don’t do better for myself, and sneering at me or imagining that the circ*mstances of my birth pre-destined me. (Though how you would, considering the absurd life I’ve lived I don’t know.)
In the same way it took me decades to understand that those who frustrate me, because they could better themselves and won’t are perfectly happy where they are. To me living on bare minimum and having to make all sorts of compromises sounds hellish, but they know how to navigate life at that level and are self-obviously okay with it.
What makes it seem like they aren’t and makes people wonder why other people don’t “better themselves” and make something of their opportunities is that most humans — not just poor ones — do kind of wish their lives were better. But they wish for this in the abstract and without considering the costs. As in, I don’t know anyone who is poor and doesn’t dream of a “lottery win.” And heck, I do too. Periodically I even buy a ticket (usually when trying to get change and not wanting to buy a candy bar) but I also know if I ever win the lottery literally no one will know. Or people will, but only if they look closely. Because if I won the lottery, I’d have a full time assistant, who also does things like proofread. And I’d have a house cleaning person. And Dan could quit so he can work at the things he wants to do with writing, music and math. And other than that…. oh. Pretty much the same. Okay, fine, the cats would have the fancy food they love ALL the time, instead of once a month. And the boys would each get a house and new cars.
But would our life change? Not really. Nor would most people’s. Most people spend a lottery win within a couple of years, no matter how large, and then go back to living as they always did.
“But Sarah, you’re saying it’s predestination.” No. I’m not. I’m really not. I’m saying most people make the effort needed to live the way they want to, and not a little bit more.
Which means, yes, people born poor and used to being poor are likely to stay poor. They can escape — even in more stratified societies than ours people manage to leave their past behind and climb up the ladder. The cost just starts at high and goes higher. — but most of them don’t really want to. They just vaguely wish things would be better.
(Sometimes I wonder if that’s why most other countries hate America and Americans. Because we’re sort of a middle finger to the face saying “yes, you can escape and do better” — because even our poor are better off than most of the world middle class — and yes, there is a price here too. Americans work longer, and have a different mind set about work than most of the world.)
But other than the fact that humans are lazy, individual humans have agency. Do I need to say that? Of course we do. And what any human can accomplish given enough wish to is almost infinite.
While the majority of humans are willing to do the minimum work needed to perhaps live a little better than they were raised, civilization is built by those who have ambition and are willing to work for it. Those who figured out how to domesticate animals and grow what vegetables they wanted instead of hoping those randomly grew, are the first in a long chain of innovators, trying to improve their own lives and thereby improving everyone else’s.
Does any of that prove that there is individual will, instead of predestination? No. But predestination and the idea that humans were all somehow programmed is idiocy anyway. Idiocy at the level of “If it were true, what would it matter?” and “All it does is make humans into widgets who don’t count, so why would I believe that?”
And this btw, even though Heinlein said it, is why I hate the idea that humans don’t reason, they just pretend to. True in some circ*mstances. There have for instance, been presidential candidates I dislike at a gut level so much I could never rationally consider them. (Coughs. Clinton.) But even so I tried. And they didn’t help their case.
Not true in every circ*mstance, and also avoids facing the fact that humans often reason at a level they’re now aware of. For instance, I knew there was something “off” with the whole covidiocy before I found out the facts of the Diamond Princess. Had I made up my mind before I studied those? Not really. I just felt uncomfortable about it. But I’m sure it means my subconscious had caught on to a lot of the inconsistencies and nonsense in how the “emergency” was being handled, not to mention the air of glee of bureaucrats and kleptocrats viewing it as a golden opportunity to consolidate power and control elections. Was it “pretending to reason?” No.
None of this “You were predestined to do that” passes the smell test. Predestined by whom? And how? If it’s all a game of inevitability since the first cell came to life, what’s the point? And why would anyone who believes this bother to stay alive, even? And yet they stay alive and strive, which means they don’t really believe it. (And we’ll leave aside the very weird religious creeds that believe this. Yes, I know some of my readers belong to those. pardon me, but you’re very weird. I won’t pronounce on your concept of G-d. Heinlein already did for one. For another, my religion is funny too. But that’s all different from pretending that predestination makes ANY rational sense in the secular world and absent divine revelation.)
More important here, though, is that the left has always believed in predestination. Or at least always believed that individual humans have no agency. Now this might be because the entire Marxist theory is the creation of a man who obviously didn’t believe any other individuals existed or were capable of agency. Look at his conception of the world as a giant game of oppressed and oppressors engaged in eternal tit for tat. And how the only things with agency were “classes” as defined by someone whose understanding of humans might lead one to believe he was an alien spider from Alpha Centauri.
Unfortunately this leaked out as his followers took over education and entertainment and news. People got bombarded with this idea so much that they came to believe utterly bizarre, mind boggling lies like “Poverty causes crime.”
Due to various bad habits of mind, it might be more accurate to say that crime causes poverty, to be fair, but at best the two are weakly linked mostly due to the fact that again you’re more likely to get caught and punished if you’re poor.
But tell me, given Hunter Biden’s economic circ*mstances of birth, would you have predicted his trajectory? Why on Earth does he need to be criminal, when he could simply be lazy and charming? Of course, if you understand his father, you start to see, yes, it’s what he was raised in and what he’s comfortable with. (Except for maybe some vestige of conscience which he must dull with crack.)
There are, I bet, as many shiftless criminals among the very wealthy as they very poor. Most humans just do the bare minimum.
This whole idea that humans have no agency is fueled by people refusing to understand other humans don’t want to live as they do. That other humans are genuinely different.
And the left has always thought humans had no agency, because if they did it left precious little room for bossing them around, let alone for the graft and corruption that is the life blood of Marxists.
If humans don’t really have individual agency, that means all humans. And what difference would it make? We’d all be G-d’s NPCs. And He’d be playing the world’s most boring game. And us arguing about predestination is predestined, and just another boring scripted argument and the only mystery is why we haven’t all opened our veins in a warm bath, except of course, we’re not predestined to.
But in this as in everything else, the left always excepts themselves. Their argument actually goes: “Other people don’t have Free Will as I do. And that’s why they should live according to my mental script. Because that’s better for everyone.”
To which my answer is two middle fingers straight up. Yeah, maybe in the boring game of the universe, I was scripted to do that, but the so called elites better learn to enjoy my digitus impudicus waved in their faces.
Because that’s all their cute little idea that I’m a widget will get them. And it will get them that in great abundance.
