Years ago some neighbors were tasked with naming the neighborhood that would soon be called Wedgewood Houston. James was one of those neighbors and had grown up on these streets. Remembering the dog food plant that was nearby and the countless number of rats that were unleashed when it was demolished he suggested rat town. Unsurprisingly he didn’t gain much traction. In the end a name was chosen that seemed a lil more appropriate. But our ideas about what makes a place safe, meaningful, beneficial and interesting are just as much molded by our culture as compiled data.

The purpose of the name “rat town” in Wedgewood Houston, on my truck, and in these pages are meant to probe those cultural norms and characteristics. It is my belief that things aren’t better for humans or the world solely because they are fancier or more expensive. It is also my belief that choosing to value these things while claiming to want equality or a world that is sustainable is grossly incongruous.

Imagine for these pages that it’s a constantly changing democratic “spirit” that exists between/ around us. Because it’s an unwritten agreement between people it would require more than one person. It wouldn’t really be created with a man alone in his basement, unless it can be proven that there should be one global culture and we can be assured that the man in his basement will read the right books.

As empires grow, their “culture” expands with them. Their values, goals and beliefs may be instilled thru stories, art, and religion. make no mistake. In order to grow, empires need to gain land and resources. The few at the top of an Empire’s hierarchy take the most resources. Those at the top are also the furthest removed from the source of those resources. That distance confuses what their use actually does to the people and the land where those goods are being produced. Unfortunately in the past that was never a intended concern. Due to the grandeur, permanance, design and cost, the cultures who have taken credit for their creations (normally without doing any of the legitimate work), were used as proof of the groups supremacy.

The “lesser” people on the edges of the empire or outside of the empire altogether still lived very human lives. There must have been connection. There was shared beliefs and song and ritual. Their lives weren’t less because they couldn’t find ways to memorialize themselves, if anything, they were less when their work was used to memorialize some great centralized ruler.

That type of refined culture… the one that tries to take over the world, that wants you to believe in its superiority, is never the sweet and good one. It’s never the one that is connected to the people around them. It’s always the insecure one hoping to prove to the world her own importance. Those sophisticated people that hope they can buy and trade culture can’t understand that real culture happens on a dance floor or in a dirty jazz bar.

 

 

In the search for an easier route to more resources the ones with the boats and the clothes and the art realized that they had underestimated the earth’s contents. A race to find and catalogue all living things began. Those financing these expeditions hoped to find new plants and animals that could be useful or eaten. When other humans were also found they were also characterized and catalogued. Because they hadn’t the ships and clothes and art that the europeans had they were classified as lesser.

we now understand that all humans have shared ancestry and that no group of human is lesser. As Jarod diamond explains in guns germs and steal, the temperate climate of europe allowed for greater travel east to west, while travel thru the equator or a pole would be more difficult. Crops and livestock couldn’t be used in latitudinal travel as they could longitudinally. With the movement from east to west, technologies were also able to spread freely.

Of course people move to new places for so many reasons. Conflict and natural disasters force movement, but it’s logically rare for someone to willingly leave a place in which that place gives them everything they need to live a fulfilling life. So, it stands to reason that the person who has moved needs or wants something that they’ve felt they weren’t receiving where they were. If a developer shows in your neighborhood claiming to understand communities or neighborhoods, don’t believe him or the public relations woman that he buys.

I wait tables and I love it. There’s an undeniable need being met there. People eat and we help them, add an extra layer of helping someone feel comfortable and connected to others in a public place and I just know that I can be proud of my work. But so many of the highest paying jobs available have little possible meaning. You just can’t be passionate about capital one. Or take any of those jobs where it’s not your goal to like or believe in what you’re doing. It’s only a job. You may even hate the thing you’re selling or representing in court. Acting like you do is the same as sucking dick for money. Now I’m not against sucking dick and I don’t think I’m against sex work either, But we can for sure know that the dick that’s paying to be sucked isn’t automatically the best dick.

 

I think we all just want to feel respected by the people around us.