Вопросы философии
Mar. 24th, 2005 05:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
birdwatcherКакие слова найдет марксист для описания собаки? В свежем номере газеты нашего микрорайона «Чикагский Журнал» Джим Салски сожалеет (как и я) о вынужденном переезде ночлежки «Тихоокеанские сады». В частности, он сообщает:
Why I'm already missing the mission
Jim Sulski
Chicago Journal, March 17 2005
A couple of years ago, I took one of my advanced journalism classes over to the Pacific Garden Mission for a tour of the facility. They were shown classrooms, the chapel for prayer, the seemingly endless rows of utilitarian bunk beds, and the hot box, a large walk-in room where the attire of the nightly "guests" of the mission was placed, the heat turned up and any living creatures were roasted to death and swept away.
Of course, it was the latter that fascinated the students, wishful entomology majors that they were.
Afterward, I scheduled another field trip for the students. We canvassed some of the gleaming new residential development going up within blocks of the mission, noting size, price, and amenities. Since the students were no better at math than they were entomology, I helped them calculate what it might cost to live in one of those new high-rise homes in the sky. We figured to be one of the new residents of the South Loop, one must either trade precious metals on the black market or sell high-rise condominiums to people who can afford to buy precious metals. And you also had to have enough cash left over to buy a very over-priced-looking dog.
The point of the exercise was to demonstrate the very incongruous ways of life developing here in the South Loop. 1 kept raising the question of how long they thought the mission could last here with the changes taking place around it. The students didn't get it. The problem was that the homeless people who rely on the mission for food and a warm bed had morphed into ubiquitous but invisible objects, a monotonous pattern in an urban wallpaper. They were no different than the annoying clatter of the el or the one of the South Loop's speeding taxicabs of death—tangible and tolerated but overlooked.
The guy on the corner pan-handling wasn't a social problem or a moral dilemma for those of us with enough money for a nice meal out; he was just a fixture of the South Loop, occasionally kept at bay with a handout but mostly ignored.
Which is why I'm already missing the mission.
Its purpose, I thought, was to show people that, there for the grace of Ja, a slip into addition, or a quirky twist of fate, go all of us. The mission and, more impor-tantly, its clients, I thought, was evidence that, yes, we can all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps but we also don't get to choose who are parents are (well, at least not yet). That who we are is a genetic roll of the dice. Some fall to earth in the old South Loop and others drift slowly down to the North Shore.
Which is why I also don't have a problem with the mission being moved. With the way the South Loop has evolved, it seems that everyone is missing the point-not just the students who are mathematically and entomologi-cally challenged.
At one time, back in the days of pre-South Loop trendiness, the area was a sort of Barbary Coast of Chicago, populated by a colorful and exotic gallery of crusty characters. I swear to God I saw an inebriated Popeye staggering on South Wabash one night.
As an undergrad at Columbia College (studying neither math nor entomology) back in the early 1980s, I would literally bolt south on Michigan Avenue when I had to travel from the college's 600 S. Michigan building to its 11th Street building at night.
My rationale was that if one of those crusty characters were going to get me, they would have to hit a moving and somewhat spastic target (on the upside, street parking was plentiful back then if you didn't care too much for your car).
Back then, the mission repre-sented what everyone in a blue-collar, hardscrabble Chicago neighborhood was a step or two away from.
Not anymore.
Today, I casually saunter down South Michigan Avenue, past high-rise residential projects and restaurants that I can't afford. Now the only running comes when the owners chase me away alter peering into a window.
It now seems that most people in the South Loop are far from a step or two away from the mission. Instead, from the world-class views of the neighborhood's luxury high-rises, a sort of vertical social chasm has opened up and in have fallen the homeless.
So in a short time, when the last few remnants of the mission are dismantled and removed from the South Loop, and the large glowing cross on the side of the building no longer casts an eerie radiance on State Street, there will be even less of a reminder of how life sometimes deals you a bad hand.
In a place where wild-berry lattes and goose-down comforters are now the norm, it's become easy to forget how hard it can be for some people to still get their hands on a cup of coffee and a warm bed. And we're all the poorer for it.
We figured to be one of the new residents of the South Loop, one must either trade precious metals on the black market or sell high-rise condominiums to people who can afford to buy precious metals. And you also had to have enough cash left over to buy a very over-priced-looking dog.Идея о том, что у собаки есть некототорое теоретическое fair value (очевидно, определяется количеством вложенного в собаку труда), относительно которого она может быть overpriced, конечно, не нова. Но в этом абзаце утверждается нечто большее -- оказывается, собака может только казаться overpriced, не являясь таковой в действительности. Для иностранных читателей отмечу, что частное золотовладение и рынок золота в нашей стране декриминализированы с 31 декабря 1974 года.
Why I'm already missing the mission
Jim Sulski
Chicago Journal, March 17 2005
A couple of years ago, I took one of my advanced journalism classes over to the Pacific Garden Mission for a tour of the facility. They were shown classrooms, the chapel for prayer, the seemingly endless rows of utilitarian bunk beds, and the hot box, a large walk-in room where the attire of the nightly "guests" of the mission was placed, the heat turned up and any living creatures were roasted to death and swept away.
Of course, it was the latter that fascinated the students, wishful entomology majors that they were.
Afterward, I scheduled another field trip for the students. We canvassed some of the gleaming new residential development going up within blocks of the mission, noting size, price, and amenities. Since the students were no better at math than they were entomology, I helped them calculate what it might cost to live in one of those new high-rise homes in the sky. We figured to be one of the new residents of the South Loop, one must either trade precious metals on the black market or sell high-rise condominiums to people who can afford to buy precious metals. And you also had to have enough cash left over to buy a very over-priced-looking dog.
The point of the exercise was to demonstrate the very incongruous ways of life developing here in the South Loop. 1 kept raising the question of how long they thought the mission could last here with the changes taking place around it. The students didn't get it. The problem was that the homeless people who rely on the mission for food and a warm bed had morphed into ubiquitous but invisible objects, a monotonous pattern in an urban wallpaper. They were no different than the annoying clatter of the el or the one of the South Loop's speeding taxicabs of death—tangible and tolerated but overlooked.
The guy on the corner pan-handling wasn't a social problem or a moral dilemma for those of us with enough money for a nice meal out; he was just a fixture of the South Loop, occasionally kept at bay with a handout but mostly ignored.
Which is why I'm already missing the mission.
Its purpose, I thought, was to show people that, there for the grace of Ja, a slip into addition, or a quirky twist of fate, go all of us. The mission and, more impor-tantly, its clients, I thought, was evidence that, yes, we can all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps but we also don't get to choose who are parents are (well, at least not yet). That who we are is a genetic roll of the dice. Some fall to earth in the old South Loop and others drift slowly down to the North Shore.
Which is why I also don't have a problem with the mission being moved. With the way the South Loop has evolved, it seems that everyone is missing the point-not just the students who are mathematically and entomologi-cally challenged.
At one time, back in the days of pre-South Loop trendiness, the area was a sort of Barbary Coast of Chicago, populated by a colorful and exotic gallery of crusty characters. I swear to God I saw an inebriated Popeye staggering on South Wabash one night.
As an undergrad at Columbia College (studying neither math nor entomology) back in the early 1980s, I would literally bolt south on Michigan Avenue when I had to travel from the college's 600 S. Michigan building to its 11th Street building at night.
My rationale was that if one of those crusty characters were going to get me, they would have to hit a moving and somewhat spastic target (on the upside, street parking was plentiful back then if you didn't care too much for your car).
Back then, the mission repre-sented what everyone in a blue-collar, hardscrabble Chicago neighborhood was a step or two away from.
Not anymore.
Today, I casually saunter down South Michigan Avenue, past high-rise residential projects and restaurants that I can't afford. Now the only running comes when the owners chase me away alter peering into a window.
It now seems that most people in the South Loop are far from a step or two away from the mission. Instead, from the world-class views of the neighborhood's luxury high-rises, a sort of vertical social chasm has opened up and in have fallen the homeless.
So in a short time, when the last few remnants of the mission are dismantled and removed from the South Loop, and the large glowing cross on the side of the building no longer casts an eerie radiance on State Street, there will be even less of a reminder of how life sometimes deals you a bad hand.
In a place where wild-berry lattes and goose-down comforters are now the norm, it's become easy to forget how hard it can be for some people to still get their hands on a cup of coffee and a warm bed. And we're all the poorer for it.