My father studied war, sailing (the rough kind) and carpentry that I may study mathematics and politics that my children may study art and literature that their children (my grandchildren) might one day move to Vancouver to study peace, sailing (the genteel kind) and carpentry (is there a kind?). They say the Soviet class struggle is lost, and so is ours, but I say my father fought to a draw. A bloody draw, an armistice that I must protect at all costs. We fought for (upward) social mobility and our reward was the downward social mobility of the intelligentsia (of which I am now part).
There was a time when you could tell the bourgeoisie by their little (in more sense than one) badges of honor. LV, Ralph Lauren and so on. But I just walked past a boy driving an old car with combat trousers that had to have been from Vietnam and a badge on his car which said Grinell College and Math club. The bourgeoisie now have more clandestine badges, veganism, Peter Attia and a very bright young child who might go an East Coast school one day. The operario (proletariat) save to buy jeans on Michigan Avenue.
My high school physics teacher who would ask us to count the leaves on a tree when we asked him a difficult question. We always hoped he had a clever answer at the end. But he always said, “No. that’s it. None of this means anything. Just like 382 leaves do not mean anything”. So maybe the class struggle is over.
