Post by twinegarden on Dec 21, 2008 3:11:32 GMT -6
There has been alot of discussion here lately about the role of the proletariat class. The downtrodden deadbeats of society who work menial jobs and suck willingly at the teet of popular culture.
While a big problem of this class of people is rooted in their ignorance and disregard for the fine print of todays modern, you cannot deny that their willingness to support one another and take pride in their families is not one of the greatest contributors to the success of our great nation as a whole. Run on sentances aside, the failure of these very people results in the most horrible of situations.
Instead of a nation full of people with local pride, food, employment, comraderie, pridefull servitude, and no more or less paradise on Earth, we will end up being stricken by a country that is in selfish pursuit of power with no satisfying end.
I was checking out of the Walgreen's down the road earlier and a young buck had a tatoo that said "RUSSIA" in white, red, and blue. I asked him what he had it for and he told me he grew up in an orphanage in Russia. I asked him what it was like and he described a miserable existance where unemployment rates were near 80% and everyone was basically scraping for themselves. According to this kid, drugs were basically legal on the whole and nobody gave a flying f**k about their fellow man. Said it was a, "society where the only thing that mattered was how much power you had". He said there were military personell on every street with AK-47s, they were not concerned about drugs or the like but were basically holding the fort dow. The kid strongly suggested visiting St. Petersburg, but said if you leave the cities at all you are basically entering a degenerate wasteland. Keep in mind this kid grew up in an orpahage with about 3000 other kids in a city the size of Grinnell. Pretty crazy shit really.
I take a great deal of comfort in knowing that while we live in a society that is governed by making the best of your abilities and being able to succeed we still look out for eachother on the whole and most everyone is truly born into a country where you really do have the option of succeding if you do what you know is right.
I asked the kid what people did to get by and what they ate, he pretty much made a loose comment by saying they did whatever it takes. What exactly that means is beyond me but I can only imagine alot of fucked up shit happens around those areas all of the time.
There is a faint risk of our nation facing a similar situation so long as people keep getting let off and production on a GDP level slows down. Hopefully, the times we are going through right now will have an ultimate effect of leveling the playing field to a degree where the right leaders show up, make the neccesary corrections, and keep the proles happy with great things like ipods, electricity, gourmet food, cars, etc. etc. We are all members of that class to varying degrees. If shit hits the fan hard enough we will end up living in a world where you are constantly concerned about things like happened to this dude. Alot of people (myself included) have been in situations and thought what this guy was thinking:
www.cracked.com/article_16912_suggested-improvements-guy-who-mugged-me-last-week.html
Another situation I ran into a couple of months ago was at one of the nicer hotels in Okoboji. I was there for a wedding and the place was great, nice rooms, nice reception, great breakfast, etc. etc.
About a half an hour after the reception I was walking in the hallways of this place with a roll along cooler full of fat tire bottles. While at the elevator, I offered a Mexican worker a beer. The dude ended up showing me where all of the migrant workers for the hotel were quartered. There were about 80 Mexicans living in a medium sized room in the basement of the place. It was fucking crazy, pardon the French. It seemed like they were crawline out of the woodwork, it was like Joe's Apartment. There were kids, elderly, and the worker age. I hung out for about a half hour, there were a couple guitars and singing and stuff. I remember belting out the song on Sublime Sublime that is all in spanish. They probably thought I was crazy as fuck, which I am.
I bring that story up because ignoring the proletariat class and letting them rot for their irresponsibility is not the correct solution to our nations problems. If it gets that way we will have our bretheren living by those standards, if not ourselves.
As a member of the proletariat class, I am very grateful to still have a job and everything sitting well. If I were to get laid off, lacked a backup plan, evicted, no money, nowhere to go, I could understand how people would either accept horrible situations or be driven to a criminal lifestyle. While I have only moderate sympathy for people who are in this situation, the less of it we see here in the US of A, the better off we are as a nation.
A fucked up thing about technological progress is that while production becomes more automated, jobs are lost and people become unemployed. We all know this and we end up facing a situation where there are simply too many people. I wonder what percentage of the population is truly having a positive net effect compared to what percentage has a negative net effect. If the percentage favors the latter, a die off of the human population is inevitable.
When things get to the point of every man for themselves, people become victims of bullshit for reasons that are way beyond their control. With a thriving proletariat class, this risk is reduced to a minimum and the likelyhood of bright minds excelling to the top is greatly increased, I know several examples of these people and I think most everyone who posts on this board is a member of that group of people, the proletariat class.
While a big problem of this class of people is rooted in their ignorance and disregard for the fine print of todays modern, you cannot deny that their willingness to support one another and take pride in their families is not one of the greatest contributors to the success of our great nation as a whole. Run on sentances aside, the failure of these very people results in the most horrible of situations.
Instead of a nation full of people with local pride, food, employment, comraderie, pridefull servitude, and no more or less paradise on Earth, we will end up being stricken by a country that is in selfish pursuit of power with no satisfying end.
I was checking out of the Walgreen's down the road earlier and a young buck had a tatoo that said "RUSSIA" in white, red, and blue. I asked him what he had it for and he told me he grew up in an orphanage in Russia. I asked him what it was like and he described a miserable existance where unemployment rates were near 80% and everyone was basically scraping for themselves. According to this kid, drugs were basically legal on the whole and nobody gave a flying f**k about their fellow man. Said it was a, "society where the only thing that mattered was how much power you had". He said there were military personell on every street with AK-47s, they were not concerned about drugs or the like but were basically holding the fort dow. The kid strongly suggested visiting St. Petersburg, but said if you leave the cities at all you are basically entering a degenerate wasteland. Keep in mind this kid grew up in an orpahage with about 3000 other kids in a city the size of Grinnell. Pretty crazy shit really.
I take a great deal of comfort in knowing that while we live in a society that is governed by making the best of your abilities and being able to succeed we still look out for eachother on the whole and most everyone is truly born into a country where you really do have the option of succeding if you do what you know is right.
I asked the kid what people did to get by and what they ate, he pretty much made a loose comment by saying they did whatever it takes. What exactly that means is beyond me but I can only imagine alot of fucked up shit happens around those areas all of the time.
There is a faint risk of our nation facing a similar situation so long as people keep getting let off and production on a GDP level slows down. Hopefully, the times we are going through right now will have an ultimate effect of leveling the playing field to a degree where the right leaders show up, make the neccesary corrections, and keep the proles happy with great things like ipods, electricity, gourmet food, cars, etc. etc. We are all members of that class to varying degrees. If shit hits the fan hard enough we will end up living in a world where you are constantly concerned about things like happened to this dude. Alot of people (myself included) have been in situations and thought what this guy was thinking:
www.cracked.com/article_16912_suggested-improvements-guy-who-mugged-me-last-week.html
Another situation I ran into a couple of months ago was at one of the nicer hotels in Okoboji. I was there for a wedding and the place was great, nice rooms, nice reception, great breakfast, etc. etc.
About a half an hour after the reception I was walking in the hallways of this place with a roll along cooler full of fat tire bottles. While at the elevator, I offered a Mexican worker a beer. The dude ended up showing me where all of the migrant workers for the hotel were quartered. There were about 80 Mexicans living in a medium sized room in the basement of the place. It was fucking crazy, pardon the French. It seemed like they were crawline out of the woodwork, it was like Joe's Apartment. There were kids, elderly, and the worker age. I hung out for about a half hour, there were a couple guitars and singing and stuff. I remember belting out the song on Sublime Sublime that is all in spanish. They probably thought I was crazy as fuck, which I am.
I bring that story up because ignoring the proletariat class and letting them rot for their irresponsibility is not the correct solution to our nations problems. If it gets that way we will have our bretheren living by those standards, if not ourselves.
As a member of the proletariat class, I am very grateful to still have a job and everything sitting well. If I were to get laid off, lacked a backup plan, evicted, no money, nowhere to go, I could understand how people would either accept horrible situations or be driven to a criminal lifestyle. While I have only moderate sympathy for people who are in this situation, the less of it we see here in the US of A, the better off we are as a nation.
A fucked up thing about technological progress is that while production becomes more automated, jobs are lost and people become unemployed. We all know this and we end up facing a situation where there are simply too many people. I wonder what percentage of the population is truly having a positive net effect compared to what percentage has a negative net effect. If the percentage favors the latter, a die off of the human population is inevitable.
When things get to the point of every man for themselves, people become victims of bullshit for reasons that are way beyond their control. With a thriving proletariat class, this risk is reduced to a minimum and the likelyhood of bright minds excelling to the top is greatly increased, I know several examples of these people and I think most everyone who posts on this board is a member of that group of people, the proletariat class.
