cf the essay in The View from Flyover Country discussing the art project in Philadelphia that hides impoverished areas of the city from Amtrak riders.
Language has a cursed power—categorization, simplification, abstraction. By calling areas where the poor struggle to get by and lead healthy, happy lives "urban blight" or "slums" we can, in a single utterance, abstract away an entire group of humans and their struggles. The WSJ headline proclaims that we are now Fighting Urban Blight With Art in a sick perversion of language, art, and humanity. It's made all the more despicable by the audience of the Journal—wealthy businessmen who enjoy an abstract relationship with the world of finance. Maybe these men cannot face the truth: that while they prosper they are complicit in their neighbors' suffering, in the demise of our global life-support system. By relating to abstracts, dealing in abstracts, they find it palatable to relate to their fellow man as abstracts. "I don't see race," they say, "but my, that urban blight—so distracting on my morning commute."
In the end I don't see this as any different from run-of-the-mill American exceptionalism and the so-called "American Dream," that venerated, worried-over old thing. I'm sure that these same folks are saying, "my, what a shame about the blight, if only those people would work harder," sipping tea and unaware as the Titanic—in this version renamed Americana—takes on a torrent of frigid seawater and slips into the depths of its icy grave. Sadly, they'll still be having tea on the lifeboat, while the hoipoloi succumb to hypothermia and intake their final breaths, the struggle over at last.
As the author, I have to wonder where am I in all of this? Am I complicit? I am neither wealthy businessman, nor struggling minority. My work by nature draws from the abstract power of language and thought. But I am wealthy, with my net worth of a mere -$7k, and the many material blessings that my life confers today. While I still work, I am afforded time to read, to think, to create, to play. When I think about people who must endure the rigors of working two minimum wage jobs to subsist, I am embarrassed over what seems a paltry amount of work on my own part. By luck of birth, I was given the keys to success, and the time and means to pursue it—and even though the path hasn't been straightforward, that initial loot drop has made all the difference.
So what is the responsibility of the person who has the means and grasps the larger picture and situation? It seems to me that it is to raise those around me. I can't solve the world's problems. I can make small changes towards a world I want to live in—a world where anonymous strangers gift money. A world where knowledge and art are both valued and free: this is our inheritance as homo sapiens, the "man that thinks", and anyone constructing a fence around it is doing the same as charging for clean air and water. I can teach, I can create, and by my art spread and sow knowledge into minds who will endure longer than I, who will create the next and better version of life on this Earth. My children, all children.
So anyhow, from just the phrase "urban blight" I find myself utterly wound and thinking ponderous thoughts at a mere 0820 in the morning. So it goes.
#eco #poverty #essay #◊journal
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