Living without any real hope of the future… changes you.
— Ian Welsh, from “The Personal Politics of Hopelessness”
I talk a lot about hope. And I’ve talked about being a class-jumper, thanks to the hard work of my parents, and my own hard work, and luck. I think hard about the path of my life: the circumstances that took me from a comfortable home to a crumbly one, enough money to not enough, and then propelled me like a rocket into one of the most elite schools on the planet, still poor and suddenly aware that the people I’d thought were “rich” in the relative backwater of Tampa, Florida probably couldn’t have gotten in the front door with the parents of the kids I saw around me. I learned about a whole new kind of rich those four years.
And I learned again the lessons of not enough as soon as I left St. Paul’s. But I knew that somehow I had to find my way back to enough. And it wasn’t just about money anymore — what I learned at my privileged prep school was that elite people had richness of experience. Richness of life.
Part of that richness, I now understand, has to do with the privilege of a baseline assumption that things will always work out. And one of the hardest things about being poor, apart from the actual experience of poverty, is the baseline assumption that things will not work out. This baseline assumption, and its pervasive influence on individual humans and the culture as a whole, is very well explained in this Huffington Post essay by Ian Welsh on the personal politics of hopelessness.
It’s really speaking to me. I haven’t had his experience — I’ve never been on welfare, and I do have a BA, and there’s that prep school education — but I’ve had the shitty jobs, sometimes three at a time, and I’ve felt some of these same feelings. Those are hard stories to tell without sounding either self-aggrandizing (oh, look how much I’ve suffered) or self-pitying (oh, look how much I’ve suffered) or self-justifying (it’s okay that I’m a solidly middle-class well-educated white girl because oh, look how much I’ve suffered). So I won’t try today. But I’m thinking about those times, and I’m feeling for the people who are in them right now.
I often get prickly when people talk about “the elites.” I dislike categorization, and I have enough experience of being both elite and oppressed that it gets a little confusing for me sometimes. But I get what Welsh is talking about in this article: and I am sorry to say that I think he’s right, that there’s an elite class in this country that doesn’t get it at all because they have no direct reference points of any kind on which to base an empathic* response. I don’t think every rich person is this kind of elite; but I’ve met the true elite, and among them are people with the puzzled, amused stare of utter lack of understanding: Well, just get your dad to put some more money in your account.
We are reaping the whirlwind of What Happens When Those Folks are In Charge. Part of what happens is the spread of personal hopelessness. That angers me, and somehow makes me feel ashamed as well, for reasons that aren’t clear to me.
Anyway, I think it’s a great essay, and I’d like to know what you think of it.
—-
(* with a nod to Robin)
The ones with no empathy also make really crappy doctors, because they want to prescribe antibiotics when the real problem is poverty and lack of opportunity. No-one should ever be allowed to graduate from medical school who hasn’t had to pound the pavements looking for a part-time job or cooked an ordinary meal for themselves or washed their own socks.
I think it’s a great article, especially the observation the we as a society never discuss class or realize its pernicious effect. If you start out behind, you rarely catch up. And what is an acceptable unemployment rate anyway? Zero if I value others right to work as much as my own. The real basis of any economic system is the labour of a bunch of ill-paid unappreciated working stiffs, not capital as we have been led to believe. When we started outsourcing jobs and undermined the ability of our workers to buy the products we produce, that was maybe the beginning of the end.If we don’t care enough to collaborate and cooperate, then hope is an illusion.
It’s a good article, and I do agree with a lot of what he says. And with you.
But no, I don’t agree with him about hope and hoplessness. Hope is not a function of class or money. I think it is a disservice to those (poor) people to say that they are hopeless. I think that plenty of poor people still have hope. That doesn’t mean that they have a reasonable expectation of becoming rich. And maybe the kind of hope they have is unrealistic. But I think hope comes, not from being presented with lots of opportunity for financial gain, but from within.
I’m not positive why some people have more of it than others, but I think it has something to do with self confidence. With faith and trust in oneself and with what is outside ourselves too. Maybe there is a hope gene, but Iâm guessing a lot of having hope is learned behavior.
I believe that people without any kind of hope are unhappy. Many poor people are not unhappy. Maybe what they hope for has nothing to do with finances. Maybe they just believe that they will be able to keep a roof over their heads and food in their families mouths. Someway, somehow they will find a way – yes that things will work out. Maybe they believe that no matter what befalls them, they will be ok. Maybe what they hope for is love. Laughter. Light. Joy. Maybe love allows people to feel hope. Not that it is a given, but that it is part of the equation.
Maybe they get their hope from places we don’t. Maybe it is false hope. Maybe not. Maybe they get it from faith in a god or higher power that will take care of them. But it is still real to them. It sustains them.
And I donât believe that all of those poor people have no hope of moving up in economic class. I know some poor people. Not a lot of them, but a few. Some of them are smart and ambitious, and they work hard and have their own business (house cleaning and yard work are businesses), and they hope to make more money, etc. I think they may be doing better than I am right now.
Many people cannot empathize with people who experience things they don’t – those things may include poverty or any other kind of suffering. That is a fact of life. Poverty will not go away in a capitalist society, imo. We need to socialize basic human needs such as food, shelter, and health care for that to change. People who have more â more money, more brain power, more physical power will have to provide for those who are less privileged or less capable than themselves.
And I think itâs true what one of the commenters to his article said about not only poor people being hopeless. There are plenty of people in the middle class who are hopeless. And plenty of rich people who are hopeless as well. Hope is not all about finances. Maybe they donât ever worry about having enough to eat or a place to sleep, but maybe they still feel that their life is hopeless. That itâs not enough â that they are not enough, that they will never feel enough joy or love or whatever in their life.
I believe there is an elite class, but I wouldn’t necessarily agree that the whole middle class is part of it.
But yes, I think a lot of the problems we are having could have been averted if people were not so greedy. And if they could have more empathy for people who have less than they do. I donât think it makes them bad people just because they have not known economic hardship. What makes them bad is when they fail to care about the hardships of their fellow humans. And I am afraid that that will not change anytime soon; it will take generations to correct that kind of character trait.
And yes, this is coming from someone who has had many opportunities given to her.
I don’t know… the most hopeful people I’ve met in my life are extremely poor. I also met a man who earned half a million dollars per year, had no debts or high expenses, and yet a day didn’t go by without him thinking of ways to kill himself—yeah, he did try out some of them. In high school, the other kids on scholarships got really bitter because they were ‘poor’. They continued to hard and eventually went to a good university, got high-paying jobs, and are as miserable as ever, thinking they’ll never be good enough no matter what. It seems that, to them, finally getting what they thought they wanted so badly took away the hope that money would fix their lives and make all the ill feelings they harboured magically disappear.
I don’t believe hope is related to social/economic class, but has more to do with the way one looks at the world. I also believe hope isn’t always what keeps us away from despair. During the most trying times of my life, what kept me going was not the hope that things would get better. I seriously thought for a while that I was doomed to live on 30 cents a day and work crummy jobs for the rest of my life. I had no hope, but I knew I was working the crummy job and eating rice and beans because it was a better option than being put in a straitjacket and having to listen to my mom tell me about the many ways I was going to burn in hell because I was a dyke. Every time I’m in a desperate situation, I give myself options. Even thoughts such as I can chose to put up with this job, or I can go live on the streets again. I can choose to put up with this pain my body is going through, or I can go check out from life for good.
I think, more than forcing the wealthy to try out how it feels to work and live under the strain of poverty, we should rethink the way we educate the coming generations. I don’t have much hope (yeah, that word) for us adults. As Jennifer said, this change will take a long time. Money handouts don’t work, IMO. Money, if people haven’t been taught to think what to do with it, only helps them self-destruct faster. I’ve been saying for years and years that education is the only sound investment we can make as a society, education and proper nutrition for our children and youth.
I particularly dislike the way we bring up children, telling them, “You must do this because I tell you to/ because that’s the way life works/ because you have no choice.” When I work with children, I always give them options: “We can solve some math problems on this notebook, or we can play this domino and multiply every pair of numbers we want to join so you get your math practice that way. It’s your choice, what would you rather do?” They can even make me go away if they wish: “Oh, so you’re too tired to work on math today? Okay, I’ll go home then. Nope, we’re not building anything with Legos today because we only do that after we’ve worked on math. You tell me what you want us to do today. Should I go away so you can rest, or do we work through these lessons for an hour and then we go play? It’s your choice.” Maybe these kids will be able to apply a similar outlook in the future if they ever find themselves having to work McDonald’s or whatever.
Choices, however gloom or petty they might be, have always given me a sense of control, they help me get through the day. Hope is something I save for the times I’m high on sugar and want to daydream about winning the lottery. I am, though, one of the privileged: I have a very able mind and body, I’ve cultivated lots of marketable skills, was able to seize one of the best educations available to a Mexican, etc.
Thank you all for this conversation. I don’t have time to respond at length right now (taxes, urgh) but I want to… will do as soon as I can.
A friend of mine who comes from Iran said, “It doesn’t matter what country they come from. Rich people stick together.” I’m not saying poor people can’t or don’t have hope. I’m just saying class is a real barrier whether we talk about it or not.
A Wish
There is nothing scary about a wish, except that sometimes
It comes true.
It’s as though, by sheer will power, we’ve changed
The rules.
The future fraught with what we thought.
Getting our wish, we may have made someone else sad or angry Or
Count for naught.
Wishes are selfish and dangerous and unfortunately a lot like Hopes.
Hopes are what make us keep going.
Hopes are dreams brought into the
Light of day.
Hopes are games we need to play.
Hopes are humankind’s
Real way to pray.
I wish . . . ?
I couldnât help but think about this hope stuff some more today. So I figured I’d get it out of my head and put it here.
Of course I overheard your conversation in the other room, where you said this:
âWhatâs interesting to me is that people are arguing that ânot all poor people are hopelessâ as if that disproved the notion that inculcated hopelessness is a socialized way of enforcing class barriersâ¦.â
I mustâve missed something because I didnât read that in his article. It seemed to me that he was mostly blaming our class problem on the eliteâs selfishness. While his article does identify a terribly serious problem in our society, I didnât hear any solutions proffered either. He said this,
âSo there’s no empathy born of shared experience, of the knowledge that sometimes life sucks and no matter what you do, it’s going to suck, and that that’s the way many people live. And there’s no acknowledgment of a need to make America work for everyone, because for the elites, that’s simply not true: America doesn’t need to work for everyone for things to be good for them.
This then, is how they’ve acted. Plenty of help for themselves, for the people they see as part of their group. And very little help for everyone else. Because the elites aren’t like ordinary people, they don’t believe they have many shared interests with you, and they no longer have any real shared experience.â
I donât believe that most elites believe that. I think that most of them have bought into the lie just the same as the poorer people. The lie that itâs just a matter of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. I do however believe heâs right about most people not understanding what itâs like to really be poor â to have no safety net and now way up or out. If they did, then they would help in more meaningful ways.
I donât think the there is an inculcated hopelessness in our society, I think it is more likely that there is an inculcated hopefulness. I think we are fed things like âThe American Dreamâ our whole lives and taught to hope and believe that (and you alluded to this I think) hard work and determination will get us there. And if you donât make it, well you didnât work hard enough or want it badly enough. To me that is a big part of a lie that keeps people tragically stuck in dreary lives at J.O.B.âs they hate. I also think most of the âeliteâ believe itâs a matter of âsurvival of the fittestâ. And they tell themselves the same lie â that everyone in America has the opportunity to work hard and get that dream life with the picket fence.
That makes hope sound like a bad thing. To me the only bad hope is a false hope – one predicated on lies and a false sense of reality. As you said Kelley, âAs if the failure to do well is a simple failure of strength of will, rather than a complex mix of class barriers and social resources and personality and luckâ¦.â
I donât pretend to have the answers. And I don’t know why I can’t let this go. I just donât think that hope is a privilege. I think it is a right. And that it helps people when it is not based on lies and misinformation. And it takes more than hope â people need tools and real opportunities. They need real help.
As you know, I’m not trying to argue with you on this. We have different perspectives. I know we’re both cool with that.
If hope is a fundamental value in your life, you should have it, use it, act from it. Absolutely. Many people have done this successfully, including me.
But that’s not true for everyone. Not everyone has hope as a fundamental value. Many people have the consistent daily experience of believing that things will not get better for them. They either lose hope, or never have it. Whether you think it’s a right or a privilege, I don’t believe that we all have it but just maybe don’t really know it, which is on some level the argument I see you making in our conversations.
I think hope is relative, not absolute. I think some kinds of hope are better than others. I think that hope can be a hallucinogen, an opiate, or a miracle cure. It depends.
Jennifer, I tend to see hope as a sponge that absorbs the help in such a way as to use it up before that help has a chance to really affect an outcome. So to add to what you’ve said, I think that help has to be offered on a long term basis with the understanding that the initial effect may be the exact opposite of what the helper intended.
As you also said, “I also think most of the âeliteâ believe itâs a matter of âsurvival of the fittestâ. And they tell themselves the same lie â that everyone in America has the opportunity to work hard and get that dream life with the picket fence.” When the help doesn’t take effect immediately, this cultural belief (lie) comes to the fore and is in fact reinforced.
I’m actually pretty pessimistic about the kind of changing happening that would mean the end of desperately poor people, and the kind of class system the we have now. Not that it might not happen – just that I think that kind of paradigm shift would take many years to bring about. Well, maybe if we get one of those apocalypses sooner than that, we could see something better rise from the ashes….
No, I don’t believe we all have hope but don’t really know it. I may have sounded like I thought that, but I don’t. I was going to say that we all have the potential for hope, but I realize that’s not always true either. But most of us in the US do have some options/choices no matter how small or difficult they may be. And I think, therein can be found a sliver of hope. And that can be encouraged to grow and help people find courage and motivation.
Sometimes I think that people do have hope, but they call it something else from what I would. Which is maybe what you are hearing.
I agree with the last part of your comment. Hope is one of those “big” words. It can have many faces and degrees. I have to take the good with the bad if I want some I guess.
Maybe it’s not a right, but for my money, it could/should be. Everyone doesn’t have it as a fundamental value, but they should have that option if they want it.
I think that we can give people hope by giving them a job or education or food or love. Not always, but often.
But as pointed out elsewhere (like in that fear.less article), hope without the courage to act, is not much good.
And I may be running out of things to say about hope – believe it or not. 🙂
I agree with you about choice, for sure. And whenever you want to say more about hope, just come on back 🙂
Ok, I lied. I’m back already. This sort of ties in with all of this.
If hope were thought of as a right, then that would create an obligation. Rights create obligations. And if you think of obligations and opportunities at the same time, that makes many people uncomfortable. So it’s important to remember that they are not mutually exclusive. Surely we could offer people hope as well as opportunity to follow up on that hope. Support them in ways that would help them find courage.
Here is an interesting article (I thought) about how when we expect people to fail, they usually do. In it they mention a former teacher who left teaching because of our broken education system.
“We expect failure from students who grow up around drugs and without strong parental and community support. We expect failure from the teachers who would try to give them a different path forward.
In so doing, we cue society to look at our education system, and by extension the people in it, as broken; worthy of pity and perhaps even sad admiration, but fundamentally fighting an unwinnable battle and as such, naive.
And while our media machine holds up the Finding Forrester examples of unexpected success, the focus on exceptional individuals in the stories we tell ends up reinforcing the hopelessness of the system as a whole.
While we understand, on some intuitive level, the debilitating impact of societal scorn, it remains far too easy for us to write away the emotional impact of societal pity. This is what Sarah Fine is talking about when she asks why her lawyer friends never have to explain why they do what they do. It’s not about the work itself, but about the way society values that work.”
I thought that Ian Welsh’s post comes from a place of expecting people to fail, and that is what I took umbrage with. But I have to admit that what he is saying is in large part true at this moment. Changing this system will take a long time.
Anyway, I think this is related because I’d still like to think that there is a way out of our fucked up system that makes it so hard for poor people to get out of that cycle. And well, of course I think that hope is a factor in there. Not that this proves that theory….
And next time I will NOT forget about that dad gum smiley face! (g)
I can’t speak for Ian, but from my perspective his post came from a place of having felt that he was expected, and was expecting himself, to fail. I didn’t see his post talking about an absolute no-way-out (obviously he’s not in that place anymore himself). But I do think that it’s the way the world looks to many people at some point in their life.