The poor are different

And the uneducated.

Which comes more or less to the same.  Here is how I know it.

Due to a odd twist of fate, I dated a high-school educated woman for a year.  I have never done this before – not because I am a classist but because I had heretofore lacked the opportunity.

Dating her exposed me not just to one, but to many uneducated minds – her family and friends; and gave me a chance to see how their minds work, or rather fail to work.  My findings can be summed up in three points:

1. there are things they do not understand – thoughts which are too complicated for them to grasp; I have tried to explain some things to them several times, with great patience and with good illustrations, and either got nowhere; or else got them to see the point only to see them slip away from it several days later; it felt, literally, like their minds were resistant to some thoughts;
2. they are generally helpless in dealing with their emotions:  are unable to see through them, or reason about them, or even see them as something that must be doubted and/or controlled:  to them, like to most animals, what they feel is them, their true self, to which they must remain faithful or they lose all compass; time and again they used the word “machine” to mean rational thought and self-control; I tried to explain to them that their bodies are machines which produce emotions, but that did not go anywhere;
3. they are generally attracted to odd conspiracy theories:  that the cure for cancer had long ago been invented but is hidden by drug companies; that the Japan Tsunami was caused by oil interests; that microwaving food kills the eater; and so forth.

This last point seems especially poignant:  limited mental resources lead to limited control over one’s life which leads to poor life results; blaming poor life results on a sinister plot saves one face.  The alternative would be to admit to oneself that one is too stupid to manage.

 

Weihnachtsoratorium

I have lived with this work for 35 years now.  I know it so intimately, that when I return to it after some period of absence (about a year, this time – ’tis the season, after all) it feels like re-encountering a long lost friend.  And when I return to it, as I am today, at times of failure and defeat, when things have not gone to plan, when I have suffered a disappointment, the pleasure it gives me, the great aesthetic depth of this music – yes, depth – seems like a reassuring voice:  there is one immutable truth, one thing that never changes and never fails, someone who will always stand by me, the same, totally reliable rain or shine, the Weihnachtsoratorium.