April 18, 2008
Right now I´m in Juarez, at an Internet cafe, because I´m having connectivity problems at home. They´re not the same as my relationship problems, but in some uncanny way they´re similar. My deadline is coming at me like a freight train in a tunnel, and occasionally I´m stymied by the Spanish keyboard. But the show must go on.
Technology´s our slave first and then it´s our master. I understand that Poe, and Shakespeare, and H.L. Mencken, wrote without the benefit of spellcheck, and drag-and-drop, and Google, but I find it hard to believe.
There´s big discussion on the Strelz´s blog about Richard Florida and the creative class. It got me thinking again about class, and tribal affiliation, and my ongoing studies in Applied Anthropology.
Class isn´t a word that we use much anymore, unless it´s preceded by working. The distinctions between upper and lower and the elusive middle are left to sociologists and political scientists and the occasional resilient Marxist stirring the ashes of the imminent class war. Class is the word that isn´t spoken by politicians and statesmen, as if, if we ignore it, it will go away. We talk about income, and we talk about wealth, but class is a concept that refuses to hold water.
Perhaps it because classes are supposed to be permeable these days. According to the popular myth, ambition and hard work determine a person´s station in life, unless you are one of the blessed whose parents or grandparents bequeathed them the means to enjoy another obsolete classism, the leisure class. And there are plenty of examples of people who overcame the ignominy of a humble birth to amass wealth, and power, and position.
And perhaps, in El Paso, at least, class is fairly homogeneous. The five really wealthy people in El Paso rarely mix with the hoi polloi, sequestered in boardrooms and gated communities and zipping off to the world cities in private jets. The richest don´t even deign to eat at El Paso´s best restaurants, choosing instead to hire private chefs.
I don´t blame them. More power to them. And it´s good to circulate the money, and I´m sure that hiring a private chef is not an economic decision.
But what´s the difference, really, between Chilean Sea Bass and a double order of Chico´s? On a mechanistic, functional level, don´t they both serve the same purpose? Don´t they both, in the words of my dirt-poor outfitter friends, the ones who are living their dream, make a turd?
Doesn´t a Chevy serve the same functional purpose as a McLaren Mercedes?
The difference is illusory affectation. Chilean sea bass is an artifact of stubborn adherence to a tribalism. What we purchase, when we shell out the jack for Chilean Sea Bass or a Mercedes McLaren, is tribal identity.
Tribalism transcends class. The greased hair rockabilly aficionados can span the range from just above subsistence to rich. Tribalism transcends income, or wealth, and can transcend social station, though social station can be a tribe of its own.
Occasionally, in my day job, I travel. And in the beginning, we stayed in upscale hotels, where the rooms might cost $200 a night, or more. I was perplexed. What, I asked myself, could justify, in the minds of these renters, a three- or four-fold premium in the price of the room? And I realized that these people were paying the extra coin so they wouldn´t have to hang out with people like me.
The social-psychologist Erik Erikson coined the term pseudospeciation to describe the innate tendency of people to view those not like them as though they were a different species. (As a writer, I recognize that he missed a great opportunity to name the phenomenon specious speciation.) Class distinctions foster the dehumanizing potential of pseudospeciation.
Perhaps it would be more useful, then, instead of talking about a Creative Class, to talk about the Creative Tribe. Tribe is more accessible. To my mind, there´s a lot more meat in that concept.
Chew on that. I¨ll get back to you.