On Sundays during graduate school, I frequently walked down to the river near campus to feed and visit with the homeless people who lived there. After a while, they grew accustomed to my visits and more open to conversation and communication, and as our relationships expanded I learned things about them that nobody remembered. In particular I remember one older man who once worked for NASA on the Apollo and Voyager space programs whose partner died, after which he lost all interest and ended up homeless because he had nowhere he wanted to be. Most people who came to the parks along the river probably found it odd to watch me, donned in suit and tie, sitting with the homeless because they didn’t know what I knew about those people. Since I took the time to learn more, I learned that these people were more than they appeared to be.
All our lives, we evaluate based on information we possess. Sometimes our information comes from experience; sometimes it comes from other people’s experiences; sometimes it comes from hearsay. Sometimes we don’t have all the information at all, like I did on the river all those years ago. Last Thursday, I found myself in an impromptu conversation with the head of receiving on campus and learned that she was a licensed respiratory therapist. She was thanking me for not looking down on her because she works in receiving; I told her that was easy because most of the people who look down on her look down on me too. What I know now that they still don’t care to know is that she worked for over a decade in health care and CHOSE TO LEAVE and do something else. How many times do we look at someone in a “lowly” job and assume they can’t do better or at someone in a lofty one and assume that they earned their way there?
For some time now, I have discussed with all who listen one of the sad truths of life about stratification. While it is true that the cream rises to the top, so also does the scum, and the problem is that the scum thinks that it’s the cream. The cream thinks the scum belongs there. The scum convinces the rest that it earned its way to the top. The real point everyone misses in societal stratification is that between the dregs and the cream are other portions which, if absent, ablate the difference between the dregs and the cream rather than exaggerate them. If a nation is filled only with rich and poor people with nobody in between, the people have more in common than if there is a wide range of income. The only way in which they tend to differ is in material possessions, but in character they tend to blend into an indistinguishable morass. Inside any body exists a portion called the Extracellular Matrix which is void of cells but filled with mostly empty space. It is integral however because it constitutes a definition of different organs, keeping different cells apart and keeping the shape and definition of each organ and system. In other words, there is no “junk” DNA and there is no empty space and there aren’t really any useless people. Even the poor among us exist so that we can show our beneficence to those less fortunate than we.
You never know about people unless you get to know them. Until I spoke with this woman, I had no idea she ever went to college. Unless you call a certain member of the House of Representatives from Las Vegas to task about his qualifications, you will never learn that he actually dropped out of college. Not everyone gets $10 million from his father to get started in business like Donald Trump did, and not everyone who lives paycheck to paycheck belongs there. Some successful people got there by timing and luck, and some failures arrived in the gutter the same way. If you look at a person’s wage, title, living situation, and family relationships, you get a snapshot which, even if everything you see is true, is not usually the whole truth.
Each semester in the department office, someone leaves a box of Sees Candy. It’s fun and illuminating to watch professors select from the box the pieces they personally prefer. All of the candies are essentially made the same on the outside, and the people generally select chocolates based on the contents. Some hate nougat and others love nuts, and sometimes chocolates are cut beforetime to see what they contain before people commit. It’s paradoxical sometimes that we choose our chocolates based on their contents but judge people by their colorful candy shell. However, it’s apparently always been that way. I guess the point of all of this is what I tell my students each semester about the scientific method. Every decision I would have made differently in my life is because the information was either incomplete or inaccurate. Maybe it’s impossible to get EVERYTHING we need, but usually we stop when we get the information that’s easy or that validates what we want to be so. Each of us has the responsibility to find out as much information as we can and bear the consequence of the choice we make with the information we possess. Many first impressions are false, and first impressions are not the only impressions. This woman in receiving chose a lesser status and paycheck. The man on the river was the victim of choices. If you meet them, what you learn about this is true. There is also so much more.
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