A reminder

My favorite book. I hated it growing up when it was a school assignment. During a nearly year’s stay in the VA hospital I came back to it and as with many books I did not appreciate as a very young person, I found that maturity gave a different viewpoint and appreciation. I now re-read it every few years. There’s much there that is part of the very foundation of my liberalism.

When Occupy sprung up, I was reminded of this passage from Steinbeck’s book:

One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out.

The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen.

Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here “I lost my land” is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate – “We lost our land.” The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first “we” there grows a still more dangerous thing: “I have a little food” plus “I have none.” If from this problem the sum is “We have a little food,” the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It’s wool. It was my mother’s blanket- take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning – from “I” to “we.”

If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.”

That’s why Occupy had to be put down. It was the beginning of “I” to “we.”

Ma Joad was right.If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’ll help.

Next time you’re traveling and see someone stopped to help someone that has broken down by the road, if the break-down isn’t with the vehicle of a pretty girl, pay attention to who has stopped to help. It won’t be a late model Mercedes, Beemer or Cadillac driven by someone well dressed that’s stopped to lend assistance. It will be someone working class, or poor. Almost always.

A couple years back I visited the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California. I had planned to visit the museum, but it was closed to the public on account of a visiting cluster of congresspersons. (A spot of shopping in the gift store, however, was allowed.)

Seems so fitting in its way.

Another Steinbeck quote I ran across just this morning:

As for the question about a swing Left. No, I haven’t swung left. I’ve always been left. I don’t look back with nostalgia to any good old time nor ahead to a static perfection. But I do believe and see a constant improvement (in the long view) a constant and consistent struggle toward a better kinder life, and I do see that the struggle and the impulse comes invariably from the common people. As for participation in this struggle – I take part when it is required of me. And one knows when it is required.

– Posted by Andrew Tobias from Three “Historic Letters”, written two years before the publication of The Grapes of Wrath

That’s why Occupy had to be put down. It was the beginning of “I” to “we.”

Hmm. It’s almost as if people were becoming conscious of belonging to a economic strata with its own interests and concerns at odds with those of others.

There must be a term for that. I wonder why no-one has ever thought of it before?….

Related to this, I love the scorn the members of the women’s committee at the government camp express at the idea of “charity” – they spit the word out. If I recall, they discuss charity as an awful humiliation the rich inflict on the needy in order to feel superior in exchange for a few crumbs.

@The Tragically Flip:

…they discuss charity as an awful humiliation the rich inflict on the needy in order to feel superior in exchange for a few crumbs.

Not only the “rich.” Insofar as there is systemic support for maintaining the presence of “needy” in our society, such an observation is not so easily dismissed.

“If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
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I know that’s true; an indisputable truth!
From my memories of the 2nd grade to the present (some 14,000 km from “home” and 60 yrs. later), it’s still the same; I’ve always gravitated to the “real” people and that’s been my anchor in this wonderful journey. But it’s a gritty, dirty, dishonest, cruel, struggle to get through and still see the beauty…