NOTE: THIS IS MY OLD SITE AND IS NO LONGER UPDATED. THIS SAME POST CAN BE FOUND ON MY NEW SITE.
"Chicken or Egg" Question
Earlier today I watched a fight, from beginning to end, that took place in the parking lot of a restricted-income apartment building.
The fight was over something stupid (a parking space), and both parties were equally boneheaded. The woman in car A behaved with the interpersonal skills of a 5-year-old when she stole the parking space that car B was backing into. The people in car B responded on an equal intellectual and emotional level, charging out of their car to start the fight.
The fight lasted several minutes and included threats, screaming, hurled obscenities and epithets, and near fisticuffs. Basically, a total toddler temper tantrum.
I see this kind of behavior around this particular apartment building fairly often, which makes me wonder something:
Does being poor make one less likely to be able to get along with others, or does an inability to get along with others make it more likely that one will remain poor?
Comments
Awesome description.
However . . . I've seen plenty of similar asshattery from middle-class suburbanites fighting over property lines, neighborhood associations and evolution.
However, this quote that I found via Kottke offers a bit of insight on the questions of decisions by po'folk. Or at least speaks to me:
"On the one hand, lack of slack tells us the poor must make higher quality decisions because they don't have slack to help buffer them with things. But even though they have to supply higher quality decisions, they're in a worse position to supply them because they're depleted. That is the ultimate irony of poverty. You're getting cut twice. You are in an environment where the decisions have to be better, but you're in an environment that by the very nature of that makes it harder for you apply better decisions."
http://www.kottke.org/08/11/the-irony-of-poverty
Posted by: Tony | November 8, 2008 06:42 PM