Social Classes: The Lower Class

Drunk British People (photo: Wales News Service)

You can't help feeling a little bad for the lower class. On the surface, it looks like they were born to it, and, really, in many ways, they more or less were. Most lower class people are lower class because they have terrible folkways, like, say, smoking crack and not having a job. They got them from their environment to be certain, but if we allow for personal responsibility at all (rather than assuming we're all inevitable products of our environments), they are in part personally responsible for their predicament. Since most of this series of essays is a sort of comedy of manners, this one is probably most clear of all. And the most sad. Many in the HBD camp would simply dismiss the lower class as low-IQ orcs. It may be statistically true in prison inmate populations, but it's well known to not be true in general. I can testify from experiences, some of the smartest people I've ever met were lower class.

How do you get along with or suck up to the lower classes? Well, you pretty much do not do so at all. But there are two ways of getting along with a lower class person at least to a limited extent. The first way is to beat the shit out of them. They deserve it anyway, and most people lick the boots that kick them. They do respect strength, in a sullen sort of way, and they really don't have much heart, like lower middle class people do. The second way, recommended for anyone who isn't a lower middle class hobgoblin with scars on your knuckles, is to give them stuff. Give them money. Give them beer. Give them drugs. They will be nice to you for a little while anyway. Maybe. Really, you should probably just throw down your wallet and run away.

I posit that modern lower class people in America are human beings who have largely been ruined by the managerial state and other forms of defective culture. Sure, we've always had a lower class, but in the old days, most of them were "lower middle class" in that they had jobs. Since the upper middle class has all the power, it is in their best interests to grow this class. I'm not saying UMC people run around plotting ways to fill up the ghettos. I'm sure it's mostly unconscious, as is are most things about social class, but the way things play out, most classes do things which are in their self interests, or they fade away (like the upper class has).

First of all, as I said above, it is damned easy to be lower class if you are born that way. If mom and dad are criminals, junkies, raving loonies or alcoholics, you probably will be also. It is easy to be lower class if you are, for example, Irish or the descendent of american slaves (descendents of Hatian and Jamaican ones seem to do much better, as do the scotch over the irish: meaning, it's culture, not race -- but culture is passed on in much the same way as race is). In fact, it's pretty easy to go south if you are lower middle class as well; particularly in hard times. It almost happened to me, as I'd be glad to tell you some time when I am in my cups. Happened to most of my home-boys. <hat over heart for the fallen ones>
Go to jail: it is as much a lower-class rite of passage as going to college is for the upper-middles. I'm not exaggerating one whit: the main thing which makes a lower-class person of the lowest class is his criminal record.
Be mindlessly violent. Don't fight over small but righteous causes like lower middle-class people: fight over anything and everything. There is nothing that can't be fixed with broken bones. In fact, you should not have any self control at all in any way.
Don't work. The world owes you a living. Your life is incredibly unfair, and those fuckers should pay for it. They should pay you not to kill them, bastards.
Religion: the lower class only gets religion while in jail, to impress middl-class parole officers. If they really had religion, they would not be in this situation in the first place. Example: Malcolm-X was lower-middle class once he got religion. He was lower class before then.
Hobbies: hanging out on the street corner, siring bastards, dealing drugs, stealing, beating up your girlfriend, getting tattoos, buying expensive sneakers, doing time, crimes in general, spurious lawsuits, sucking up to upper middle class social workers, poppin' a cap in yo ass.
I don't understand lower class dress, but I am pretty sure it is important, as they beat the shit out of each other over it all the time.
Military service: felons aren't let in any more. In the old days, Army infantry and Marines.
Lower-class people don't vote; they have criminal records. But they wouldn't mind doing a favor for the upper middle-class social worker once in a while for some smokes or booze, if it isn't too much trouble. Which is why upper middle-class people want to allow criminals to vote. The upper middle class and the lower class have an equivalent relationship to that between the upper class and the lower-middles. Many of their folkways are similar: single parent families, amorality, "it's not my fault" irresponsibility, living in big cities, really hating the cops, a culture of drug abuse, anger at "da man," total lack of productive activity, stupid tattoos, etc. You even can see upper-middles play acting at being street people from time to time.
Habitat: Da hood, Indian reservations sans casinos.

Example lower class people: Mike Tyson, Eminem, Charles Bukowski, Axel Rose, the thug on the street corner who wants to kill you, almost everyone who is in prison, Sonny Liston.