ANOTHER ARTICLE ON PARTNERSHIP FOR BECCA DEAREST
Yesterday, Becca, I expounded at great length on a general theme of how, after many years of biographical research, I seem to have discovered a major link between poor people helping each other escape poverty and find oftentimes outlandish success m, by being in very close relationships, and/or in very close “groups” of some kind, that would essentially be equivalent to relationships. This finding was backed up by statistics, if need be.
Alas, the main example I used yesterday was displaying how a truly dedicated band (who often sleeps with each other in a van in early years) seems to often escape poverty in a way that's actually unheard of in other lines of work, , but this example of strength in a group, or a simple duo, goes far beyond just a band: it could be applied to many areas in which extremely successful people thrive. I've never heard, for example, of a video game being programmed only by one person. There is usually a massive development team behind the creation of any game .
In fact, I have often felt that one of the principle dilemmas of the basic jobs offered to the poor is that none of them give anyone any reason to form deep partnerships based around or within the job. Most low income people essentially lead a totally separate life, with totally separate folks, outside of their work. This is actually a very bad thing, because they never get a chance to create these major, long lasting “escape route” partnerships. For example, oftentimes, in the gaming industry, it might be the case that two programmers meet each other, whilst working on one game, and then they start developing another even more successful game, together, in their own time.
The story of the poor needing real partnerships that they can depend on and real relationships is not new. Farmers had their families . Musicians had their band. Pirates had sailing crew . Modern people of the ghetto struggle to set up street gangs, which are continuously sacked and caged by the government, because there is power in group. And of course the government is a massive group, plucking soldiers, mercenaries, and agents from literally every angle of the nation and globe.
I know it seems slightly off topic to discuss all of this in a piece about relationships blooming, but a discussion about relationships is also really a discussion about GROUPS , and groups , the main point is, are literally almost aways at the forefront of any truly successful enterprise, and oftrn- not surprisingly- (most important part here) the original formation of a group all begins with a successful two person, “duo” relationship. At every major groups core, there was always, once you stretch far back enough, just a duo that began it all.
Notice, for example, Becca, how even when you were in a relationship, at the times it was healthy or in a good mood, a small group did begin to form around it. At first it had just been each of us entirely alone, but then you were together with your ex, and then I was attracted into the bond, because-- initially not knowing you at all , and being upset with him-- I was originally attracted to the couple as a whole, instead of the individuals. It was arguably the same for any other friends , who probably enjoyed visiting more when a crew was there, and so on and so forth.
This group would have inevitably continued to grow, if the relationship at its foundation had been healthier. In my experience and also judging from what I've read, I can't stress enough how much groups tend to always grow from a main root such as, yes, even just a single successful, happy,a nd healthy relationship.
In a sense, it could be said that a successful, healthy relationship is a bit contagious: People are attracted to see it in action , an then they're also inspired to start one themselves, and in addition to this, when said new person does start one themselves, theirs is far more likely to stay afloat, due to whoever they're coupling with witnessing the previous success of this originally inspiring group that they're introduced to. Get what I mean? A couple therefore becomes two couples who are often together, and eventually the two turns into 3, and eventually you have an entire sturdy community of sorts hustling around, there for each other in an intimate way.
Ie: if you look again at the Stones, never forget how many thousands of people have been made successful due to the initial dedication and perseverance the founders had to their, originally, only 2 man crew. This is an effect a single person could never have. Single people often cannot attract anyone . Its like a hole you get stuck in and it just goes deeper and deeper.
Alas, at this point, the poor person asks, if al of this is true, and if heathy relationships are clearly proven to lead people to further success than they would have ever found as loners, then how come everyone I know, down here in poor town, is as burned out, exhausted, and ruined as could be by r-ships? How come everyone in poor town is often vehemently opposed to them, and all eventually convinced that the entire functional formula is the exact opposite? I.e. Alone is better? HOw come no one in poor town can stay in marriages, and when they’re in them, they get abused and ruined, et cetera??? How come even the people around here, that appear to be in happy r-ships, often still seem totally opposed to actually getting married????
Easy answer, as always: Poor people again have no idea how to run a proper relationship, as a direct result of the fact that ...well, poor people-- all too often-- haven't ever had to really “run” or “control” anything major. This is yet again the major theme that was revealed in yesterday's writings: Poor people are actually often not forming partnerships , when they do form them, based on anything truly healthy or strong. They've got no clue how to pick a good horse.
They're instead forming them based on the same manic impulse shopping they are notorious for doing every day at Wal Mart and the mall: Just like they would search for a cheap drug to take, they essentially go out looking for whatever mate seems the most fun on Friday night, (or really on any given day) and the rest of it all be damned. Poor people are literally “famous” for often having a total inability to imagine a future: They live totally within the moment, and so whatever is best within the moment, wins. The poor will burn down a relationship thats been building for, say, 1 year, just to experience some new , random thrill, on a Friday night,because they’re never thinking of tomorrow. Hell, for the poor, a 1 yar relationship is oftne considered rather long. 5 years is considered almost a lifetime.
This inability to stick with anything is literally evident no matter what you’re examining in poor life: Poor folk don’t bother reading, because you can’t usually finish a book in a night, and tomorrow doesn’t exist; they don’t bother with rock music anymore, because it actually takes a long time to learn an instrument and make a rock record, as opposed to a computers beat and a quickly spit “freestyle”; they don’t cook because, in order to cook, you have to shop a week in advance, and they don’t think a week in advance; last but not least, even when it comes to drug use, poor people choose all the worst drugs to do because, well, tomorrow doesn’t exist anyways. Psychedelic drugs like shrooms and LSD are essentially unheard of in the ghetto. Why? Because it actually takes a lot of time and scientific knowledge to make them, (the high also takes about an hour to come on) and poor people don’t have any time to make or wait for anything. It’s also the same idea with wine: takes too long to make, just drink beer, or if you’re really poor, like they were in the Wild West, just drink liquor.
Long story short, the examples of the poor and their “today is the only day!” ideas are endlss…
And this obsession with the moment means that the typical poor relationship , of course, is constantly on edge, because both people involved in it realize just how close it may or may not be to ending, any given moment, when the other person flees for whatever that weekends biggest bang or biggest party is. Since they are so manically paranoid over the other person fleeing, poor people -- and this is the biggest detail of all --- often tend to create relationships of an unnatural exclusivity: Instead of allowing the relationship to breathe and keep creating new extensive links (like we saw earlier is the best thing to do, where friends and so forth get added to the group) most of them instead try to lock the r-ship down into a black hole , where no friends or other couples, or anyone at all ,is allowed in. They usually don’t even let each other have simple non-sexual connections outside the r-ship. This is very bad, its like being in prison.
All the outside world becomes seen as a threat to the r-ship; and what happens, eventually, becuase of this, is that it all becomes a very exhausting experience, which you sooner or later just feel like you need to escape. “Someone open a window; I need some fresh air!!!!!” Imagine again the Stones, and imagine if they were terrified to move beyond the 2 man group, because they thought whoever the 3rd or 4th person in the band would be, would also be the one to burn down the entire band. . It is very common to meet depressing low income couples who seem to have literally not a single friend outside of their duo; but this is not nearly so common in circles of people who are successful, or who think like the successful. They apply their relationship in a positive way, to attract new people into their lives.
In other words, the relationships of the poor are significantly more on edge due to a natural distrust that comes from both parties, deep down somewhere, knowing that the initial foundation wasn’t the healthiest one, in the first place. They are, in a sense, self-aware, and this self-awareness of how weak the original foundation was ,which is almost exclusively built on sex and sexual attraction and “what a big bang”, leads to a very pervasive and serious thread of paranoia and mania throughout the relationships existence. They understand that they were chosen in a rather fickle way; and they know that they will soon be left in another fickle way, as well. Those who think like the successful, don’t have this dilemma .
The relationships of a healthy mind are often chosen based on far more niche and defined reasons-- “I fell in Iove with Maggie at first because only she plays violin, was teaching me Swedish, and can talk to me of Jane Austen books” -- and these defined reasons are much harder to find all over again, versus sex, or looking attractive, which essentially anyone can do. Again, think fast food: The poor choose rships based on “chain” reasons you can find replicated in every city and every town. The successful instesd eat at an individually unique restauruant that is the only one of its kind in all the globe.
This idea of course is again someting the low income , not at all individualistic person sort of realizes deep down: they know there is little to nothing unique about them; and so they know they are easily replaceable! Hence the intense desire an unhealthy rship often has for the unnatural exclusivity. “If I lock everyone out of this duo , it will last.”
In yesterdays piece, I used an extreme example of “cheating” / “swinging” to explain the general “easy going ness” of the upper classes and/or people who emulate the successful, when it comes to how cemented & sturdy their relationships are,but this admittedly extreme example was only meant to put on display the idea that the relationship of the poor is often so weakly founded that, not only can it certainly not abide by someting so extreme as swinging, but it also, often, can’t even manage to survive a simple flirtatious encounter at the mall, or as said above, even having non-sexual friends on the side.
The poor are so doubtful of one another, you see, that they wind up in explosive, “im gonna burn down this whole fucking building!!!” fights very often. And...remember...since the poor often don’t have much of a building to burn down, guess what? When the flame lights, the little building they did have, the little book they had started… burns down very quickly.
In some sense ,the relationships that the lower classes engage in can almost be connected to their living experiences, in general: They are renters, job hoppers,and TV watchers. They are never home owners, never careerists, and they often never have a hobby they study , beyond the TV. They are always popping up in a new neighborhood, meeting some new group of folks on a new street, setting up shop somewhere else. Remember Becca: I am, in some sense, in the same camp as a “job hopper”, but I also have been steadily pursuing the same goal for over a decade worth of time now, as well. So I’m also a potentially future careerist, in another sense.
(Most truly impoverished people, after all, aren’t writing anything like this. Their poverty is truly that deep, encompassing both the mental and the physical. The poverty is so crippling that they literally cannot even express themselves in an understandable way, almost as though they have no language, and this of course goes to show just how lonely of an experience it can be, as language is invented only to create community and r-ships! Think, as I say, of how the ghetto folk express themselves exclusively in a slang that, everyone outside of the ghetto, finds tragically offensive and incomprehensible, etcetra.) .
At any rate, all of this hopping around, from jobs to relationships to neighborhoods, seems like a better way to live to them; but it is actually nearly as negative as being tied up in a tragically abusive relationship, cut off from all of the world, because they are always starting from scratch over and over again,every season...and this lack of being able to ever “settle down” in their personal life, leads to them never quite settling down in all of their other affairs, as well. This is not to say that the constant traveler is always a negative entity: He is not. After all, the great bands all travel constantly; but they are traveling with the same foundation everywhere they go. The poor don’t have this.
Every project they start, just like every relationship, they eventually burn down after only a bit of progress has been made, and then they have to go to square one, and start a new relationship, whichof course, since they eventually get anxious and realize time is of the essence, they form in too much of a hurry, with yet another similar idiot, and so then it winds up the same way as the other ones did, and back to the beginning they go again. And remember, when a relationship burns down, so too does nearly every single connection that was often beginning to build around it, even if those connections were, as they so often are in the cases of the poor & unhealthy, few and far between.
And all of this now leads me to the last topic which I’ve been giving some thought, when it comes to this entire discussion, and this last bit actually has to do with the children that the poor often create, accidentally, whilst engaged in one of their many “fly by night”, destined to doom, relationships.
Here’s what I have to say about the children: I think the children, who are of course scattered everywhere in any given poor community, give a false sense of relationship and “company” to a parent. This is to say that, for someone childless like myself, I am profoundly aware that I am not in a relationship and that I am alone, with no “partner in crime”; but a person with a child is almost “tricked” into thinking that they are not alone, even though they actually are alone, in every department in which it counts.
After all, a child , though he or she is a wonderful being, often full of joy and happiness to lend, still isn’t an actual adult partner. The child can’t actually do anything for the parent: they cannot give anything concrete to them, and they certainly cannot be a shoulder to cry on for what are, to them, mortifying and incomprehensible adult issues. They cannot help the parent create a “crew” or a “band” or anything of the sort. The child can help you pass the time, thats about it. In fact, if anything, the sad truth is that the presence of a child, unfortunately, only seems to serve to make the next rship all the less likely to happen or begin. (This isn’t my own idea, dear Becca, I am just of course stating what you have told me yourself, of the ‘baggage’ idea, and of what I’ve read). In the first place, theres the fact that the parent is, as I say, distracted by the child, tricked into thinking they aren’t alone, when they are, and in the second, there is the fact that new, interested other poor people generally seem to shy away from the so-called “single parent bracket” (which , avoiding single parents, is a whole other seriously foolish idea that I could dedicate an entire book to writing against.)
So what does this mean now? Well, I think it shows you the type of trap thinking many poor folk eventually fall into: “What do I need a partner for? I got my kids. They’re all I need.” This becomes yet another way for the poor to discredit the usefulness of relationships/partnerships, in an effort to try and prove how much better they think being alone is, etcetera…
Again, however, to equate a child to a full fledged adult partner, is an egregious error, and its actually putting far too much pressure on the child if you should really think of it. Also, another thing is this: By the time the child eventually is at a pass where they could maybe become a full fledged partner for the now considerably older parent, its often the case that he or she has been left so traumatized by years upon years of a volatile, never settled situation that .. the last thing he or she wants to do is stick around and help. Instead, what happens? They flee, thinking that being alone is infinitely better! And so the whole game begins again. Or, of course, even if they do not flee, they just get involved in their own life, and since life is so expensive, how can they really be expected to take care of both a parent , and their own up and coming family? So a child is , again, not a partner, and most likely, never will be one, either, except in cases of random and extreme success, like say, your child becomes a millionaire, almost the moment he or she is out of the starting gate of adulthood.
Now..if you have stayed with me this long, there is one last thing I want to write about all of this relationships/marriages/families/crews/bands and partnerships topic, and it is actually an argument in what will “seem” like the opposite direction, but is not.
Here is what it is: When the poor do think they’re in a partnership that might be worth something , and might be worth “tying the knot over” , i.e. might be worth “preserving”, they --as they do wiht everythin else-- tend to get a little too excited over making it known. Whats this mean? Its simple: They go crazy with a public display of the famous “WEdding Day” itself, perhaps because they realize whats happening to them is rare, and oftentimes -- from what I’ve read-- this wedding day, even if the poor couple receives many gifts on it, actually serves to push them into literlaly years worth of payments and debt, all in the name of a single celebratory day. In fact, the entire wedding day affair/”tradtion”, is probably one of the major reasons that poor people have now, in our own time, become so distrustful and suspicious of marriage, in general. Just think of that for a moment, dear reader: Poor people are now, in a very real sense, often avoiding the creation of a beautiful lifetime bond, all becuase they are mortified of the expenses and the display, of literally one day. ONE DAY. If you think of it, it’s almost as though all of the success the poor could feel, as a result of finding this great partnership, they actually then backfire on , by hosting this extravagantly absurd celebration.
The average wedding, according to Google, costs upwards of $35,000. This is literally preposterous.There are much better things a young blossoming couple culd be spending $35,000 on , assuming they even have it, in place of a single, celebratory, status symbol day. The entire wedding industry and what it has twisted into , mostly over the course of the 20th century , is yet another display of just how cluelessly screwed the American poor continuously are. Remember: Just because marriage and partnerships are good, does not mean every single tradition that comes with them automatically is. Unfortunately, not many low income, workin’ folk are able to understand that a piece of something can be good, whilst another piece of the same thing is also bad. Catch my drift?
Weddings began centuries ago as simple ceremonies; the AMericans turned them into nuclear bombs of debt, just like they’ve done with healthcare,college, chldcare, and many other things. These people are seriously painfully clueles…
So anyways, in closing, there you have it: Yet another treatise on why relationships, partnerships, and yes, even marriages, are actually shockingly good things, in spite of all we’ve been being told, by the ever clueless, and certainly pitiable, poor.
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