Growing up on the edge of the Chicago suburbs has shown me the highly noticeable difference between rural American culture and that of the city dwellers. It used to mystify me as I sat on a train from Aurora to Chicago, watching the wide-open spaces become more and more densely packed with buildings which would gradually shrink in size. Different sets of needs between rural and urban folks influenced different cultures which developed and percolated in America. And since I believe it's important to understand the perspectives of everybody, I'm appreciative of the opportunity I've had to mingle with people from out in the "boonies." Due to the combination of nature and nurture, I am not, at my core, the type of person to agree on political stances with most rural folks; however, working with the so-called "rednecks" has definitely coerced me into reevaluating my priorities.
I never thought I would have an outdoor job as an adult, let alone love such a job. Here I am, though, enjoying the work I do and clinging to this job despite taking a pay cut to acquire my position. I work as a civil engineer that oversees road construction projects. And who are the people building the roads and bridges, with whom I interact? They're the laborers. They're Tom, Joe, Bob, Carlos, Miguel, and other assorted names that are mostly the simple Caucasian and Hispanic ones. What do they have to offer? Their physical bodies, for the most part. Their muscle. Their ability to exert forces and decisively move their muscles, their shovels, the machines that get the job done. They do stuff. That's what they do.
It sounds so simple, but that very simplicity is what leads people to take their indispensable actions for granted. The things they do are basic, but we often forget that the basic needs we have are also the most important ones. Consider Maslow's pyramid, or even just common sense. Our most basic needs are food, water, shelter, safety, and protection from disease. Now that we've established that, think about where these things originate. Food comes from farmers. Water comes from public entities that hire construction workers to create wells, water towers, and pipe networks, plus plumbers to get the systems working in individual homes and businesses. Shelters are built by people who work with their hands, including hospice and police facilities, which give us safety and health. You can see my point now. It's the rednecks whom you make fun of that are an essential part of giving us all of our basic needs.
Rednecks receive a lot of condescension for being ignorant and "uncultured," but we need them. What's more, they are ahead of the game in a certain way when it comes to philosophy. Believe it or not, despite their tendencies toward archaic religious practices and intolerance of other cultures, they have imparted upon me a complete restructuring of my perspective. And that's because the people with the most developed and advanced ideologies lack something that labor-intensive rednecks have: a will to action.
Living life in the best way requires two things: motivation and action. In other words, there's dreaming, then there's doing-- and you need both. Thomas Edison called them, "inspiration" and "perspiration." However, most people consider one of these things more than the other. There are the dreamers, who dwell on the potential of an idea more than its actual realization; and there are the doers, who jump headlong into situations without thinking about their consequences. Privileged people often don't need to work hard to receive compensation, so they will more often be dreamers. But those who come from hardier backgrounds have to work harder to make a living, and they will thus learn the relative importance of labor and action over ruminating on details.
I know some people who ruminate on details until they hurt their own minds. For example, some people will watch the news stories of all the crimes and social injustices in the world, and they will then post about how much they feel, hope, and pray for the wronged. After an earthquake in Nepal kills 4,000 people, Americans read news story after news story about it and note how it affects them emotionally. But does that really do anything for the tens of thousands of homeless, starving, and devastated individuals affected by the disaster? No. It fucking doesn't.
This is to contrast with the level-headed people on social networking, who will mention how they're affected by the horrible situation, but they will also do two things. First, they ensure that their post about the tragedy is articulate and concise, because they know that it's not about them. They won't write a five paragraph essay on their Facebook about the situation in Nepal (for example), because if anyone has a lot to say about the crisis, it will be one of the Nepalese who needs to constantly negotiate just to get the basics, like food and shelter. It's not about you; it's about them, so that makes it rude and highly distasteful to make it about your emotions and not theirs. Second, and most importantly, a level-headed person will place a call to action. The whole objective of the media's attempts to raise awareness of a humanitarian crisis is to influence people to act, specifically to take steps to mitigate the suffering of those affected. A level-headed person will make a short post that includes a link to a page where you can donate to relief efforts or sign up to help clean up the disaster. Because it's not about you, and it's not just a casual conversation topic. Shit needs to get done. And I know that, if I was involved in a disaster, the people who would come to my rescue will be the ones we pejoratively refer to as "rednecks." Because rednecks are the people of action. And action is what we need.
Seriously, if a tornado were to destroy your house, who would come to your rescue? If a tree fell on the wreckage of your house, trapping you inside, who would grab the chainsaw to cut it apart and free you? It would probably be the guy who knows how to use a chainsaw! I've been blown off the road by a blizzard in two separate occasions. Both times, the people who came to my rescue weren't policemen or firemen. They were rednecks. They were rough, ready artisans piloting large pick-up trucks armed with chains and towing power to pull me back onto the road.
These are the people who inspire me to want to become a man of action. All my life, I've just been a pile of ideas. But ideas don't matter if they don't lead to real, practical decisions and work. I referred to Thomas Edison earlier, but I didn't mention the whole quote he said. I'll never forget how he said how "innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." The work is almost all of it. You still need the dreams, but remember that they only constitute one percent of the effort involved in any great step forward in life, according to Edison's approximations-- and I don't think he's too off-course. It's the dreams and the motivation which serve as the ignition for people to start doing great things, but the work is the part that really matters. Dreams alone, without action, are useless. There is no virtue in barking without an intent to bite. So before posting about how virtuous you think you are simply because of your awareness of a global issue, consider that we'll probably judge that you're only trying to selfishly brag about your own "intelligence" and "awareness" if you don't also include a real, practical action toward helping the cause. What matters is the real effort. What matters is real work. All my life, I've been a man of ideas and dreams, and now I just want to spit on that notion of who I've been. Work is what's really important--doing, not dreaming. Now I want to be a man of action. Thanks to the hard-working people I've met at work and elsewhere for inadvertently setting me straight.
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