We the Living: Part One

I took this picture in 2015 in a post mentioning that John B. Castleman was a soldier who fought for the Confederacy. The statue was taken down in 2020. 

 I think the most dangerous threat to our democracy is the idea that half of the people in this country are fundamentally wrong; the notion that some people hold views that make them irredeemable in the eyes of society; the idea that some people are just pathetically stupid and they will never get "it" (whatever "it" is for you). Even if you grant that half of the people are "all-right", that's a dim view of humanity.  Ultimately, why would you listen to such people?  And if you can't listen to them, how can you allow them the same rights as you?  In effect, they become the obstacle; something that must be dealt with in one form or another.  Perhaps they should be barred from voting. Perhaps they should be kicked out of the country. Or maybe just shot. As long as you believe that they are the problem, you can never have a democracy, because in a democracy they are the whole point. 

There is really only one principle in a democracy: all people are created equal.  The second you lose that principle, you've lost your democracy.  Thomas Jefferson tried to espouse that principle before there even was a democracy.  He did say all men were created equal, but the principle was in its infancy.  They fixed that oversight in Seneca Falls with The Declaration of Sentiments in 1848 seventy-two years later.  You might point out that Jefferson didn't even mean all men were created equal when he wrote it.  He did own men after all (including his own son).  But I've taught U.S. History, for many years, and while I've always taught the facts, I don't damn the principle that he tried to espouse and failed to live up to.  He's dead after all. And so are his slaves.  They can't own us any more, so I leave them where they belong- in the past. 

It wasn't until the 13th Amendment that all men were politically equal, and not until the 19th Amendment that women were included.  This doesn't invalidate the revolutionary nature of Jefferson's words.  It rather illustrates the nature of democracy: that it is a work in progress.  Since the beginning, whenever we get closer to it, we can see that there is more work to be done. We do not bemoan the incompleteness of our democracy, but simply push forward in making it the perfect union that it was meant to be.  

You can argue that Jefferson didn't really mean it.  He was just trying to get a rebellion started.  To which I would reply that it didn't matter what he meant.  It only matters what the men and women who fought on behalf of the American Revolution meant.  It only matters what the generations who came after believe that his words meant.  Meaning is a living thing.  It is not some artifact that gets frozen in time. It is born, matures and sometimes dies. 

The idea that we are created with inalienable rights is another bedrock principle of democracy.  This was really John Locke's idea, but even he wasn't a practitioner of egalitarianism as we understand it today.  Still, the idea is pretty revolutionary.  Locke was arguing that humans had natural rights, and thus if a people were to be severely injured by their ruler(s), they were justified in rebelling against him/them (Locke was not to be confused with a feminist).  

A question I often ask my students is: where are your rights?  They are usually confused by this question. They initially think I'm trying to suggest that rights don't exist.  But when they reply, "We don't have any rights," I go, "Of course, you do!" Then I bring up our school's "right to learn" policy, which is essentially that no student may interfere with another student's right to learn.  I point out that if a student is being rowdy and distracting, I have to send them out of the room for violating the rights of the other students in the class.  Concrete actions were taken as a result of an intangible right.  Ideally they come to realize that a right is a living thing,  and that it needs to be maintained and nourished, or it will die.  

As we dig deeper into the concept of rights, we learn that rights change over time.  Prior to the 19th Amendment, women had no right to vote.  Now they do. Not only do some rights come and other rights go, but rights are interpreted and reinterpreted all the time.  I typically have to remind students that legally they have no say in who has what rights, but that they should start thinking about it now, because they will, and that it won't matter what their ancestors view on the subject was anymore than it mattered what Jefferson's ancestors thought about the subject.   Only the living get a say in a democracy. 

I must say, I have had a lot of success with kids, and I wish I could be as successful with adults.  Most adults think that their rights are tangible things that they inherited, and they're stuck with them even if they don't like them, but rights only exist in our hearts and minds.  So too, a democracy is not some relic of the past, but a living breathing entity that exists not outside of us, but within each and every one of us.  We are the democracy. A government can and should protect your rights, but ultimately you are the guarantor of your own rights.  

It can seem like a bit of a paradox.  A right is typically viewed as something that we're born with and that can't be taken away, but that is only because some of our rights are so important that we treat them this way.  And because humans tend to want the same basic things. In order to have a democracy, people's voices need to be heard.  That's as true today as it was hundreds of years ago.  People need to be able protest, and freely assemble.  These rights have not been in existence since the dawn of humanity, but they have withstood the test of time.  

While the particulars of a right are open to interpretation (freedom of speech does not give you the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, for example), I think that you can make at least one general statement about a right: it is only a right if all people can enjoy it.  Otherwise it is only a privilege.  See, rights and democracies go hand in glove.  Just as a rights are living things, so is a democracy.  Both need to be maintained, and both must apply to the people as a whole- not just some people- because otherwise, they are not legitimate.  

And so, once you begin to dehumanize people, and see them as less than, you should be aware that you are inching away from a democracy.  Racism, sexism and homophobia are all inherently bad, but they are especially bad in a democracy, because they force you to fail the universality test.  The universality test is real simple: do you believe that all people...(fill in the blank). If you do, then it's universal.  Democracy is universal and rights are universal, and yes, I am aware that there is a lot to fleshed out in the details beyond those statements, but if we can agree on those basic principles, I feel like we're off to a good start. 

My Persona

 It's hard to believe that I released the song "One Line Epitaph" fifteen years ago and people continue to listen to it all over the world.  Every month I can see on Apple Music that hundreds of people are listening. That's just one platform. I'm on every digital music platform that I know of, so I imagine that there's many more out that. For some reason I am unable to track that particular song on Spotify or Pandora, but I imagine the song does well. That's not bad for an artist who hasn't toured in over a decade.  I haven't been able to do any promotions, but people are listening.  I don't know who they are, but they're listening. 

A couple years ago I discovered that an album that I had left for dead, Love and War Vol. 1, had managed to get over ten thousand spins. I had done zero promotion for that album, except to mention that it was out. That motivated me to release three albums since that discovery, and the most recent one Belief, a reissue from my band Satori, has shot up to the number two position after "One Line Epitaph." Again zero promotion. 

The idea that I could get so many people to listen to my music by doing nothing but putting music out there goes against the most basic laws of the music business.  It has certainly motivated me to put more product out there. I have had dozens of albums in various states of completion for years, but now I'm starting to finish them and put them out.  It's challenging, because while many people are streaming my music, streaming doesn't generate revenue.  

One might assume that I should do some more promotions, but I'm not so sure.  Not only can I track the number of listens, I know geographically where my songs are being listened to. I live in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was born here. I'm 48 years old.  That's a lot of friends, and a lot of reach, but Louisville is not my number 1 city. That would be Halifax.  At least on Spotify it is. Louisville cones in at number 10. On Apple music it's 19th after San Diego. I've never been to San Diego or Halifax.

This brings me (in a very meandering way) to the idea of a persona. We all have a persona or public self, which is distinct from our more private self.  For some, their persona and their private selves are not very distant.  For others, they are miles apart.  Personas are not necessarily crafted.  Young children have personas that they may not even be aware of, but their parent's have discovered this when their child's teacher describes behavior (good or bad) that the parent's have never witnessed.  Are we talking about the same child?

When I was much younger, I could easily be described as hypersensitive. I always felt most at east either by myself, or with a very close friend. I was a serial monogamist of best friends. Unfortunately many of them moved away.  I cried hard and often at feelings of rejection, inadequacy and embarrassment, but I discovered that I was less likely to feel this way if I wasn't entirely myself. Or more accurately, a different self. 

Our personas are not falsehoods.  They are our public face.  As I grew up I had the public face of a person with a lot of confidence.  I didn't need anyone's approval, so they couldn't hurt me. I didn't need to be accepted, because my acceptance was all that necessary.  This was true to a point. I was pleased with myself creatively, though in truth I didn't understand how I did what I did, and so taking credit for it seemed a bit like showboating. 

I was in high school when I started writing songs, and the key was always to get away from everyone and everything. This was fairly easy since I was usually the only one at home.  I had the run of the place, and I would find a way each day to get to a place where I could by myself and let my creativity run wild. If anyone intruded on my space, I'd have to stop what I was doing immediately. My magic didn't work, if someone could see me. 

On days when I wasn't at home writing music, I was doing theatre. Unfortunately, I was not a very good actor.  The only decent performance I gave was when I wrote the script.  I was pretty good at comedy, because it didn't require that I bare my soul publicly.  As a result, my public persona became more of a comedian.  Thus my public persona did not align well with the songs that I wrote. I occasionally wrote a funny song, but mostly I tried to write "soul" music. Music that was reflective of my deepest self. 

If you listen to one my early songs "With the Wind" you'll hear a song that is anything but funny. I was in the right space when I wrote that song. I had no fear of judgment, and no fear of anyone shattering my private space. As a result something came out of me that I could never have planned. It was more like the release of something. 

I was never able to craft a persona that matched my music, and I had no idea that I had a persona, so I never tried, but as I look at the numbers I find that there are people who know a deeper part of me, and they've stayed with me a long time, but for the most part, the people who know me don't listen to my music that much. You should never try to build a career out of playing for your friends, and I don't like all the music that they listen to all the time either. 

When my band The Navigators would be on tour, we would often stop in Louisville on a Monday, as a night off, so that I could hang with friends, but also because we'd be unlikely to fill a venue of any size.  We'd do better in Lexington or Asheville.  Though in truth, we never did all that well.  I could perform the music, but I couldn't play the audience. On some nights I would sing the songs in a way that surprised even me. There was a gig in Detroit that I just killed, and I remember that the lights were blaring, and I couldn't see the audience. Only now am I realizing that my sense of safety allowed me to reach into myself and to deliver on a whole new level. Sometimes when the audience is far away, and you're standing on a huge stage, you can feel very alone.  For me that was a good thing. 

It's weird. We're taught that to succeed you have to work very hard, and I did, but I have had more success in the past few years by doing nothing but letting the music speak for itself. If you think you know me, you should give my music another listen. To quite my most successful song:

So you say you know just who I am. 

But I'm afraid that you don't understand. 

How to Eradicate Covid 19 in One Single Step: Part One

 Obviously you need to get everyone vaccinated, right?  Or you need to get a large enough percentage vaccinated to where it doesn't matter. So what is keeping us from accomplishing this single (though not simple) step?  Why are people being so hesitant to what is necessary? I hear a lot of anger from my friends that is directed towards those people. You know, the people who just can't get their act together to do the right thing: poor people. 

No, I'm not making this up.  You can see the numbers here. I posted that in May, and I was surprised at how little of a response I got. Okay, I wasn't surprised at all, because nobody wants to hear/talk about poor people. Except that if we do nothing about poor people, we are all going to die.  It probably won't be the Delta variant, but I'm sure by the Omega variant, we'll be toast.  Poor people aren't going to kill us through malice- at least not their malice. 

This will be hard for many of you to accept, because you have likely bought into one of two narratives. The first is that individual freedom must be protected at all costs from the government.  The second is that if people were just educated, we wouldn't have these problems (global warming, racism, etc.) Neither of these narratives address the problem of poverty, and they aren't meant to.  The first narrative leads you to believe that all poverty is the result of personal laziness, and the second narrative suggests that poverty is a result of discrimination. 

The poverty line as a metric has its problems, and there are many who will attest that it misrepresents just how bad the problem is.  Still, 1 in 7 Americans lives below the poverty line, and you can only be okay with that, as long as have no idea how horrible our country is to people who live under that threshold.  The idea that one in seven Americans is lazy enough to warrant cruel economic sanctions is ludicrous, but this narrative can only exist in a world where the counter-narrative (that discrimination explains poverty) thrives.

When you look at the numbers the problem can seem crystal clear.  According to the Urban Institute, 18.1% of Black non-Hispanic people live below the poverty line versus 9.6% of white non-hispanic people (and hispanic people are worse off still at 21.9%).  Those are stark contrasts indeed, but it's important to note that that life is horrible for that 9.6%, and you can't explain that horror by resorting to discrimination. The real reason so many white people live in poverty is the same reason every other group is in poverty: they were born into it.  

There are no doubt many advantages to dividing up society by race when poring over statistics.  One cannot escape the reality of discrimination, but having achieved that knowledge, I recommend that you continue to consider the statistics from other perspectives, because when you begin to look at the raw numbers, you start to see a very different story.  Roughly 17.1 million (5.2%)Americans are white and poor versus 7.2 million Americans (2.2%) that are black and poor, and 12 million (3.7%) Americans who are Hispanic and poor.  Then you add all the numbers up and you get about 45 million people in poverty.  

If we could create poverty parity amongst all races, we would lift about one third of all people who now live in poverty out of poverty.  That would be an amazing accomplishment, but if we could do that? Why not lift everyone out of poverty?  Well, the big reason is that it would require a radical reformation of our economic system.  One of the appeals of the discrimination theory of poverty is that you don't have to lose the winners and losers economic system.  You just have to live with 1 person in 10 falling below the poverty line. 

Now don't misunderstand me.  I'm not arguing that we can stop worrying about race, because the issue at hand is a class problem.  When I took an African American philosophy in graduate school I learned the painful truth that when society speaks theoretically in universal truths ("all men are created equal"), they are not universally true in practice.  So I'm not arguing we replace our focus on race with a focus on class. I'm saying we need to add to our focus on race by looking at class. Otherwise we will end up with a stated goal of eliminating poverty that will value the elimination of white poverty over all other forms.