Blog #3 (late, I know; interesting, I hope)

Being the elder statesman of our class, I have had more experiences, more jobs and more shape shifting in my life than most (certainly, not all) of you. I have lead a life that a chameleon might envy and have had the extraordinary good fortune to be able to experience work, class and language from an array of angles. Let me begin with a brief rundown of the positions I have held and let you take them in for a moment:

• Soldier
• Waiter/bartender/barrista at various places, from no-star to four star
• Front Desk Manager - four star hotel
• Innkeeper at a Napa Valley start-up B&B
• Regional Sales Director for a hotel company
• Volunteer Firefighter
• I.V. Technician/E.R. Technician
• Construction Manager (large, multi-million dollar projects)
• Drug Dealer
• Prisoner
• Deck Hand on Tow Boats (yes, those ugly barges on the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers get moved around by people on boats)
• Headhunter/Executive Recruiter
• General purpose consultant (presently)
• Student (always)

I'm certain that I have left out a few things, but I believe that my point about the variety and, well, strangeness of my life has been made. I am here to tell you all that class, language and work are absolutely determining factors of the shape of our worlds. What makes a Physician a Physician? Is it the lab coat? Is it the stethoscope? Is it the Porsche in the driveway? Is it the fact that she knows exactly what amniocentesis, medial phalanges, hydrocephalus, or sarcoma with metastases mean and what to do about them? Of course, it is all of these things in our western culture. In Europe, the cultural image of a Physician is something else and it is different in Turkey and Tasmania, too; for many of us House or E.R. or other media have formed our ideas of what it means to be a Physician.
What is likely the same in each of these places and cultures is the language, the class and the work. While the names of the above procedures, pathologies and bones can be translated into various languages, they all mean the same things. Furthermore, the actions or the work of the physician is the same - to heal as best as possible given the available technology and medicines. The class of a physician, finally, while not guaranteed to be wealthy in every culture, is very likely to be proportionately higher than those of more commonly held jobs. Yerbol may disagree because of his experience, but I will wager that, even in Kazakhstan, Physicians are paid and fed better than a garbage man or a seed separator.
The language of a profession is what makes it inaccessible to non-practitioners of any given job. Lawyers spend years learning how to manipulate and use language within their professions, as do Physicians, Architects, etc. An inmate, too, must learn and use the terms of art of her environment; if you don't know what shakedown, rat, punk, 'hole' or the SHU are, you might find out the wrong way. The words of professions, of cultures, of classes are the hallmarks and the agreed upon terminologies that create culture and are simultaneously created by culture. Our words are our weapons or our healers, our recriminations that create friction, anger, calmness, unity. When Odysseus insists that his crew sail past the Island of the Sun, having just saved his ship from certain destruction between the Scylla and Charybdis by following the warnings of Circe to the letter, one crewman pointed out that Odysseus set an impossibly high bar for them. An example of Odysseus' mortal nature, despite his god-like strength, stamina, fighting ability and courage can be found in his inability to convince Eurylochus and the rest of the crew to continue to follow the instructions given to Odysseus by gods:

You're a hard man, Odysseus. Your fighting spirit's
stronger than ours, your stamina never fails.
You must be made of iron head to foot. Look,
your crew's half-dead with labor, starved for sleep,
and you forbid us to set foot on land, this island here,
washed by the waves, where we might catch a decent meal again.
Drained as we are, night falling fast, you'd have us desert
this haven and blunder off, into the mist-bound seas?

Eurolychus portrays himself as a 'regular Joe' being abused by his above-average leader; he claims no blood of the gods in his line, he fights honestly and fairly and he follows orders (most of the time). But, in a class statement that appeals greatly to the rest of the hungry men on the ship, he sets himself apart and says that enough is enough, thereby garnering agreement from enough of the rest of the crew to force Odysseus to stop and in the end, eat of Helios' herd, much to their ultimate distress. Does any of this 'appealing to the lowest common denominator' sound familiar? Joe the Plumber can't afford health insurance, but doesn't want to pay an extra $300,000 a year in taxes so that illegal aliens can get basic health care on the backs of his poor workers. The 'regular Joe' argument worked for Eurolychus and it works today, if you aren't listening closely for the lessons from the gods.