More than one way to interpret "being poor?"

Russell Kirk (NY Times image)

I think it was the great conservative thinker Russell Kirk who suggested in effect that poor people are happiest being poor. Most likely he would reject the paraphrase. Who would want to answer for that? On its face it's objectionable.
Kirk was a man of ideas and sometimes these people deliver a jewel that contradicts typical good judgment. So, we need to peel away and find at least a kernel of truth in otherwise absurd assertions. Why am I reflecting on this? I am prodded again by wanting to understand my generation.
We were the children of affluence. It is said that WWII resulted in the great American middle class. Really it was an affluent class of the type never seen before. War veterans got advantages thanks to schooling from the GI Bill. "Well, they earned it for having been in the service in WWII," you'll argue. And of course they did. But they did not earn it in the standard capitalistic way.
If you enjoyed the "professor" character on the TV show "Gilligan's Island," you're appreciating someone who studied acting thanks to the GI Bill.
"Middle class" is a curious term. Our impulse is to want to celebrate it totally. Politicians do this constantly. We need a strong and happy middle class, they say. But of course, in order to have a middle class you must have a poor class. The rich will always be with us.
The affluent folks of post-WWII gave birth to the likes of high school class of 1973 members. That's me. It was an odd time to approach adulthood. Society was doing us a favor, it was suggested, having the drinking age lowered. Could you imagine that kind of thinking today? Our public schools were set up as an obstacle course - it was a survival game. We wanted to jump for joy whenever school was called off due to the weather. That happened a lot in our intense winters of the late '60s here in Minnesota. Our local radio station (Morris MN) had a song ready to play immediately following the announcement of no school. It began with the lyrics "That's what happiness is."
Teachers of that era made no bones about how much they hated their jobs. They negotiated for higher salary in a scorched-earth kind of way, as if their paychecks were the only reason they wanted to continue their miserable ordeal in life. Maybe the fathers from the WWII generation felt this was the way it should be, as it would reflect military-type discipline.
Another theory is that the purpose of school back then was to prepare kids for industrial age jobs. Schools are always guided to replicate the outside world, to prepare kids for that environment. Industrial age jobs? I'm reminded of the character of Mary Hartman's husband from the groundbreaking 1970s TV sitcom. This guy, lamenting his life one day, noted how he had been tested at work one day to see how fast he could do something. After that, he was expected to work that fast all the time. Such different times from today when our digital assets have created shortcuts and efficiencies all over the place.
Today's work has stress but it no longer has the kind of drudgery that was once common. Today it is assumed you have "passion" for your work.
 
Song like a museum piece
Just as we might look upon the lowered drinking age as odd, it's ditto with the Johnny Paycheck song "Take this Job and Shove It." The attitude is an anachronism. The song is actually misunderstood. You're missing the point if you think this is just a guy driven crazy at work. The thing driving him crazy, in truth, is the loss of his significant other. She had "done left him" to use country music vernacular. (I actually used the word "done" in this context in the song I wrote about Kirby Puckett, on YouTube - lyrics say the Minnesota hockey North Stars "done left us" for Texas.)
However, I do not have a southern accent. My Christmas song for 2019 is at a Nashville TN studio as I am writing this. I love southerners as long as they can behave themselves.
 
Switch on the "Wayback"
So, what about Russell Kirk's suggestion, at least an implied suggestion, that poor people might be happiest in their deprived state, as "poor." Why would I even give this suggestion the slightest consideration? Well I can be like Peabody and Sherman and turn on the "Wayback Machine." No one in his right mind would want to go back to 1973. It's being done here to make a generational point.
I was at a summer resort in 1973, the classic "summer job." I will not give the resort's name. The operators were blameless. They sought young people to hire who had at least a modicum of musical talent. Many of these kids came from "good families" and attended college in places like St. Olaf. Most had not spent much time "on their own" in life. Most of them behaved in a disgusting way. This isn't even a matter of opinion.
Peer pressures made the problems worse. The young people stayed up late and behaved in a raucous, irreverent and actually anti-social way. There was nothing constructive about it. It was the antithesis of being constructive. And they reveled in it, I assure you. My observations are from firsthand. A girl who played in the St. Olaf band gave oral sex to a guy she'd just met at an outdoor party. I could go on.
Our "rock" music was so different from what our parents preferred, we might have been space aliens. And it had to be loud. The loud music became a subject at a meeting at UMM once. My father reported saying he had reservations about it, but that the voices on the other side affirmed "this is their culture." It might have been. But kids eventually retreated from it when technology allowed us to appreciate good music that did not have to be played loud to impress people.
The cabin where I stayed at the resort was full of marijuana smoke one night. The manager happened by, surprising us and he reportedly said "is Brian here?" He was no doubt concerned that I would relay reports of all the ridiculous debauchery back to my father who was in a position to facilitate employees for the resort.
 
Not claiming to be perfect
I had my own limitations that summer, but not related to the kind of misbehavior I'm citing. I really wasn't ready to live away from home yet, and my parents should have realized that. We all have human limitations. My parents grew up in the Great Depression and they knew they absolutely had to get their act together, just to obtain life's necessities. But then in the post-WWII, with real affluence coming their way, they forgot what adversity had actually done for them. They didn't want to wish that on their kids, naturally.
But they seemed clueless about what generous material blessings were going to do to their kids. Naturally, us kids should have been totally thankful for our blessings. But it doesn't work like that. Ergo, I'm returning to the Russell Kirk thesis that poor people might be happiest in the state of being poor. When you give them things they haven't really earned, it doesn't work out.

(image from "Goodreads")

Do I literally agree with Russell Kirk? Not really. I need to keep my faith in humankind, hoping that people can simply use their own wisdom to plot the desired path.
There is a book called "A Generation of Sociopaths" (Bruce Cannon Gibney) about my generation of the boomers. So it's not like I'm a lone voice in the wilderness. We continue to feel entitled as we retire with Social Security and other comfortable benefits, while the young get saddled with debt and become embittered. Pretty soon we'll have to start going to them to say we need even more help. Hey, it's always been there for us in the past, right?
 
Addendum: An exhibit to support how the boomers didn't appreciate all the things that had been given them, was Mad Magazine. The magazine poked fun at the symbols of the good life our parents had given us. Tom Engelhardt wrote about this in his book "The End of Victory Culture."
  
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com