Today at my work, two Latina girls came in and I was trying to help them. They didn’t speak very good English, I thought at first. Until I realized an important difference: they didn’t speak any English. They were asking me if I spoke Spanish, but I was too dumb to get what they meant at first because they were speaking very quietly. Then one of them said, “trabajo”, a word that I recognized after a second.

“Work, trabajo,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we have anything. Sorry.”

I felt bad about it and very embarrassed. Having obvious misunderstandings with other human beings can be very embarrassing. I wanted to be able to give them work, though I’m not really in any position to do so. I wouldn’t be so bold as to say that I was living a life somehow parallel to theirs, but I’m clinging to the bottom of the bracket in some respects within the social group to which I happen to belong, by birth and by circumstances (and not to mention decisions on my part). There is no real comparison between experiences within any of them, but we most certainly have something not unlike the caste system here in America. It’s almost never talked about. I don’t know how you want to rank who’s on the bottom exactly. Immigrants, the homeless, the poor blacks, the poor Hispanics, the poor whites, the middle class whites, the upper middle class whites, the full-on upper class.

The untouchables of most historical caste systems were those people relegated to the death and fecal trades: handling corpses and decaying waste matter. That’s why people didn’t want to touch them: they were physically covered with filth and diseases from their trade which sustained their life. I’m not untouchable, but I’ve spent six months of work cleaning up dog shit and piss, so I at least understand what it’s like, though I never got more than my shoes pissed on a little bit by the dogs.

I guess I’m just feeling more sensitive towards issues of labor lately, having been doing work and research of my own and felt foolish that I didn’t sooner understand what these women were asking me. I don’t know if anyone else in the store was even aware of the brief interaction that had taken place between the three of us. The whole thing just made me want to be more conscious of other people, of myself and of social situations in general which I feel like are about to become immensely more common in the United States.

These lessons, I have to say, will be very difficult for certain elements of middle-American caucasians. Many people are able to live their lives blithely unaware of what is required by an army of people they never even see who have little of the rights, recognition, social standing or money of an ordinary middle-class white person who considers themselves “poor.” They will require a much greater self-awareness, cultural sensitivity, understanding, sympathy, kindness, tact and diplomacy. It takes a certain level of balls to walk up to a person you’ve never seen before and ask for work, any work. And then to take it if they give it to you, and not complain because you don’t know where money might be coming next. You’re just trying to land yourself in a good safe position. Millions of people are living exactly that life right now, whether or not White America finally catches up with its own caste-customized economic crisis. May God have mercy on us all.

The acting got kind of slammed, but they loved the sets. w00t!

It seems like all the counter-cultural online intellectual-types of a few years ago have lately been singing the praises of an unlikely literary hero, a military analyst named John Robb who has been authoring a TypePad brand blog on global security and terrorism for quite a few years.

With richly descriptive passages such as this, I can easily see why:

Security will become a function of where you live and whom you work for, much as health care is allocated already. Wealthy individuals and multinational corporations will be the first to bail out of our collective system, opting instead to hire private military companies, such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, to protect their homes and facilities and establish a protective perimeter around daily life. Parallel transportation networks–evolving out of the time-share aircraft companies such as Warren Buffett’s NetJets–will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily pad to the next. Members of the middle class will follow, taking matters into their own hands by forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security–as they do now with education–and shore up delivery of critical services. These “armored suburbs” will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links; they will be patrolled by civilian police auxiliaries that have received corporate training and boast their own state-of-the-art emergency-response systems. As for those without the means to build their own defense, they will have to make do with the remains of the national system. They will gravitate to America’s cities, where they will be subject to ubiquitous surveillance and marginal or nonexistent services. For the poor, there will be no other refuge.

Robb’s writing echoes the dystopian science-fiction coming out in the mid-1980’s, except now it’s being written as statements of fact instead of fiction. This must be why the counter-cultural types like me are reading him these days: we like having our minds blown. We used to have to sit around and dream up fantastical possibilities to entertain our imaginations with, now all we have to do is look around.

Reader poll: when’s the last time you were in a room full of people who were pretty much all singing, including you? What kind of event was it?

Quote from Wishtank:

“Right now, we are dealing with a mass extinction of Earth species, exponentially rising toxic ocean pollution, and planet-wide bizarre health effects from the ambient levels of drugs and chemicals in our water and food. Global warming is not really a concern for me when you set it up against facts like that, I definitely think that’s a well-funded shiny distraction. “

“No matter what kind of nightmare collapse scenario you can imagine for the United States, Africa has already been there and back.”

Great post on Brainsturbator about the fact often-overlooked by Americans, that Third World countries (heck, entire continents) have already been through and continue to be put through what in America would only be considered the far-out paranoid noodlings of conspiracy theorists and collapseologists. Americans fear what might come of economic catastrophe while other countries have been dealing with massively worse crises for generations.

But his article is cool, because he uses Africa as a hopeful example for how ordinary people coming up with novel innovations on the ground is what gets people through hard times. And he suggests that Third World countries without the “advanced” infrastructure of a country like the United States are actually better off because they aren’t locked into one technological or industrial solution to their problems like we are.

*

Also see Justin’s provocative post on 5GW, fifth-generation warfare, on Wishtank magazine.

Anyway, been excited about the internet again lately as it seems like there is some good writing going on again, and a burdgeoning camaraderie between authors and readers of many different domains. It’s starting to remind me of some of my internet experiences of a few years ago, back when the web and blogging were in their heyday. These days, it seems like that stuff has been in decline. Maybe it’s having a revival? Let’s hope so, as there are lots of things to talk about right now!

This ad appeared at the top of one of my Gmail accounts. Should I be alarmed? Should I report it to the FBI?

“Are you a terrorist? - www.ACLU.org/watchlist - Watch list passes 1 million mark And you might be on it. Take action”

I’m waiting for the day when clicking on a link such as this automatically *puts you onto* a terrorist watch list. That day may not be very far off…

Just found this job listing on Craigslist Baltimore, a request for labor help to kick someone out of a house: wave of the future?

I need someone on standby to move roommates items out of my house. I have started the eviction and all I am waiting for is the date from the sheriff’s office.
I will be here to help.

Please email me if you can help. I need cheap labor, cash paid.

Eviction scabs.