Not used to sleeping alone.
It gets so hard to close my eyes in the dark.
When I know your gone…
I feel your pillow next to me
Try to believe it’s you enough to dream.

Every morning I wake up alone.
I try instead to pull myself out of bed.
When I know your gone…
The distance between you and me
Grows far beyond a point that I can see.

Not used to being alone.
You look the same, but there’s dust on the frame
Since you’ve been gone.
Our wedding photos on the wall
Are memories too painful to recall.

Social class is not a function of net worth, race, or religion. It is one of mentality. Let me explain.

For the past two years my family has lived in a small, two bedroom apartment about two miles from the campus of the university my wife and I attend. It is not our ideal living conditions, but we make do. Most residents are either college students or “blue collar” folks. There is also a number of people with physical disabilities due to the nearby school for the deaf. The management does a pretty good job of keeping up on any maintenance, snow removal, etc. The area is certainly no ghetto and yet I am struck by the apparent number of residents who seem to believe that it is.

In the past year I’ve seen:

1. condoms inflated like balloons and tied to the support beams of the front door canopy
2. trash abandoned in the hallway (this happens about twice a month)
3. empty (or partially so) beer cans and bottles strewn on the lawn and parking lot, often broken if glass
4. used gum stuck to the walls, carpet, and ceilings of the hallways
5. last year someone actually opened our unlocked apartment door (while I was home) and threw some rotton apples inside (I’m assuming kids, but I don’t leave the door unlocked anymore)
6. abandoned spills (and messes of all kinds, including vomit) in common areas
7. broken beer bottles thrown into the swimming pool (necessitating its closure and drainage)
8. graffiti on walls and doors

and countless other disgusting things that display a lack of any regard for the property, other residents, and frankly themselves. This Saturday someone, for apparently no reason, tore down the suspended ceiling in our hallway. Last summer, a resident who lives on the floor above us described his July 4th festivities to me in between gleeful giggles of self-satisfaction. He got drunk and shot fireworks at other inebriated barbecuers until they fought him. He’s a 40 year old car salesman with a 10 year old step-daughter.

In an Urban Archaeology class I alluded to before we discussed an archaeological study of Lowell, MA. (See Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses of Lowell, Massachusetts.) Lowell was a planned city built by capitalists around textile mills. Since it was from a Marxist viewpoint, the study discussed how the landscape was a representation of the power of the owners over the workers. In particular, much was made of backyards. My professor ranted about how the tenement buildings had nicely manicured front lawns, but the backyards were essentially trash heaps where residents would dump stuff. Since they weren’t overtly visible, the management wouldn’t clean it (or force them to). According to him, this showed how management mistreated the workers.

My apartment experience has given me a different view: some of the tenement residents were disgusting pigs. The tenement occupants didn’t care about the quality of the backyards because it wasn’t their property. Many of these folks had (and have today) a “low class mentality” and don’t mind living like swine.

I find such deconstructionist treatments interesting more for what they reveal about the deconstructor than the subject. For instance, if the leftist archaeologists had found the backyards as neatly manicured as the fronts, they would have used it as evidence that the managers insisted to exercise control over even this portion of the worker’s environment. Apparently, those deemed “in power” are responsible for their actions, but the “oppressed” are free to uncritically wallow in their own shit.

As I explained in a previous post, I think that libertarian politics should be strictly utilitarian (maximizing individual freedom) and that such a characterization is not inconsistent with cooperative action. The difference is in conscious choice.

Most socialists would assert that social programs such as welfare must be implemented by a government which compels compliance through taxes and other coercion. This argument doesn’t make a lot of sense for democratic socialists. If the government program must be favored by a democratic majority to be implemented, then why wouldn’t the majority in favor of the program be willing to contribute without the threat of government force? The whole point of a government program over a private one is to force the minority opposed to the program to fund it.

What socialists fail to accept is a revolution of society through an evolution of social norms rather than via Mao’s “barrel of a gun.” I had a Marxist archaeology professor who loved to describe a supposed extinct egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers. In this society, the best hunter of the group would become the de facto leader, but its social norms dictated that the greatest respect was afforded to those who gave away the most. That is, the best hunter would be the last to eat. What he failed to realize is that the hunter’s actions were only influenced by the norms of his society, not dictated.

I have no qualm with charitable action and even feel a Kantian duty to perform it, but if we as a society want to encourage such behavior we must do so by affecting change of social norms. Be charitable yourself and publicly shame those you feel are exploitative. If you want someone to feel a duty toward his fellow man robbing him usually doesn’t work. Government programs discourage personal duty toward mankind because it provides a means to disclaim responsibility.

Something I’ve been mulling over for a few months is whether libertarianism is deontological or utilitarian.

On the one hand, libertarianism can be seen as “freedom maximization.” That is, it seems to propose a sort of rule utilitarianism whereby individuals are free to do anything as long as their action does not initiate harm against another individual (or by extension, his property). I prefer this interpretation. However, though any libertarian would agree with the above, in practice many are not consistent with this view. In my experience, libertarians are eager to uphold an individual’s right to be stupid (vices are not crimes…), but are critical when someone makes what they consider socialistic choices. They confuse free cooperation with forced government conformity.

I think this criticism stems from a deontological view of libertarianism that is a jumble of Objectivism, social darwinism, and efficient market theory. The outlook is that since the market is efficient and we should be free to act in that market, then the correct actions each person should be taking are those which maximize his own exploitation of that market. The syllogism makes a certain amount of intuitive sense, but is faulty because it eliminates the freedom people should have in such a society to act irrationally or self-destructive if they want.

In my opinion, the deontological strain of libertarianism can be dangerous because it tends to justify inequality when it seems to be a result of market forces. Further, it requires all participants to adhere to the same ideology by presupposing that such an ethical system is already some kind of mystical truth that is somehow exempt from the requirement of “proof by market optimization.”

This is why the Libertarian Party is the “party of principle” instead of a party of significance in national politics.

A common idea in Christianity is that it is superior to Judaism because christians are “not under law but under grace.” That is, the Judaic law was oppressive and impossible to follow. Jesus rescued us from such dogmatic oppression.

This view is a bunch of crap. The fact is that the vast majority of rules were not hard to keep–keep a diet, take one day off a week, etc. However, Christian doctrine is more oppressive in my view because it does not simply seek to regulate behavior, rather, it requires regulation of the internal state of the person. If you thought it was impossible to follow the Judaic law (or even the more restrictive pharisaic interpretations), try controlling your thoughts and feelings.