It is my current belief that American culture places too much reliance on the concept of fault. Decades of propaganda have led us to believe that you should “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and that only you can be blamed for your misfortunes.
Thus we work hard to believe that the only thing separating us from the “American dream” is effort. That with enough effort you too can enjoy yachts on a monday evening, surrounded by sunshine and glasses of champagne.
While I’d like to offer statistics as to why this is unlikely and that billionaries are only ever born into wealth, I cannot do that as the results are skewed [1][2][3] and I don’t have the authority to tell you which to believe.
What I can tell you is that I personally come from a rather poor family, one not so poor I was afraid I’d lose the roof over my head yet poor enough to live off of food stamps and “peanut butter toast” for the majority of my life.
There is certainly likelihood where I could become wealthy (eww) but I want it to be made clear that it would take me a dissproportionate amount more effort then someone gifted six million for graduating high school.
This is not said with the intent of garnering pity or to offer excuses about why my Pen Island startup failed but as an attempt to help others see another perspective.
South Tucson
Last year I chose to enroll in a class about the anthropology of disabled people. Not because I had any particular interest in the subject but because I needed an online-only class that would fulfill the writing requirements I needed for my degree.
Thus like most of my non-major courses I began by paying as little attention as possible. However this time there was one story in particular that caught my interest.
Back in the 1932, a man by the name of Howard Hughes founded the “Hughes Aircraft Company”. Starting as a passion project, the company’s success rapidly ended up accelerated via the looming threat of war reaching the U.S. over seas. Eventually, Hughes had amassed enough success where facilities began to be built in El Segundo, Hawthorne, Fullerton, San Diego, and most importantly, Tucson Arizona.
In consequence of this success, it didn’t take Hughes long to realize that he had a waste problem. And what do you do with large amounts of toxic chemicals in need of disposal you ask? Why you dump it in the nearest body of water of course.
By the mid to late 1950’s the Hughes Aircraft Company proceeded to pour copious amounts of cancerous trichloroethylene (TCE) into South Tucson waters. By late 1984, the range of contaminated water had reached a width of 3,000-4,000 feet and a length of more than four miles. Fourty years later, many Tucson families still were experiencing sickness from drinking water that contained 200x the reccomended limit for ingestion of forever chemicals.
When the outraged South Tusconans cried out in justice they were told that their dispraportionately high cancer rates were a result of their poor lifestyle and eating habits (no I’m not joking). That if they had just tried a liiittle harder then maybe their son wouldn’t have been diagnosed with cancer before he had learned to walk.
“It’s supposed to be the other way around,” Alfonso said of his granddaughter’s premature death. “Our grandkids are supposed to bury us but we’re burying our grandkids.”
Responsibility without Fault
Following my (very dilligent) reading of the course material me and five other students were instructed to have a conversation about the contents of the chapter.
One thing that really stuck out to me about that conversation was an overwhelming sense of doom that overarched each conversational point. Everybody knew that there was a problem but nobody had the initiative to discuss any sembelance of a solution.
While the obvious solution implies legal and societal change, what does this mean for the Tusconans right now suffering with ailments caused directly by misaligned governance? Shall they wait till they’ve been granted enough pity points with the supreme court to be granted the gracious permittance of safe drinking water?
Large-scale societal change may be the only reliable long-term path forward but I don’t believe that means we should give up on the individual of today.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect those who’ve wronged you to make it right it yet in today’s day and age theft is sanctioned and fraud steers the helm. The decision to believe that someone else will come save you is becoming an increasingly unreliable bet to make.
It is not fair that we must think about this but we cannot give up because of it.
In order to survive one must be willing to take responsibility for what is not their fault.
Only buy imported bottled water, move cities, states hell even countries. These are not in the slightest reasonable requests, nobody should have to uproot their entire family simply to provide their childeren a safe place to live.
But what’s the alternative?
Shall we tell those people it’s hopeless?
That they should smile as they bury their granddaughter?